We are living in the best era for gaming

[Bofferbrauer2]

IcaroRibeiro said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

And this is where you're wrong. They just gained much more prominence, but back then, there were also tons of indie developers. The reason the indies gained so much more prominence over the last 15 years is because they continued making games with genres/themes that the publishers didn't want to touch anymore as they got more and more risk-averse. But that doesn't mean they just emerged back then, what changed is their visibility.

Even if you're right, this shows how much better market is now. Before, indies needed physical distribution, the odds of them succeeding were close to noexistent. Getting global release? Forget it 

How many 90s indie games turned to be classics? I can't think any

Ever heard of shareware? This is how most Indies sold their games before the Internet allowed to do it completely without physical media. Another way was to develop your game and then mail it to potential publishers, though they risked having to sell the rights to the games when doing so. Finally, several indies simply went and self-published the games, which in the late 90's was relatively easy (They needed just a jewelcase CD in most cases).

As for 90's indies becoming classics, Doom, Wolfenstein, Commander Keen, (well pretty much everything from id software at the time became a hit despite technically being an indie developer until their acquisition by Zenimax in 2009), One Must Fall, The Exile/Avernum series (Avernum was originally just an extended remake of Exile), Constructor/Mob Rule, ADOM, Nethack...