I had to stop and think for about 20 whole seconds on which topic icon to use for this thread. That is a problem I have not had in almost a decade. Weird.

Anyway, there isn't really a particular point to this post, I've just been mulling over a few things which have made me think over the years at various points, all coming together as the nostalgia heats up.

What was it about GSF, or indeed a few forums on ForumPlanet, that made them feel like someone's home on the Internet? I felt that way for quite a few years, and even now with it gone, it still seems like it was my cyber-birthplace of sorts. Seeing it gone isn't too different from seeing my first home in Sydney get split up and divided into other properties. No other place online has felt anything like it.

And even on ForumPlanet, I don't think every forum was like that. I visited many a forum on that planet and I don't think very many still have groups of people that currently interact regularly. I of course don't claim to be one of those grand ForumPlanet conquerors like Dracion or Oopah, but I saw my fair share. There are still many circles of friends who owe their introductions and early interactions to GSF.

3DAP did it, though none of the other category sites seem to ever have done so. Strategy Planet, RPG Planet... nuthin' much. They died early. Even getting game-specific, I have not witnessed the kind of longevity from other planets' communities as I've seen from PBnW. There is something about the green, the blue and the yellow (or tan?) that largely just worked. While I think GSF had the benefit of not being confined to any game, genre or even platform, I think 3DAP and PBnW did so well primarily because they went beyond their initial GSI-mandated intentions. 3DAP had a guild, PBnW had a clan, hell, all three of us joined forces in Mech Wars and some of us in NukeZone as well. We didn't really team up much with other planets' forums. Planet Medal of Honor had a clan but I think they just played... Medal of Honor.

I guess, having met with 6 GSFers in person now, and hoping to meet with at least that many more while I'm here in Europe, it's just got me considering how it all came to be. It's all definitely more than just text on a screen.

In Reply To #1

More than just text on a screen sums it up pretty well. I met several people from /gamespy (where easily 95 of my posting took place) that I still talk to, some pretty much daily, and consider extremely good friends. I've met up with several people and all were as awesome in person. The place just had character and characters that made me want to go back again and again. Hell, some days I still miss it and definitely miss some of the people I fell out of contact with.

I've never had another forum community quite like 3DAP(sorry to the GSF people, I left when 3DAP was shut down and never got to know you much). It had enough update activity where you could check back in a few hours or even a day and the same conversations would still be going on, instead of being lost hundreds of new threads made on an hourly basis.

Ironically I think the requirement for 500 posts for a custom icon helped build a community. It truly allowed you to notice at a glance even before reading the post count number that this person has been here for a while.(But please don't add that requirement here, we've all served our time). Granted a good many used Word Association/Above Me topics to get a decent number of those posts, but even in those you could see people taking notice of other people by what they posted in such a short format.

And another thing...YARN, the best community game ever!!!

Yeah, what he said.... Except for the meeting people part.

In Reply To #3

I have to agree on the "hundreds of posts created on a hourly basis"... I guess that's one of the things that made me move to the relatively smaller, console forums for a while.

I don't know, I never felt particularly accepted by the GSF community, I think partly because I came later so the old regulars ignored me, partly because I was younger and even more of an idiot than I am now. Even now I feel like a bit of a hanger-on. But on the other hand, the GSF forum led me to a few of the closest friends I have in my entire life, people I interact with daily still, people I've met, people I trust with my closest secrets. If that's not special, I don't know what is.

I actually 'missed the boat' so to speak with most of you guys, only joining in 2004. And even then, I spent most of my time in the console forums (I modded the Nintendo forums) and PC forums. So whilst I recognise your names (I did get quite a few posts on Main) I never knew you all, except for Cyrris.

But still, the things said are the same for me. I spent many of my formative years (ages 15-19) posting heavily on the Gamespy forums, and can still remember many of the posters I posted with like it was yesterday. Especially on the Gamesube forums. So, it probably in some ways affected my views on the world, and influenced me in the late-teens.

I just loved the fact that each area had its own communities, its own rules, its own idiosyncrasies. I would post in various forums, and see so many different users. Good times, good memories.

For how many of us was it the first place we actually hung out properly online?

That will have been part of the impact, I'm sure (3dap, and forumplanet in general wasn't my first internet community, but it was *one of* the first, and the one I settled into the most, when I was still fairly young)

Although I think the fact that it attracted more than its share of nerdy-but-not-too-nerdy people probably helped; there aren't many people I've stayed in contact with for more than a decade, and there are fewer I'd be interested in recontacting after the same period of time. Quite a few of them are related to forumplanet in some way.

Like anything I think it was a combination of factors. As pseudo said, for a lot of us it was the first general purpose place to 'hang out' online that persisted beyond games. I know I was playing a lot of UO, counter-strike and FPS games at the time. They didn't bake the social network into those games at the time so we had to go elsewhere to find people outside of the console chat log.

I ended up on the /gamespy forums from liking the GameSpy front site (humor and irreverence mostly) and often ending up in threads from search results on games (I was doing a lot of tinkering with .ini files and stuff to get my ol' 350 mhz IBM Aptiva to play CS at a reasonable framerate).

I think I stuck around because it seemed like there was something to invest in. It wasn't just a scatter-shot of 'anything goes' posts from users you'd never see again. There were a lot of subtle elements to this that appealed to a young me:

Post Count - It was the first time I encountered this so prominently displayed on every post/thread. It spoke to a sort of permanence of identify for me. Something to build and be respected for. It was pretty obvious which members didn't 'deserve' their post count from just being around for a week or so.
Perfect Traffic - /gamespy was never too frantic to not keep up with, but never to slow as to get bored with. You could actually just "browse the forums" for hours on end and keep conversations going at a good pace while doing other PC stuff (reading articles, AIM, a little homework for me at the time).
Earned Avatars - Mentioned before and similar to post count. It was something to work for and it really did allow you to skim threads through bullshit when it happened to occur. You could pick out your friends and familiar 'faces' easily in a thread and build recognition with new folks. It was also the first step into feeling "part" of the community.
GSF Clan - This furthered the sense of hierarchy and self-management. Having to get majority vote to get into the clan was a really cool bit of community organization to see in something tied to an 'official' site. It was the next level of community really and I always thought of (early) GSF as kind of 'example setters' for new posters. Creating decent topics, not spamming, few worthless comments and such. Then I got in and undermined the shit out of that. (I kid I kid)
Community Selected and Active Mods - I loved that mods were posters too. Again, self regulating community.

For a while I thought all forums had this and I just happened to land on GameSpy when I did. At a few points I explored other places but just did not find the same level of community. I am not saying it didn't exist; it just wasn't as immediately evident.

Also, I still love the no frills format. Most forums are still ass (hey stack overflow).

Hey now, I remember you were relatively new when that huge "officially sanctioned" arena thread went down and you and I went back and forth in that several times. That thread was so great.



Y'know, I never thought about it this way but that's exactly right.

In Reply To #10
I actually blame a lot of my broad knowledge/interest in things on the forum community. People loved games for sure, but they had a shit ton of other interests and I think everyone involved benefited from that cross pollination.

I am into so many hobbies/jobs/activities/sex positions now and I am sure being constantly exposed to the lot of all you had a big influence.

In Reply To #9

You've got a few interesting points to pick apart here.



I've always wondered about what is best here. Because I tended to consider 'joined date' a better indicator of a persons veterancy than their number of posts, I made that display in Aelon's forums instead of a post count. However I think there's more too it than that, and your point of building something to be respected for is a good one. People who lurk for years on end have indeed contributed less than those who have posted more (with posts of substance, anyway).

While it'd be nicer to just be considered purely on the basis of the content of your posts, we live in an age of information overload where no-one is going to go back and read all your posts to see what kind of person you are. Checking a couple of posts, their join date, and post count is a pretty good summary.



Agreed, though certainly in hindsight there are things we could have done better. However, the death knell was likely the move to [GSF]'s own forum, essentially removing our official status and also switching the activity of many of those 'example setters' over to the clan forum instead of the community forums they formed on. Wasn't our choice though.



Also agreed, and also a point at which the corporation failed us after shai left. Allowing the community to vote moderators in and treating the moderators and admins as users-with-responsibilities was a good move and entirely appropriate.

Turning around and stripping mods and admins of their positions (Aretek, Hardflip, BangBang) because they were "not representing IGN appropriately" (despite being users, not employees) was a complete betrayal of that understanding, and utterly stupid.

I know that all good things must come to an end eventually, but IGN's takeover of GameSpy is a great lesson in exactly what not to do to a community.

Depends on your definition of relatively new. I had been hanging around for, I think, a couple years at that point. But that arena thread was when I started to get noticed. Man, you and me had a lot of fun in that. I still remember having a Cab Calloway-battle with you.

Like many others, GSF was my first forum. I've had a couple others since, but not in the same way. They're for groups of people I want to keep up with. Not just a general internet hangout. First came to Gamespy for the Daily Victim, went to Gaming Discussion to chat about games, poked my head into The Lobby. Saw the madness, decided to burrow in.

*ahem*

Actually, some members who didn't care for me got into my account and did some dumb shit with it. I was warned it was going to happen. I, in turn, told that useless imbecile Evil Homer it was going to happen and yet when it happened I was told that because of what I had done (again, not me but people using my account) I was out. Nitwits.

IRT fett

CAB CALLOWAY! I need to read this thread in its entirety this instant. A special treat for whoever makes this happen for me.

Definitely an appeal, in the same way that achievement hunting has some appeal. It's not something that actually matters - and meeting someone who thinks his postcount / gamerscore / whatever makes him more important is always hilarious (and a quick indicator of twattishness).

But it's definitely pleasing to see meaningless numbers increase because of things you've done, in a 'high score' kinda way.



Still a really important thing for me; I can't be doing with fora that move too quickly, I can't see how you can possibly make friends or build a community in places that have 200 posts a second (and what's the point of replying when nobody else will ever read what you have to say?)

A better way to put it: