Multiplayer games that shaped me
I would be a completely different person if I never sunk hundreds, if not thousands of hours into these games.
8 Games
There was no greater navigator to my early internet experience than Team Fortress 2. For it was not on an internet forum or school lunch table that I found out what a "furry" was, it was on a TF2 Surf Deathmatch server. Domo, Hatsune Miku, Nyan Cat, and whole slew of other early internet figures were blasted straight into my prepubescent eyes without any regard for how it would affect my brain. I'll never forget seeing actual pornographic sprays that would captivate the eyes of an innocent person walking by, only for an spy to uncloak and backstab them. (It happened to me.) But, yeah the game was fun, and the scout and soldier remain some of my favorite characters in any game. I think the game is a tough sell today, especially after the random balance changes some years but ESPECIALLY because of the constant hacking problem this game can't seem to shake. Regardless it's probably the game with the most impact on me, as my first gaming videos ever were made on this game, and of course, I was introduced to STAR_ and Jerma985, who inspire me to this day. Nearly 12 years after buying a physical copy in a gamestop, it is still my most played game with ~2,250 hours.
1
No family bonding activity quite like connecting 4 controllers to an Xbox 360 slim, booting up console Minecraft and having a creative mode build contest with your siblings. If it wasn't on console, then it was questionably obtained beta versions of the game that ran so poorly on my dad's old thinkpad, the only memories I have of the experience was the 20 fps I managed to scrape while walking through the wall of fog iconic of very low render distance. Even under those circumstances, I don't know if a virtual world has captivated me more than early Minecraft. While I struggle to find a reason to play past the End nowadays and have to resort to insane, and often very bloated, modpacks to really enjoy exploring again, this game changed me.
2
Other than Pokemon Go, I can't remember one other game that managed to captivate the entire world like early Fortnite did.
3
I don't know if there's a game that had a greater influence on me becoming a PC gamer than Battlefield 4. I'll never forget playing near release on Christmas 2013 and being forced to play the campaign because the Playstation 4 servers were down that day. The first two months of this game's existence were filled with horrible launch maps, horribly balanced vehicles (which remain to this day), and a game that was very clearly; unfinished. Regardless, I loved every second. It wasn't until the following year that I got to experience the game on PC, with all of the DLC for the game, and even with it's chaotic gameplay, it remains one of my favorites. Along with Team Fortress 2, this game was also in the spotlight of my early content creation days and if you asked the right person, you could probably get a link to a Playstation Sharefactory funnytage I made back in the day. I'll never forget the day my 240hz monitor, that I just barely was able to purchase, arrived two hours before my film studies class and I spent that time listening to good music and playing on an Operation Locker server. I dropped like 100 and I'll never forget that memory (playing 240hz for the first time made my eyes a little strained lol)
5
My earliest memories of Garry's mod are torrenting bootleg versions of Garry's Mod 8, only to find out that the game was only $10 dollars on a platform called "Steam". After making an account and begging my mom to buy it for me, I spent so many hours just experiencing what a sandbox game meant. Constructing makeshift vehicles with HL2 pods and thrusters, building janky houses out of simple shapes, and of course putting ragdolls in ludacris or even lascivious poses. I probably put in a good 600 hours before exploring multiplayer or finding out about the Steam Workshop. Without this game and it's continuous reminder that I was playing a mod of a different game, I would've had a very different introduction to Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2, Half Life, and the Portal Series, which were cornerstones of my PC gaming experience growing up.
7
