Ditto. There was a special mix there for a while, with the right folks running it and the right folks populating it, and it just fucking worked. In retrospect, we were part of something big, and something special. It was sad (and I'm still a little bitter) to see it go, but nothing's forever.

The parabolic arc of the Gamespy Forums' life and my little corner of it is a pattern that plays itself out as endlessly, tastelessly, and irresistably as an old Star Trek temporal loop episode. I've finally accepted it, and keep an eye out in real life for when the people I care about start bailing out so I know when it's time for me to move on. It's started at work. We've been losing assholes for a while, but someone I really like and respect left last month. Le sad.

My closest friends in the world today are folks I met there. They're some of my oldest friends now, too. God damn, I'm old. But so are you fuckers, so neener.

Oh and as to not be heartless, it was definitely above all the people. I was breaking down the more technical reasons why I thought such fine folk gravitated to these forums over any other.

I think I first struck something up with Suerte and then it just continued onward.

Also, fett mentioned the Daily Victim. That was GameSpy's hook that kept me coming to the front site.

Archives for it, awesome: http://crzysdrs.sytes.net/dv/

I had to think for a while about how to respond to this.  Some of you I've kept in close contact with, most of you not so much. But I do agree with Taco in that while it was happening GSF was a brilliant community.  I think it's a huge testament that we can come back a decade later and launch straight into arguments about Othar, the Almighty Sock, crotchbats and math(s).

I'm not going to speculate on "where it all went wrong", because I honestly don't think it did while I was there (I had left by the time IGN committed the treachery mentioned by Coyote).  My priorities shifted and I moved in a different direction.  I'm just glad that I was a part of it and that I have an opportunity to be a part of it again.

In Reply To #16

It was my first exposure to "interacting with and befriending strangers on the internet" and in that regard it was a pretty great environment given the shaky ground of the time. Nowadays that sort of thing is extremely common thanks to MMOs and social networking so it's easy to forget how unique places like this were.

I feel bad that I fell out of regular contact with many of you. I was just a stupid kid in the halcyon days of this forum (much like many of you) which, along with a self selection process I'm still unsure about, resulted in a good group. However, as Taco Prophet mentioned, this sort of cycle happens literally ALL THE TIME in life, I was just too young to appreciate it until more friends fell by the wayside, including the GSF people I met IRL. GSF actually taught me something about keeping up contacts, how to manage a long term friendship especially when you can't interact with your friend in person (sup college buddies). Or more specifically, what to do to avoid what happened since I appreciate the irony that I haven't spoken to almost everyone here in a decade.

There was definitely a je ne sais quois. Also Taco Prophet chatting with me back then about the programming industry actually impacted my professional life significantly: I currently work for a competitor of his (assuming he's still at the same company).

I frequented GameSpy.com for the Grudge and the reviews mostly, before I started on the forums a couple of months later. I think the humour of the place had a lot to do with the types of characters that came on to the forums.

I think that to an extent, the site had character itself. Just this morning I have discovered 14 ForumPlanet avatars which I missed in my original searches - we now have all 74 originals in the gallery (yay!). Those avatars have character themselves - very memorable, and drawn by a proper comic artist. I think it makes a difference at least on first impressions. I also think the avatar choice helps to give you a subtle impression of some aspects of a forumer's personality.

I changed jobs about 3 years ago. I work for an investment bank now. It's given me anger issues but I love it.

In Reply To #20
Remember when we stayed up in your dorm room till 5am playing a monster game of Rise of Nations?

3dap was the first forum I ever joined. Mostly because of a discussion between McKree, Kurayanaminok, and TheBigDuke. It wasn't anything memorable, I just remember having an opinion that I wanted to share, so I signed up and didn't say anything. And then signed up again a month later under a new name and did say something. And then switched back to the original account because of a glitch, where I built up 20,000+ posts that I lost to IGN. Oh well ;)

For me, strange as it is to say, I feel like I grew up on 3dap. I must have been about 13 when I first signed up, so it was certainly formative in some way. I remember how nervous I was when I made my very first topic, hoping that it wouldn't sink without a trace, and that the cool cats with 1000+ posts wouldn't hate me.

I loved Fargo and Shai, Hellchick, Thrrrrppppt!... In some ways, I've ended up following a similar path to Fargo (though far less illustrious :D), so the Gamespy network will always hold a special place in my heart.

I do a lot of writing these days, and, as silly as it sounds, having somewhere to spend time writing every day was obviously incredibly valuable. Many of my posts were about movies, music and (duh) games - things I've ended up dealing with professionally. 'Talking' to people from various corners of the globe was also just brilliant. I like to travel, and I think the forums played a part in that too.



I'd go along with this. There was something about the pace of life. It was a relaxed French village, not central Tokyo. We actually knew each other! Or at least it felt like it.

For what it's worth, I've barely frequented a forum since Gamespy's glory days. I don't know if that's because I grew out of it (doubtful), or because I couldn't find anywhere that was quite the same.

I prefer ravenger, or pillager actually...

I did actually consider writing Conquistador at first, but then decided against it. I don't think you actually killed any natives...

Personally I stayed because of a desire to collate a huge database of information on random people through polling. I have since sold such details (age, nationality, weight, stance on gun control, thought on who is the most attractive of small subsets of early 2000's celebrities, whether you pee in the shower, etc.) to marketing companies.

I'm sorry folks but I'm a contemptible shit!

Either that or I stayed because there was a broad range of people who had lots of different and interesting perspectives on a wide range of things, who shared a love of gaming, who were much more amusing than me and who were just a bunch of awesome folk. Certainly the pace of posting being reasonable but not overwhelming was great as you felt that people would pay attention to what you had to say (or if they didn't there was a good reason for it) and the moderating was (in most cases) very well pitched.

I banned Violent Chemistry for a month for trolling.

In Reply To #29

My finest moment as moderator was deleting the Word Association thread.

All the butthurt people complaining that their postcounts had dropped by several thousand was particularly satisfying. At least one user dropped from hundreds of posts to below the threshold required to have a custom avatar.

That was especially brilliant.