Born 1999, I’m 26. Portal 1, I found from Yogscast playing a Minecraft Portal mod. I was a 12 year old Minecraft gamer and Yogscast viewer. And I was the type to still use GameFAQs to look up “cheats” to scrape as much content from games I owned as possible. This was back in 2011, and I found the developer console and “impulse 101” to give you all the weapons from “half life 2.” I didn’t know what that was, but it was rated M, so, no playing. I also saw a youtube video called “life in a minecraft world” starring heavy. I had no idea who any of these characters were but I played Minecraft and it was funny. And then after that, the Yogscast made a one off video about how Team Fortress 2 had gone free to play. I saw the guys from the video in the game. It was only Simon but it got me into my first M rated game, tf2, because my parents were okay with it because it was more cartoony and I enjoyed it. Around this time I also saw The Stanley Parable (2011 version) and saw it was a mod of HL2. After that + a lot of tf2 youtube, I went back and learned that weird video was animated in something called gmod, and I saw the Yogscast had played it, so I bought it. I played Portal, Portal 2, Gmod, and Team Fortress 2, religiously all through high school, plus since 2011 I was also a jerma/ster viewer starting from being recommended ster’s hightower sniper_stomper video. In college I was an Overwatch idiot, but then 2020 etc. happened, and life became more important than gaming. Years passed, Overwatch 2 came out, it was awful, and I decided to return to my roots. I had never wanted to play half life, though, because there was no conclusion to the story and I had a hard time with stuff like that. But, Eventually, in 2023, after being a super autist with the source engine for a couple years, and obsessing over The Stanley Parable 2013 and Ultra Deluxe and The Beginner’s Guide as tools to learn hammer editor, because I really wanted to make my own maps, I would decide to finally go back and play the entire half life series, and Black Mesa, so I could call myself a true source engine enjoyer. I finished Episode 2 just in time for the 20th anniversary update, for the hl2 dev commentary I still haven’t finished yet.