#web1

[talos-stims]

tally hall's internet show episode 1 - good day | source

[raspberrydraws]

Hii

Not many drawings! Sorry but I've been busy working on my neocities blog!! Wanna see? (Also I burnt my hand lol rip)

I started from 0 so it looks VERY humble but I'm having so much fun learning how to code! Can't believe people used to do this!!

[librarygoth]

new edition is out :) 

[cyberpunkonline]

Subscribe to the Faewave Cult mailing list for articles, news, exclusives and moar...

[xaviergalatis]

[tibic-contant]

Webs

[radspeon]

some blinkies i found while digging around on gifcities!

[broadcast-spectrum]

[prophyles]

Web2 Created the Surveillance Economy, Web3 Will Kill It

And the advertising model is the culprit

http://www.prophyles.com/blogs/Web2-Created-the-Surveillance-Economy-Web3-Will-Kill-It.html

[bunnygirlskull]

Yknow i always knew the eventual burning of the internet would come

There is only so much space on every server and thats all at a premium. Silicon wafers and nand flash take up physical space and lots of money and processing to fetch and send and redirect.

But the general lack of understanding or care from major companies about preserving the history of the internet, good and bad, for a comprehension of the human culture and countercultures that existed throughout the period of time that this communication method existed is awful.

We will lose large swathes of archives that anthropologically set the general tone and atmosphere for various internet eras. From the early days of web1 to now and today and what comes next.

Its all been burning for a bit, but at least theres efforts to preserve it and i hope they go far. There needs to be hope.

[talos-stims]

glitch effects | source

[spider-man-2o99]

so flipside is a specific kind of robot called a super adaptoid (which is a ~silver-age marvel reference, iirc?) and this literally isn't Officially Stated like ANYWHERE because PAD cannot write a damn comic book without putting at least one deep-cut-no-explainsies reference in it and i've not wasted countless late hours of my life sniff-snuffling around for Anything Trustworthy i can get my hands on and digging thru rotting web1 links all for NOTHING so. woe burden of useless 2099 trivia be upon ye

[antisocialxconstruct]

Hi Charlie! Do you have any recs for some indie cyberpunk games? 👀

My god do I.... A lot of these, especially the proper deep cuts, are fairly short and fall into the IF/VN category, eventually if I have the time to go hunting through more of my to-play list hopefully I can recommend a wider variety.

I'll start with a couple more mainstream titles and then get into the real weird stuff.

Obviously anyone who's been around here a while knows I never miss a chance to profess my love for the Shadowrun games by Harebrained Schemes, although that's pushing the limits of "indie" lmao but for a worthwhile rpg experience that also does a lot to counteract some of my biggest gripes with the cyberpunk genre (particularly the way they handle mental health, addiction, and bodily autonomy), I really can't think of anything better.

Also in the "only indie in the broadest sense" category, for anyone who missed the hype train on Stray I do heartily recommend it. I think it's easy to dismiss that one as sort of a "gimmick" game with how much coverage focused on the pc being a cat and not a lot else, but the game definitely has a lot to say about like... human legacy and the steady march of time. It's hard to say much else about it without spoiling major plot points, it's fairly short but well worth the experience.

Another long-time favorite of mine is RUINER, although I'll freely admit this one is not what I'd call... deep lol. What it is, is absolutely dripping with edgy cyberpunk style and intensely fun to play. I think it does have an underlying commentary on like, the commodification and expendability of human bodies, but it doesn't really take a lot of time to invite you to meditate on that because there are big guns to pick up and sick combos to execute and so, so many people to kill. But maybe that's also part of the commentary 👀

Hacknet is a hacking simulator (go figure) that's very slick and stylish, and if you're not overly familiar with coding and command prompts and such it does a pretty good job of making you feel like you're doing cool hackerman shit without actually asking too much of you on a technical level. I like its sense of humor but I also like the way it occasionally drops a bombshell of a moral quandary on you in the midst of all your petty crimes. I highly recommend getting the Labyrinths dlc to go with it, especially because it'll give you some fun stuff you can take back into the base game.

Hypnospace Outlaw plays like a love letter to the web1 era (and to the power trip of being a community moderator before centralized social media lmao). It has a loose story about what's essentially a shared dream internet, and you're charged with enforcing community guidelines which unfortunately makes you a bit of an outside observer rather than a proper netizen. That provides some context and will carry you through to the conclusion pretty quickly, but ultimately its play/replay value is in uncovering secrets and just delighting in the nostalgia (or the novelty if you're not a 90s kid). The devs are currently working on a sequel(?) that looks like it will actually let you build your own website and interact with other characters in the world, which I'm very excited to see.

Broken Reality is a weird one, and feels a bit like Hypnospace Outlaw but for the early idea of VR. It's also fairly short, but I think it's exactly as long as it should be for the gimmick not to wear out. It starts out as essentially just a surreal walking sim and it's gonna feel like trippy self-referential vaporwave nonsense right up until the tone takes a hard left turn in the third act.

Vapor Trails is still in development, and I admittedly haven't played too much of it mostly because I'm very bad at platformers, but it's got a really nice aesthetic, clever character writing, and what I've seen of the story so far has me intrigued enough to keep throwing myself at it. One to keep an eye on, at the very least.

_transfer is... something very odd. More of an "interactive experience" than a game in the strictest sense, and intended to be played in many short sessions that build on each other bit by bit as you connect with a variety of other intelligences to recover memories about yourself and the world. I don't think I fully understand the story it's telling me and I'm not sure I'm even meant to, but I've played through several sessions and each one leaves me feeling kind of discomfited but fascinated. (I will say $10 may feel a bit steep for what it is, I got it in a bundle.)

Momotype....... okay listen. You're going to go look at this game and think "Charlie has clearly lost its mind, there's no way this is cyberpunk." I need you to just trust me and play it. It's free, it'll only take a few hours to get all the endings. It's Momo.

LOCALHOST is another short one with a fair amount of replay value for the surprisingly varied dialogue trees. You're tasked with wiping some damaged AIs off several hard drives, only to discover that they're all quite chatty, and now you have to decide what to do with them. This one also has a sort of unsettling vibe, and I like the variety of perspectives it has on how AI personalities might manifest.

Subserial Network is by the same developer as LOCALHOST. I've actually only just started this one so haven't gotten very deep into it, but I already find the concept pretty compelling. It's structurally similar to Hypnospace Outlaw, or maybe more accurately to something like Orwell, requiring you to comb through the internet archives of fellow citizens to incriminate them as "subserials": androids who want to forsake their human programming and become more machine. The language used to describe the serializing process has some pretty obvious parallels with both transgender healthcare and treatment for neurodivergence, so I'm really curious to see where it goes with that allegory.

A couple of honorable mentions that aren't really cyberpunk, but have a vibe that just makes me want to include them on this list:

The Magic Circle is essentially a game about game development, with a lot of commentary on artistic integrity and creativity, but the real novelty of it is the amount of stuff it lets you do inside the "game" of the game. It's really hard to explain but it's very open-ended and satisfying.

The Turing Test is, on the surface, a pretty standard "trapped on a space station solving a mystery" puzzle game, and I will say upfront the gameplay probably isn't going to be anything you haven't seen before. The puzzles are pretty good, if you're into puzzle games, but the real reason I'm putting it on the list is because this game was my first introduction to the "Chinese room" thought experiment, and it genuinely had a huge impact on my views and opinions on artificial intelligence.

[konveeart]

♡

One thing that's been solidifying in my mind these past couple weeks is that I want to re-build from the ground up my relationship with SNS. I've been holding onto this thought for so long, only recently crossed my mind I could do that.

SNS are not web1 and won't be web1. Tumblr is the only place that I feel a little better posting wip work as long as I forget that once I do so, if it gets reblogged, it's out of my hands.

I always think "I want to let my friends know that I'm around", but I've found peace working silently, under the radar.

It's one of the many thoughts that orbit in my mind, close enough not to ignore. Looming giants, ever present. Working is the only medicine to dress them in an invisible cloak, keeping them out of sight as long as I'm immersed.

Sadly, this isn't a deviantart journal where I could write long-form and get respectively long-form replies/comments back. This is the only place I can think of talking about it, even ever so abstract because I still feel weird posting and I don't have solid answers. Just the epiphany that I've been playing pretend and I can finally take the steps to set myself free from it.

One of which is reblogging older artworks without stressing about chronological order. Dip my toes into that, see how I feel about it.

Anyway I have a dreamwidth acc where I write more stuff I think about, so hmu if you want the username :)

[omorales81]

Ahsoka PSA: don’t search for “Sabine’s rock music,” or risk going down a rabbit hole of dead links at Lycos and Netscape. 🥸🤦🏻‍♂️ “Igyah Kah” isn’t on @spotify #Ahsoka #TrueStory #OneToGrowOn #Web1 #SabineWren #StarWars 🎸🏍️

[bungerc0re]

w/ my love of web1/early web2 sites and my basic competency in code i should’ve set up an rss feed by now, unfortunately idk how