For me, probably IRC and old school forums. Nowadays, everything is monetized, corporate, and all about engagement; either farming it as user or monetizing it as an owner.
Lemmy does kind of bring back some of that old school forum vibe with modern niceties though.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Forums. Gaming guides made by actual gamers. Clans that are recognizable and actually respected, playing against the same. Email being the main method of ‘notifications’. MSN Gaming Zone. PS2 network gaming, and not having to pay a fucking fee to play with your friends and those halfway around the world. Hosting dedicated servers. Lists of available servers and games to join, instead of this bullshit ‘matchmaking’. Modding games, and to an extent programs. Websites not having 50 fucking layers of Javascript garbage just to load what is effectively a static page. Before analytics were everywhere, before ads took more real estate than the content. When Google was just a search engine.
A lot of stuff, but basically, before the internet was shit, and simultaneously, corporations taking over humanity.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Gamefaqs back when it was a bunch of txt files
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Sad no one will experience it again.