Introduction
A while ago, I found this videogame called "Hypnospace Outlaw", I added it to my steam wishlist, and didn't think much about it, I decided to wait until there was a sale to buy the videogame, however, a few months later, it got added to xbox game pass, and I decided to try it out.
Sometimes you find a movie, a game, a book, whatever piece of fiction or similar, that justs sticks in your mind forever, whenever you keep enjoying that medium, in the back of your mind you will always in a way compare it or think about this other piece of media, this has happened to me with hypnospace outlaw
Hypnospace Outlaw is a game set on an alternative reality 90's internet, a device is created, a headband you can put in your head while you sleep, allowing to browse the internet and be "productive" while you're sleeping, however, that internety is quite different as the actial internet, as it's not really open and free, but instead runs on an enclosed, propetary system called hypnospace
Hypnospace mimics the feel of geocities, everyone has their own 100% customizable website and these websties form a zone, a zone being a group of websites that covers very similar topics, for example, in the real world geocities you have stuff like "The colosseum" with different subzones, meaning, every website in this zone is probably about sports
this is an example of a real world page inside the colosseum, last updated in 1998
website attached to image
or this other one
website attached to image
as you can see, the web design is very much pretty bad, in the second image we can spot problems like dark blue text on a black background, which is nealy impossible to read, this is because the field of web design was just being born, and the ammount of people with the HTML and CSS skills required to make a good looking website that holds up today were almost none.
In contrast with the current day where every professional website almost just seems copy pasted from every other professional websites, in the old internet, in the 90's, every website displayed tons of variety and personality, for the better and the worse
hypnospace outlaw replicates this feeling perfectly, for example, in the "Goodtime valley" zone, which is a zone about american culture, you can find the website of user "Burning Rubbers"
this page is much worse than you would originally think, as there is an awful midi for a rock song blasting in the background, and everything is animated, the skeleton is a gif, the fire is a gif, the first set of letters are completely animated, making for a very chaotic experience
not only that, but hypnospace outlaw, replicates the entirety of the OS, meaning file explorers, music players, general UI, and even dumb programs like virtual pets
The actual game
You may be wondering what the actual gameplay is like, you play as a enforcer, this being, an admin for this social network, and you must browse the internet deleting copyright infrightments and more, however most often than not the stuff you need to report are pretty well hidden, so you must look for clues, and explore unlisted websites and more
However, more often than not, the actual gameplay loop takes a back seat, as the game just invites you to sit down and actually read all the websites, and it's here where the true magic of the game is, in the storytelling.
The game does not have a "plot" like most other games, but instead you're offered the opportunity to just read about and understand everyone in the network, and see their own personal stories progress as the game progresses and the clock advances, this game does not have a big overarching plot until the very end, but is mostly formed by like 6 different, not interconnected plots
you may think this is some sort of earthbound-like approach to storytelling, where 4 different characters go their own way to then find each other and group to kill a god, but no, the ending of the game, barely any of the characters that you meet are there, and the story that takes the main stage was one that you weren't even aware that was happening, leading to a very unique and veryhuman experience
thing is, yu're not actually forced to interact with every story or plot, but you can choose and pick which ones do you actually want to read, and the game doesn't punish you for skipping any, some people might be very engaged with the coolpunk music scene and chowder man plotlines, however, some other person might not be interested in that, and instead engage more with the story of the freelands, the geek zone
Internet spelunking and frog days
however, when you finish the game, and think about it, you realize that it's not necessarily a finished game, as this program is just a gamified version of the entire 90's internet, nothing is stopping you from just loading up some geocities restoration website and for you to browse actually old, dead websites, with their own unique dramas and personal stories
and that's what I did, I loaded https://geocities.restorativland.org and just started looking, for example, I found this website
if you look into it, you can find stories of them roleplaying as fbi agents, which I believe that is pretty neat, you can spend hours looking at websites, seeing what was popular to see all the personal dramas, to see group of friends form and break apart, in a very similar way to the actual game
not only that, but you can look at wayback machine and other places like old dead forums to find old programs and other type of media which are currently forgotten to time
This game has an official discord, where a lot of members share these old websites, and even make their own replicating the same feel these had, but one day, one of the devs were talking and mentioned a couple of their inspirations for the game, and they mentioned a never finished indie game called "frog days"
frog days is yet another game that was created and then forgotten, however, this game is very special, as even if it's more recent, it replicates a lot of the aesthetic that old games had, this is also a puzzle game with their own OS and stuff, but, this is a lot more bizarre and confusing, and no guides exist on the internet, i've been trying to beat it on my own, but i'm not good at puzzle games and this game is way too hard for me,
so then, I ask, would you be interested in me making another thread, were we try, solve and beat this old, unfinished game? there is a poll attached to this post, vote there
What changed?
all of these leds to the question, what changed? when and why did we stop doing this sort of websites?, and as I said earlier, a lot of the reason, was because no one had any idea what was doing back in the day, but another big factor was the lack of software to actually make websites
In the current day, if you want to make a little personal hub where you talk about whatever, you sign up to twitter, they handle all the UI stuff, and give you a premade, pre-stylized, userpage, you can post whatever you want and you know that everything else is handled by the corporation between twitter, this is different to geocities where you had to do all on your own
but what if you actually want to make a website?, well, there is still software for that
In the current day, most websites aren't done by pure CSS and HTML, but use programs like wix and wordpress, which alerady handle a lot of you, i've just finished a apprenticeship for a website design company, so I have some experience on making those generic, brand websites you see nowadays
for example, let's takle apple's website
this topbar?, this is handled on wordpress, you just put the words and the places were it links and it does the rest for you, this topbar is a premade option
The title with the image?, that's also a premade option, if you're using the new wordpress web builder or the more popular elementor plugin, you just set a column, and then drag the title and image blocks into the website, then change the parameters, and wow, it's working
just look at this tutorial, look how simple making a website is in the current day, compared to in the 90's
while you still use quite a bit of css to actually set all the colors and spacing and similar stuff, it's nowhere the ammount of coding needed to make it from the ground up, were you had to use invisible html tables to actually space everything out and make it look properly
while this is absolutely amazing for making easy and simple intuitive websites, that anyone can access and find information, a lot of the charm is completely lost, making a website to look old with wordpress is actually way harder than replicating the entirety of apple's website
while this is pretty good for actually website design, I do think this in a way is a step back in customization for social networks, even social media that allowed you to customize almost near everything like deviantart are pushing back against these options, redisinging the website to the ground up, making everything look a lot more uniform and professional
even if you go on tujmblr, which I believe that is the social media that in the current day allows for the most customization, you can still see how a lot of pages fall into simple templates, limiting the artistic expression of the creator
please, allow big customizable options, you can still have a basic twitter profile template, but allow me to change the tabs that show in my profile, the way the follower count is displayed, the colors and the background of the page, maybe add a few systems to stop you from making something bad for the eyes, but just allow me to actually make cool, unique websties that truly show who I am as a person, knowing how full of life old websites are, this is just a step back
A while ago, I found this videogame called "Hypnospace Outlaw", I added it to my steam wishlist, and didn't think much about it, I decided to wait until there was a sale to buy the videogame, however, a few months later, it got added to xbox game pass, and I decided to try it out.
Sometimes you find a movie, a game, a book, whatever piece of fiction or similar, that justs sticks in your mind forever, whenever you keep enjoying that medium, in the back of your mind you will always in a way compare it or think about this other piece of media, this has happened to me with hypnospace outlaw
Hypnospace Outlaw is a game set on an alternative reality 90's internet, a device is created, a headband you can put in your head while you sleep, allowing to browse the internet and be "productive" while you're sleeping, however, that internety is quite different as the actial internet, as it's not really open and free, but instead runs on an enclosed, propetary system called hypnospace
Hypnospace mimics the feel of geocities, everyone has their own 100% customizable website and these websties form a zone, a zone being a group of websites that covers very similar topics, for example, in the real world geocities you have stuff like "The colosseum" with different subzones, meaning, every website in this zone is probably about sports
this is an example of a real world page inside the colosseum, last updated in 1998
website attached to image
or this other one
website attached to image
as you can see, the web design is very much pretty bad, in the second image we can spot problems like dark blue text on a black background, which is nealy impossible to read, this is because the field of web design was just being born, and the ammount of people with the HTML and CSS skills required to make a good looking website that holds up today were almost none.
In contrast with the current day where every professional website almost just seems copy pasted from every other professional websites, in the old internet, in the 90's, every website displayed tons of variety and personality, for the better and the worse
hypnospace outlaw replicates this feeling perfectly, for example, in the "Goodtime valley" zone, which is a zone about american culture, you can find the website of user "Burning Rubbers"
this page is much worse than you would originally think, as there is an awful midi for a rock song blasting in the background, and everything is animated, the skeleton is a gif, the fire is a gif, the first set of letters are completely animated, making for a very chaotic experience
not only that, but hypnospace outlaw, replicates the entirety of the OS, meaning file explorers, music players, general UI, and even dumb programs like virtual pets
The actual game
You may be wondering what the actual gameplay is like, you play as a enforcer, this being, an admin for this social network, and you must browse the internet deleting copyright infrightments and more, however most often than not the stuff you need to report are pretty well hidden, so you must look for clues, and explore unlisted websites and more
However, more often than not, the actual gameplay loop takes a back seat, as the game just invites you to sit down and actually read all the websites, and it's here where the true magic of the game is, in the storytelling.
The game does not have a "plot" like most other games, but instead you're offered the opportunity to just read about and understand everyone in the network, and see their own personal stories progress as the game progresses and the clock advances, this game does not have a big overarching plot until the very end, but is mostly formed by like 6 different, not interconnected plots
you may think this is some sort of earthbound-like approach to storytelling, where 4 different characters go their own way to then find each other and group to kill a god, but no, the ending of the game, barely any of the characters that you meet are there, and the story that takes the main stage was one that you weren't even aware that was happening, leading to a very unique and veryhuman experience
thing is, yu're not actually forced to interact with every story or plot, but you can choose and pick which ones do you actually want to read, and the game doesn't punish you for skipping any, some people might be very engaged with the coolpunk music scene and chowder man plotlines, however, some other person might not be interested in that, and instead engage more with the story of the freelands, the geek zone
Internet spelunking and frog days
however, when you finish the game, and think about it, you realize that it's not necessarily a finished game, as this program is just a gamified version of the entire 90's internet, nothing is stopping you from just loading up some geocities restoration website and for you to browse actually old, dead websites, with their own unique dramas and personal stories
and that's what I did, I loaded https://geocities.restorativland.org and just started looking, for example, I found this website
if you look into it, you can find stories of them roleplaying as fbi agents, which I believe that is pretty neat, you can spend hours looking at websites, seeing what was popular to see all the personal dramas, to see group of friends form and break apart, in a very similar way to the actual game
not only that, but you can look at wayback machine and other places like old dead forums to find old programs and other type of media which are currently forgotten to time
This game has an official discord, where a lot of members share these old websites, and even make their own replicating the same feel these had, but one day, one of the devs were talking and mentioned a couple of their inspirations for the game, and they mentioned a never finished indie game called "frog days"
frog days is yet another game that was created and then forgotten, however, this game is very special, as even if it's more recent, it replicates a lot of the aesthetic that old games had, this is also a puzzle game with their own OS and stuff, but, this is a lot more bizarre and confusing, and no guides exist on the internet, i've been trying to beat it on my own, but i'm not good at puzzle games and this game is way too hard for me,
so then, I ask, would you be interested in me making another thread, were we try, solve and beat this old, unfinished game? there is a poll attached to this post, vote there
What changed?
all of these leds to the question, what changed? when and why did we stop doing this sort of websites?, and as I said earlier, a lot of the reason, was because no one had any idea what was doing back in the day, but another big factor was the lack of software to actually make websites
In the current day, if you want to make a little personal hub where you talk about whatever, you sign up to twitter, they handle all the UI stuff, and give you a premade, pre-stylized, userpage, you can post whatever you want and you know that everything else is handled by the corporation between twitter, this is different to geocities where you had to do all on your own
but what if you actually want to make a website?, well, there is still software for that
In the current day, most websites aren't done by pure CSS and HTML, but use programs like wix and wordpress, which alerady handle a lot of you, i've just finished a apprenticeship for a website design company, so I have some experience on making those generic, brand websites you see nowadays
for example, let's takle apple's website
this topbar?, this is handled on wordpress, you just put the words and the places were it links and it does the rest for you, this topbar is a premade option
The title with the image?, that's also a premade option, if you're using the new wordpress web builder or the more popular elementor plugin, you just set a column, and then drag the title and image blocks into the website, then change the parameters, and wow, it's working
just look at this tutorial, look how simple making a website is in the current day, compared to in the 90's
while you still use quite a bit of css to actually set all the colors and spacing and similar stuff, it's nowhere the ammount of coding needed to make it from the ground up, were you had to use invisible html tables to actually space everything out and make it look properly
while this is absolutely amazing for making easy and simple intuitive websites, that anyone can access and find information, a lot of the charm is completely lost, making a website to look old with wordpress is actually way harder than replicating the entirety of apple's website
while this is pretty good for actually website design, I do think this in a way is a step back in customization for social networks, even social media that allowed you to customize almost near everything like deviantart are pushing back against these options, redisinging the website to the ground up, making everything look a lot more uniform and professional
even if you go on tujmblr, which I believe that is the social media that in the current day allows for the most customization, you can still see how a lot of pages fall into simple templates, limiting the artistic expression of the creator
please, allow big customizable options, you can still have a basic twitter profile template, but allow me to change the tabs that show in my profile, the way the follower count is displayed, the colors and the background of the page, maybe add a few systems to stop you from making something bad for the eyes, but just allow me to actually make cool, unique websties that truly show who I am as a person, knowing how full of life old websites are, this is just a step back