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United States, Utah

I keep seeing posts about how they miss all the mc8 users or whatever and stuff and this place is so empty, that every single one of my songs are at the top of the song list.  Can someone just tell me a quick overview of what the situation is with this place and what made it get to this point?

btw, they should make it so you can put html and css as the post instead of BBCode, its a little too limited with BBCode.

Last edited by Rubedog (Dec 20, 2021 11:45 pm)

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Glasgow, Scotland.

Nothing specific happened. The Internet just evolves. New people interested in this kind of thing ended up spending more time on Facebook groups. Folks generally don't use forums any more. People got tired of answering the same old questions over and over. Lots of things have been covered to death, and anyway, this place was never as busy as somewhere like 8bc anyway for a variety of reasons and that ended up dying in some spectacular non spectacular fashion due to weird politics.

There is no good answer. There is no grand conspiracy. That's why nobody has answered you yet. It's just the way it goes.

p.s. HTML will never be allowed on forums like this for security reasons. It's a standard setup for all forum based software.

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New Albany Indiana

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?

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New Albany Indiana

Also 8bit collective was another forum used from like 2005-2010 maybe??? Before my time

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United States, Utah

Thank you Bit wish!

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Retired

A lot of people interested in chipmusic are also on twitter I think

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IL, US

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

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Liverpool, UK

Been doing shows on twitch since May 2020 - https://www.youtube.com/calmdownkidder has an archive of the shows as does https://www.twitch.tv/calmdownkidder/videos

Last edited by calmdownkidder (Jan 9, 2022 2:40 pm)

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UK
Rubedog wrote:

btw, they should make it so you can put html and css as the post instead of BBCode, its a little too limited with BBCode.

some spicy xss.

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

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New Albany Indiana
Bit wish wrote:

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?

Also the chip wins group isn’t deleted, but it’s archived.

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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 heart 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?)

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IL, US

8bitcollective wasn't a thing until 2006 (or very early 2007), nonfinite & kitsch both got into the gear game in late 2008, iirc (low-gain was the main US cart source through 2007)

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East Kilbride, Scotland

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!

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e.s.c. wrote:

8bitcollective wasn't a thing until 2006 (or very early 2007), nonfinite & kitsch both got into the gear game in late 2008, iirc (low-gain was the main US cart source through 2007)

I stand corrected! I remember you from 8bc, environmental sound collapse! how have you been?
so what places were the stalwarts of the scene in the early 2000s then?

Sycamore Drive wrote:

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!

Sycamore! I remember you also. I think we were both starting out at the same time. How you doing, got any new music out?

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Michigan

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)

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I drifted away after 2015ish. Got my start in 2011 In the budding chipthrash scene but that kind of collapsed in on itself due to egos and drama. I moved on to using Logic Pro but just recently dusted off my gameboy. I will say I was shocked at how things changed and how fractured everything has gotten. I think it’s like everything else though. It comes in waves and right now we are waiting for the next. I plan on playing more shows than ever before and I’m hoping in my area I can build a budding scene but we shall see