Comment on Discoverability is the industry’s "Achilles’ heel," marketing survey finds
Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org 3 days agoI will highlight the existence of shareware, freeware, and other indie physical distribution channels. Both IBM compatibles and other PCs had "homebrew" scenes, not dissimilar to the "indie" scene today. The Amiga is still noted for the PD offerings it boasted. Many of the big companies now started as Indies. So, no.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 3 days ago
Maybe I'm not old enough but I don't remember a time where shareware and freeware were part of a physical distribution channels. Most of my shareware I found on the internet and my knowledge of the Amiga public domain comes from Aminet, which started as a FTP site. I still had to get physical discs for full games, but shareware and abandonware I could easily find on the web.
As for for many big companies starting as indies. I'm not arguing "indie" didn't exist back then, my point was that it was too expensive for most people to be indie. The fact that we had 10-20 "indie" studios (kinda hard to call them indie when most of the time they also ended up being publishers for other studios) back in the day and now we have thousands of indie studios supports my point that it is easier to be indie today than it was when physical media was dominant. Part of it is because of easier development tools, part of it is easier publishing.