What Happened to Gaming & Gaming Communities
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Ch4mpTW✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Shadowfx1970 wrote: »Shadowfx1970 wrote: »Shadowfx1970 wrote: »Shadowfx1970 wrote: »What happened to gaming.. well.. here's the abridged version.
Once upon a time many moons ago in the 1980s there were these things called game parlors. When we finished school.. we would grab our bags, our stack of coins that we'd raided from the parents coin jar stash, and spend until 5-6pm plugging coin after coin into game after game.. with friends and complete strangers standing by our sides yelling screaming and getting into it just as much as we would. Come 6pm we would scuttle home and face the third arse whooping of the week for being home late for dinner.. (and one once a month for the missing coins).
In the 1990s some of these lucky mates had parents who spoiled them rotten for Christmas and laden them with NES's and Sega Master Systems. We would spend summers glued to console game after console game.. Battletoads.. Ski or die.. California games.. Top Gear.. over the years the consoles evolved.. we got the SNES and the MegaDrive.. the scenery never changed. You still spend hours at your friends houses throwing controllers at the couch in frustration - but sharing the best moments of your childhood together.
Slowly the arcades disappeared as consoles took over the world. You no longer were in that environment where you met new people but the social aspect was alive as ever with your mates.. there was still that human connection.
A paradigm shift began in the mid 1990s with the clear separation between PC and console gaming.. we had discovered 9600 baud dial up modems and bulletin boards. I got a 14.4k when it came out and I was the king of the area. Then when 28.8's arrived I was dethroned. Big titles began to appear where you didn't even need to get up and go to your friends houses.. that's when we got Command and Conquer.. and the original Starcraft with the ability of making a direct dialup connection between friends landline phones. This was the Era of father's yelling 'oi get off the bloody computer boy I need to use the phone'!.The phone calls you made to your friends saying 'are you ready? im going to dial in'.. the begging your parents to get a second line installed..
This again evolved faster than we could catch up to. Almost before we knew it the bulletin boards all began dropping their traditional software on a CD models and joining the new revolution called the Internet. Suddenly the world just got a LOT bigger. Bulletin Board providers became ISP's. Local Bulletin Boards that once had close online communities suddenly took a gigantic dive into the pond.
The universities were already miles ahead on this.. they had already begun rolling out DEC AlphaServers by the truckload.. buying entire IPV4 Class A subnets and getting onboard. When we got to university we were just in time to see this evolution.. Once we got past the glorious red box of *** also known as Novell Netware, we were opened to this whole new world. Gaming changed. Sure the universities barred the ability for us to actually install and play anything decent on their LAN's.. but as they provided us with free Shell accounts, we discovered for the first time early Online Gaming in the form of MUD's/MOO's. I still recall 16 of us sitting in a lab at 5am clacking away on Honeywell Mechanical keyboards.. playing the LPMUD Ritual Sacrifice. Everyone's brows furrowed.. staring at the 14" CRT Screens.. in our own worlds. Silence except for the clacking of keys. Silence except for the first person yawning and stretching at 6:00AM and yelling across the lab 'Does Anyone Want to come for a McDonalds Breakfast run?'. This was the unanimous call for everyone to stop laying and reach for their wallets and a post it to write their orders on.
Even though we were all together in a lab.. the gaming experience had changed. We were no longer connected as before.. even though by copper wire we were. As we all began to get home dialup internet accounts we gradually stopped going into Uni at 3am to play our MUD's there.
This was what changed gaming (and for the bigger part.. people). For years we clung on.. arranging days where we would all pack up our PC's and converge on a predetermined location (the friend with the fastest Internet house). Hours of fiddling around with stupid BNC terminators and IPX/SPX networks just to fire up a local HL2 Counterstrike 0.9 Beta Server to spend a day of fragging and carrying on as gamer boys did. As networks and games evolved.. the humble LAN Party disintegrated. No longer did you look forward to going to a LAN to leech as many new movies and games as you could.. you could just fire up IRC and smash the FServe/FTP channels for what you needed. Hosted Servers became more stable and online gaming evolved. I miss those days.. even for a brief period LAN Centres appeared, trying to win back that social crowd in a fixed location.. but even those failed.
Once we no longer interacted as humans, and turned to text on a screen - we lost our social skills. People on the Internet became something else. Being so focused in their own little world they lost the human skills developments that were needed to be social. The Internet became a place where cowards could hide behind keyboards and say what they really felt without retribution or fear of a punch to the head. If this was the 1980s and you said those things in a schoolyard you would get your head beaten in plain and simple.. if you cut in at a Game Parlour when someone elses 20c piece was sitting on the machine as a sign that it was 'reserved' you got your arse kicked plain and simple. Fast forward to 2015 and we have an entitlement society where players want everything their way, and its all about me me me.
It's easy to say <insert X MMO here> killed gaming.. but this is simply not the truth. The problems had begun well before EverQuest Dropped and just devolved further after that. Only those who saw the evolution of how gaming changed will ever understand the landscape that is the norm today. The Internet was essentially what killed it. Once you took away the ability for people to interact together collaboratively in person, you took away part of their humanity and we have spiralled into a society that lacks values across the board now with the younger generations seeing these behaviours as 'the norm'.
MUDs were the bomb. My favorite online era too date.. with EQ1 being a close second.
Just good times, good social experience.
In grad school I wrote a MUD based on Forgotten Realms (started out as a semester project, oh the good ole days) at one point, had 35k unique users which was pretty good for those days. I also played Sojourn until the split.
Good times... Things won't ever be that good again.
A friend of my fathers actually created the first game called a M.U.D. at Essex university I was about 7 at the time, I think it was the first or at least the first in the UK I played a few as I got older and one of the original 1980s ones is still around it's called Avalon I occasionally still play when I want a text driven game.
lol I never mention it cause usually you get the same old response of Everquest or Wow was the first mmo's from the mainly younger generation.
Geez showing my age now.
Interesting I always thought Richard Bartle was the first one wo did that in Essex, but wiki says, it was Roy Trubshaw (never heard of him before), who later gave it over to Richard Bartle. Some MUDs are still quite alive, this is not a totally dead era of online gaming.
It is quite interesting, that the german mud, which is quite popular still, is as well called Avalon - avalon.mud.de - just checked at 4:32am in the morning 33 players online - that is a lot for a MUD.
Edit: what is as well interesting to know with a mud is, that the content is actually player created. If someone has played for long enough, to know enough about the game world, he can become a wizard or noble and can help to create the game world and create quest and other stuff for the game world. He normally ends his career as a player and becomes a developer - I found this to be a very interesting concept.
Oh it's Roy! Thanks for that I thought his name was Rob it was a long time ago and I think I only met him once.
EDIT: I didn't realise it was on Wikipedia, never really thought about it until it was mentioned in this thread, interesting read, one of the first text-based games I played was the wizardry series.
Yes, and the first was MUD1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD1 - interestingly enough they had even a commercial paid version of it later. I think another one was "british legends" which was out in the early 80s already.
What I find quite interesting is, that even the idea behind second life - socializing, user created content - was as well in the MUD world present. There was a type of mud, which did not have combat but was just for social interaction and creating content and share it with others - I just do not remember the type of MUD it was.
I do believe although I might be mistaken and I'd have to research it more, the scientific community used and still use a type of MUD for social experiments and to develop new ideas in tackling world problems such as resource management.
It just amazes me how the deeper you dig into the gaming world the more you discover.
This could be, there is a new way to incorporate non-scientists (the public) into science - this area is called public science. There are lately as well projects to make this into MMOS - MMO (public) science - by integration of scientific tasks into MMOs. The first such project is "project discovery" in EVE online, where people help to classify proteins in certain cell types with the goal to create an atlas about the distribution of proteins in the human body. And this is extremely helpful to science, using the human capacity for pattern matching to get this done quickly. Project Discovery has been a huge success in EVE and for science. The results will be used by a myriad of scientist in the future - gaming mixed with science can actually work.
I may have to revive my EVE account to check this out
Likewise. I must look into this.1 -
Zardayne✭✭✭✭✭Your perspective is skewed by nostalgia. Those behaviors you claim are new have always existed, kids brawling with each other and breaking controllers because they got worked up over early console games, exploiting for infinite lives in Super Mario, client side code changes to toggle god mode in almost all pc games and many console, and on and on.
And the gaming community has always had a combination of personalities and behaviors, just like everywhere else in the world. Some people are helpful, kind, and altruistic. Some people seek challenging activities and adrenaline rushes, some people want to coast on the efforts of others, and some people are abject wretches. Just like in every workplace, every school, every sport team, everywhere.
Wear these, and move on to telling kids to get off your lawn.
I'm so tired of hearing that games and communities were not better in the older games and that it's all nostalgia. I read it all the time on other MMO sites and now here. I've been playing MMOs since day 2 of Ultima Online and I've played almost all of them, especially the larger ones since. I had some great times and some epic encounters throughout my gaming history. Back in the day guilds actually had weekly guild meetings where we actually saw the characters of the players in chat. Out of 8 guilds I've been a part of in the newer games (ESO, GW2) I've been a part of very few guild meetings and they were on voice chat. No one got together. In Asheron's Call we not only had guild meetings but we had Vassals (players sworn under someone) and it was in your best interest to check on them often to make sure they didn't need anything or to run them through dungeons that were too hard. In Lotro we'd have guild meetings in the tavern in Bree ( i think it was) and we'd fill it up. Players would see (Yes we had guild tags..gasp!) who we were and ask if they could join because they saw we actually did things together). We'd have duelling nights, scavenger hunts, etc..It was fun..
Most of the content in these new games is so easy ( and nowadays with work and life I'm more of a casual) even a casual can faceroll through it. Sure they have some of the Epeen fest time trial encounters so the leet can brag about how uber they are but of the casuals how many actually do these anyway. I mean just how many times can you run the same thing and enjoy yourself? I miss being able to play a true hybrid character, I miss being playing a support /healer class that didn't have to have half dps skills because the game was so easy my heals really weren't needed that much because every DPS class can heal, support, and fully function without me, I miss an open world and not these themeparks with zones a certain level, I miss seasonal in game events, I miss the random champion mob mixed in with others to up the challenge, and when you killed a super strong mob they didn't drop a green junk item. I could go on and on all day...
Here's one for the older MMO crowd. Does anyone recall the first time as an adventurer when you entered a Lugian citadel or an Olthoi catacomb in Asheron's Call? Remember the fear and excitement? Where is that fear in today's games? The risk was real going after that Atlan weapon fire stone but when you made it..wow that was epic! How about exploring the Keltoi catacombs in Daoc early in the morning when not a lot of folks were on and you pushed deeper and deeper exploring knowing at any minute you could be over your head and leaving a tombstone with a small amount of experience deep within or logging in Darkness falls not knowing if your side owned it or not only to be met with a small group of the enemy farming it's depths. Those were good times man..
You know how I know games and communities have changed for the worse. Years ago I played with a group of real life friends and we moved to MMO to MMO as the herd did. At one time we were 6-8 strong. I'm talking we would meet for pizza or lunch at work weekly and BS about the game and what the plan was for the week. These were local folks. Now, there's 2 of us left. They didn't leave because of life. They left because of boredom. The two of us still try to recruit them back and have for the last 2-3 years and on occasion one will return only to disappear within 2-3 weeks. It's beginning to wear on me too but I'm hanging in there. I enjoy ESo for the most part so hopefully more changes will keep this one interesting. I'll leave with this about the ESO community. I posted 2 LF guild posts over the past few months desperately looking for a guild that was active so that the last 2 of us friends could find a home. I think I got one response to one weeks later..and it wasn't what we were looking for. It's bad when trade guilds are required and have more folks than regular gaming community guilds..IMO of course.
Sorry for the wall of text. I had to mad type this during my break at work! lol0 -
Zardayne✭✭✭✭✭I will add as well. Most of the time if you bring up "the good ole days" the snarky replies you get are "well why don't you go back". Unfortunately us gamers move like a herd to the next best thing or the new shiny. Guilds are forced to go where the bulk of their people want to go if they want to survive. As we've moved on and these newer games just haven't met expectations, people leave and eventually most guilds dry up only to be resurrected by remaining guild members into smaller guilds. That leaves the older games relatively empty. Most of the old games were meant for a community to play with encounters made for guilds and friends. They weren't built for soloing and everyone/class wasn't specced for uber DPS survival builds like the newer games. Going back really isn't an option when there's no one left to play with and if there were some you'd still be so far behind to catch up to even play with those folks. By the time you got there they might be close to shutting the server down. Who would want to take that chance?
Just so you know I've tried going back to some of the old ones..UO was pretty damn empty, I didn't care to dual box on EQ, and playing on a Warhammer shard ran by a group I didn't recognize really wasn't an option.0