The Best Time To Be Alive
When was the best time to be alive?
Has it even happened yet?
My pick: 2003-2004.
If I were to pick a time, it would be around the time when Macromedia Flash MX 2004 came out
and the OG Xbox was released and had some time to get into its groove, so around 2003-2004. Yeah, VR
wasn't really a consumer grade thing yet (HTC Vive wouldn't come along until 2016), and that part sucked, but
overall, I had a blast, and the economy was booming rather than facing
constant rapid inflation (Whitehouse Archives). Also, because standards were lower for web
games, it was easier for a kid to stand out and make a name for himself.
Not to mention social platforms like Facebook had not yet taken over
society, and the internet was just cooler.
Reason #1: No Social Media (Yet)
Social media was still in its infancy. MySpace was still only in its first year of public access and wasn't really popular yet. It also wasn't nearly as dominant over the news as Twitter became a decade later. People went to MySpace to get to know more about musicians or peddle their own music... or at least to make an instant friend in Tom, who was the founder of the site and auto-friended everyone who signed up.
Reason #2: ARGs Were A Major Marketing Strategy
Halo 1 was still in its heyday, and Halo 2 was being hyped to hell and back. Halo 2 released November 9th, 2004, and it was one of the most memorable video game releases in history. Before its release, there was a real world "alternate reality game" (ARG) marketing campaign to find out secrets about Halo 2, and it was pretty unique. There was a fictional beekeeping website called I Love Bees which was a front for the whole Halo 2 mystery. These alternate reality games really were something unique, because these kinds of marketing campaigns didn't get repeated often and thanks to digital sales, these kinds of ARG experiences went away entirely within a decade. Portal tried the ARG thing a few years later, but it was mostly handled via in-game things rather than anything in the real world. Most notably, a year before that, in 2009, The Secret World had a pretty clever ARG starting on the Funcom website which led to some secret content teasing the game's release. Unfortunately, the secret entrance to this ARG was hidden too well, and nobody found the secrets until after the game already released. I say that anecdotally because I could not seem to find a good reference to back this claim up, but here's a news post from Dec 12th, 2012, when someone posted about the players of the ARG still trying to figure the thing out really close to the release date.
Reason #3: Flash Was Alive & Well
"What's Flash?" I here you youngsters say. Oh boy, don't get me started. You see, the internet wasn't always flat boxes using CSS styling to add dropshadows and other simple effects. Most browsers and even phones had some form of Flash Player around this time, and it allowed websites to do all kinds of really nifty stuff without having to do much technical work to make it happen. Vector art was everywhere thanks to Flash's IDE making vector art easy to draw as well as animate. Nothing has quite replaced Flash in this regard, and even in 2024, I find myself looking at a bland internet full of boring, flat websites with little to no animation and almost always zero sound effects and no music. Videos are mostly compartmentalized into YouTube now, and we don't really seem to care. Hell, even the videos I show embedded in this blog are using the YouTube video player. That said, there are still some cool things you can do with CSS and JS alone, and you shouldn't blame the tech as much as you should blame government and new regulations and expectations of businesses. Some of the businesses which at one point might have paid Flash site developers to make cool stuff are now scared of lawsuits and fines based on accessibility laws for example or privacy laws for that matter. We've also gotten to the point where most of the internet no longer has Flash Player or any alternative installed, and telling users to install a plugin just to see your site's content is bad for business.
If any of you wants to get the AS3 dev experience without going back in time with some hacked software, I suggest looking at Moonshine IDE. However, I don't think anything provides the same animation and vector drawing experience of the classic Flash IDE. Adobe has become extremely anti-consumer over the past two decades, so I highly recommend staying away from the official Flash IDE from now on and instead using alternatives, even if you have hacked copies of their software. Using even the hacked version of something helps it keep a foothold in your life and the industry. I'm currently using Moho Pro 12 for 2D animations and Blender for 3D animations. I use Affinity Photo to replace Photoshop as well.
Reason #4: I Was Not Adulting Yet
During this time, I was still young and living off my family for the most part. I didn't often have to worry about things like rent and electric bills. I just hanged out with friends and slept when I felt a need to. I often played games for 24 hours straight with no time off for anything other than bathroom breaks. Social media, as I mentioned before, was not yet a thing, so online clout didn't drive anything I did as a young person. I just drew things, slept, ate, and occasionally played a game or watched television shows or went to a theater showing of a movie with friends. I had more real life friends, talked to more people on-the-go and in random places, and got way more exercise. I ate more and enjoyed everything a lot more than I do now. I worried less because I had less exposure to the world's problems and less health concerns. I wasn't as fearful of political parties and didn't have to worry as much about skyrocketing inflation. Taxes were less restrictive and didn't even cover online purchases yet. I also had tons of time to work on hobby projects. It felt like I could do more on my own in the early 2000s than I can now, which is concerning to me now. I should totally fix that.
Do you disagree with my assessment? Is there another time period you think was better? I won't be surprised. This article is an opinion piece. You're welcome to disagree with it all you want, and feel free to let me know what time period you'd choose. Just remember that the past is often seen through a filtered lens and not everything was great about any past time. I will admit there are a ton of bad things about the time period I chose.