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[User 73706]

Back in the good old days, Halo was cool. People played it and shit. Everyone had heard of it in one way or another and it wasn't some sort of taboo identifier; but then, following Halo 3, its fanbase began to die down. New games like CoD, Minecraft, indie games, etc. began diversifying the same demographic further. That itself isn't the issue. The thing is, what the fuck happened to the Halo community?

I'm not complaining about fat basement nerds walking around in Master Chief t-shirts; every community's got them. But every Halo player I've seen in person nowadays is just plain weird. Ironically it's been more conservative, right-wing types that have stuck to Halo in my experience while the 12-21 males usually stick to Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc. in the FPS department.

Have any other fanbases gone from anyone and everyone regardless of demographics to a few select oddballs in recent history?

 

[sublimit]

Edit:nevermind.I missread the OP.

 

[Dictator93]

I witnessed the downfall of the competitive Dawn of War II community.
It was rough, I love that game.

 

[Nostremitus]

I was around for the NES and SNES...

 

[Strickland]

Team Fortress 2. All the people give a shit about right now is hats.

 

[gngf123]

Any genre of game that doesn't do well anymore.

I used to enjoy SHMUPS, and still do. I knew a number of people who used to play them on the Genesis and stuff like that, but nobody who is very interested in them anymore.

Same for 2D platformers. People around me consider them a relic of the 90's and everyone should move on to First Person Shooters and things.

Internet community is still sticking around for both though. So that's awesome.

 

[RoKKeR]

Halo and to some extent Battlefiled. The super hardcore BF fans have really turned against the franchise, starting with Bad Company in 2008.

I'm still a fan of both, however.

 

[Nibel]

Shenmue fanbase is alive and well

You can tell that SEGA

 

[nrvalleytime]

Command and Conquer: Red Alert. I've seen so little enthusiasm for this Free to Play version being released, and all the people that religiously used to play online just aren't coming back because of it.

 

[Mass Effect]

Mass Effect fanbase. ME3 was bad (really bad, and no not because of the ending), but some people were taking it way too seriously. The Bioware forums were scary about a year ago.

Gears of War. Not so much the community getting bad, but the fact that's it's been drastically declining in numbers over the past few years (though this is largely Epic's fault). I mean, do people even care about Judgement? I don't. And Gears used to be one of my favorite IPs this gen.

And you've already said Halo.

Halo and to some extent Battlefiled. The super hardcore BF fans have really turned against the franchise, starting with Bad Company in 2008.

I'm still a fan of both, however.

See, that's funny. I became a Battlefield fan from the original Bad Company. Never played a BF game before that.

 

[Passive Assassin]

Command and Conquer: Red Alert. I've seen so little enthusiasm for this Free to Play version being released, and all the people that religiously used to play online just aren't coming back because of it.

Cold blooded yet true heh.

 

[zewone]

So...this article isn't about less fans, it's about Halo fans being weird?

I'm a fan of Halo, I wouldn't consider myself weird.

COD is definitely the more popular shooter. Of the few people I know who still play Halo (like 2 or 3), they are just normal people.

This is a strange question.

 

[EagleBurnn]

I was there and in the forums when the messiah of FPS was announced, Quake 4. After years of shooters getting easier, the true king was to arrive. Then it happened. One of the largest fanbases in history was silenced. October 18, 2005. Never forget.

Quake Live then came to us but we all know that it isn't enough to fill the hole Quake 4 made. We Halo fans think we have it bad but you have no idea how bad it can get.

 

[Interfectum]

Team Fortress 2. All the people give a shit about right now is hats.

Most of the games I play in people rarely ever mention hats. It's only really bad during the holiday sessions where the drops are time sensitive.

 

[Starfish Hero]

I've was a Sonic fanboy. The rest should go without saying.

 

[Guess Who]

Team Fortress 2. All the people give a shit about right now is hats.

Ugh. Tell me about it. The TF2 item "economy" has become more popular than actually capping flags and pushing carts.

 

[Overdoziz]

But every Halo player I've seen in person nowadays is just plain weird.

eeehhhhhh

 

[Ocaso]

Do we still have Metroid fans? Prior to Prime's release the series was so unequivocally loved, that to see how it's changed and shifted since is a little painful. Prime was universally loved in the general gaming press, but head over and read the Metroid Database's reviews and you'll see a somewhat less enthusiastic (though still positive) reception. At the same time Fusion's changes to the 2D formula and storytelling brought more unease and it seems every title since (with Zero Mission as the possible sole exception) has proven more divisive, culminating in the potentially franchise-halting Other M. Sad thing is that while there are tons of shooters and RPG's, full scale console pathfinding games are few and far between, which makes it all the more painful.

 

[Dorimukyasuto]

Halo and to some extent Battlefiled. The super hardcore BF fans have really turned against the franchise, starting with Bad Company in 2008.

I'm still a fan of both, however.

BC2 still has a nice community. I still play everyday. The game really is a great FPS and it seems like people actually want to work as a team as opposed to other FPSs.

 

[sn00zer]

I was apart of a huge forum called hlfallout.net it was all hyping up for the release of HL2, tons of posts a day, very active, but as HL2 releases got farther and farther....it slowly began to die, now its a shell of its former self

 

[pantsmith]

Silent Hill.

It went from postmodern art house horror to the crap you find at Hot Topic.

I know there are a lot of fans still dealing with denial, so they get a pass, but I have seen one too many people wearing Pyramid Head shirts as some kind of edgy fashion response to the movies. Just stop. All of the symbolism and artistry is clearly lost on a branch of the fanbase that, like Tomm Hulett, just wants to see more "twisted" nurse designs without any regard for why they originally existed.

 

[RoKKeR]

See, that's funny. I became a Battlefield fan from the original Bad Company. Never played a BF game before that.

Which is part of why the original BF fans have drifted away from the franchise. A shift away from a 100% PC game was enough to alienate the hardcore fans.

 

[User 73706]

eeehhhhhh

Bingo.

 

[Gully State]

I witnessed the downfall of the competitive Dawn of War II community.
It was rough, I love that game.

It's an amazing spectator RTS (I remember one eldar player who basically made a living out of forcing skirmishes and back capping while keeping death tolls at a minimum), but at the same time goddamn did it have a brutal learning curve.

 

[RoKKeR]

BC2 still has a nice community. I still play everyday. The game really is a great FPS and it seems like people actually want to work as a team as opposed to other FPSs.

Oh no, don't get me wrong I love BF, and BC2 is one of my most played games. It's just that the super hardcore has drifted away from the franchise. Visit MordorHQ for a few seconds and you'll see what I mean.

 

[Dice]

Yup, T-ara.

There was a short time of somewhat united support for the group, then there was infighting, then a weird leadership rotation concept that made it worse, favoritism in promotions, a scandal about a member, introduction of a new member, significant concept changes, a massive bullying scandal that was handled in the worst possible way and ejecting the member, another new member added and plans for another one who is way younger than the rest and can't even speak Korean.... things pretty much just went to shit more and more and more over the last 2 years. A lot of people who used to be fans just want the group to disband now.

For for gaming not really. I mean franchises have gone down, but it's not like fans left as the franchises continued.

 

[PIMPBYBLUD]

Star Wars Galaxies...use to love the shit out of that game Pre-NGE

 

[Complistic]

Bioware games in general.

 

[sunnz]

Mass Effect fanbase. ME3 was bad (really bad, and no not because of the ending), but some people were taking it way too seriously. The Bioware forums were scary about a year ago.

Gears of War. Not so much the community getting bad, but the fact that's it's been drastically declining in numbers over the past few years (though this is largely Epic's fault). I mean, do people even care about Judgement? I don't. And Gears used to be one of my favorite IPs this gen.

And you've already said Halo.



See, that's funny. I became a Battlefield fan from the original Bad Company. Never played a BF game before that.

Same with me.

I first played a BF game from BFBC1 and absolutely loved it, still my BEST FPS this gen.
I even went and tried to play BF2/1942 but didn't find them as fun/couldn't get into them.

I do understand the hate, or dislike from old BF fans, I mean it went from PC exclusive to console exclusive ( even for one game) and ever since no BF game really has come close to BF2/ the ones before ( maybe BF3)

BFBC1 to me had the right balance of pretty much everything, such a good game.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Not gaming related but "30 Seconds to Mars".

Oh my god. What the fuck happened to them?!

 

[shandy706]

Amongst my friends and I, Gran Turismo.

We all moved over to Forza and PC sims since GT5

 

[ExitPlanetDust]

Any genre of game that doesn't do well anymore.

I used to enjoy SHMUPS, and still do. I knew a number of people who used to play them on the Genesis and stuff like that, but nobody who is very interested in them anymore.

Same for 2D platformers. People around me consider them a relic of the 90's and everyone should move on to First Person Shooters and things.

Internet community is still sticking around for both though. So that's awesome.

Pretty much all of that.

 

[Jotamide]

Yep, a small FPS called Tactical Ops. It started as a UT mod and became standalone. Kind of the equivalent of Counter Strike but without Steam which back in 2003/2004 was a huge plus.

I was part of the T.O. Chilean league. They used to hang at a forum called zoomby.cl. The community was fucking hilarious, and even though we didn't have a proper anti-aimbot/hack system, nobody cheated.

Eventually, the forum admins were called out as shady (not only the FPS side but MMOs and other games as well) and the players started leaving. Finally that company closed and now only the uber hardcore fans still play the game.

 

[Tyrant Rave]

Halo and to some extent Battlefiled. The super hardcore BF fans have really turned against the franchise, starting with Bad Company in 2008.

I'm still a fan of both, however.

Heh, I still remember all the Battlefield threads you made on Bnet.

I'll just go with Guilty Gear. BlazBlue is way more popular now and a lot of the fanbase just moved to that.

 

[erpg]

Valve fans. From a decent group of people attracted to good single player games, to some sort of strange cult.

 

[Muffdraul]

That's easy- Final Fantasy.

My first FF was FFIV in 1992. I first went online in 1994 when my employer connected their network to the internet, and one of the first places I started hanging out was a BBS for video game discussion. FFVI was coming out soon and there was a lot of talk about it. The FF fanbase was teeny-tiny back then, or at least the English speaking segment of it. I just remember how nice and civil everyone was back then. And there were hardly any arguments. It seemed like virtually everyone was in agreement- FF got better with every game in the series. I honestly don't recall any fights about how FFIV was better the VI, how FFVI fucked everything up and was "a betrayal of everything FF stands for!" and other such horseshit.

But then in 1997 FFVII was released, and that's exactly the sort of thing that started happening. I remember when FFVII was being previewed, everyone seemed really excited and positive about it. It came out in Japan, and the people who imported it reported back that it was awesome, every bit as wonderful as they hoped. But then it got released in the US, and about a month later the fanbase had suddenly increased in size by about 100x, and it was like a bloody civil war broke out. A lot of old school fans became bitter that suddenly their beloved private jacuzzi was being invade by newbies, so they acted like dicks, which made the newbies act like dicks, and it just got worse and worse. And it seemed to me that the situation kinda spread out from there and infected video game discussion in general. All of a sudden it seemed like every forum I went to, everyone was flaming each other about everything. It's been like that ever since.

 

[Piers]

Ragnarok Online, the MMORPG.
In short, nowadays you have to solo until Lv 75-99 and have amazing gear at +7 or higher with rare cards and shit if you want to potentially party with people. General speaking it's treated as a single-player game these days, until being able to manage high-end dungeons.

 

[Evolution_1ne]

I'm a fan of hardcore, tactical, competitive FPS OP...... it was brutal

 

[-Amon-]

I used to be very active in the pc simracing scene when online racing started to be organized in online leagues in my country ( Italy ).

There where pratically two campionships, one was the CIGPL that used Gran Prix Legends as a base, the other was named, i think NROC, but i'm not that sure anymore lol. They used Nascar Racing and simulated the nascar season.

As when everything starts, it was beautiful. These two leagues had no money involved. The servers needed for racing and the forums needed for the organization side where offered by big portals or self financed by the organizers. There where no prizes. All the persons involved gave to the hobby lots of free time just for the fun of it.

Racing was hard and winning was really important given the enourmous amount of time you had to invest in training, but for the great part we witnessed great rivalries but no enemies where made, it was great fun, it was for passion and nothing more.

To cut it short when i decided to leave from that world in 2006, the expenses for the servers where starting to go up and some leagues started asking for admission prizes to the championships, and prizes where given to the winners. The atmosphere was changed, the new guys were different and even we, the old timers were different.

It was like going from the golden era of F1 ( the 60's ) to today's F1 in 5 years.

 

[Rickenslacker]

In the broadest sense I guess people on the internet in general? I can't stand how 4chan seems to have plagued everything and I feel like an old man yelling at clouds when it comes to social media sites.

 

[HitokiriNate85]

Do we still have Metroid fans? Prior to Prime's release the series was so unequivocally loved, that to see how it's changed and shifted since is a little painful. Prime was universally loved in the general gaming press, but head over and read the Metroid Database's reviews and you'll see a somewhat less enthusiastic (though still positive) reception. At the same time Fusion's changes to the 2D formula and storytelling brought more unease and it seems every title since (with Zero Mission as the possible sole exception) has proven more divisive, culminating in the potentially franchise-halting Other M. Sad thing is that while there are tons of shooters and RPG's, full scale console pathfinding games are few and far between, which makes it all the more painful.

This. And holy shit. I just wanted to see when it was that samus.co.uk closed and found that the domain is back online as of November, but the site isn't coming back. Still have those speedrun DVDs sitting on my shelf.

Post Other M I've gotta wonder if they'll even continue the franchise. I imagine we'll see something since they at least included it in Nintendoland, but I feel like the Prime trilogy was the real series finale.

 

[SmithnCo]

Silent Hill is a good (bad) one. What a fall into shit.

 

[Dram]

Post Other M I've gotta wonder if they'll even continue the franchise. I imagine we'll see something since they at least included it in Nintendoland, but I feel like the Prime trilogy was the real series finale.

So Other M potentially killed the franchise?

 

[RoKKeR]

Heh, I still remember all the Battlefield threads you made on Bnet.

Damn, really? That's awesome. Can't say I recognize you, but I miss the good old days, back when B.net was readable. Haven't posted there in months.

 

[JDSN]

Resident Evil 5 destroyed the RE-centric that I belonged to, RE6 was just met with apathy and guys talking about Dayz.

 

[Deadly Cyclone]

You calling Heckfu weird?

Also Halo's not dead Warher!

 

[nailbombxx]

Half of the Bayonetta fan-base turned against itself because they don't want to buy a new console.

 

[Muffdraul]

That was the Internet itself becoming more and more accessible as the 90's went on. There were always trolls, but they weren't like the current ones. John McAfee is a good example. It was less saying disingenuous stuff to rile people up and talk them down for not reading sarcasm through text, it was hilarious satire and elaborate pranks. That's what you get when mostly informed, smart people are the ones with access and patience to use BBS and eventually IRC and other services.

When it opened up wide probably starting with AOL, things changed. I was a child for this whole transition, and it was baffling to watch. Looking back, while people claim anonymity is why the Internet is awful, I think Facebook and Twitter have disproven that. People are awful, and they brought themselves as they were to the fun, if imperfect club that used to be the Internet. People didn't get worse, they just got more visible.

Obviously the internet explosion was a major component. But from where I was sitting, it seemed like the FFVII fanboy wars did a LOT to fan the flames, so to speak.

 

[Sanic]

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

 

[Lawlzy]

Anyone who was in the bemani / rhythm game fanbase knows how that fell out years ago. Or at least, it's just the elitests left now.