General Gaming News and Discussion

gauze

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There are a handful of people I run into who reminisce that sorta Halo golden era as peak FPS'ing, followed by CoD(we're all in our 30s).. but I think it has a lot of do with the bar of entry. I got a PC when I was young because some guy at circuit city talked my mom into getting it.. but i'd say majority of my friends and people I remember.. most of the ones who had PC's were people who had pseudo gamer dads or relatives.. atleast compared to those who had consoles.. it was a 5:1 console to pc type deal. A lot of switch after 5 deaths type of childhood.

Either way, its funny talking w/ them now because theyre trying to cut their teeth on competitive games.. much like Counter-Strike. Then trying to explain that whole entire era of mods.. as much as I played CS as a kid.. I also played Firearms, Earth Special Forces, The Specialist, TFC, Natural Selection, or Master Sword.. even when it came to BF1942.. Fondly remember Desert Combat.

I usually attribute console fps's as the reason we lost custom servers.
 

Caeden

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I had a console because we were poor “dumb” farmers. My grandmother introduced me to gaming. She played a ton of Atari 2600 and 7800. Then she got an NES.
 
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Vorph

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LG shouldn't be a problem if you keep the TV offline.
Yeah, I'm not too concerned about it. I let the TV get updates just because they occasionally do fix things in the firmware, and I let washer/dryer/appliance connections go through so I can get notifications. Everything else LG is blocked, and my router hasn't allowed any of that hard-coded DNS tomfuckery since Amazon started using it to stop people from refusing Fire OS updates.

What they're doing absolutely should be illegal though, and not just in EU.
 

Nija

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Those who think Halo was peak are just younger.

Everyone reminisces about stuff you experienced when you were going through puberty. I graduated in 97. I can still recite more gangster rap than I care to. I want Starter jackets to make a come back. Etc.

Peak fps gaming for me was qwtf. Class based. Complexity. Skill, things like priming grenades. TF2 was an incredible regression. Just like each Elder Scrolls game is an insane regression and elimination of (imho welcome) complexity.

Prior to tf1, ROTT on the 486 PCs at the back of the lab, BNC network connextors. IPX/SPX instead of tcp/ip. Killing my BBS when Nate dialed in and sysop messaged me to fire up some Doom 1v1 over modem.

My reaction to Halo was poor, as in my opinion there were better things out there, years earlier.

All that said, it was around the Halo era that gaming started becoming more of a business. More players = more sales. To attract more players, lower the barrier to entry. Simplify, tighten the gameplay loop, increase the audience, roll in the dough. That’s the exact formula that produced TF2. Also EQ2 - but to a much weaker response. (Mostly due to being a weak product after all the changes to try to reach a larger audience than EQ1)
 
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mkopec

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All that said, it was around the Halo era that gaming started becoming more of a business. More players = more sales. To attract more players, lower the barrier to entry. Simplify, tighten the gameplay loop, increase the audience, roll in the dough. That’s the exact formula that produced TF2. Also EQ2 - but to a much weaker response. (Mostly due to being a weak product after all the changes to try to reach a larger audience than EQ1)
Forgot to mention the biggest one of them all, World of Warcraft.
 
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Dr.Retarded

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I had a console because we were poor “dumb” farmers. My grandmother introduced me to gaming. She played a ton of Atari 2600 and 7800. Then she got an NES.
My grandmother who was a dairy farmer had an Atari, and I believe it was my uncle's because he was the youngest out of the four kids.

That was the first video game console I ever remember playing. I think my favorite game was Moon Patrol, and to this day I can still remember the music. I think it's only like 14 notes and then it switches octaves.

He had a bunch of other games on there that work just completely horrendous to try to play, but when you were 5 years old, you weren't sitting there thinking about poor game design.
 
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mkopec

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EQ2 was around the same time. If I remember correctly EQ2 released like months ahead of WOW, or at least the open beta to WOW which basically killed any chance for EQ2.
 
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Dr.Retarded

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Those who think Halo was peak are just younger.

Everyone reminisces about stuff you experienced when you were going through puberty. I graduated in 97. I can still recite more gangster rap than I care to. I want Starter jackets to make a come back. Etc.

Peak fps gaming for me was qwtf. Class based. Complexity. Skill, things like priming grenades. TF2 was an incredible regression. Just like each Elder Scrolls game is an insane regression and elimination of (imho welcome) complexity.

Prior to tf1, ROTT on the 486 PCs at the back of the lab, BNC network connextors. IPX/SPX instead of tcp/ip. Killing my BBS when Nate dialed in and sysop messaged me to fire up some Doom 1v1 over modem.

My reaction to Halo was poor, as in my opinion there were better things out there, years earlier.

All that said, it was around the Halo era that gaming started becoming more of a business. More players = more sales. To attract more players, lower the barrier to entry. Simplify, tighten the gameplay loop, increase the audience, roll in the dough. That’s the exact formula that produced TF2. Also EQ2 - but to a much weaker response. (Mostly due to being a weak product after all the changes to try to reach a larger audience than EQ1)
Duke Nukem 3D demo over 28k modem 1v1. That's where I cut my teeth, and then it was Quake 2.
 

mkopec

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We had the Doom demo, or whatever it was on our unix stations at work for some reason back in like 93? 94? Then I got the full game on the PS1. Never had a PC until like 99' and go figure my wife buys me EQ for xmas that year. Big mistake on her part.
 
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Dr.Retarded

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We had the Doom demo, or whatever it was on our unix stations at work for some reason back in like 93? 94? Then I got the full game on the PS1. Never had a PC until like 99' and go figure my wife buys me EQ for xmas that year. Big mistake on her part.
One of my best friends as a kid, his dad was an electrical engineer and worked for a power company. They had a PC in their parents bedroom, and Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny was on there. Those were the first FPS games I ever played.

The crazy thing is we used to play Super Nintendo more because his mom was always playing Wolfenstein. She was a damn wizard at the game.

I guess Doom came out not long after, and I had them installed on my dad's computer.
 
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Penance

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Halo was the first game I saw people playing at a highschool party. Not some little get together of burn outs and rejects party either. Mainstream 100+, did you hear so and so is having a party, party. Before Halo video games were fringe nerd shit. Halo was the game that brought gaming mainstream. Think it was Halo 2. Halo 1 introduced most of the popular kids, jocks and what most of us would call "normies" (non true gamers, ie PC and RPGs etc). I remember one kid had the perfect house to hook up 4 system links. So once Halo 2 came around with the online component it was all over. It was probably past most of you boomers time, either you were grads in college, where the PC LAN scene was actually kind of popping, or already 30 by then cause god damn some of yall are old. But the cultural revolution that came from Halo can't be understated. Even if it was a step back in terms of mechanics, gameplay or whatever.
 
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Cybsled

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Duke Nukem 3D demo over 28k modem 1v1. That's where I cut my teeth, and then it was Quake 2.

DN3D was the first time I played a fps multiplayer. I remember my cousin had it installed and we played for like 30 minutes, then got kicked off because it was a long distance call and our parents weren’t willing to cover the expense more than that
 
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Dr.Retarded

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DN3D was the first time I played a fps multiplayer. I remember my cousin had it installed and we played for like 30 minutes, then got kicked off because it was a long distance call and our parents weren’t willing to cover the expense more than that
When I worked at Taco Bell in high school, we would get off work at like 1:00 or 2:00 a.m., and always stay up for a couple of hours doing dial-up Duke Nukem. It was glorious because nobody was going to call your house in the early morning and kick you off. Nothing was worse than in the thick of a command and conqueror match for raiding Terrathan Keep in UO and somebody calls or your goddamn sister wants to blabber to a friend.

I guess it was that and the first Quake that one of the dudes from Taco Bell had on his computer. But one-on-one Duke Nukem in the movie theater level from the demo was glorious.
 
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Otto

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When I worked at Taco Bell in high school, we would get off work at like 1:00 or 2:00 a.m., and always stay up for a couple of hours doing dial-up Duke Nukem. It was glorious because nobody was going to call your house in the early morning and kick you off. Nothing was worse than in the thick of a command and conqueror match for raiding Terrathan Keep in UO and somebody calls or your goddamn sister wants to blabber to a friend.

I guess it was that and the first Quake that one of the dudes from Taco Bell had on his computer. But one-on-one Duke Nukem in the movie theater level from the demo was glorious.
My dad had a second phone line installed after getting kicked off the internet playing Warcraft II one too many times.
 
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mkopec

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My wife used to fuck with me. I never knew it till years later when she told me. But while playing EQ she used to go downstairs and unplug the phone line.
 
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Penance

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Cut my teeth on TFC in both quake and half life. To this date it remains the all time great CTF game along with tribes. Nothing even comes close.
 
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Gavinmad

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My wife used to fuck with me. I never knew it till years later when she told me. But while playing EQ she used to go downstairs and unplug the phone line.
I don't know how to feel about this. Hilarious and enraging? Hilariraging? Something like that.
 
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