What was gmsing like in the very early 00's? Was it the golden age of gaming like some really proclaim?

Keep in mind that the 00s were an era of change thanks to the Internet and phones so it depends if you were a kid, or a teen-adult.
As a kid your best way to know of the good vidya was talking with your friends and the vidya magazines which also came with some sweet ps1 and ps2 demos, also the commercials on tv, and no much more, multiplayer meant going to Another friends house most of the time Kids played single player games and later talked about them in the school or Park and shared some secrets, cheats, or help because you got stuck

>no DRM
This part isn't true. There was quite a bit of janky ass DRM on CDs

>and therefore no politics and all that shit
You heard it here first, politics didn't exist in the 00's

>what gaming was like in the early 2000's

You were getting Jewed less back then. Around that time, the only company that was Jewing hard was Sega with their constant release of consoles and irrelevant console upgrades that they would undermine with new consoles. In the early 2000's, DLC wasn't yet a thing, so you would still get expansion packs to games which would greatly increase content while you waited for the next title. There was no day one JewLC'ing yet or preorder exjewsives. Since broadband and Jewtube weren't monolithic, devs happily gave out demos for their upcoming games directly to the consumer instead of hiding them behind closed doors at hype parties for game """""journalists""""" or advanced copies for Jewtube shills that the publishers could control. Also, video game magazines were still largely staffed by guys who grew up playing Mortal Kombat in middle school and Quake in college, so they actually talked about video games in terms of gameplay, graphics, level design, and fun as opposed to diversity, feelings, and toxic white Christian masculinity since colleges didn't start promoting made up SJW degrees until around 2008. Because said SJW degrees were still largely in their infancy, many games were still being developed by nerds who grew up playing video games, not bloated studios packed with 300 pound pink haired cunts, an army of H1B visa pajeets to code, and a handful of token white "cat dads."

2008/2009ish was about the time that the video game industry was being gutted by the Jewing we see today. In 2008, Far Cry 2 could be made and the largest criticism was that it was somewhat broken, repetitive, and needed more content. In 2009, a black game """""journalist""""" named N'Gai Croal played the Resident Evil 5 demo and was outraged by the racism of a muscular young white man punching and shooting black zombies in Africa, ushering in the age of outraged libtrash censoring the medium.

It was great. Japan still ruled the day, people got their gaming news from magazines, people weren't afraid of a little skin in their games, and the most politics I recall seeing at the time was some guy writing for Game Informer saying that he didn't like Bush in his profile.

My biggest dream at the time was someday writing for PSM.

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there was no way to watch other assholes on the other side of the planet play video games for handouts, you had to actually play them yourself. strange concept, i know.

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>My biggest dream at the time was someday writing for PSM.
So was mine. Imagine if we knew what gaming "journalism" would be like in the future - i would've probably worked harder to become one to try and keep the industry somewhat respectable.

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You'd probably either have been run out of the industry by the San Francisco clique, or worked your way up to being PR for a publisher/developer at this point.

First of all, who the fuck is taking that photo?

i would've almost certainly been #metoo'd by someone for wrongthink by this point. i wish i could start now, but the entire industry - influencers, streamers, bloggers, etc. - completely disgusts me.

there are FtM's more manly that that soi-saturated creature

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>That video
Do you think that guy is legitimately that much of a fag or do you suppose it's theatrics for good boy points?
Why is it that the industry suffers to allow people with even the pretense of shame for playing video games to be their "journalists"?

oldfag here
While the 00s was a great time for games, i'd say the main difference compared to today is that back then we still had hope for the industry
hope that video game developers wouldn't sell there fucking soul for a buck. The down fall started with ecelebs and esports. All we had to deal with was DLC then, but now you can just gamble ingame. and you have "influencers" telling you what to play and you zoomer sheep follow along.
And there was hope for, you know, graphics to improve as technology advances, which hasn't happened in like 15 years? in fact it's acceptable now to cell shade everything and call it an art style.

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Its all virtue signalling for views and likes. No one is genuine on camera, thats nothing new. The same people against loli and shit are usually pedophiles and sex offenders; this guy is probably a hardcore fetishist of some kind.

that cuck ruined giantbomb
he was like a singularity of sjw energy that infected everyone and everything around him
even after he left it was too late, they were so infected with onions that none of the content they put out was watchable anymore
patrick klepek's his name if you want to know just whoe that thing is

It was amazing. The amount of variety and experimentation was crazy. Devs could actually take some risk and still stay afloat because budgets weren't so insanely high.
I genuinely wonder how the next generation will look when they've already insinuated there's going to be even less big budget games. Will they really entirely on indies to generate that content? Also, adding that overall console sales are down.

games as art nonsense blah blah
whatever you stance on that is, no one can deny that older games have a lot more "art" to them. the meme translation is "soul"

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Games used to be finished when you bought them. No patches to fix things the devs had missed, which means games were more polished. No DLC to buy afterward, no cosmetic skins to gamble for.

You bought a game, played it, and either moved on or hoped for a sequel.

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It's way better now because you can go back to play those old games AND play brand new ones. The only difference is that you're depressed because you either don't exercise or you're wasting away in your childhood home because boomers at the housing market

Where did this come from?

Shit hurts, man. I got really into the early days of Gamesradar too, because it had a similar energy to PSM. That crew was just a bunch of dudes fresh off the plane in San Francisco from places like Florida and Illinois (one of the guys' hometowns happens to be like a 10 minute drive from the town I grew up in). They had a fantastic sense of humor, and just loved playing and talking about games. Their Talkradar podcast became my weekly friend simulator years before I had ever heard the term "friend simulator". They also got really comfy with the off-topic discussion during the third segment, because they knew their bosses didn't listen that far into an episode.

youtube.com/watch?v=eqB63nSiDyM

Then, you could gradually sense the city and industry begin to influence them, and they eventually became just more parrots spouting the same SJW talking points as the rest.

my poopoo hole haha

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Late 90s to early 00s was kino as hell.

Everybody says when they were a kid that gaming was in a golden age. Objectively video games are in a golden age right now, because literally any video game that existed in the past you can play right now, probably way better than when you were young. And that's the key point, you were young when you played those games.

Multiplayer was primitive with most games having their own stupid service you had to sign up for. Also lag was a major problem even if you had digital internet instead of dial up. Console multiplayer was practically non-existant - xbox live was a laggy mess. Modding wasn't huge. It was hard to know the quality of a game without some legwork, renting it or finding a demo disk. Gaming websites existed but the opinions of most members was retarded since pre2007 internet was mostly the realm of autists.

Modern gaming is way better in every regard.

Studios were smaller so there were lesser budgets and developers could take higher risks.

Not if they're online multiplayer games, and we've also just been tainted by the progress gaming has made since a lot of that older stuff came out, it can be really hard to get past really clunky mechanics or controls and so on, and in some cases the games are just plain horrible to look at, especially early '00s FPS games and similar.

Fuck yea it was. Studios pumped out hit after hit in those days across all platforms.

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devs were more concerned with how to make players enjoy the game and want another one, as opposed to them now trying to figure out how to maximize profits and customer retention in each game through addictive daily chores, mystery prize boxes and cosmetic rewards

i really think overwatch put the final nail in the coffin and made lootboxes for costumes the fully accepted norm

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Pretty much the same thing happened to the music and film industry.
It's all gone to shit.

No downfall started when 7th gen consoles gained traction.

Can you blame anyone for not being genuine? I hate everyone who shares my fetishes too. I see too much of myself in them, and it only makes me hate more. If our fetishes were to be removed from the face of the Earth everyone would be better off. Sjws-at least that kind actually got that part right. You should never be open about your fetishes.

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I think your dementia is kicking gramps.

This. If you released a bugged game on consoles, it was a death warrant.

this will never not make me laugh
>caring about e-celebs
kill yourself, zoomer faggots

Magazines were dying and most of us had internet connections, so we no longer had to rely on rich friends to download FAQs off of Gamefaqs to floppy discs. Broadbands and torrents were still a few years away, so it was mostly just an extension of the 90s. Only instead of mags we got our info from messageboards and places like Gamespot. Single Player games were still king. We were starting to notice oversaturation were one genre would push others out, in this case FPS'es set in WWII gaining so much traction that people stopped making RTS and management type games.

I don't remember signing up for playing multiplayer.

>e-celebs
you're the zoomer faggot, I'm 27 years old
Giantbomb was a fun gaming site that made enjoyable videos.
Swallow a bullet.

I loved Talkradar. I miss those days

i remember reading a lot of magazines and drawing a lot

It was great until microsoft got a hold of the market and pushed DLC and paid online everywhere. At that point pandora's box was opened. We can never go back. At least some indie games are decent

Also fuck matchmaking

I had a blast playing metroid prime and smash bros melee on the gamecube while also having a blast on pc with games like Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2. Downloaded everything I needed through p2p and you could actually browse the internet without needing an ad blocker, but I digress. And also you could actually have a tight social circle of friends online through dedicated chat services and forums, and keep in touch with irl friends through msn messenger, no one would give you shit or bother you if they didn't get your address. Basically, I had a fucking blast m8.

The people who reviewed games were able to beat them and make well informed opinion pieces about them.
Remember last year when that journo said the DMC5 demo didnt have music and was unfinished, but actually sucked so bad he just never heard it?

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Oh, and magazines were a much better source of information about games than the current gaming "journalism" is today, by a mile.

The shit talking was spectacular. There was almost no meaningful reporting systems. God I miss it.

Christian's are the original SJWs.

oldfag does mean you're an old fag, fag

arena shooters werent as dead lol

Oh, and yet another thing. Nowadays the word social gets thrown around 24/7, which is just a mere excuse to have you online all the time, ID'd, and constantly paying for the services they provide. Back then the social aspect happened very naturally. Even games meant for singleplayer ended up being a social activity by just taking turns or trying to figure some shit out together with your dudes

Btw, there's a book about the gaming industry where a former anonymous EA manager specifically mentions that the anti-Japanese push in the media was actually their (Microsoft) down. Its fucking disgusting how they practically wanted to prevent and sabotage Japan's chances of success early on in the 7th gen.

>sjws who got it right

The only SJWs who ever get it right are the ones that kills themselves.

there was a time when nothing you did online was tracked. no smart phones. no constant-contact culture that always had to be online. no social media.

i feel genuinely sorry for kids who grow up with this dogshit nowadays.

>down
*doing

Considering my favourite and greatest game of all time came out in 2001 I would say it really was the golden age.

Warcraft 3 + TFT if you're curious.

>there was a time when nothing you did online was tracked.
And santa is real, right?

How young are you? There also used to be a time when all you can eat data on mobile phones wasnt a thing. The interent was expensive and precious.

I'm 30. You're fucking naive if you think tracking is something new.

I don't doubt it. Sony is shit right now, but if microsoft were still on top the industry would have been much worse

this

fuck DLC, i want expansion packs back

and this I miss getting a new issue of a video game magazine and finding a PS1 demo disc inside, or the early days of Xbox live where you could play a demo of many upcoming games. Now we have to wait for the snowflake journalists to bitch and whine about social issues they have with an upcoming game, the devs change it to make them happy, the game then goes to a youtube retard who gives out who pretends even shit games are AMAZING BROS!™ because they depend on early content to get views e.g. theradbrad pretending Mafia 3 was one of the most fun games he'd ever played when the game was so broken he could crouch in front of enemies in broad daylight and they wouldn't see him. After all that shit, we have to wait for actual streamers who can sometimes play games well show the game on their streams for us to decide if we want to buy it. Everyone is lined up to take a shit on games these days and the actual consumers are at the end of the long line.

When people say DRM, they mean internet-dependent copy protection. Otherwise they just say copy-protection

Look at what came out in 2001. Amazing year. GBA/GameCube/Xbox launch. PS2 hitting stride. DC dead but cheap as fuck in clearance bins everywhere.

MGS2
Halo
Melee
FFX
GTA3 (aged like milk but mind blowing at the time)
Tony Hawk 3
And many more I’m sure I’m forgetting.

EGM issues were like 500 pages back then, not a “problematic” game in sight.

nice

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Every time Aris mockingly says "journalist mode" I think of this chink retard who couldn't cut it in real media so he's stuck writing about something he hates.

Mass surveillance is new. You used to have to do something before they would track you. Now everything you do and say is recorded and they look at it with algorithms.

There have been much better years than that.

You sound like my fucking grandmother. muh algorhithms. You don't know shit. Mass surveillance has been a thing in the DDR as well.

Explain to me how I'm being surveilled when I dont even have an internet connection. I'll wait.

That's what i did, West Wood man...
>Good times

By forcing your neighbors to keep diaries about you, reporting back to authorities so they can save their own skin. Pick up a history book you fucking clown.

Accused of rape by Zoe Quinn and then an hero or somebody just Epstein's you

Oh sorry. Didnt realise I was speaking to a schizo.

gaming in 00s ewaas good becasue we were kids back then and kids have a much bigger imagination and no responsibilities therefore cuold enjoy game to the fullest

Yeah, here's the rest of your favorite buzzwords when you've realized you made yourself look like a moron:
cope
dilate
have sex

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I didnt have a gf back then. So the same really.

Your neighbors are not making diaries about you user. Lmao.

2000-born zoomer here. I feel like 2007-2008 was when gaming started to collapse because that's when I started using a computer.

Of course not. Because I don't live in the DDR. Reading comprehension isn't your strongest suit, is it?

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Do I live I'm the DDR? I think you are very confused.

>If our fetishes were to be removed from the face of the Earth everyone would be better off. Sjws-at least that kind actually got that part right. You should never be open about your fetishes.
Ugh that's so problematic, don't kink-shame me.
Fetishes should be lauded as long as it's the right kind of fetish.

The entire conversation was about you being a naive faggot that thinks that surveillance is something new and is only possible through the internet through "muh algorithms".

The entire conversation is you pretending that because there was surveillance in the DDR it's the same as it being world wide. You sound like an idiot.

i was still playing telnet games, so imagine downloading games through the phone but on your computer. very cheap but very cozy.

Unrelated question but h ow did the japanese culture rule the internet at time?

Shut up fag. Some things shouldn't be allowed.

And now here we are, with you moving the goal post after spending half an hour acting giving lip like an obtuse child.

Like your existence.

Porn/fan service and violence really. There was a demand for it in the West where it just wasn't being produced, and given the anonymous nature of the internet people were free to discover, share and explore for awhile.

I wasnt under surveillance user and you arnt "pretending" to be retarded.

I don't like it any more than you do user. The idea that some things shouldn't be allowed. But the shame is too great. It's not something anyone else should ever have to deal with.

>10kbps internet
>Pentium 3 pc which took a million years to do anything
It was hell.

>Internet wasn't really a thing back then
yes it was
it was just guys having fun
women only started to care about the internet when facebook and shit started happening
and that ruined the internet for the rest of us

7th gen c*nsoles were the beginning of the end. Before that c*nsoles and PCs were pretty much equivalent in terms of power. Hell, the PS2 blew most average PCs out of the water. 7th gen is where the difference in performance started to get noticeable.
Game developers had to take this crippling handicap into account and downgrade games so that c*nsole trash could be able to run their games.
Unfortunately, the suffocating stagnation brought upon by c*nsoles won't be going away anytime soon because the global average IQ is decreasing and therefore the number of c*nsole peasants will only grow.

t. 29yo boomer who lived through the golden age of 1999-2005

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It truly was. On top of having tons of high quality games to play that weren't all the same genre, the internet wasn't really widespread so you felt like anything could happen or any 'myths' about the games could be true. Nowadays you can't get that because everything in the game is datamined and exposed a week before the game releases.

That also existed, though maybe more of a mid 2000s trend when everybody was trying to figure out how to sell their games

Graphics, soul, and overall gameplay elements aligned perfectly.
Reviewers were done by people who enjoyed videogames instead of bitter journalists who couldn't make it in the New York times.
Fan service games had it's own subgenre. Fans of those games kept to themselves and were treated with respect by reviewers almost as regular games.
Now those games are practically non-existent and anything related to "fan service" is review bombed and attacked for pushing toxic masculinity while homo erotic games are seen as progressive and evolutionary.
Even though we live and the best age for communication dev listen to the obnoxious loud reviewers.
There are so many more things that's wrong with the industry and ALL can be undone.
Sadly once zoomers or any other younger age groups are influenced enough, they too will regurgitate the same "criticism" pushed by "reviewers" and that's when things are fucked.

>Games used to be finished when you bought them
lmao nostalgia googles
pic related required three separate patches to work properly, I only found out by pure luck as few people had internet at home back then
even if you found someone who had access to the internet each one of these patches was around 5-20MB which doesn't seem like much until you realize your best bet of transporting those home back in late 90s were 1.44MB floppies

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The day I realised I could go to the library and transfer files from their internet connected PCs to a floppy was the day my life changed.

People like to forget about the downfalls when thinking back 15 years. Windows wasn't as stable, drivers weren't as stable (I remember bluescreening regularly and reinstalling XP about every six months), the internet was much slower and less accessible, you had to manually look up and install patches, you got your news and reviews mainly from printed magazines, there was no crowdfunded indie scene at all, only studios.

But most importantly hardware advanced at such a pace and Nvidia and ATi dealt each other such unpredictable blows that a midrange graphics card was struggling a year later and was obsolete two years later. People who could afford it upgraded their PCs in major ways on an annual basis. It was hell for poorfags. Nowadays you can comfortably use a graphics card for four years and a processor for six or even eight years.

>I genuinely wonder how the next generation will look when they've already insinuated there's going to be even less big budget games
More MMO, games as service and so on. Hell, essentially.

>Modding wasn't huge.

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If you're thinking alphabet agencies and to an extent your providers then you're correct, but he's very obviously talking about adware companies and other "third parties".

>Windows wasn't as stable, drivers weren't as stable
The average user was still expected to be a bit less of a retard from the technical standpoint so it cancelled each other out. In this age of forced touchscreens and always-online that's not acceptable anymore, of course.

>(I remember bluescreening regularly
Which almost always meant a driver problem which was solved by staying on a stable version or replacing hardware.

>and reinstalling XP about every six months)
Which is how Windows operated since 95 and until at least 7, don't know about those other two abominations but they can't possibly be better in any way.

>virtue signalling

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Smart phones and cheap laptops was the death knell of the Internet; people who once believed that computers were a nerdy hobby suddenly realized the internet could be used to attention whore