/vr/ - Retro Games

I was playing this today. With bots.

They don't make them like they used to. Timeless gameplay, I mean. This game actually feels like a game. For the briefest of moments, I feel alive, and then I remember I'm just playing with bots. Meaningless.

I open the server browser and find hundreds of servers. Almost all have zero players in them. The ones with any number of players were from far away regions. Even so, I'd be playing with people I don't really know. It's a far cry from my days when I spent weekends playing on Face, honing my skills so I could play with and against my friends in high school. They were all into the game. It was a truly social activity -- we all congregated to play the same game and have fun together.

Days ago, a good old friend told me about how he played this game at the company with his coworkers. I suddenly feel a glimmer of hope. He's changed jobs though, and the group seems to have broken up.

After a while I stopped playing. I had this sinking feeling in my chest. As if everything I love was dying in ways I couldn't possibly help. Everything... Decaying into irrelevancy until I'm the only one that remains. Just me and the game.

The feeling of connecting to an empty server and walking around the map is too powerful, too heartwenching for words. Maybe a single misguided soul will also connect to the server -- giving me a glimmer of hope. I proceed to hunt him down mercilessly and wipe him out -- three times. He disconnects. I close the game in sadness, as if someone being unwilling to be my personal target practice subject was an alien concept to me.

Why can't games not be like sports? Cards? They are also games... But they don't fade over time. They don't disappear. They only grow stronger. It's meant to bring fun, not sadness.