Yes: this piece kind of lost me with the opening. Consumer software barely existed in 1999?
Even ignoring games, have you ever seen the contents of a PC World cover CD? It's all over the map: there was consumer software for every conceivable reason and purpose. Commercial, shareware, PD, and open source were all alive and well - in rude health, in fact - in 1999.
Going further back, I remember the 80s. Even the little market town I lived in had at least half a dozen different places you could buy software, and the mail order scene for software, and weird hardware devices paired with software, was very much alive and well. I'd go as far as to say that, budget games aside, mail order was my default mechanism for buying computer software until well into the 90s when online became more prevalent.
Chevrolet, of all companies, used to literally distribute a program that was effectively a virtual and deeply pixellated car showroom to consumers in 1987: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I89vPzhpNNA.
Consumer software back in the day was widespread, diverse, weird, and wonderful. Going back into the 70s and early 80s, much of the early innovation in consumer software for personal computers, came from the very consumers - the hackers, hobbyists, and tinkerers - who bought them.
Remarks like "Consumer software barely existed just 20 years ago" simply come off as out of touch and ignorant of history, which has the effect of undermining the credibility of any other point the piece is trying to make (especially as an opener - WTH?).
Even ignoring games, have you ever seen the contents of a PC World cover CD? It's all over the map: there was consumer software for every conceivable reason and purpose. Commercial, shareware, PD, and open source were all alive and well - in rude health, in fact - in 1999.
Going further back, I remember the 80s. Even the little market town I lived in had at least half a dozen different places you could buy software, and the mail order scene for software, and weird hardware devices paired with software, was very much alive and well. I'd go as far as to say that, budget games aside, mail order was my default mechanism for buying computer software until well into the 90s when online became more prevalent.
Chevrolet, of all companies, used to literally distribute a program that was effectively a virtual and deeply pixellated car showroom to consumers in 1987: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I89vPzhpNNA.
Consumer software back in the day was widespread, diverse, weird, and wonderful. Going back into the 70s and early 80s, much of the early innovation in consumer software for personal computers, came from the very consumers - the hackers, hobbyists, and tinkerers - who bought them.
Remarks like "Consumer software barely existed just 20 years ago" simply come off as out of touch and ignorant of history, which has the effect of undermining the credibility of any other point the piece is trying to make (especially as an opener - WTH?).