A lot of folks think of indie games* started in the late '90s thanks to the internet, but they actually started in the '70s. Devs would copy their games to disks and sell them in baggies to hobby shops, or direct by mail via magazine ads. (*The term "indie games" might indirectly be GDC's fault.) - ThreadSky

katewillaert.bsky.social • 39 days ago

A lot of folks think of indie games* started in the late '90s thanks to the internet, but they actually started in the '70s. Devs would copy their games to disks and sell them in baggies to hobby shops, or direct by mail via magazine ads.

(*The term "indie games" might indirectly be GDC's fault.)

Comments

sonsofliberty.vote•39 days ago

"Laughs in MUDDS"

elthesensai.bsky.social•39 days ago

That’s how gaming started in general. Today when we think of indie games it’s a bit different. It’s a studio that can be a one person team or bigger. That’s how I see it anyway.

infuriatedsigh.bsky.social•39 days ago

C64 was cassettes. Press play on tape 😁

rigbythedog.bsky.social•39 days ago

Back in the 1970s, I was purchasing other items that came in baggies, lol.

panimu.bsky.social•38 days ago

I don't think you can have "indie" when there isn't AAA next to it in comparison.

tpoholmes.bsky.social•39 days ago

Groups like BMUG (Berkeley Macintosh Users Group), which I was a part of, had entire disk libraries you could order, consisting of hundreds of games, utilities, etc.

Most of these were shareware (get it free and pay the author if you keep it, at least in theory) and freeware.

ddm.bsky.social•39 days ago

As the lone area Mac kid growing up in the 90’s this sounds amazing.

tpoholmes.bsky.social•39 days ago

I get it. I grew up in a town of 2500 in rural PA. We got an Apple II in ’79, then a Mac late ’84. Post college, I moved to the Bay Area, by pure chance 3 blocks from BMUG, the world’s largest computer user group. There for 4yrs, served on the board, and eventually landed at Apple. It was a ride.

xeiavica.newgrounds.com•39 days ago

Free (libre) software has also, always been there since the start. Back before software could be copyrighted, it was most of the time given away for free (with source code) and even sometimes in the public domain. The (commonly called open source) movement is reviving that old practice.

kumimono.bsky.social•39 days ago

PD, freeware and shareware should be terms familiar. iD software wasn't a huge conglomerate when Doom came out, indie by any standards, I'd say.

katewillaert.bsky.social•39 days ago

A few people started up software exchanges that made things a little easier for '70s indie devs by handling the copying, distribution, and advertising for them. Shops and/or users could order games advertised in magazines, or send away for the full catalog.

katewillaert.bsky.social•39 days ago

Now, picture if you will, an alternate universe where one such software exchanges bought out all the others, becoming the place that every hobby shop *had* to order from, and every dev *had* to sell through. And gamers are so attached to physical media that Steam remained a bit player.

katewillaert.bsky.social•39 days ago

What I just described is what happened to the comics industry, and the monopoly distributor is called Diamond. Yesterday, Diamond filed for Chapter 11, and for people in the comics world, it'd be like hearing that Steam filed for Chapter 11. No one is sure how this is going to play out.

karobit.com•39 days ago

frankly, there's probably an alternate universe where Amazon had purchased Steam somewhere around, like, Orange Box times, and everyone kept their digital exclusivity through them until eventually, Amazon decided that the Steam executable is being depreciated in favor of the Kindle Downloader

katewillaert.bsky.social•39 days ago

(*I've greatly simplified here to get to the point quicker, so not everything I said is 1:1. For example, Diamond is only a distributor, so they don't handle the printing or advertising. In fact, one might argue no one in comics handles the advertising, haha. Ha. Heh. Sigh.)

katewillaert.bsky.social•39 days ago

If you're a gaming person not into comics, why should you care? Because everything I've seen happen to gaming AND games criticism (as well as music and music criticism, to an extent) has happened to comics first. Comics are the Black Canary in the coal mine. You should take this as a warning.

tacticurn.bsky.social•39 days ago

I'll clap if Steam ever folds up. Consolidation is rarely good news for consumers, from my experience.

scrollboss.bsky.social•39 days ago

I see what you did there

katewillaert.bsky.social•39 days ago

But I want people to think beyond just hating Diamond or Steam (or Spotify). Think about how rare it is now for someone to make a living doing comics or music even for a major company or label. How rare it is to make a living doing comics or music journalism. Games are heading that way too.

blvdnights.bsky.social•39 days ago

This is my roman empire

reverendcrush.com•39 days ago

I only avoided comparing Diamond's situation to a "Steam Chp. 11 for gamers" because I know some jackass would have been like "but Steam's digital!"

Like, yeah, even more reason to be cautious of monopolies that won't let you own the media you purchase. Everyone thought Diamond was invincible too!

theunclebob.bsky.social•39 days ago

I, personally, *HATE* Diamond because, when they took over everything, they included minimum order quantities that my FLCS at the time was simply unable to meet (like, it was ran by one dude and was slightly smaller than a Walmart vestibule). Diamond acquiring everything was pretty much when I got

theunclebob.bsky.social•39 days ago

out of comics simply because they weren't easily avaliable. The industry will rebound (well, DC/Warner Bros., and Marvel/Disney will, for sure) and it won't be pretty, but good riddance to bad rubbish as far as I'm concerned.

theunclebob.bsky.social•39 days ago

Oh! Just read a quick article - and I'm definitely not an expert, but I wasn't aware that Lunar and Penguin even existed now, I'm so much out of the comic world loop.

desideriuserasmus.bsky.social•39 days ago

I don't recall any such services. This was early days; everything was done small and amateur-hour.

katewillaert.bsky.social•39 days ago

TSE Software Exchange and Creative Computing, which I think Adventure International based its initial model on. Doug Carlston sold his first game to five of these groups because they didn't think of themselves as publishers with exclusivity and all that.

desideriuserasmus.bsky.social•38 days ago

Very interesting... I didn't know about them. Thanks.

amothermole.bsky.social•39 days ago

even just, ya know... kids making games in the 80s on their home computers. How could they think it was only a 90s thing?

danielmclaury.bsky.social•39 days ago

I do feel like "indie games" is only meaningful in the context of a world where major game studios exist. Like, in the 1980s, Sierra On-Line was about as mainsteam as you could get, and as far as i know it was like five or six people.

katewillaert.bsky.social•39 days ago

They started indie and grew into a mainstream company, as did Broderbund and others that all got started around that time.

rav24.bsky.social•39 days ago

What I would love to see re-explained is the usage of the "indie" instead of "inde".

English is not my first, but I'm sure the source word is INDEpendent not INDIEpendent.

ezrat69.bsky.social•39 days ago

It's spelled how you pronounce it. As it became its own word instead of just an abbreviation it also gained a "proper" spelling.

c0deredhead.bsky.social•39 days ago

I miss Shareware

ottojschlosser.bsky.social•39 days ago

Yup. I did it in the early days of Macdom, mid-80s

qua12.bsky.social•37 days ago

Thanks for correcting gaming history👍

qua12.bsky.social•39 days ago

Great game history👍

atariarchive.org•39 days ago

Disks or cassettes! Or even in some cases they’d sell you a paper copy of the source code so you could type it in if you wanted to save even more money

be-three.bsky.social•39 days ago

When I was about 12, I spent ages typing out code from the back of a magazine and all it was was a ball bouncing across the screen. This put me off coding forever.

yesterzine.bsky.social•39 days ago

Literally how Sierra online started for one.

moegamer.net•39 days ago

There might have been no Ultima without ziplock bags!

yesterzine.bsky.social•38 days ago

And the Big Red Arrow christmas quiz would have been much easier!

desideriuserasmus.bsky.social•39 days ago

I did indeed sell copies of my two "Indie" games, Tanktics and Legionnaire, to some computer stores, but there were very few such stores. Yes, we all used Ziplock bags. But I emphasize how few of us there were. I sold about 100 copies of Tanktics and 150 copies of Legionnaire.

5007-574in3d.bsky.social•38 days ago

Was this your game?

desideriuserasmus.bsky.social•38 days ago

Yep, I made that game for Avalon-Hill.

5007-574in3d.bsky.social•38 days ago

Ah. Cool. I think it's archived in the eXoDOS project, so it's preserved for the future. :D

desideriuserasmus.bsky.social•38 days ago

You need the physical map to play the game. I hope they include a printable image of that map in the archive.

jdyer.bsky.social•38 days ago

if you haven't seen it, there's a board game engine (Vassal) where someone made a Tanktics module

https://vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Tanktics:_Computer_Game_of_Armored_Combat_on_the_Eastern_Front

sometimesplaygames.bsky.social•39 days ago

I still remember when it evolved into shareware and having to figure out extended memory settings for DOS

flamepanther.bsky.social•38 days ago

Oh, people think indy games started or at least "first got big" with Braid on XBLA now. I got laughed at in the comments of a PC Gamer article for pointing out that Doom was an indy sold via mail order and that games like Ultima used to be sold in bags.

evil-wizard-esq.bsky.social•39 days ago

Fuck yes. I had swap parties in the 80s when my buddies and I would trade around disks to try new stuff. Indie, or small developer/small budget games, or however you view them, are the creative lifeblood of the industry. Many if not most people at major studios started out there.

serrick13.bsky.social•39 days ago

I remember a lot of that in the dial up days as shareware. Commander keen, wolfenstein and others.

motherhenjacobs.bsky.social•39 days ago

Disks in the 70s? no. No idea where this came from but it is wrong and illogical. People didn't start having personal computers until the late 70s/early 80s and they were loaded from magnetic tape.. cassette tapes. There were no "indie" games because ALL games were "indie".

desideriuserasmus.bsky.social•39 days ago

You nailed it. Casettes were the ONLY distribution medium until 1980. The first floppy disk systems began appearing in the late 70s, but were far too expensive for most people. Floppies did not become common enough to use for distribution until 1981 or 1982.

rjponchione.bsky.social•38 days ago

Um...there were no disks or home computers in the 70's.... 😂😂

connorrosine.com•38 days ago

It's about movies, but the point remains mostly relevant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjwlrvcKcfI

be-three.bsky.social•39 days ago

I miss being able to copy games off my friends with a tape deck

lonmup72.bsky.social•38 days ago

The potential for a U.S.-Russia detente under Trump could be the game-changer that resets the global power dynamics, all to our benefit.

digitaleclipse.bsky.social•39 days ago

Absolutely! Wizardry is one of those historic plastic-baggie games, sold at computer fairs in the late 70s!

doliver.bsky.social•39 days ago

Yup. My dad coded an adventure game (featuring his blues band!) on the Spectrum 48k. Magazines came with code and sprite tutorials. It was accessible. Anyone could do it.

cannabinerd.bsky.social•39 days ago

What was the old gaming magazine that used to come with floppy demos of games?

celestial-void.bsky.social•39 days ago

Let's all give Llamasoft @stinkyox.bsky.social a shoutout. He's the OG!

schraderopolis.bsky.social•39 days ago

billthecat71.bsky.social•39 days ago

"Spacewar" was developed in 1962 by a group of students at MIT. It consisted of two players, each navigating ships to destroy each other by firing torpedoes. It is considered the first indie video game.

andeeharry1.bsky.social•39 days ago

thanks for sharing

forneiavtuber.bsky.social•39 days ago

I know this is how Richard Garriot got his start. He was peddling floppies in zip-locks in middle-school, if I'm recalling my history correct.

serrick13.bsky.social•39 days ago

He was ultima, right?

forneiavtuber.bsky.social•39 days ago

He did Akalabeth first, but yes. He's the Ultima guy.

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