yeah, and that a significant portion of users had their own little websites and/or blogs. I spent ages browsing those tiny iframe sites built with fancy Photoshop brushes and incomprehensible navigation menus.
I actually got into web design by making a Pokemon fansite with animated gifs on every page xD
someone reverse engineered it :) https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball
you can play it here: https://pinball.alula.me/
There's also StoryGraph - it's not federated, but ran by a tiny UK company, but seems pretty popular. I like the content warnings feature and stuff like readers rating the pacing and moods of the books, which is then displayed with graphs on the book page, but they have also introduced some AI features :/ (fortunately opt-in)
I understand their reasoning, but still, it soured me on the game. GenAI models being built from non-consensually mass-scraped art was known from the very start, and yet the devs thought it was ok to put it into their game... They could have just used stock textures as placeholders like developers have been doing for decades.
But anyway, we are free to just not agree and draw the line in different places on what we consider ethical conduct 🤷
Tbh I'm the same as Mohab, I strongly prefer third person over first person. First person makes me feel claustrophobic bc the screen is just so much smaller than an actual first person FoV would be (maybe this would be better in VR). Also it stresses me out that I can't see what's sneaking up on me from the sides or behind. I even played Oblivion in 3rd person (with a summoner build so I didn't have to aim).
Cyberpunk 2077 - it still doesn't go on steep enough sales to justify buying when I have hundreds of unplayed games on Steam. But I'm keeping an eye on its downward progress. Maybe when it reaches £10-13...
PieFed has its own share of dodgy stuff:
I've come across a still-living webcomics webring the other day, made me feel nostalgic :')