Oh, what a coincidence! I just finished visiting an old gaming forum I started browsing almost three years ago. It's definitely on its last leg, and I'm sad to see it go. The game it was built around has waned severely in popularity, and most previous members have moved on to Steam. I think the forum has more or less been abandoned. 90% of the people who made the forum great are gone, and that makes me sad. We used to have fantastic discussions about strategy, potential game features, and clan wars. That's all gone now, and it saddens me. I had over 600 posts on that forum, and it's the main site I used as I learned to work my way around the Internet. I hope Hubski is never abandoned, but the reality is saddening: it's only a matter of time. EDIT: Here's the forum, if anyone cares: http://begonebrotherhood.forumotion.com/
I've been going through this for a good ten years now. Been perusing and becoming involved with online communities since I first had an account on GameFAQS over 10 years ago, which I actually still have. Though at this point it's used to keep in touch with a couple of people on some social and private boards. 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. That was a sad one, I checked in about a year ago and it looks completely abandoned at this point. Exhibit C, for me, is Xbox Live. Some buddies and I from high school became good friends with a lot of people from all over the place, but eventually people go to college, get married, go into the army, etc. You have the memories and reminders from forum posts if the forum is still up, and maybe enough to keep in contact with people you come to care about in different ways.
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.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.
I had a similar experience with various Usenet newsgroups and irc channels. I wonder if much of the web moving towards being tied to your real-world identity will hamper that. I'm sure I wouldn't have have been as welcome as I was a lot of places if they new I was a 14 year old kid in Mayberry.
Same here. I spent half my youth on forums, in my case related to Rollercoaster Tycoon. The other half I played the game. I could put a lot of creativity in that game and the community. Besides, rollercoasters are f'ing awesome.I mean it's impossible to understate the impact the early forums I joined when I was 13/14 had on me.
WHAT?! veen. veen. My man! Also have you ever fucked with http://www.openttd.org/en/ - seems up your alley.
I'm interested in all of those things!!! veen, what's your steam ID? and flagamuffin if you're on that too.
Chris Sawyer's the man, aka The Assembly-Writing Superhero. OpenTTD is really cool, I got into it about a year or so ago but I'm absolutely terrible at it - I know how to build bus lines and rail lines but that's about it. Know a good tutorial that's better than the wiki? Also: SimCity 2000. Amazing.
if anyone here is interested in a dying city you should check out worlds. you can download it here under "Worlds installer V 1890" it might be hard to get it running on windows 7 and higher but trust me it is well worth it if you are interested in this type of thing. there's a small group of long timers who are on there almost 24/7, most of them have been there since the beginning or close to it. here's a neat report if you're interested but dont have the time to visit yourself. edit: also, let me know if you're interested in seeing some of the more unsettling areas, i believe i still have a version of worlds with points of interest bookmarked.
Here's a pretty neat related article about the abandoned cities of the World of Warcraft.