451–460 of 478 posts
Obligatory: https://cryptologie.net/posts/some-unrelated-rambling-about-...
This person hasn't seen competition. Take Starcraft on ICCup for example. CS/DoD where you can rely on others for team games are much easier psychologically than a one-on-one duel where it's just you and nobody else but you to fuck things up.
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This kind of interaction is what makes me miss the "old internet" the most...
My intuition is it still exists. This "old internet" sentiment is due to the fact it was mostly academics in their world and geeks in theirs on internet at the time. Then it made it easier for everyone to use so everyone used it. But I bet there are still the same proportion of geeks in the population. Which are still socializing on niche area of internet. We don't see it because we're old farts and have jobs and hab…
I can somewhat relate as the creator of fy_iceworld (if you believe). The one who commented on the Rock Paper Shotgun article. The quote from the NY Times article, "it allows amateurs to add imagination with limited resources." is exactly what I was feeling at that time. I knew nothing about programming, had minimal art skills, but was able to create CS maps. It makes me nostalgic and wonder, "What if I started makin…
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My intuition is it still exists. This "old internet" sentiment is due to the fact it was mostly academics in their world and geeks in theirs on internet at the time. Then it made it easier for everyone to use so everyone used it. But I bet there are still the same proportion of geeks in the population. Which are still socializing on niche area of internet. We don't see it because we're old farts and have jobs and hab…
I was part of a group of high schoolers that found each other on IRC and ICQ. We built out what became Day of Defeat-another HL mod. We followed CS-were early adopters of their betas and realized we could also mod. We were fortunate that we had parents that let us build on a very wild internet . I know a few from the group made it with Valve-I kept in touch with a couple- and my parents stayed involved but I dropped…
Thank you for that. This mod was awesome in LANs.
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I think you're right My son spends most of his time in small closed Discord servers. The niche areas still exist, but a lot of them are hidden and invite only, or just intentionally or unintentionally not easy to discover.
Seems it is not just about geeks VS general population but rather the classical case where success (ease of access) & popularity inevitably bring failure. Few open (loosely or not actively moderated) "spaces" left. No wonder given the general attitude of the, lol, "invaders". :D In the past - you pick an IRC server and a room and 4 out of 5 times you'll learn something interesting, have actual fun with ppl you don't…
Nope. Maybe that's what you see because you don't have the time to check for diamonds in the coal mine but there are a ton of indie games being released every day. Many trying random concepts.
Yes modding is not en vogue nowadays but frameworks like rpg maker, godot etc allow a lot of people to experiment and materialize their ideas (good or bad). And that's without factoring in what LLM will allow when some get trained on those tools and related tutorials.
I'm just basing my views from what is available on Steam. I think there are a lot more experimental games and genres being developed and shared in those channels I don't have the time to discover and enjoy.
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As someone with 10,000+ hours in CSGO/CS2, I think your argument is weak clearly is coming from someone who is a boomer. CS is one of, if not, the least egregious "loot cases" systems in the gaming industry. Every case you open, gives you a reward, which can be sold. Each case you open has fixed odds and is not manipulated by the gaming companies to psychologically torment you. You get no benefit from using skins or…
Saying its among the least egregious examples just isn't true. Doppler knives can sell for over $10,000. We know the sorts of psychological outcomes that occur from putting a vanishingly unlikely $10,000 jackpot on a slot machine. People will willingly blow their paychecks, week after week, hoping to strike that 0.00275% chance for big money. This is bad for society, just like slot machines.
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This kind of interaction is what makes me miss the "old internet" the most...
My intuition is it still exists. This "old internet" sentiment is due to the fact it was mostly academics in their world and geeks in theirs on internet at the time. Then it made it easier for everyone to use so everyone used it. But I bet there are still the same proportion of geeks in the population. Which are still socializing on niche area of internet. We don't see it because we're old farts and have jobs and hab…
Funnily, a substantial amount of interaction over the past some years has been shifting back to private, invite-only spaces, e.g. private Discord servers. Being old farts without real-world contacts in those spaces we are getting left out a bit, not too dissimilar to the old farts of yesteryear.
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You sound like me. I disliked CS because of how slow and campy it was compared to Quake and we always had this banter in my friend group about Quake vs CS vs Unreal Tournament and which game requires more skill. I ended up playing for one of the best clans in Sweden and competed for a few years until Q3 eventually died. I did try playing CS more serious for some time but I just couldn't stand it and I never had the p…
> Quake requires more skill btw. +10 I still get a buzz watching the old Q2 / Q3 frag videos. I was never that good, but have scored a handful of ridiculous flick rails over the time. I think Rocket Arena 3 was peak for me. I'm nearly 20 years out of practice now though. Feels like I'm getting closer to picking up some light hardcore PC gaming again though ;) My niece is looking forward to having a crack at Portal 2…
When I got my first personal computer, I stated playing RA3 a ton–and Unreal Tournament on the side. Later on it became Quake 3 OSP/CPMA (as well as Freeze Tag and InstaGib) and Quake Live Clan Arena, but never really competitively.
At the same time I also discovered CS 1.6. It was sort of a relaxation from all the fast-paced fragging for me. I liked the slower pace and different skill it required. I eventually joined some tournaments and started playing more competitively, hooking up with people in IRC.
I try to seek out games every now and then, but unfortunately there's less and less communities around Q3 and the likes, so it's becoming increasingly harder to find fun matches.
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Saying its among the least egregious examples just isn't true. Doppler knives can sell for over $10,000. We know the sorts of psychological outcomes that occur from putting a vanishingly unlikely $10,000 jackpot on a slot machine. People will willingly blow their paychecks, week after week, hoping to strike that 0.00275% chance for big money. This is bad for society, just like slot machines.
I agree that the gambling side looks bad, egged on by streamers pretending to be overjoyed when they win, but is $10000 really big money? I'd have thought a lottery ticket would be far more enticing.
Meanwhile you can watch a video on youtube of a streamer pulling a $10000+ knife, several $1000+ knives, and a litany of $100+ knives and skins all in a single stream (where they sat opening cases for 8 hours straight and spending $18000 on 2000 cases + keys).
I think generally the way I've experienced people justify it is that $10000+ would be a life changing amount of money for them in a way that the $100 they have on hand isn't, and even if they strike out they still get cool skins for a game they play, so why the hell not. And eventually they are $2300 dollars poorer, with nothing to show for it but some in game skins.