What was gaming like in the early 2000s?

You used to be able to buy a brand new console, pop a game in, and play. Getting things out of the box was the longest part of the process. Now everything needs a day one patch, and an update, and all sorts of bullshit

people born in 2001 can be 18 now

rtcw:et, natural selection, quake 3, half life deathmatch, tribes 2, cs 1.6

all amazing FPS games of their time that had solid player bases, don’t know about other multiplayer games. I know my brother was playing a lot of brood war and wc3 dota at the time.

Vastly superior to gaming now.

we had this exact thread, same op image, same wording about a month ago

So? You’re now just learning that Yea Forums is filled with reposts? I’d rather have another thread like this then the endless roster threads, bait threads, or consolewar threads that use the same wording with the same images.

you forgot UT2004, the best arena fps

I didn’t play it so I didn’t include it, just included games I played. But I do wish I played it back when it was alive, seemed fun.

truth

vidya magazines were still relevant and worth picking up for all the free games/demos they had.
Internet was just starting to make an appearance but was too expensive/laggy for more than 20min a day of emails, checking forum posts.
napster/kazaa/limewire meant you could spend all day downloading a 10meg .zip and not be sure if you'll get a movie, porn, CP, a game or a virus.
people still had lan parties fairly regularly
computer monitors weighed half a ton and took up most of your desk space
last years before laser mice became widespread, i dont miss cleaning those fuckers.
vidya/movie piracy was primarily going to a mate's place and borrowing a bunch of CDs to burn.
Everyone played early versions of the Counterstrike mod, C&C Red Alert, Starcraft or Unreal Tournament

Attached: 1560623959653.jpg (1280x720, 223K)

this

This sums up my childhood

multiple hard drives.
I remember I had four 3gig hard drives in my 233mhz Pentium II at one stage and having to make tough decisions about what I installed. Backing something up onto a CD meant sitting around for 20 or 30 minutes. CD drives were regularly still measured in how fast they were (1x, 2x, 4x etc).
Trips to the store to buy another 50pack or 100pack spindle of burnable CDs was really common, but anyone who cheaped out and got the cheapest CDs paid for it in the end with the silver shit peeling off the back within 6 or 12 months.

server browser (no matchmaking)
no game publisher launchers
no automatic updates
had to download custom maps/mods manually and install them
custom maps/mods
cheat codes

Attached: steam 2004.png (1024x768, 320K)

...all downhill from there

Post 2000's we had some one off great games fear 1, portal, talos, l4d ect

Everyone was playing Counterstrike, Battlefield, Tibia, MU Online, or Lineage private servers. Cybercafes were very popular. There were still a few relatively healthy arcades around. Lots of unofficial Fast & Furious videogame adaptations. Doom 3 was hyped as the next coming of Jesus. Worldwide cursing when Valve launched Steam and forced you to download updates weekly on "barely faster than dialup" broadband, if you were that lucky. Medal of Honor had not been cast into the abyss of irrelevance by CoD yet. Lots of F2P Korean MMOs. RTS games were still a thing.

It had it's strengths and weaknesses. You could really only rent like one game a week. If it sucked, it sucked. If it was good, you had the rest of the week (4 days) to decide if you should rent it again, rent another game, or start saving up your money to buy it. Games were a lot more scarce back then. I guess it just made us appreciate them all the more.

And before you get the wrong idea, I'm not saying it was a better experience. I would give up half of the games in my steam library right now to avoid going back to that time. But it was a much more humble time where we had to make do with what we had. If that meant walking all the way across town in 110 degree heat, seeing nothing new at blockbuster, then walking back home empty handed to beat earthworm jim for the 9999999999th fucking time because there was nothing else to play, well that's what we did.

It's mind blowing how now it's a "joke" to hate steam when it makes this whole experience so much fucking easier.

Attached: 1200px-Blockbuster_logo.svg.png (1200x719, 84K)

>implying this isn't a bait thread

>not having a car by the early 2000s
what is this, the early 1900s?

Of all the threads on Yea Forums right now, this one's a bait thread?

>everybody was of the same age and income bracket in the early 2000s

Attached: spongbob professional.png (300x304, 77K)

>literally any thread on Yea Forums not being a bait thread
So you got tired of being downvoted and came here, huh?

Depends on your definition of bait

god i hate this place

lan parties daily, russia. was comfy

Zoomers born in the 2000s will never know how comfy video game magazines from 2004 were

In retrospect it sucked. Terrible audio, shitty mice, mouse pads are way better now, low resolution

early playstation magazines used to give you literally 100 decent-length game demos every week.
some of the demos were so long that you didnt really need to buy the full game.
magazines were the only way you learned cheat codes, strategies or any sort of tips or commentary.
reading articles about massive 1000-man lan parties I couldnt go to
good shit

Glad you could make it Uther.

Attached: Arthaspaladin1.jpg (216x216, 7K)

>all content came on the disc you bought
>tons of unlockables, cheats, replayability
I want this so much

>DM-Gael
>Home...

Attached: GAEL.jpg (310x155, 11K)

It was shit but there was hope for the better. It didn't get better.

>you'll never be 14 and playing Halo 2 again
at least we had the good times

Attached: 1543673041382.png (754x554, 290K)

Man of great taste I see. So many maps and mods youde never run outta new shit to see.

>Unreal Tournament is dead because Epic focuses all their money on fortnite and exclusives

Attached: 1527149406733.gif (935x670, 674K)

We were free from the nickel and diming of arcades, For a small period of time it was perfect, Games came out complete and polished, They had to because there was no way to patch games back then, But now we have surpassed the greediness of arcades, The truth is it was rigged from the start, And that's no meme

There are people among us this summer who weren't born until the mid 2000s

I don't fucking know, too young.
I rented all my N64 games at a place called "Movie Gallery" and named all my save files"AAAAAAAAAA"

>all content came on the disc you bought

until they wanted to sell it to you again with a subtitle like directors cut , special edition , etc

Attached: Resident-evil-directors-cut-ps.jpg (800x675, 157K)

>all content came on the disc you bought
Nah, back then DLC was called expansion packs.

Games weren't all MOBA spinoffs, microtransaction machines, and lazy indie 'retro' shit. There were actually fun shooters and single player games.

>expansions ran anywhere from $20-40
>some expanded, some were stand-alone
>most were at least 50% the duration of the core game
Modern DLC add-ons were a mistake.

Imagine an industry where you make good sales if you make a good game and everyone followed that principle.

>counter strike
>warcraft 4 custom maps
>Gunz
>Ragnarok

it was a good day to be alive and in some tidy cyber playing Woe or the icemap from Counter Strike, HL crossfire. so many memories

Attached: 1502223398277.jpg (500x269, 24K)

generally speaking there were less games to choose from, because basically no indie games and accessibility was a real issue.
Getting information about (new) games wasn't really easy, you'd read gaming magazines for basically all information about games. Forum/chatroom were more for options and discussions on specific existing games.

For the games itself, the vast amount was primarily designed to be played alone and classical in their approach, basically no dlc day1 patch bullshit. Other than that playing games themselves didn't feel different from today.
In online games generally the language was rougher, but very few cared about this shit as much as today.

what I personally miss the most are LAN parties with friends and the whole fragmovie scene.

Attached: 1349062483855.jpg (720x960, 107K)

Take off your rose tinted glasses.