8 ms·

Some important early 2000s games off the top of my head: - BF1942. The Desert Combat mod was a blueprint for the “dudebro” FPS boom - Counter-Strike, DOTA two

Some important early 2000s games off the top of my head: - BF1942. The Desert Combat mod was a blueprint for the “dudebro” FPS boom - Counter-Strike, DOTA two mods for other games. Both took aspects of other genres (FPS duels and RTS) and made them more accessible to non-hardcore players. - GTA3 and sidequels. Vice City really anticipated the 80s nostalgia boom of the mid-late 00s. San Andreas was unlike anything I had ever played before in terms of pure scope. - MGS2. Insane production values (Kojima described it as a “Hollywood game”) mixed with an interesting story and subverting player expectations. The shitstorm surrounding it reminds me a lot of “The Last Jedi”.

rspeer 9y ago
And do people play those games anymore? I'm not asking about their sequels and follow-ups, like DotA 2. People still enjoy The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past (1991) today when many more good Zelda games exist. But it appears to me that not even nostalgia would compel someone to play an early-2000s PC game.
- qplex 9y ago
  This question doesn't make much sense given how these titles have evolved as player-made modifications to the originals (Half-Life, Warcraft 3).
  - rspeer 9y ago
    That seems orthogonal to what I asked. ALttP has player-made mods (randomizers) too. Let's put it this way. At this moment on Twitch, there are: - 4 people playing Warcraft 3 (any mod) - 0 people playing Half-Life 1 (any mod) - 1 person playing GTA 3 (any mod) - 21 people playing A Link to the Past (any mod) - 13 people playing Super Mario 64 (any mod) So I am totally on board with Al-Khwarizmi's claim. The role of even the best early-'00s games was to show us what better games could be made. Once those better games were made, the '00s games were abandoned, in a way that '90s games weren't.
    - comex 9y ago
      That’s apples and oranges, though. Super Mario 64 wasn’t a PC game. For a better comparison, how about Super Mario Sunshine (2002; not as popular as 64 but pretty popular), or perhaps Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001; currently one of the most popular competitive fighting games)?
    - qplex 9y ago
      I don't follow this at all. Eg. the authentication servers for online play (which I'd argue is the main component of HL/CS/WC3/...) are down. It's impossible to play these games now, so how there could be anyone playing them?
- setzer22 9y ago
  I do enjoy some early-2000s games today more than recent AAA titles (PlayStation 1,2 Gamecube, and I'd throw the Sega Dreamcast in there too). On the other hand, I grew up with a SNES emulator with more than 300 games, I played a lot of them, and despite the unusual gem like TloZ, most SNES games were totally unmemorable, to say the least. My point is, that I don't see a fundamental difference between SNES-era games and the early 2000's, both were markets saturated with crap, and a few gems that have stood the test of time.
- jowsie 9y ago
  You can search for active CS 1.6 servers right now, there are thousands of them.
- rangibaby 9y ago
  Counter-Strike (2000, last major release in 2003) had a peak of 20,000 players today, making it one of the top games on Steam. http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ There were lots of trash games for PC in the early 2000s, but I think that is normal for any console.

rspeer 9y ago

And do people play those games anymore? I'm not asking about their sequels and follow-ups, like DotA 2. People still enjoy The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past (1991) today when many more good Zelda games exist. But it appears to me that not even nostalgia would compel someone to play an early-2000s PC game.

qplex 9y ago
This question doesn't make much sense given how these titles have evolved as player-made modifications to the originals (Half-Life, Warcraft 3).
- rspeer 9y ago
  That seems orthogonal to what I asked. ALttP has player-made mods (randomizers) too. Let's put it this way. At this moment on Twitch, there are: - 4 people playing Warcraft 3 (any mod) - 0 people playing Half-Life 1 (any mod) - 1 person playing GTA 3 (any mod) - 21 people playing A Link to the Past (any mod) - 13 people playing Super Mario 64 (any mod) So I am totally on board with Al-Khwarizmi's claim. The role of even the best early-'00s games was to show us what better games could be made. Once those better games were made, the '00s games were abandoned, in a way that '90s games weren't.
  - comex 9y ago
    That’s apples and oranges, though. Super Mario 64 wasn’t a PC game. For a better comparison, how about Super Mario Sunshine (2002; not as popular as 64 but pretty popular), or perhaps Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001; currently one of the most popular competitive fighting games)?
  - qplex 9y ago
    I don't follow this at all. Eg. the authentication servers for online play (which I'd argue is the main component of HL/CS/WC3/...) are down. It's impossible to play these games now, so how there could be anyone playing them?
setzer22 9y ago
I do enjoy some early-2000s games today more than recent AAA titles (PlayStation 1,2 Gamecube, and I'd throw the Sega Dreamcast in there too). On the other hand, I grew up with a SNES emulator with more than 300 games, I played a lot of them, and despite the unusual gem like TloZ, most SNES games were totally unmemorable, to say the least. My point is, that I don't see a fundamental difference between SNES-era games and the early 2000's, both were markets saturated with crap, and a few gems that have stood the test of time.
jowsie 9y ago
You can search for active CS 1.6 servers right now, there are thousands of them.
rangibaby 9y ago
Counter-Strike (2000, last major release in 2003) had a peak of 20,000 players today, making it one of the top games on Steam. http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ There were lots of trash games for PC in the early 2000s, but I think that is normal for any console.