Originally Posted by Shiner

Awesome. I've read something, but what is the story on how TG got started? It looks like Apo was registered in 2001 and then in 2003 you have your first members including Tempus, GhostintheShell, CingD and Wyz signup. I assume this was a Ghost Recon focused community then?

Any sense on which game grew the community most?

Well, I joined Network 42 in 2000 or 2001 after Apophis posted a message in alt.games.half-life.counterstrike about hosting a server dedicated to playing CounterStrike the way it is supposed to be played, focusing on teamwork, objectives and communication instead of just frags. Network 42 grew quickly to two CS servers and was quite famous (or infamous to the fragmonkeys) throughout the CounterStrike community for quite a while. N42 then hosted Day of Defeat, Ghost Recon, Jedi Knight and some bloody Soldier of Fortune(?) game. Ghost Recon took off like gangbusters. There was a real desire out there to play that game in the TG style. The community grew to include other games, and dropped the games that didn't work out. N42 changed its name to TacticalGamer not long before it had to start asking for monetary donations due to the loss of its free hosting. A LLC was formed to keep the community alive and, obviously, to try to make some money. The business venture was less than successful and Apophis is now back to running this community on his own (with volunteer administrators).

2003 was the last time we switched forums software. Most of those first few weeks of registrations are veteran members that have been here much longer. Apophis' registration date is much earlier because he edited it.

At different times, different games grew this community immensely. I'd say that CS, GR and BF2 are responsible for most of the growth of this community through the years...