I saw this Lemmy post, but a huge list of games with no discussion isn’t very interesting! Let’s talk about why the games that influenced us had such a big impact - how they affected us as people.

For me, it was the PC game Creatures. It’s a life simulation game featuring cute little beings called ‘Norns’ which you raise and teach.

You can almost think of it like a much cuter predecessor to The Sims, but which claimed to actually “simulate” their brains.

As a thirteen-year-old it was the first game that made me want to go online and seek out more info. What I discovered was a community of similar-interest nerds hanging out on IRC chat, and it felt like for the first time in my life I had “found my people” - others who weren’t just friends, but whom I really resonated with.

I learned web development (PHP at the time!) so I could make a site for the game, which became the foundation for my job in software engineering.

And through that group I also discovered the Furry community, which was a wild ride in itself.

So yeah, Creatures. Without that game, I think I’d have become quite a different person.

  • dfyx@lemmy.helios42.deEnglish
    12·
    2 days ago

    I would say Age of Empires 2 which was where I first used the name that I still have on here, over 25 years later. Its amazing editor also resonated with my urge to create my own games without requiring programming knowledge that I just didn’t have at 11 years old. I went on to create custom content for Warcraft III, Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind, eventually studied computer science and joined some indie gamedev communities where I made a lot of friends, some of whom I still meet in person once or twice a year. I never became a full time game developer but I worked on some stuff part time in the mid 2000s and still do it as a hobby.

    • tiramichu@sh.itjust.worksOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      I remember making custom maps for the Star Trek: Armada RTS with the in-game editor, and I tried my hand at making some Half Life maps, too. For me that didn’t turn into any big community like your experience did, but it definitely helped me to believe I could be a creator of things, and looking back that was probably important :)

    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      2 days ago

      I remember I rapidly advanced my typing skills at one point as a kid purely from trying to enter cheat codes quick enough in AO2 over and over again lol.