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user-inactivated  ·  3573 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Laura E. Hall: What Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?

    Exhibit B is a browser based game I used to play the hell out of in my mid-teens, going from around 5k people playing to less than thirty over the course of a few years as console and mobile gaming picked up.

You, me and delta seem to have had nearly identical experiences -- it's amazing how die-hard communities sprang up among those early, simplistic games. Remember N game, maybe? To this day I have a couch to sleep on in every major city in Australia if I need it thanks to that little flash game. It's a game that introduced me to people who shaped my youth, my political views, my sense of humor, my taste in movies and music ... I mean it's impossible to understate the impact the early forums I joined when I was 13/14 had on me.

I'm a big fan of that phenomenon, for all that the internet takes a lot of shit for corrupting our kids. All I found was a group of people my age and a bit older having intelligent and interesting conversations that we couldn't have elsewhere. I could list a hundred examples of ways those interactions made me a more mature person.