I've enjoyed messing around with this new version of Xfire over the past handful of months. I was a frequent user in the late 2000s, logging several hundred hours in some of my favorite online games like Halo Custom Edition, Jedi Academy and Guild Wars, among countless others. The social element of Xfire pushed me to discover games I probably wouldn't have tried on my own and connected me with other like-minded players, with at least one encounter turning into a decades-long friendship.

There's a psychological component to the act of logging game hours. Watching the numbers go up and competing for time between different titles is like an overarching meta-game in a certain way. The phenomenon was as true back then as it is now, at least for me. I gravitated toward using Steam more often in my early twenties as Xfire started to fall off and digital game sales became more in vogue. Steam filled a similar niche to Xfire and opened up an even greater world of possibilities I wasn't fully prepared to embrace. I now have a massive collection of digital games I'll probably never get around to making even a small dent in, approaching a sense of finality in my relationship to the medium of video games as I start to grow old.

Like many others I run into on smaller corners of the web, I am entirely disillusioned with the state of modern technology. There are good games still coming out and it's still possible to leverage technology to further personal ambitions, but it's hard not to get a sense of cynical exploitation embedded within everything when I look around. It's one thing to have nostalgia for a better time, and another thing entirely to seek out old ways of doing things for the sake of self-preservation. As far as games go, I simply find more satisfaction in playing older titles I missed out on or cling to fond memories of. Games used to be complete experiences designed for maximum enjoyment by the player, and it now feels like a novelty when that happens.

A recent hobby of mine is to collect old computers and peripherals from my youth. I regularly use a Windows 98 computer and a Windows XP computer in addition to modern PCs I've heavily tweaked to conform to my needs. The great thing about this version of Xfire is that it works with the old stuff all the way to Windows 11. I haven't quite gotten it working on Windows 98 (or Linux), but it's very accessible otherwise. With some work, old games will run on new hardware and operating systems at a reasonable level. I can log Xfire hours on games from 20 years ago pulled from my Steam library with a Windows 11 operating system skinned to look like Windows XP, and then play on an actual XP machine later on if I feel like it. I prefer my 19" CRT monitor if given the option, but the versatility of PC games means I can get back on my laptop in bed later if I want, or switch to my 1440p 16:9 monitor for a more immersive experience.

This is all to say that the confluence of various forms of technology becoming more available to me and the rise of this new version of Xfire has rekindled my interest in computer games from all these years ago. I could be playing thousands of other games elsewhere, my goodness, I have way too many gaming devices around the house. The simple fact that Xfire exists gives me that subtle internal nudge to play late-90s and 2000s era PC games, just like when I was a teenager. I think that's pretty great.