Observation on witnessing the steady rise and fall of the Team Fortress 2 community over almost a decade.

I'll address the elephant in the room and say that I arrived to the party way too late. According to Steam I started playing TF2 on June 4th, 2017 (the same day I registered my Steam account). That means I pretty much missed out on almost every major TF2 update. Meet Your Match was almost a year old. Love & War and the class updates felt like an entire other world (and I guess in some ways they were after in a post-Overwatch world). So I kind of doubt that this gives me enough ground to stand on, but at the same time I've been playing TF2 for longer than most people these days, so I'm quite conflicted. Nevertheless I shall press on with this blog post and not waste any further time.

When I first started playing TF2 and engaging with its community, it was a...polarizing experience. On one hand you had people who'd given up hope, and on the other you had people still holding on for dear life, determined to not let the game die. And then Jungle Inferno (the last major update) happened! Which in retrospect was Valve's "fuck this, we're out" moment. One last move to appease a fanbase who (quite rightly) didn't want their game to become e-sports fodder, and then they could focus on CSGO and DOTA. And, in a sense, it worked.

So what happens to a fanbase when all the content you get for almost a decade (Jungle Inferno turns 10 next year. Chilling thought.) is community-made, and about two people are actively working on the game? Results are unclear but all signs point to it slowly yet steadily becoming a hellscape. Just really dire stuff. A house divided cannot stand and whatnot. On one hand you've got the toxic positivity guys who seemingly don't care for the game's aesthetic (or actual gameplay but let's not get into that right now) and just view it as Wish-Fulfilment: The Game, and on the other hand you have people who take the game so seriously and who have been playing for so long that they've bit off way more than they can chew and have nothing to show for it.  

It's depressing, you know? Watching a fandom become a mockery of itself. Looking back to fifteen years ago when TF2 was one of the inescapable kings of internet gaming culture, compared to now, where it is essentially a red-headed stepchild that somehow keeps magically avoiding death. It's just so weird. I doubt anyone imagined this fate for the game during its prime. Time is cruel, I guess.