When did everyone go away? (Page 1 of 2)

I got into the chiptune game in like 2012-13. Everyone used this website. Gradually over the next couple years everyone started using the chip tunes=win group on Facebook. By like 2017 this place was dead and everyone was on Facebook. Sometimes between 2018-2019 the owner/mod of chiptune=win group got into some sort of controversy and decided to just delete the group. I don’t have a lot of context bc Even though I saw stuff happening in real time, I just wasn’t paying much attention.

But it was something along the lines of “this guys doesn’t like to promote females or book them for mag fest”, “this guy doesn’t like women” type of stuff that I saw on Twitter and Facebook. Maybe some one else could fill in the blanks?

Thank you Bit wish!

personally, i just got used to there not being new posts here. guess i should start checking again more often since i'm still a staff member here (shrug)

but yeah, a lot of the scene has moved on to either using mostly non-chip gear or stopped making music entirely (including most of the staff here). and most of us who are left aren't releasing as much as we used to, i've been sitting on a bunch of unreleased material for years & i know i'm not alone.
then of course the fact that live gigs aren't really a thing at this point can't help the situation either

some spicy xss.

Last edited by firebrandboy (Jan 10, 2022 11:51 am)

I'm not the most qualified person to speak on this (I only discovered the scene in 2007) but I can paint you a rough timeline:

1980s/90s - actual demoscene / hardcore OG chiptuning. google or wiki demoscene and you'll get an idea of how chiptune/8bit music was actually born

begin of the 2000s chiptune began to establish crossover appeal. ease of use plus relatively famous artists (beck, Björk, crystal castles) led to (for example) the babycakes (a scene-kid/emo/??? clothing brand) endorsement, with artists like henry homesweet (a lovely chap whom I met in my hometown or Norwich once) playing huge raves. sabrepulse also had some pretty big internet fame, followed by colonopenbracket etc. there was definitely a lot of emo/scene-kid hype towards 2006-2010.

throughout the early 2000s 8bitcollective was active, 8bitpeoples put out some fantastic records with growing publicity, 8bitfest was putting on awesome lineups. nonfiniteelectronics and kitsch bent were enabling basically anyone to make chiptune who had 80 quid to spare. every week a new form of pro sound or backlighting was being discussed and perfected. I was very active on 8bc, the scene was basically my life 2007/2008, and it was a great time (for me at least) to be in the community. although a lot of the older heads were already complaining about how mainstream it was getting, that n00bs were asking the same questions, that all the music was just uhhn-tiss uhnn-tis.

so basically, the scene was born from a fringe-movement, and experienced a temporary boom in popularity due to mainstream adoption. 8bitcollective closing didn't help (man, I was fucking gutted when it went) and over the years more and more of the pillars crumbled. so we've essentially come somewhat full circle to where the movement started.

I'll be honest though, personally I see a lasting impact from these years of 'boom'. I was just recently visiting a mate at his uni department and saw two kids with "I my gameboy" stickers, my mate introduced me to them as they're both getting into chip tunes and had some questions. didn't see anyone into 8bit when I did my degree 7 years ago, and when I was gigging 8bit stuff I never once met someone who knew what the hell I was doing. I feel the public consciousness has definitely absorbed chiptune, but the actual scene has reverted to being more nerd/hardcore, which I think is a good thing. I came to 8 bit via Mark Denardo and the Mark VII hiphop remixes, but I may not have stuck around had it not seemed so alive and accessible, I'll be honest.

So, to answer your question:
In my opinion, chiptune is as it always has been. It just went through a bit of a hype for a few years.
Anyway! This is all just the subjective view from a dude who played a lot of gigs in bumfuck norfolk when he was a teen. might look completely different to someone closer to the heart of the scene (New York? Central Europe?)

The last time I popped my head in, there were some pretty active Discord servers like Chiptune Cafe.

I'd been around since about 2008, I still have fond memories of chipmusic, this forum, 8bc, the gigs, the awesome artists I got to hang out with etc but it was such a long time ago since everyone I knew was active that I fell away too. Hope you're all well, by the way!

Michigan had a huge chiptune scene, but it vanished when the huge 8-bit(16-bit) indie game revival happened. I'm guessing it was a counter-culture thing of "Hey! I don't like those full orchestras performing live music on my games, so I'm going to square waves and FM synths to make music." And suddenly when games like Shovel Knight and Hyper Light Drifter came out, the chiptunes group just kinda stopped.

I don't know if that is the true cause or reason to why, but it's kinda norm in the entertainment world, right? Just look at the biggest counter culture movement in history (punk) and see how when it started to become commercialized, it just stopped.

ALSO!!!!! Nothing against Shovel Knight and Hyper Light Drifter, I love these games and are actually a huge influence getting me into game development and working on creating my own retro style game (however I'm using m68k assembly instead of modern language).

I'm just upset that now, since I have the money and time to create chiptune music (or more categorically correct, 8/16 bit musical compositions), this site that was the "go to" collective of all people interested in retro music and informative when others ask for help, is no longer popular... i don't know /shrug

edit: [...] biggest counter culture movement in music history

Last edited by Princedmorn (Apr 28, 2022 1:25 pm)