I don't expect this thread to get any replies, but I feel like I need to get this feeling off my chest anyway.
There's something amazing about shitty games that base their gameplay around inter-player interactions, isn't there?
I'm not referring to games like Dota, GTA, L4D2, etc where you generally play multiplayer and see other players. I'm also not referring to games with dedicated and active communities such as Factorio or Dwarf Fortress.
No, I'm specifically referring to games that base their gameplay around how you interact with random strangers.
I'm talking about games like SCP; SL, GMOD, TF2 (modded servers), SS13, etc. Even VRChat, though that gets boring real fast.
In these games, there's no real sense of a "community" except some server regulars. You can just hop into a game, and you'll start talking with total strangers. It's much better if the game is horror-like. Slenderfortress, SCP;SL are, in my opinion, are amazing games/gamemodes. You're grouping up with a large number of strangers to fight against more strangers, and you all have to work it through. Some people don't have a mic and have to communicate via nods and headshakes, whereas some people are angry scottsmen with horrible mics.
The beauty here is that you don't know any of these people. When you're the last 2 people of a team and you're left with overpowered foes, you have to work together until you inevitably die and then have a laugh about it in the post-game chat.
In my opinion, one of the best GMOD mods is "Morbus". It's basically a copy of the TTT gamemode, but with a couple of big differences. The "innocent" are people stranded on a spaceship. The "traitors" are shape-shifting aliens that can swap between the alien and the human models. Unlike TTT, there's no 'detective' class so the innocent can't do much to find the aliens. Their main goal is to survive until the round timer ends, unlike TTT where the main goal is to kill the traitors. That being said, you can kill the aliens if you get lucky. There are some other major differences but there's no point in going over them.
Overall it's a great "horror" gamemode. I'm 100% sure it'd do well as a stand-alone game. Unfortunately the gamemode got cancelled and now no one is playing it.
Regardless, there was something magical about Morbus. Just the way there's something magical about SCP:SB, which is a Gmod gamemode based game as you all know. SCP;SB is a horrible game; the graphics are buggy, the menu is shyte, etc. Yet it feels so good to play a shitty horror game with 19 other total strangers. Most other Gmod gamemodes are brilliant too; Dark RP can be really nice to play if you're on one of those night-city maps.
What makes me afraid is that these games are slowly dying off. Gmod used to be huge, especially around 2011-2013. There's still plenty of people playing it, but this doesn't change that fact that the majority of gamemodes are essentially dead. TF2's community servers also got shat on by Valve. The weird DOOM / Mariokart / MLP hybrid community maps were milestones for the TF2 community, as retarded as that may sound. Ex-Youtuber Ster has this shitty video that lets us take a glimpse at what TF2 used to be; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZN1TrV7sP8
Random maps, broken gamemodes, shitty codes, etc are what makes TF2 community servers unique.
Whatever. I guess this is all. If you've read this, thank you. And I hope I was able to resonate some feelings within.