Really interesting servers with solid communities formed around them. It might not have been entirely the same as a LAN, but think back to CS 1.6 and even maybe CS:S, early on. It's just a bunch of drop-in/drop-out based on what showed up in the server-browser that evening for you. It's hard to tell the servers apart and I've yet to find many with a real community around them. This erodes any chance of a real community forming around that server. Something about the way games are shoved out, iterated quickly upon, and the custom-server stuff is handled today has forced this sort of lack of individuality among servers. You didn't even need a LAN for a LAN experience, even as late as the early 00s. Were we better off with LAN parties I ask? Yes. The only difference though, a decade ago I played the games I still enjoy today, with real people, real friends, living real life together, sharing real stories, face to face and eye to eye, sharing laughter. I've realized that I'm the same as I was a decade ago. when I realize why I'm 'anti-social' by today's standards.

Whereas my greatest nemesis before was growing rivalries with actual people, that would soon become the very people that a decade later I would pay special visit, hours out of my way in some cases, to visit and converse over lunch or dinner. Expectations of myself, unmet, creating frustration, my greatest nemesis. Yes, I'm fighting random strangers in whatever random multiplayer game that I play, but I realize that much of my frustration comes from my expectations to become better than my performance the previous night, or even the previous game. When playing online, I've realized that the only nemisis I have. But when gaming online with my brother, or best friends of yore, when I turn off my console to go to bed, or wind down, I feel as though I don't know them. Actually more like 15 years later, or longer if we're going back to Win95 days. Many of these memories, if you're like our crew, we still recount to this day, a decade later. When I would play with friends via LAN, we would create countless memories. But, there's one thing that I don't have after hours of gaming with friends over the internet. The ability to come together and enjoy video games, which is something that surely becomes increasingly difficult as we grow older, and even more difficult since multiplayer became viable over the internet. I've realized that what draws me to Giantbomb, and to youtubers like Simon and Lewis Yogscast, or TotalBiscuit and Dodger on The Game Station, or countless others, is that it represents something that's been missing in my life for quite some time. Or the first Halo Party where unknown high-school randoms became best friends for life, many of which are the closest long lost friends we have. The first console game (Goldeneye) we used carboard and blankets to sub-divide the screen to create a LAN like scenario, so other couldn't narily be called a 'screen-watcher,' even though you'd always staunchly deny that you did. The first Command and Conquer and Red Alert LAN party.

Screenwatcher game