A brief history of Downtown 2014-2016

[Crazywolf]

A Brief History of Downtown: 2014-2016

Written by Crazywolf

2014 - Random Fun

Back in 2014 when I first joined the most popular forum games in Downtown were the likes of Guys vs Girls, Members vs Staff, Playing Matchmaker and Rate the Signature all of which are still going strong today, there was also Rate the Avatar which is now defunct. I can't remember exactly when I started posting forum games myself but an early hit was Invent a Title for the Person Above You and another was Battle of the Avatars. Initially Siks didn't seem to be around much but toward the end of the year he was definately the most prolific poster on that section. Meanwhile the popular chat threads of that time were The Rep Machine, Random Facts About Yourself and the Random Thoughts thread. (Personally the first of those three is something I've always disliked both then and now but I'll leave that debate to another thread.) Regulars in Thoughts and Facts included the likes of Zulera, Nachthexe, Lestari, MisstheMarx, Serah (queen of cookies and sparkles), P.K. and Kaptain Johnson with the list for Free Rep being quite similar.

2015 - Year of the family.

The year 2015 saw an influx of new Downtowners such as Meg, Griffin, Gelid Phantom (gone but not forgotten) and Liono as well as a reappearance from Miss Devil who had been on hiatus for the past year or so. Combined to existing members like Siks and P.K. the new arrivals made the game section in that year pretty hot and active. It will probably come over a bit narcissist but games I remember most in that time tend to be ones of my own like King of the Hill and Hurt or Heal: Superhero Edition. Another popular new game however was G's Roll High which is still going today.

In the chat sections things were changing too. It all started when GoldenMyth posted the first ever RPA Family thread. What started out with the question "who are your family on rpa?" soon morphed itself into a form of roleplaying leading to all sorts of random madness. In the early days of the thread there were so many active members that really it's impossible to try and remember or list them all. Probably the person who took the roleplaying angle to the furthest extent was DracoDecathalon who was always teleporting off on world-saving quests or trying to draw other family members into his anime-related missions. Over the year the thread ended up getting deleted a couple of times meaning the current thread at the time I write this is actually the third one it's had. Also over time the in-character element steadily died off to the point it became more like a normal chat thread which is how it is now. One knock-on effect when the Family thread started was that some of the previous most popular threads like Random Thoughts and Random Facts went pretty dead.

2015 also saw a revival of the Join A Club section led by Miss Devil with her Ladies Lounge and Devil's Canyon. The Ladies Lounge was a curious entity in the regard it was also open to men and in fact after the first 10 or so pages it felt like there were more men in there than women though I must say I didn't post a lot in there myself. Another well used club-thread was Checkmate run by Hayabusa, Sinderella, Karma, Juicesir and Kiki. I never actually posted in there myself but from the outside it looked like it was the close friends of Haya, Sin et al who most often frequented it.

2016 - The game renaissance?

Early 2016 was when Miss Devil decided to give the game section a renaissance and I think in that time she must have posted about 50 new game threads. Meanwhile her Ladies Lounge got revamped as The Lounge. Early 2016 also saw the Water Wars: Snowball Edition, an epic multiplayer game that ran 24/7. As of right now the Family thread has dropped a long way from it's heyday of activity but as of now it and The Lounge are both still going along. What will the rest of 2016 and future years bring to Downtown? Who knows... but hopefully I shall be around to see it.