A Little History, 31-40

I have played video games my entire life. Starting with the Atari 2600 (the original one, with the faux wood paneling), which was my dad's. Video games have always been around, but I never felt like I was invested in any kind of gaming culture, even when I was playing Unreal Tournament 2004 on my PC and going to LAN parties. It's like saying that you're a part of a "reading culture" because you swap books with friends. It's not a culture, it's just something you do. But that changed with DropShock, and as a precursor to that, the fateful Christmas my ex-GF bought me an Xbox.

I owned a PS2, and only then just because it was a decent DVD player, and my GF liked Crash Bandicoot. For me, gaming - real gaming - happened on a PC. But even then, it was far down the list of activities that I preferred. Derek was awesome at Halo, and he had Xbox Live before me (although you had to use a software tunnel to play Halo CE over the internet). So I got an Xbox and played the shit out of Halo CE shortly before the launch of Halo 2, and we had lots of LAN parties, which I greatly miss doing. So it wasn't until all of that happened that I began to accept that I was, or already had become, a "gamer."

Even still, on the Xbox, I only wanted to play Halo games. Once the Xbox 360 came out, and more and better games were released, we started to move our focus away from a strict Halo-centric podcast and more into that gaming "culture." But I guess like anything, my interest in playing games all the time was waning. It also didn't help that we were now getting internet stalkers. People would search the internet for pics of us, with our girlfriends, whatever - and start posting them back onto the forums, or on other forums. Legitimately creepy shit. It all started to feel like our hearts weren't in it anymore, and that recording a show was becoming an obligation, rather than some time for us to get together and have some fun.

To further add to the bleakness of gaming-for-a-reason, rather than for fun, was the Prick List. It was funny to document and call out particular trolls in the game, but that shit is still highly aggravating to deal with, even to this day. We would begin seeking them out (one show, we even stopped mid-way through to play a couple rounds just to get some names), and exposure to that much douchebaggery is exhausting.

We just lost focus and it wasn't fun anymore. By the time we were up to episode 40, we were ready to pack it in. We left the show open to listeners who wanted to keep the spirit of the show going, dubbing them "Community Episodes." But outside of a handful of consistent regulars, no one really showed interest. Instead, I received a lot more emails asking if we could just bring the show back to its origins: me and Derek, fucking off about Halo. We never did, and while there had been attempts by others to revive the brand, I've always felt that Dropshock was best left to how we remember it. Some things can never be repeated. So I leave you with the final ten episodes.

Episode 31

Episode 32

Episode 33

Episode 34

Episode 35

Episode 36

Episode 37

Episode 38

Episode 39

Episode 40