Back in the late 90s my first experience with an online community was playing an Online game called Acrophobia. It was hosted by the same company that did You Don’t Know Jack (that was how I found it) and it was a lot of fun. Basically a group of people get a string of letters that make a nonsense Acronym and you have to come up with what it stands for. The group would then vote and you get points.
There were different “rooms” in the game and each ended up getting a bunch of regulars. Mine was named The Porch. A made quite a few friends on there. We ended up doing a lot of ICQ chatting outside of the game and got involved with each others lives. The group even had a get together which unfortunately I missed.
I was feeling nostalgic today and it made me think of the game and that made me wonder if my current online community ever played in that one.
How funny, I was just reminiscing about this game a few days ago. I wasted so much time on Acrophobia. I don’t think I ever played it on IRC, but the game client the YDKJ people came up with was pretty much a structured IRC client anyway.
LOVED that game! I remember staying up all night playing it a few times, sucking down sweet tea and chain-smoking in my best friend’s boyfriend’s apartment. Somebody needs to bring it back.