I can speak only for myself, but it feels like the "rules" were still more lax in the 90s. So much of my time was spent toying around with the original Half-Lif

I can speak only for myself, but it feels like the "rules" were still more lax in the 90s. So much of my time was spent toying around with the original Half-Life: making sprays, importing custom models, playing half-finished maps, exploring whatever bizarre mods were trending on Fileplanet. And everyone else was doing the same thing! There might be tons of zany games out there today, but that comfortable feeling of loose, collective exploration is missing. (Well, maybe the Minecraft kids have similar experiences.) Even the user-generated content is overly polished and unsurprising. I miss existing in that collective weird space.