Descent 2/3 but modern graphics. I came across dxrebirth and was pretty stoked. Spent an hour mapping keys a game pad just to find that multiplayer games were possible but seemingly impossible to get people to join. Granted, I only spent an hour or two before giving up..
I know that some games might fit this description, but I’m not committed enough to play a game that requires me to work my way up a social ladder or play the markets to stand a chance. ..looking at you, EVE online
Good news - you are describing a game that exists! It's called Overload and is the spiritual successor to the Descent series, written by the original creators of that series.
There is a small but active multiplayer community. (Find it on the community Discord server.)
This is not related to the article, but the comments.
In all my years on the internet and on internet based communities, this community never ceases to impress me on how supportive members are of each other. I too have experienced some severe bouts of depression in my lifetime, and to a lesser degree still am experiencing one.
While this community is pretty diverse, I find some solace in reading comment threads like this one, as I sort of assume that most of the people who gravitate towards HN are in a similar mindset as myself. Maybe we’re a group of people who have lived through the evolution of internet and social media, maybe we are all to some degree attempting to practice some sort of limiting our media inputs to those which provide a more meaningful experience in this world, or maybe there are just more realists in this community than the others I’ve been exposed to.
I’m not really sure what it is, but I find these comment threads incredibly helpful to my situation. I’ve limited my “social media” intake to only HN for the past few years, and while I find myself on some days wishing there was something more magical to spend my time on, this community is the only place where I am reminded regularly to go out and do “Something” not because it will make me richer or more attractive or more popular, but simply because I will live a more fulfilling life. Thus being a “magical” community in and of itself.
I had a car with uConnect prior to the airplay integration (or whatever it’s called). There was a point where I was unable to play any music from Spotify or SoundCloud, as after a second or two into playback, it would play the stock U2 song packaged on iPhones at the time. This was incredibly frustrating as most of my music listening habits were done on these two platforms.
Some time later an update to the iPhone resolved this, so as lelandfe mentioned, this is likely a bug.
Comically after some time I grew resentful of this bug and one day my wife was in the passenger seat while I exclaimed “I hate U2”. (I don’t really mind them, but the comment came out anyways). She looked at me confused and concerned before I explained why I made the comment and consoled her that I was referring to the band and not “you too”.
Have you considered using Nextcloud or Owncloud for this purpose? There is a bit more overhead as you are responsible for maintaining the system, but the upside is that you’re in control of the things you’ve mentioned are pain points.
I make it a habit to utilize dial-in numbers for conference software and disable mic inputs on my computer for this reason. There’s no guarantee that my phone doesn’t listen in while I’m muted, but I feel like it’s a better choice. There is a bit of audio quality loss, but on the flip side it isn’t as much of a battle over bandwidth while streaming video, sharing my screen, and broadcasting on audio.
I agree with this. I’m a somewhere between generation X and millennial, and for some reason tech was uncool in the eyes of my peers. Suddenly many of them are talking about decentralized this, UX that, and the whole space is slowly losing it’s “coolness” to me.
I’ll admit I enjoyed the exclusivity that my interests evolved into, but I definitely wish I had more people around me to share my interest in technology when I was younger.
In a way I think I grew into this expectation of exclusivity, as that was the only way my adolescent self could tell myself it was a cool hobby.
Age might play a factor in this equation, as others are saying. I say this because I have found enjoyment in simplicity more than complexity these days, and I’m told that’s something that happens with age. Writing a website that runs purely on html+ css, text based communication (as in not slack or discord), and things that I can work on for a few days and complete. I’ve taken a recent interest in sailing. My former self wanted to take on massive undertakings of complexity that required months or years of planning and doing to accomplish. To go on a bit of a tangent, I remember having an idea years ago to find a way to build a computer into a boat which would take real-time measurements of the water and weather conditions. These days I’m interested in reading my surroundings to understand the environment.
Channel your energy into real life. Sounds easier than it might be, and I would be naive to believe everyone has the same experience with gaming..
..but at some point I lead an ruthless clan of hundreds of people who would considerably push the limits of the servers rules. Some of them cheated, and they were ostracized (or just hid it really well). This all took place inside a server of a well known game but not very well known multiplayer mod for the game.
I realize this might not answer your question at all, but I’ve been itching to share this story to a while. I told myself I should write a blog post about this, but there are so many fine details that I’ll leave out of this comment that it will take some commitment for a full write-up.
Anyways, it took loads of time and energy to manage the people, ensure resources were properly distributed, and formulate ways to create internal conflicts within the organization to weed out those who did not reciprocate. I was young and didn’t really think how much of a jerk I was being, but I realize that now.
At a certain point I realized I had a significant addiction. Maybe it was the game, but it was probably the power I had in the organization. I tried cutting the activity out of my life, but that just left a gaping void in my life. This wasn’t a substance addiction where I was losing friends or making life effecting choices (other than the amount of time I didn’t spend on studies or a job). It felt like the more time and energy I spent in this role, the more my social bubble grew, and the more respect I gained from the admins of the server. There was a lot of politics, a lot of time spent protecting the image of the organization, and even some clandestine operations where my organization would, at the request of certain admins, target other groups who were blatantly breaking the rules, and rejoining after a few hours (or however long it took for their ISP to change their IP) under different names.
Granted my organization did not always follow the rules, I always made a thorough attempt at explaining the actions of our members, and made concerted efforts to appeal to the public (of the server) why our actions were justified. We had what we called a “legal department” which would direct accused members to remain quite during reports on the forums and let us handle the communications.
From this experience I learned a great deal about how to handle conflicts, how to operate just within the confines of regulations, and (probably the most enriching part) communicating with people who spoke very little English. Also made some great friends along the way that I still talk to on-and-off to this day.
All in all it was a really significant learning experience for me. I eventually started a media blog with one of my in-person friends, and had a huge international marketing base to generate the first thousand or so clicks from. I also learned a thing or two about workplace politics, in that (sometimes) it’s better to bring your issues to those above the issue. Other times it’s best to remain quiet and do what you know works. Some other things I learned was that there is always someone with more power than you (server admins, your bosses boss) and that you should probably show a little respect to that person (whether or not you actually respect them). One of my biggest take-aways from this experience is that if you keep working at something, no matter how badly you think you are doing at it, you’ll eventually look back and say “hey, I did that!”.
Best of luck to you, addiction is something many people struggle with in many different ways. I think that acknowledging that there might be an issue is a huge step in the right direction.
Who knows, you might find yourself looking back years from now in appreciation of all the time you “wasted” playing a video games, in some strange way.
(Please excuse any typos or incorrect grammar, I wrote this haste-fully(?) between calls.)
I’ll take a stab at answering your question directly..
..I still play games from time to time, but for a while it felt like I was just falling back into the same traps. I’d play late into the night and wake up feeling like shit for work the next day.
The way I combat this is by only playing when I’ve gotten in touch with an old friend and want to share an experience with them, finding a game that I can spin up a server on and learn about what it takes to manage that sort of server or community, or when my kid invites me to play.
A healthy amount of gaming is possible, but for me I need to be able to tell myself I’m bringing some enrichment to my life by playing.
Hope this is a bit more helpful than my previous rant.
It’s not as fancy as some of the others, but I used Ghost because anything else would probably have broken by now. (And I still managed to break it, as the text renders black if you’re not using dark mode)
