u/petehans303

I was thinking about this the other day while looking at my Steam library. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, the gaming landscape was so specific. Everyone was into RTS games and arena shooters. If you look at the top charts today, those classic genres look totally dead, but they really aren't, they just changed into something different over time.

Take RTS for example. We all grew up on Command and Conquer, Starcraft and Warcraft, the games were pretty hard and punishing for newcomers, and you had to master both the macro economy side of the games and the micro unit control. But players eventually fractured the genre into entirely different directions, people realized you could cater to some parts of the playerbase and have a successful game. You had the custom maps in Warcraft 3 that started the whole MOBA craze with Dota and League. Then you have the base building side. The whole turtling aspect of RTS (Almost everyone enjoyed turtling back then) morphed into these massive base defense survival games. 

I was actually playing some Diplomacy is Not an Option lately and that’s what sparked this whole train of thought. It takes the best parts of old school RTS (scale, familiar controls, UI etc.) but is completely focused on turtling and defense. It feels like the natural evolution of how I actually wanted to play Stronghold back in the day. In fact it might be a spiritual successor of Stronghold in a way.

Then you have the shooter space, while on the surface level games look similar, fundamental things have changed so much. Quake and Unreal Tournament were the absolute peak of multiplayer gaming for a lot of us. Pure arena shooters are basically a ghost town now, but their DNA completely morphed into the hero shooter. The old emphasis on map control and weapon pickups turned into managing cooldowns and team synergy in games like Overwatch or Marvel Rivals. The crazy strafejumping movement replaced by built in, easier to use, movement abilities. Tbh I liked the skill expression of strafejumping a lot, but veterans just dominate any newcomer if you have mechanics like that in a game so I can see why its not as popular anymore. But the basic fast paced fps formula is there, just repackaged for a new generation. The funny outlier is Counter Strike. It somehow refused to change and just willed the tactical FPS genre into existence through sheer stubbornness. It is wild that it still pulls massive numbers and sits right alongside its own modern evolution with Valorant. I guess the game really was ahead of its time, since we still play it.

Even old hardcore roguelikes and traditional RPGs kind of merged. We went from these slow, punishing ASCII dungeon crawlers to modern roguelites. Developers basically took the progression and stat building of an RPG, mashed it with the permadeath of a roguelike, and sped everything up into condensed action runs like Hades or Dead Cells. Not surprised roguelites are so popular, the combination works very well.

It makes me wonder what the popular games right now are going to turn into in another twenty years. I have no idea what the games will look like, but I know some version of Counter Strike will probably still be popular.

I've gotten my whole friend group into Olden Era and we did 4-6 player matches both weekends since launch and plan on making it a regular thing. The game actually feels like oldschool HOMM, we are having a blast with it so far. We almost always roll XL maps because early game exploration is definitely the most fun part of the game, and a bigger map prolongs it. The part of the game when you still don't know where everyone is, who your neighbors are, and that excitement when you run into the first enemy scout. The midgame is always a blast too when everyone finally starts clashing. But once the dust settles and it is kind of obvious who is winning, we enter that late game phase and things turn into a bit of a slog. You still have to sit through some tedious mopping up of the remaining towns and chasing down random straggler heroes. Sometimes you are in the mood for a long drawn out game and that is fine, but lately we've just been calling it early by a gentleman's agreement because nobody wants to grind it out and we are way more excited to get another game going than finishing the current one.

It got me thinking about how other games force a conclusion so this doesn't happen. I remember back in the day when we were playing the old Worms games, you had the armageddon timer to force the game to end, with the optional sudden death and meteors deleting the map.  Civ 6 has the mode where comets literally delete cities in the late game, not sure how well that works, I havent played it much. I also tried a demo recently for Atre Dominance Wars, there's this merge mechanic, sections of the map get destroyed if they are not linked to your capital. It makes the map way smaller in the endgame, but you still get a big map to explore before that.

Having some kind of optional setting like that would be pretty cool in Olden Era. Even just an escalating event, like something making parts of the map change or become dangerous after a certain month or something like that would help spice up the late game a bit.

I feel like a lot of big RPGs like Skyrim or Fallout always promise this "play however you want" experience, but it rarely actually feels that way. After a few hours everyone just defaults to the same three or four playstyles. Plus since everyone does pretty much the same quests, every playthrough ends up feeling pretty identical to the last one. While I love playing stealth archer, I’m looking for games with more variety. I’ve found that roguelikes are usually the best at actually delivering on this since they are literally designed for it. Games like Caves of Qud or Cogmind are some of the only ones where I feel like my character's story and build are actually mine, mostly because the procedural nature forces you into weird situations you can't plan for. And the world/item generation just naturally makes every playthrough quite unique.

I’ve also been getting back into ARPGs lately for the same reason. But even when I’m playing PoE my character ends up feeling a bit gimped if I don’t follow a build guide, the game is just too complicated for me to come up with a build that actually works well. Last Epoch feels much better in this regard, I can homebrew a weird build without looking at a single guide and still have it work pretty well. There is enough depth to be creative but the game feels more forgiving so my builds never feel too underpowered.

I am looking for more games where my character feels fundamentally different from everyone else's, and it would be cool if my choices were more interesting than the standard dnd style class system (warrior mage rogue etc...)

I was thinking about some old games I used to play and it occurred to me how many of my favorite multiplayer games are basically unplayable now because the player counts are at zero. I really want to revisit some of them to see if they still hold up but I don’t really have anyone to play with me.

I would give anything to get a consistent group for Splinter Cell: Blacklist again. Spies vs Mercs was easily the best stealth multiplayer ever made, and I haven't found anything like that ever since. Same goes for SWAT 4, it really felt awesome playing with a group, rainbow six siege doesn’t really give me the same feeling at all. It’s a shame developers just stopped making those kinds of methodical tactical shooters. Even Left 4 Dead 2 is a struggle because playing with randoms who quit after getting downed once is such a waste of time, so you really need a dedicated group to actually finish a campaign.

The biggest hurdle is actually finding those people. I’ve tried using discord for this but it really feels like a waste of time. It was hard to even find the right servers for this, and then I realized they haven't had a message in the LFG channel since like 2023. And if you do find an active one, trying to break into an established circle of people who have been talking for years is just exhausting. I don't want to spend my limited free time "networking" just to play a video game.

I thought of maybe using those gamer matchmaking apps like Gameram or Noobly for this. Has anyone here actually used them for anything besides the massive popular games? I'm curious if they’re a ghost town for more niche stuff or if they're actually a viable way to find people for less popular games.

I am currently building a B2B SaaS as a solo founder. I have been getting some pretty good feedback from early users, and I am trying to figure out exactly where to direct my marketing efforts next.

Up until now, my entire strategy has been relying on manual LinkedIn outreach. I spent the last few months really testing and dialing in an effective messaging strategy that actually seems to be converting quite well. The last 2 weeks went really well and now I have too many clients to keep doing fully manual outreach. Right now I’m in the process of porting over my manual workflow to expandi, and once I have that sorted I need to figure out my next move.

I will have the bandwidth to tackle a second channel, but I am getting serious analysis paralysis trying to pick one. Cold email feels like the most natural progression from LinkedIn, but I keep reading horror stories about deliverability right now, and setting up all the infrastructure seems daunting. Another option is paid ads on places like Reddit or LinkedIn. I have a small budget I could allocate there, but I know B2B ads can burn through cash incredibly fast if you don't know exactly what you are doing. Finally, there is video content or video ads. I keep hearing this is where the highest ROI is right now, but I have absolutely zero video editing experience. I would have to outsource the production and everything, which just adds a whole different layer of management and cost.

Has anyone else been in this exact position as a solo founder, when you have extremely limited time and resources how do you decide which channel to pull the trigger on next? Would love to hear what worked (or failed) for you guys when scaling past your first channel.

I am currently building a B2B SaaS as a solo founder. I have been getting some pretty good feedback from early users, and I am trying to figure out exactly where to direct my marketing efforts next.

Up until now, my entire strategy has been relying on manual LinkedIn outreach. I spent the last few months really testing and dialing in an effective messaging strategy that actually seems to be converting quite well. The last 2 weeks went really well and I have too many clients to keep doing fully manual outreach. Right now I’m in the process of porting over my manual workflow to expandi, once I have that dialed in I need to figure out my next move.

I will have the bandwidth to tackle a second channel, but I am getting serious analysis paralysis trying to pick one. My main options right now seem to be:

• Cold Email - This feels like the most natural progression from LinkedIn, but I keep reading horror stories about deliverability right now and setting up all the infrastructure seems daunting.
• Paid Ads (Reddit/LinkedIn) - I have a small budget I could allocate here, but I know B2B ads can burn through cash incredibly fast if you don't know exactly what you are doing.
• Video Content / Video Ads - I keep hearing this is where the highest ROI is right now, but I have absolutely zero video editing experience. I would have to outsource the production, which adds a whole different layer of management and cost.

Has anyone else been in this exact position as a solo founder? When you have extremely limited time and resources, how do you decide which channel to pull the trigger on next? Would love to hear what worked (or failed) for you guys when scaling past your first channel.

I feel like the older I get the harder it is to find people to play anything that isn't the current massive release. Most of my real life friends either stopped gaming entirely because of kids and work or they only play whatever the new shiny game is. I really enjoy playing Arc with them but sometimes I want to play some random old game and it's always a struggle to convince them to try it with me. And even then they end up complaining about graphics and I can tell they are only playing because I asked, not because they wanted to.

I am completely fine playing solo games most of the time but lately I have been really craving some casual multiplayer. I just want to find a couple of people to play older stuff with. I am talking about a casual run of Left 4 Dead 2 or maybe some classic Worms Armageddon on a Friday night with a beer. Nothing hyper competitive at all.

Whenever I ask about how to find groups for this the default answer is always to just join a disc server. But honestly I find disc so incredibly tedious for this kind of thing. I am also a bit shy to begin with, so joining a new server where people already know each other always feels so daunting. Even if I find the right server and figure out how it works, I end up just staring at a general chat where a bunch of people have been making inside jokes for five years. Trying to awkwardly jump into that feels exactly like walking into a stranger's house party. It is just way too much effort when I only have a couple of hours of free time.

I was looking for disc alternatives the other night and saw there are basically matchmaking apps now just for finding gaming buddies. I found a few that looked legit (keep in mind that I’m very cautious about these because I’ve had my fair share of weirdness in various disc servers), Plink and Gameram. Has anyone here actually tried going this route? My biggest fear is that I will download one and it will just be filled with teenagers looking for a competitive Valorant squad or people looking for groups for Arc or Warzone. That’s not an issue per se, but I’d definitely love to also find some folks who love older titles like HoMM, Age of Mythology, etc..

We just finished a great Q1 for our clients - pipeline numbers were up, we had two renewals at higher retainers with people who were MORE than satisfied with our work, and the team is coming along pretty well. Then I looked at our own new business pipeline and realized we havent signed a client through anything other than referrals or warm intros in about 5 months. Not that I’m complaining we got a good rep but it feels like we’re at the mercy of strangers sometimes.

Its kind of ridiculous when I think about it. We run outbound, content, paid campaigns for clients every day and then for our own agency it's just word of mouth. It feels great when it works but we don’t really feel like we are in the drivers seat running like this.

I've been trying to figure out what to actually prioritize for our own lead gen (we're a 10-person shop so I can't exactly dedicate a full-time person to it) and I keep going back and forth between building out our own outbound motion vs doubling down on content that drives inbound.

Appreciate any real world answers on this, been stewing on it for a while.

We just finished a great Q1 for our clients - pipeline numbers were up, we had two renewals at higher retainers with people who were MORE than satisfied with our work, and the team is coming along pretty well. Then I looked at our own new business pipeline and realized we havent signed a client through anything other than referrals or warm intros in about 5 months. Not that I’m complaining we got a good rep but it feels like we’re at the mercy of strangers sometimes.

Its kind of ridiculous when I think about it. We run outbound, content, paid campaigns for clients every day and then for our own agency it's just word of mouth. It feels great when it works but we don’t really feel like we are in the drivers seat running like this.

I've been trying to figure out what to actually prioritize for our own lead gen (we're a 10-person shop so I can't exactly dedicate a full-time person to it) and I keep going back and forth between building out our own outbound motion vs doubling down on content that drives inbound.

Appreciate any real world answers on this, been stewing on it for a while.

Took me until year 7 to get perfection and the golden clock was the last thing I needed. I'd been putting off Fector's Challenge for months because that minigame can go straight to hell. Finally sat down one night and ground it out, got the summit cutscene, and now I'm sitting here staring at my Steam library with 700+ hours on one save and nothing to do.

Fields of Mistria is probably the closest thing to Stardew I've found. The 90s anime art style is gorgeous and the festivals feel more involved than Stardew's in some ways, plus the magic system is a nice touch. But it's early access and you can feel it. I ran out of meaningful content around Fall Year 1 and the game just sort of stopped having things to say. I'll come back when there's more there but right now its half a game imo.

Coral Island I wanted to like way more than I did. The tropical setting and the underwater ocean cleaning stuff is a cool idea, but the farming felt weirdly sluggish to me, like every action takes a beat longer than it should. And the NPCs are pretty flat compared to what Stardew does (Shane's arc alone is better written than most of Coral Island's entire cast and I'll die on that hill).

My Time at Sandrock was fine but it leans way too hard into building machines and gathering scrap in the desert over actual farming, which just isn't what I'm after right now.

I wishlisted a few upcoming things to keep on my radar. I found this cozy MMO called Loftia recently that looks like it might actually be exactly what I need. It has a cool solarpunk vibe where you do the farming, housing, and crafting stuff, but you do it in a shared city with other players. The idea of doing typical cozy farm tasks but with a whole server of people hanging out and trading instead of just a small co-op farm seems genuinely fun. Also waiting on Haunted Chocolatier (Aren’t we all?) so I can run a candy shop whenever ConcernedApe decides it’s ready, but I’m not hoping either that or Witchbrook are gonna come soon no matter how much I long for them.

But everything I actually want to play is either unfinished or unreleased which is a pretty frustrating place to be.

Nothing is going to be Stardew and I've made peace with that. I just feel like I finished the best version of this type of game and now everything else is a step down. Anyone else go through this after perfection or did you find something that actually kept you going?

Our acceptance rates on connection requests dropped by a flat third (of what they were previously) over the past month and a half, and I can't figure out if LinkedIn actually changed something or if it's just our accounts. We're a small SaaS team, 4 people doing outbound, and the messaging hasn't changed. The overall strategy and details haven’t been changed in that timeframe at all (same ICP same copy etc.)

I even tried switching up the approach last week to see if it was just message fatigue from our prospects. We paused our usual notes and tried sending completely blank connection requests for a few days to see if the algorithm favored those. Normally we see at least some variation when we do that but this time it didn't change a thing. It honestly feels like our requests just aren't showing up at the top of people's notifications anymore.

I run our outreach through Expandi and noticed it seemed to pull back activity around the same time, which made me think LinkedIn might have tightened something on their end. But nobody in my network is talking about it.

The weird part is InMail response rates stayed roughly the same. It's specifically connection request acceptance that tanked. Checked our profiles, company page, everything, and nothing obvious changed on our end.

Probably overthinking it and it's just normal fluctuation on our accounts. Has anyone else noticed a dip lately?