Spindley Q FrogHi Mastodon, I started a podcast about shareware / freeware / homebrew game history! First episode is out now! http://fringe.games/
Andrew Roach@SpindleyQ Oh I am so there.
@SpindleyQ I have been researching a book on the same topic for almost a year. Dozens of pages of notes. Looking forward to what you got.
@SpindleyQ And you start with FlapPing?? I own that cartridge!!
@SpindleyQ Looking forward to listening to this.
@ajr This is really cool to hear because I'm kinda starting out by just interviewing my friends. I've crashed on Kirk's couch before, haha
@ajr Nice! It's a criminally underresearched space; the world needs lots of projects like that. I mostly decided to do a podcast since I didn't feel I was up to writing a book or a bunch of articles, and what I really wanted was first-hand accounts & stories from people who were there
I'm starting in 1977 and covering the development of Zork/Dungeon/ADVENT at MIT (with, maybe, a brief aside about PLATO) and then diving in to the BBS c64 and BBC Spectrum scene of the 80s.
Eventually, I plan to get in to the actual shareware scene, but that's harder to find info on.
@ajr in my somewhat limited experience, I've found that it's often not that hard to track someone down, if there's a particular piece of software or organization you're interested in.
My white whale is a kinda-shady local publisher that changed names literally with every release - I can find NO trace of these people on the internet after the company went dead, and people who worked with them back then are like "nope, no idea, never hear from them anymore"
@SpindleyQ I'm bogged down right now researching the HyperCard scene.
It was clearly an important movement in independent software and game development. But I can't find much information about individual games, or creators.
@ajr Yeah, I can imagine there's SO many threads to follow there
beans@SpindleyQ Hey, just started listening but I really wanna say that I'm very grateful for how usable the website is
@HeckTheCistem aaaah thank you! I am not very confident in my web design skills, and I was not at all sure at first that building the site from scratch was the right call, so this is very heartening to hear. :)
@SpindleyQ Well, it looks great! And it was really nice to be able to find a subscribe button without having to scour through pages
Also, the podcast itself is great ☺