Ever think of how remarkable it is at how active this community still is?

[Buccura]

Yeah it's not what it was in it's heyday perhaps, but really think about it. This is a community that was birthed from and still largely centers around the games of a developer that has been defunct since 2000. Niche games even for their time that are nearly 2 decades old or more, and yet despite this, this community still shows remarkable signs of activity for it's age. Discussions are still happening, fan missions and mods are still being made, and even once in a while someone new joins. There are some subreddits and forums dedicated to more recent games that don't have as much activity as I can see in TTLG. A decade ago I might have thought by now TTLG would have died out but nope, we are still trucking along. I've seen similar forums that are practically dead either by comparison, or just straight up dead.

So, here's to us!

EDIT: Yes I know the thread title is grammatically screwed up.

[Gray]

Yes I have. I was away for many years, while being busy with my life or playing other games, but I always thought of TTLG as my family in a sense. Sure, it's not as active as it once was, and for me, that's fine, I'm too old and tired to keep up with that level of activity. But I'm very happy that it's still here now that I want to be back here. It feels as if I'm back amongst friends and I can say any stupid nonsense that pours out of my brain, and I don't have to watch my words. Sure, people will call me up on my stupidity, but that's fine, I know they mean well, because we're friends.

Point being, I agree with everything you just said.

[Tony_Tarantula]

I would have said yes maybe a bit ago, but after seeing things like how there was a secret City of Heroes server being maintained for the last decade, the Mechwarrior community not only still exists but just saw a Kickstarter re-launch that raised over 2.5 MILLION dollars, and people still play the original counter strike I'm not surprised. Good game experiences breed dedicated fanbases that persist.

[ZylonBane]

Also the Freespace 2 community is still going strong. Really impressive for a niche genre game released in 1999.

[demagogue]

LGS's premature death might have given us extended life in a weird way, because then we morphed into a fandom for games that uphold the LGS legacy, and there are still a few of those coming out each year thanks to places like Arkane and um ... others.

[Marecki]

My thought exactly when I reappeared here after an extended leave of absence. It definitely helps that a lot of LGS games very much continue to hold their own even today content-wise and thanks to graphics and audio mods released by the community, the presentation is not to be sneered at either. I celebrated my return to the fold by having played System Shock 2, Thief Gold and Thief 2 (in that order); STILL bloody good gameplay experience.

Come to think of it, it's probably high time I gave modded Thief: Deadly Shadows a go. Modded beyond Minimalist + JohnP's texture pack I mean, I have never played it without those two. For one thing, I am curious how much the removal of loading zones changes the feel of that game.

[MrDuck]

I am forever.

[icemann]

This place is home to me. Been coming here since early 2000, and its one of the main places I go online every day. Great source of discussion, news and debate. Love this place. The good and the bad. And systemshock.org just doubles with it for me. Everything here extends there.

[Gryzemuis]

Everybody is here because of the Thief games.
The Thief games failed, commercially, because they were made for "MIT grad students".

You can't build a sound financial product based on what "MIT grad students" like. Not games, not movies, not music, not anything. To make money, you need to cater to the masses. Very simple. To maximize the profit of your product, you need to steer away from "MIT grad students" and embrace the masses. Target your products towards the masses, make every accessible, take away anything that could limit the marketability of your product. Streamline all the things.

I assume the people here are like those dumb useless "MIT grad students". With their weird tastes and weird preferences. Not worth making products for. Nobody should make games or movies or music for them. Waste of time. Too small a market. Even if you have a website that doesn't produce anything, but just reviews stuff, you want to review for the masses. Why waste time and money on small markets ?

That's why I come here. If people here say a game is good, it might be good, or it might be still not for me. But I find the opinion of the average TTLG-person 100% more interesting than any review-website, or news-website in the world. No matter how underground or counterculture those websites are. If you like(d) the Thief games, I value your opinion more than anyone elses on the web.

[Starker]

Except the Thief games didn't fail. They made a profit. In fact, Thief was commercially the most successful game the studio made, selling half a million copies in a little over a year. And the sequel did even better, though unfortunately the royalties were processed too slowly to save the company. The reasons for the demise of LGS are many, but the failure of the Thief games is not among them.

[Trance]

I'm not here because of Thief. I'm here because of System Shock.

[Gryzemuis]

I was just trying to make a point. You know what I mean.

Activision, Sony, Ubisoft, EA, etc, none of those companies think: "when we create/market out next game, we have to make sure we make them just as good as the old Thief/System Shock games". Modern criteria for designing games, or even just liking them, are different from what they were in the nineties. And yes, of course there are exceptions. That's why I am here. To read about those exceptions. I think the unusual, exceptional, weird, niche, off-the-beaten-track games are appreciated more by the average TTLG-er than by just random people on the web. So for me, these forums are a more important source of information than any other website could be.

[ZylonBane]

Everybody is here because of the Thief games.

I'm not. I'm here because of SS2.

[Pyrian]

I...I think I came here by way of Deus Ex? Not many clues in my posting history. Apparently my very first post was disagreeably disagreeing with Malygris over AvP movie expectations.

That being said, throwing around names like SS2 and DX don't really detract from Gryzemius' premise.

[Purgator]

I'm here as part of my community service.

[Medlar]

There’s no place like home

[SubJeff]

I'm here because of Thief but I could easily have been here because of System Shock 2. Thief was the first game I really got into when I got back into gaming, but SS2... I think I dreamt about it more.

[Tony_Tarantula]

Everybody is here because of the Thief games.
The Thief games failed, commercially, because they were made for "MIT grad students".

Where did that quote come from?

Whoever said that is an asshat for the same reason that the guy who said "You need to have a very high IQ to appreciate Rick and Morty" is a widepsread internet meme and this guy deserves the same ridicule. You don't need to be some kind of galaxy brained genius to enjoy Thief.

What is true is that the whole genre of "immersive sim" games that were popular at the time require a longer attention span to play and reward players who are inquisitive. They're games that thrive much more off dopamine than adrenaline.

[icemann]

I'm not. I'm here because of SS2.

Same here. I don't really care about Thief.

[ZylonBane]

Where did that quote come from?

That quote came from the meat mangler of Grizzlemouse's brain. The actual quote, by Warren Spector, while working on Thief: Deadly Shadows, is "You can’t make a game by and for MIT grads. You have to make the game accessible." (Computer Gaming World #238). This was probably a reference to what was apparently a tongue-in-cheek internal slogan of Looking Glass: "By MIT grads, for MIT grads", a reference to the number of MIT grads Looking Glass had on staff.

(on a side note, it's slightly depressing how much Looking Glass lore seems to have almost completely fallen off the internet)

[demagogue]

I think of the holy trinity, Deus Ex was easily first for me and it was a fight for 2nd, Thief might have just edged System Shock 2, but SS2 had some great gaming moments & mechanics that Thief didn't have too.

But what brought me here were T2 FMs, as I was already trying to make FMs from the tutorial on the T2 CD over a year before I knew anyone else was doing it. In my mind, the FMs & the whole scene here were an entirely separate thing from the game itself. Deus Ex and SS2 might have been better overall games, mechanic-wise, but they didn't lend themselves to one-off FMs or even new campaigns.

Now I'm here because I know people and they're into the things I'm into ... and because GenGaming is still following new games that are in the LGS bent.
Oh, and the occasional FM still.

[mxleader]

I don't remember how I found TTLG but it had to do with Thief. The brother of a woman I was dating was showing me Thief on his new computer and I tried it out for an hour or so and I was hooked. I got a copy of TDP for Christmas and that was the beginning of the end of the relationship I was in. However it was not Thief that ran the relationship into the ground but Half Life and the twenty hour marathons of game play that did it in. Thief has caused problems in all my relationships but I don't care because I still have the game and this community after all the break-ups and a divorce.

[SubJeff]

Deus Ex and SS2 might have been better overall games,

Clean yo mouth out boi

[TTK12G3]

It's as big of a mess as it always was, but it's why I keep coming back.

[Marecki]

I am forever.

For was it not said by the Mad Brummie Alfred Reezmoggy ("Eldritch occult and casual racism for the whole family! Available for bar mitzvahs, tribal rites of passage and homoerotic private-school parties"), that is not dead which can eternal lie and will JUMP OUT AND SHAG YOU RIGHT IN THE LEFT NOSTRIL, MARK MY WORDS! ?