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I have excellent memories of GameWinners. And stupid memories. And cringe memories. But mostly excellent memories!
I was on there at the age of ~13-15 so I expect I was silly, ignorant, rude, insulting, petty, easily offended… disaster basically. If anyone actually enjoyed my company, thank goodness for that. Sorry to the rest of you! Here’s my whole GW life story for some reason. What can I say, I’m nostalgic and verbose.
When I was setting up my GW account, Marlfox was this book on my desk from the school library about these sneaky grey fox villains who want to harm a bunch of rodent pals who live in an abbey. I think no-one ever called me out on how lame my choice was! At the time, I had a lot of respect for the Redwall books by Brian Jacques so maybe some of you did too. My user name was MarlFox because having an extra capitalised letter made it better somehow. Later on I considered people with lower case usernames to be top tier cool, I felt like they were language renegades. But MarlFox had stuck by then.
During my time on the site around 2003ish, I joined the Hylian Warriors Clan which was for Zelda fans. Lots of competition, debate and RPing to determine exactly who among us were the biggest and most loyal Zelda fans. Hugely important. Greatest of honours to be mentioned on the clan’s title and introduction post. I sank many hours into the group to get myself onto that post. The sense of belonging and achievement when I was made the official clan Sage of Whatever filled my little heart with pride.
When that clan ran out of active members willing to talk to each other, I made my own clan about Skies of Arcadia, which was an obscure Dreamcast and Gamecube RPG about sky pirates. There I got to experience the heady delights of GW clan leadership. King of my own tiny little world. Can’t remember if I went mad with power but I do remember being so excited about the clan RP that my members could barely keep up. Thanks to anyone who joined it, hope it was good memories. I’d still love a reboot or sequel to that game even to this day.
After that, I joined the Star Wars clan and Peering into the Mind of the Idiot. Big groups. Older kids with more eloquence and maturity than myself. Doubt anyone noticed I was there. If I held my own when challenged over something or made one of the regulars laugh, I felt like I was doing OK. Eventually I grew up a bit and realised some of the people there who I looked up to were getting a bit unpleasant. They were staring too long into the voids of 4chan and Encyclopaedia Dramatica, which were too dark for me.
When the time came to leave GW, I was too hooked to stop so spent an hour breaking rules to get my account banned. Too easy! Some of the mods were a bit… self-inflated. At this point a mod looked up my IP address to judge whether to ban me and found the accounts for my brother (13, serial forum griefer) and sister (11, posted in a couple of girl threads). The mod came to the conclusion I had multiple personality disorder and a love of causing trouble so all of us were perma-banned. Whoops! My siblings forgave me. I would have liked to visit my old haunts later but accepted I’d done this to myself. No negativity to anyone involved. Just funny to remember it now.
I liked GameWinners because it was a place where I wasn’t judged for my appearance and where a bit of intelligence wasn’t a bad thing. It was a good escape when I had bad times at school. I found strange little corners where I felt accepted and was excited to chat and express myself. I made dumb teen mistakes and regretted them in a fairly safe anonymous environment. Some conversations genuinely helped steer me towards being a better person. So thanks to all of you who made it special. Thanks to the people I met and the people who worked to make the site a good place.
All the best to the old community, hope GW Forums is a success, and an extra thanks to those of you who shared such deeply personal introductions. It’s been fascinating learning about what was going on with you back in those days and what you’ve been up to since. Keep being real!
Marl
I was on there at the age of ~13-15 so I expect I was silly, ignorant, rude, insulting, petty, easily offended… disaster basically. If anyone actually enjoyed my company, thank goodness for that. Sorry to the rest of you! Here’s my whole GW life story for some reason. What can I say, I’m nostalgic and verbose.
When I was setting up my GW account, Marlfox was this book on my desk from the school library about these sneaky grey fox villains who want to harm a bunch of rodent pals who live in an abbey. I think no-one ever called me out on how lame my choice was! At the time, I had a lot of respect for the Redwall books by Brian Jacques so maybe some of you did too. My user name was MarlFox because having an extra capitalised letter made it better somehow. Later on I considered people with lower case usernames to be top tier cool, I felt like they were language renegades. But MarlFox had stuck by then.
During my time on the site around 2003ish, I joined the Hylian Warriors Clan which was for Zelda fans. Lots of competition, debate and RPing to determine exactly who among us were the biggest and most loyal Zelda fans. Hugely important. Greatest of honours to be mentioned on the clan’s title and introduction post. I sank many hours into the group to get myself onto that post. The sense of belonging and achievement when I was made the official clan Sage of Whatever filled my little heart with pride.
When that clan ran out of active members willing to talk to each other, I made my own clan about Skies of Arcadia, which was an obscure Dreamcast and Gamecube RPG about sky pirates. There I got to experience the heady delights of GW clan leadership. King of my own tiny little world. Can’t remember if I went mad with power but I do remember being so excited about the clan RP that my members could barely keep up. Thanks to anyone who joined it, hope it was good memories. I’d still love a reboot or sequel to that game even to this day.
After that, I joined the Star Wars clan and Peering into the Mind of the Idiot. Big groups. Older kids with more eloquence and maturity than myself. Doubt anyone noticed I was there. If I held my own when challenged over something or made one of the regulars laugh, I felt like I was doing OK. Eventually I grew up a bit and realised some of the people there who I looked up to were getting a bit unpleasant. They were staring too long into the voids of 4chan and Encyclopaedia Dramatica, which were too dark for me.
When the time came to leave GW, I was too hooked to stop so spent an hour breaking rules to get my account banned. Too easy! Some of the mods were a bit… self-inflated. At this point a mod looked up my IP address to judge whether to ban me and found the accounts for my brother (13, serial forum griefer) and sister (11, posted in a couple of girl threads). The mod came to the conclusion I had multiple personality disorder and a love of causing trouble so all of us were perma-banned. Whoops! My siblings forgave me. I would have liked to visit my old haunts later but accepted I’d done this to myself. No negativity to anyone involved. Just funny to remember it now.
I liked GameWinners because it was a place where I wasn’t judged for my appearance and where a bit of intelligence wasn’t a bad thing. It was a good escape when I had bad times at school. I found strange little corners where I felt accepted and was excited to chat and express myself. I made dumb teen mistakes and regretted them in a fairly safe anonymous environment. Some conversations genuinely helped steer me towards being a better person. So thanks to all of you who made it special. Thanks to the people I met and the people who worked to make the site a good place.
All the best to the old community, hope GW Forums is a success, and an extra thanks to those of you who shared such deeply personal introductions. It’s been fascinating learning about what was going on with you back in those days and what you’ve been up to since. Keep being real!
Marl
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