Better together
Our mission is to bring guys together, just like we once were.
A brief history
Mark & Lloyd playing. Circa 1999
It's 1999. Me (left), and my best mate, Lloyd, are playing Age of Empires: Rise of Rome on a Tiny Computers 810LS1. We're about 9, maybe 10, and we're utterly hooked.
Fast forward to the early 2000s, Wire World (now defunct), a popular dedicated LAN party shop operating close to where we lived, often played host to groups of us celebrating birthdays — this was where the appreciation for LAN parties started. Here we could be tribal, we could be violent, slow and methodical or fast and aggresive. The result was our friendships grew tighter playing 'pre-internet' games, and my God, did we laugh.
Source.Wire World, Radstock, 2006.
Fastforward a quarter century, it's 2024. We've lived through gaming revolution after revolution. Inundated with powerful consoles, ludicrous graphics cards and processors. DVDs, then Blue-ray, Handhelds and VR, 4K, 1TB, discless, souless — the lot. Everyone is separate, decentralised and side-by-side console gaming is all but dead. Many of us have children of our own, careers, wives, entire lives (and its exhausting). No one forgot the old days, we just moved on. Then I saw this.
I dont know who made this. But it's brilliant.
Nostalgia is delicate, but potent. And never truly leaves you. By chance, whilst working at my parents, I stumbled upon a 15 year old BFI motherboard that belonged to my brother, and quite by accident, got it working. After just a few weeks, Michael, Lloyd and I had old computers of our own, again. We were playing games together, again. It was great, again. This gave me an idea.
TW WhatsApp was created on this day.
'Tired World' was spawned. Was I inspired by Wire World's LAN party business? Sure. Was I learning that revisiting old memories wasn't always fleeting? I was. Yet, I'd found that what mattered most importantly of all is that games are friend makers, games are home, for so many of us who are by now, older, slower and a bit miserable. The right games bring you together. And that's very special.
I want to bring people together to play games. I have good reason to believe that some of the most brilliant and forlorn in our society today, are men, our age. Whilst internet gaming is fantastic, nothing beats being there. Which is why I want to find these men, get them in a room, shove games that they love in front of them and say "there you go...".
No internet, no girls, no distractions — just joy. Now wouldn't that be nice?
LFG!
Mark
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