Les_the_Sarge_9_1
Posts: 4392
Joined: 12/29/2000
Status: offline
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I mean that sincerely, why exactly are we here?
I have been with Matrix Games now for almost 4 years eh.
I am almost entirely positive I found Matrix Games in connection with Steel Panthers, but in 2000, well Steel Panthers was essentially it more or less eh.
I have stayed since. I could have wandered off I suppose.
In the first year or so of my being around the forum was constantly buzzing with Steel Panthers posts. There was always someone posting about this or that or the other thing.
It seemed the game was always "desperately in need of "fixing".
I was never entirely sure the game was in dire peril though. Each new version that came out "just had to be the last one". I was certain, I mean rock solid certain to ask for anything past 5.1 was the height of lunacy. It was a free game after all, and worth every mega byte downloaded.
I still recall my first download too. Fresh from getting a computer magazine with it on a cd, and the cd was a coaster. Man I was irate, 11 bucks wasted. Because I am not a computer gamer mostly, and the magazine had not a single article in it I wanted to read.
So I downloaded the game right from the source. It was 4.1 when I started, and by the time I had a real copy on cd it had miraculously gone to 4.3. I took my hard drive down to a friends place, put it in his machine, and burned the game to a cd just to be safe. He had only recently gotten a cd burner too, it was really cool having access to a cd burner then.
But that first download , man what an experience. I phoned family and friends and told them look my phone is going offline so just forget calling me. Told all my online friends if you need me ICQ me otherwise I am busy. Took my computer and my then humble dial up connection 2 and 3/4 solid days of downloading. And of course I used Getright, I did not want to have to do this twice. I still had a miserable online time limit type account as well.
What a change the forum has made since then.
Now when I come on, I have to scroll waaaaaaaaaaay down to get to Steel Panthers. Not surprising I decided to heck with that, I am going to make General Discussions the default best forum here if I have to single handedly.
I don't think it was actually me that made the General Discussions forum active though hehe.
Matrix Games today is sitting on a goldmine. They have an advertising perk money can't buy in my opinion. It cost the site owners good money to give us Steel Panthers as a free downloadable program. And it cost them a lot of sweat and toil to see it made into the SPWaW version as well. But it was an effective tool. Few online sites of note can claim to have done something as substantial as produce a game of its magnitude and then just given it away.
Picture your next big game purchase, and then picture the company having spent hour after hour perfecting it just so they can give it to you free.
People can call me fanboy or any other slag that suits them, frankly Matrix Games has done me a great favour, and they have earned my friendship.
With some luck, Matrix Games will enjoy releasing several titles over the next 2 years, and earn a firm and rock solid foothold in wargames production. And that is assuming you don't think they haven't already done so.
People claim annoyance over the fact Matrix Games doesn't do demos. Matrix Games doesn't "need" to do demos. Their games are already better promoted than most other companies games are even with demos.
If you can't come here and find enough information about one of their games, then my advice is open your damned eyes man.
I want Matrix Games to in a few years, "be the way things are done". I want the industry making comments like, "now if Matrix Games can do it, then so can you."
Back in the hey days of Avalon Hill, people would hold you up and say, hey if AH can do it, so can you. Until shown otherwise, Matrix Games is today's AH.
I wasn't the ever recognised dude I am now for quite some time eh. I think I can say with some certainty though, that I am a fairly familiar face today. I like it :)
Is there life outside of Matrix Games? sure there is. Doesn't say much though.
Outside of my home I can find deserts, wastelands, barren locations if I go far enough. I can find other places like home too. But I like home.
Explains why I like Matrix Games :)
I like wargaming intensely, I like people that like wargaming like me. I am not saying my style is wargaming is the best, but I like my style the best (is that some sort of surprise? hehe). I come here knowing the people here (for the most part) are here because they expect to find people they expect to be more or less similar.
Some appear to come here and then discard the place like a used newspaper. That's their business.
I didn't come to Matrix Games just to get a free download and then leave. Then again, forums at that time were still fairly new to me. I have not been inhabiting forums for nearly as long as I have been enjoying the wonders of being online.
People think I am seemingly in here all the time. Truth is I am nornally online chatting with someone (could be your wife hehe).
But I do enjoy coming in here and checking out who's in and what is currently the latest gossip. I have found out almost every cool computer wargaming bit of news thanks to a wargaming forum. The print media seems to be more or less dead. I have no money to spend on wargaming magazines any more. To slow and to yesterday.
You only get out of something what you put into it.
Today you could join meet some great people and who knows maybe even see them in person through good fortune.
Or you could download something, and leave never to be seen again.
I have met maaaaaaaybe 3 persons here at Matrix Games who have behaved in an annoying manner. I have no idea how many I have met and enjoyed conversing with. I have met numerous good friends. I wish I could share a beer with quite a few too.
I have had the pleasure of making my ability to download easily now, an option for those still stuck employing the older slower dial up means of connection. I have burned to cd quite a few copies of the Steel Panthers download data to cd and then mailed it to most corners of the globe.
Another happy wargamer is a good thing.
So guys (and gals when we are blessed with them), why are you here?
Keep in mind you can get a lot out of being here, or next to nothing from having come here. Only yu can make that choice, and if you got nothing out of being here, perhaps that was all you were trying to get out of it.
Yeah it was a friggin long post, I hope everyone enjoyed the comments :) .
_____________________________
I LIKE that my life bothers them,
Why should I be the only one bothered by it eh.
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