Slashdot Mirror
DailyRadar.com Closes
Fervent writes: "At first it seemed like an April Fool's joke but Daily Radar has closed. Apparently the same bug that's bitten every other game web site (like CNet's GameCenter) got to Daily Radar. Now for major publications we have GameSpot. And, uh... GameSpot." And don't forget OMM - there's a whole slew of sites in this area -- it will be interesting to see who can last through this downturn.
Scooby Dooby
"I never put on a pair of shoes until I've worn them at least five years."
Samuel Goldwyn
....is www.gameunit.com
They should put up some banners to make some money of all the linkage from slashdot. Have at least a little cash in their pocket.
I'm not sorry to see Daily Radar go. I originally signed up for their mailing list long ago, and somehow, they propagated that signup to additional Imagine Media lists that I did not want to be on. Furthermore, in January when I followed their instructions to be removed from the mailing list (in response to their anti-Nintendo stunt, punishing their readers for their legal problems over unauthorized game guides), they did NOT remove me from their mailing list. I sent SEVERAL letters to newsletter@dailyradar.com, and also letters direct to the editors' addresses, over the course of SEVERAL months, and the e-mails never ceased. Just this last Friday, I got another "Blips on the Radar" e-mail, right on schedule. "Daily Radar, Weekly Spammer," I called them. Now maybe my inbox will receive just a little less CRAP!
Daily Radar's problem was content. Far from being a hardcore gaming site, they attempted to become an entertainment portal. The content was basically the same recycled syndicated content available everywhere.
I had read NexGen Online then DR for a few weeks and haven;t been back in a year.
My beloved Gamecenter closes, then Daily Radar. How do all the bad sites stay around? All the good ones are closing.
sCary's renamed Shugashack (now ShackNews) is still around.
As is Blue's News
A good number of the above are fairly major publications. Snowball.Com is in trouble as well, but IGN is their biggest crowd attraction, and IGN Games has to be near the top too, so it should last a little while. Core is a major publication in Japan with a real circulation. ZDNet + C|Net together have enough muscle to keep GameSpot going.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Well, I'm from another competing site, and that's generally what we do, too. Of course, there are always some exceptions, even dramatic ones. But we buy our own games, occasionally score an interview, and pretty much have fun losing money, since it's about the hobby and a chance to share a good game (and scorn a bad game) with other gamers.
Plus the junkpile reviews are great (so cool of an idea, I took over them)--you know we aren't getting subsidized for those!
You would keep your bandwidth relatively low, which in turn would keep cost low.
The only problem I see would be industry contacts.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
I know I'm an old fart, but sometimes I just get more enjoyment out of roguelikes than the latest version of diablo with better graphics and less gameplay.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
*most* of the "PlanetX" sites (where X is any one of several games, Quake, Halflife, Unreal, etc...) are owned by GameSpy, IIRC.
We'll end up being both the first video game magazine on the web, and the last ;p
To bad all of our writers got real jobs and we quit doing print. :(
On the plus side, I think we actually update more frequently than OMM... cough...
I wonder if "Fuckedcompany" will end up on its own list ;)
There is a maximum size to any community, virtual or otherwise, beyond which it stops being a place where everybody knows everybody else, and starts being more like a small city, where you have your circle of friends but most of the people on the street are strangers to you. At which point you begin to form subcultures around common interests.
I think of it as being like living cells, which can only get so big before they either divide or die of bloat.
USENET was like that too, back in the day. There was a real online community there, and there were rules you had to learn or you'd be voted off the island (and they could make it stick!). It worked even though it was huge, because accounts were largely metered out by colleges and universities. So, every fall a new batch of students would arrive and go online, but by the end of September they would have been mostly civilized, and things would calm down again. This worked up until 1993, when AOL came online and there was a flood of newbies that never ended (Hence the term "The September that Never Ended"). The result was that large swaths of Usenet effectively died of overpopulation and spam, because the constant flood of newbies just couldn't be acclimitized before the next newbies showed up, and that culture was pretty much crippled. Fortunately, many smaller newsgroups that the masses just aren't interested in still survive (anything involving strenuous thought is generally safe).
You even see the same thing happening in radio and TV. If your college has a single radio station, its programming is split up to try and cover every possible interest on the one channel. In a metropolitan area, though, there are lots of channels, and so the dominant formats each get their own stations, and the fringe formats get time in the late-night shifts. Sometimes a fringe format gets big enough to take over a station, like hip-hop or talk radio. But nobody listens to every channel at once.
I'm assuming someone has already postulated this as a law of sociology, but since I never studied sociology, I wouldn't know.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
erm... just to check myself I checked gamers.com and it still looks active. I know that firingsquad.com is still going strong.
UGO network is also still around but I believe their future is questionable. I do know they have a booth at E3 though.
Let me clarify though, Gamespy is going to close down at some point - and that does include all of the planet sites. That really sucks. A lot.
--onyx--
DailyRadar was a standby, but there are still a few left.
Namely IGN - which shows no slow down in its Vault sections. Gamers.com is still around as is VoodooExtreme.
I wont count Gamespy as they are ready to close down shop as well. Lots of sites are losing hosting in that deal.
And so the internet hosting/banner/funding debacle claims another.
--onyx--
Neil is one of the best quake/quakeII/Half-Life mappers there are. His levels are innovative and always a hoot. Some of this is due to Daily Radar PAYING him to do some mapping. Hell I got a subscription to PC Gamer just to make sure I get his stuff without having to wait a month for it to get posted on Daily Radar. What am I going to do if I want to rescue Private Monkey? I'd include a URL for the games but it's gone. His site is http://planethalflife.com/manke
Bummer.
We still have Voodoo Extreme, which has somehow survived most of this. It's on UGO now, which while it has had problems and probably will eventually go under as well too, Billy Wilson isn't one to give up without a fight. It's been pretty widely reported(or rumored?) that he and the rest of the VE crew have been trying to take the site independent.
/. are around, I'll be happy.
In my opinion, its one of the best sources for gaming news, and has been for a very long time. So as long as VE &
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
How can this be redundant? I liked Timothy's article better. I thought it was better written than Hemo's. That had not been mentioned until I said it, as it was my opinion.
ZD in the 80's and ZDNet in the 1990's/2000's are entirely different creatures. Times change, editors move on, standards shift... And ZDNet has never been much more than a whitewashed politically correct channel for wire stories and chopped down articles from ZD magazines anyway. Beyond that, ZDNet hasn't even been owned by Ziff-Davis in three years - their corporate parent Softbank spun it off to take advantage of the dotcom stock boom and CNET recently bought them out. (So why does ZDNet still run ZD magazine stories? Licensing.)
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Gamecenter didn't close because it was losing money, but because CNET bought the ZD whores and their game site Gamespot was slightly more popular and has an international presence. Now Gamespot has been spun off as a separate company owned by CNet, instead of just being a ZD site. That notwithstanding, Gamecenter was a lot better than GS will ever be.
ZDNet - Diluting quality since 1995(TM)
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Try the FreeSpace series. Really very good (and the "Descent:" part on the first one is a misnomer, and only exists because Interplay originially didn't think FreeSpace could do well on its own).
While it's true there's little left in the way of adventure gaming these days, why not try out Gabriel Knight 3, Escape From Monkey Island, and The Longest Journey?
Try the first two Fallout games (yes, they're post-apolcalyptic, not fantasy, but they're good role-playing games), or the Baldur's Gate games and expansions. Or on the console front, check out Final Fantasy IX.
As you see, there are plenty of current games that fit the bill. Sure, they may not be King's Quest 26, or Wing Commander 18, or Ultima 10, but that's okay -- I'm of the opinion that a series can only go so long without getting stale and unimaginative.
I know this is in jest, but I couldn't help but respond. Fucked Company won't ever be on Fucked Company, because Pud has a clue -- Fucked Company isn't a company at all. He's ripped on fucked companies time and time again for hiring a shitload of people to do nothing, while he runs a successful site essentially by himself (I'm sure there are a few more FC "employees", but I doubt they number more than 10 or 20, certainly not in the 100s or 1000s that many dot-bombs felt they needed).
<obvious>Besides, if Fucked Company gets fucked, who would run the Fucked Company list to list them?</obvious>
I've seen this attitude a lot, and in more areas than just gaming. People will always rave about the "Good ol' days", while simultaneously blowing off all but a very few of the current crop of <whatever we're talking about>.
What people fail to realize is that when you look back on the past, you don't remember all the failures. You only remember the successes. Yes, all the successful games had great gameplay (and lots of them had groundbreaking graphics, for their time -- such as Final Fantasy 6j/3us and Chrono Trigger, to name a few from the recent past). However, for every one of these great games, there are tons of bombs. Anybody remember the Home Alone games on the NES and SNES? How about the deluge of bad Simpsons-inspired NES games? Or to get away from the licensed games, what about the "original" clunkers, like Vortex (a StarFox rip off, and one of the few games to utilize the original SuperFX chipset)?
The point here is that while most of today's games may be crap, we're going to look back in five years and only see the "good" games (for whatever definition of good), like Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Tribes (to get the FPS games out of the way), Black & White, the Fallout series, the later Final Fantasies (oddly, everybody thinks FFVII just plain sucked, yet I really enjoyed it -- had a great story), and more. We'll all have forgotten about games like SiN, Soldier of Fortune, Frogger 3D, and all the other lamer games. And of course there will be a few that will take on "Atari ET" status, like Daikatana, and most likely Duke Nukem 4Ever (assuming it ever ships).
Looking back on the past fondly is one thing, but to hold up the worst of today's games to the best of yesterday's and proclaim that all of today's games suck is just being naive. Don't live in the past. Seek out the good games of today. I guarantee you that you'll find more than a few worth spending some change on.
I must be the only one still (or ever) reading Adrenaline Vault. The reviews are fair, and the news is as current as anywhere else. Not as much attitude as DailyRadar, though.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. --Albert Einstein
How can you say there aren't any gaming sites left except for GameSpot? Jeff K. is the leading provider in game content and news. It isn't unusual for him to scoop bluesnews, and his comics are much better than Penny Arcade's. He interviews big gaming celebrities like Cliffy B and John Carmack.
He also reviews the PC games that matter, and wrote a brilliant editorial on the upcoming console wars.
For shame. www.captured.com. I barely even have time to play games anymore, but at least I can virtually enjoy them through kerbuffel & crew.
I concur. It also reads like the reviewers went to the store and bought the games...although I'm sure this isn't ALWAYS the case, it's nice that these are people like me who want to know what's worth dropping my cash on, rather than people who have to make advertisers happy by shilling the latest new stuff.
It might be an elaborately contrived ruse, but I've yet to play a game that rated well on GD that sucked.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Decent coverage, although updates are sometimes sporadic. Oh, and they're British. So all you people who hate theregister because they talk funny...don't waste your time.
Good reviews, excellent demo archives...what else do you need?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Daily Radar UK, which used to be Future Gamer (I think), is still alive and well. Don't know if that's of any interest to former readers of the US site; but it's there if you want it.
-Stephen
Now there was a site. I somehow got sucked into reading Daily Radar all the time after Next Generation went away... I'll miss Daily Radar somewhat, but I'll agree the real loss was long ago went Next Generation was taken from us.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure, use of Javascript had been annoying for some time - but Daily Radar was the site that made disabling Javascript mandatory! Two popup windows (one huge) was quite enough for me.
Like the other post, I was going to leave for good as well - but I still liked the site for some things, so I stuck around.
I think the thing that probably canned the site though was that despite all of the factors you mentioned, they had to use a LOT of bandwith. I downloaded a lot of preview movies, most between 5mb and 20mb. Even with a bandwith limiter of some place (I could only get 10k/sec when I used to be able to get 160k/sec long ago), I still downloaded a lot of movies... That cost must have been too much to bear even with all of the other great things going for them. I think a site with all of the factors you mentioned woul;d be able to survive just fine with smaller content.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We don't get a ton of hits, just enough to feed our egos. And we sont mind operating the site at a loss. Labor of love and all that.
S.
http://www.stepto.com
All the time.
They don't know they're duplicate posts.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Magic Box... great meaty news site.
www.the-magicbox.com
i also love The Gia.
www.thegia.com
That's true, there are sites that are very profitable because of the content they provide. The Wall Street Journal (and a slew of porn sites) have all been very successful, and they all charge quite a bit of change (WSJ is something like $80 a year.)
I think alot of media companies are going to realize they can't give their commodities away. It'll only be time till the magazines (time, usnews) and newspapers (mainly, the NY Times) start to charge for content. It HAS to start denting their paper sales eventually. Besides, I'd pay for an NYT online subscription (if it is a bit cheaper than paper of course.)
say goodbye to the next 3. Oh wait, did someone say something bad about hype?
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+&x
it sucks, but you're probably on to something. That bad thing is that if that works for someone, everyone else will start piling on the ads to illustrate the value of not having them. Curious, that. (oh, and it happened to pr0n sites about 2 years ago)
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+&x
There's more than just Gamespot out there. Check out Stomped.com. I know one of the news guys, Sean "redwood" Martin, and he's quite dedicated. And yes, it's more than just "Quake" ;)
I read that site every day after lunch. No more peep show... Now what do I do?
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Still, I'm gonna miss the peep show. I'm sad to see you go, Daily Radar.
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Well, I've been reading next-generation online for about a year before the staff moved to daily radar. I really liked NGO before because they had quality reviews. Now, with DailyRadar, they forgot about journalistic integrity and started bashing games or movies because they didn.t have enough violence, or praised another one because it showed (insert your favorite actress name here) breast and that the movie was good because of that. I'm not sorry that this web site had to close down. The content recently has been mediocre at best over at DailyRadar and I hope that these people get a grip on themselves, go back to NGO and go back to the great articles they wrote before.
"The answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is... 42"
Humour? I don't see the humour in considering actress X as an object. Can you???
"The answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is... 42"
Even though I am from a competing site, I am saddened to see this site go. While there is SOME online competition (there has to be, right?) it is always sad when a prominant member of the community like Daily Radar goes down. I'd like to wish the best to the staff of the site -- guys, thanks for running such a fantastic site, and good luck on any endevours that you undertake in the future.
I know the digerati keep telling us that micropayments will solve all these problem...bah, ain't gonna happen.
What I think could happen is content / ISP partnerships where you pay say 19.95 for the basic Earthlink account, 21.95 gets you subscribtions to ESPN and CNN, 25.95 gets you even more, etc etc. The ISP splits the marginal revenue with the content sites, and everybody makes a little more money without bankrupting the consumers. They could even start to segment - have a sports subscription with access to all the premium sports content, a gamers subscribtion, etc. You get the idea...
and gaming sites just go off the deep end about how great the trees look. ;^)
Um, yeah. B&W has a good reputation. Now, I haven't actually played it, and I have friends who've been hooked by it, but most of them seem to still admit minor problems. I found FiringSquad's review (78%, blam!) refreshing.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
I visited the site a few weeks ago, and signed up for the mailing list. I received no indication about this subscription deal, or else I would gladly have paid.
Yes! That guy!
There's still tagor.com ...
Tee hee.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
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crazy dynamite monkey
Here's my favorite gaming sites to visit almost daily:
VoodooExtreme
Shacknews
Stomped
Computer Gaming Online
GamesSpy
3D News
Firing Squad
Avault
Games Domain
GamesMania
IGN News (PC)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I know for certain that Valve would be one of the first to jump in. Counter-Strike is the major reason why Half-Life is still selling well today, over 2 years after its original release. Valve has always been supportive of the community, and I see them pioneering a service like that to support their fans.
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"After Careful Consideration, Bush Recommends Oil Drilling" - The Onion
With their entertaining and (+1!) insightful goodbye message.
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The only way I can see out of this is virtual isolationism. As more people find that the net is mostly useless, I suspect they'll start either moving off it to private networks run by individuals or VPNs, using the internet only for transport of their encrypted packets.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You babble on about loser posts and loser mags, and then say that cheap pr0n has more staying power? baah!
dejavu
That was, of course, according to the message posted at gamecenter on closing day, and could have been outright lies for all I know.
Wing Commander 1-4, Privateer
King's Quest 4-7
Dagger of Amon-Ra, Gabriel Knight 1
Loom, Fate of Atlantis, Sam and Max
Ultima 4-7
Now I play... almost nothing. Where are the modern equivalents? Now I spend all my 'gaming' time trying to reverse-engineer Ultima7.
I would also say they extended their coverage way farther than they should have. There's nothing wrong with a online magazine that covers one platforms(like PC Gamer Online) or even many platforms(like Next Generation Online), but Daily Radar had to be the end-all-do-all website that covered Games,Showbusiness, Technology/Gadgets, and even its own humor section. They had way to big of staff with alot of time on their hands. Especially one that was funded by banner ads
I knew their death was on the wall when you couldn't browse the site with out getting pop-up ads all over the place. That was already with the banner ads that were already plastered on the page and clever little link box ads for Online Gambling (Did they even think about their Demographic audience?) that would pop-up if you left your mouse cursor idle.
Screw Daily Radar and screw Imagine Publishing for creating it. I still blame the death of many good websites(NGO, PC Gamer Online)on Daily Rader and it won't be missed in my opinion. There are much better websites out there.
Backyard Boxing online?That's unpossible!
ICQ:47685501
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
The trouble with sites like dailyradar is that they take an army of paid staff to do what a couple of hobbyists do just as well.
I called them dailySpamdar as when you went to their site, you would get a page with 3 banner ads and TWO popups! It was pretty outrageous and it made me quit going there, but I still hate to see them go under. /. users hate Windows or think Microsoft is out to get them!
____________________
Remember, not all
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
First they send me a notice asking me to subscribe to Total Movie for 2 years (luckily I didn't) then the last issue of Total Movie says they are going monthly. Then they take down www.total-movie.com and I have to do a search on google to find out the magazine is canceled. They still owe me money!
Meanwhile, I suscribe to Maximum PC back in Feb. I still have yet to recieve an issue. I emailed them last week and even though their web site promices replies within 48 hours, I have yet to get a responce. They owe me money for that too!
So I think the whole damn company is in trouble.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
FYI, Lowtax went off and created SomethingAwful, and while he's had horrendously bad luck with various hosting networks, the site is pretty cool. If you haven't checked it out yet, make sure to spend some time in the Jeff K and Cliff Yablonski sections. :-) Lowtax was also able to bring along one of my favorite parts of PQ, Cranky Steve's map reviews. The reviews aren't done by Lowtax anymore and are lacking in quality, but it's a nice blast from the past. (Even if this past is just two years ago.)
Coincidentally, Lowtax recentally brought the afore-mentioned Fragmaster on board as a guest editor. Now if only Frags would resurrect Walter. ;-)
GameSpy's only redeeming value is FilePlanet. I know a lot of people here hate it, and I agree that the format and bandwidth suck, but I usually have better luck downloading from FilePlanet than anywhere else.
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I like to watch.
Probably any aspiring or professional game writers already know this, but FYI, Adrenaline Vault is looking for part-time writers for console and PC games. Click here for more info.
what about the venerable Stomped.com?!
The mappers, coders, and reviewers hosted on Gamespy's networks feel about the same way. The news on any of their sites, even the venerable PlanetQuake, sucks.
Fileplanet? Dear god, don't get me started. The redeeming value of fileplanet is that they have a stranglehold on content, namely, everything that used to be hosted on cdrom.com and its many mirrors. Now it's hosted on what, 2-3 servers worldwide? One isn't a full mirror, one is in Italy (great for Italians, bad for USians like me), and the last is GS's own server. I can rarely coax a resumable, non-redirected, ftp download out of Gamespy's server, so I generally download from Italy (fileplanet.ngi.it). Problem is, it looks like many other people have the same idea as me, because NGI's ftp server is almost always full.
Yes, I am on a lowly modem. I don't think Gamespy gives a rat's ass that I am, though.
Imagine my surprise as I turned to gamerspress.com and read the uppermost blurb by DarkPaladin, entitled "Why we went Flashlink":
Looks like there is a difference of opinion about whether "it's about the hobby." :P
Good job, I thought I'd seen it all.
I guess it's bad news anyway.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
I'm torn, do I comment on the one that has the capital C, or the lowercase C. Decisions decisions.....
57 million channels and nothing on.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Their subscription servlet is busted.
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SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Also, don't forget that the bulk of information used on gamespot's cheats and hints section, as well as their game guides comes from posts and FAQ's originally presented by cheat code central. (Which they credit on the page.)
www.cheatcc.com
Hope that's helpful,
Andonyx
Andonyx www.andonyx.com
I love fileplanet. Mabye it's cuz I get 300KBp/s from them, or because the backend is run by the most kick ass map reviewer ever, Radium!
W00t! Gamespy is wasting alot of talent by having Radium work behind the scenes.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Lets not forget that we still have Snowball(http://www.snowball.com) network's IGN (http://www.ign.com).
Forager
student of animation and the fine arts
The Vorticans shall rule the earth.
The Eagle's Talon shale rule the Galaxy.
The funny thing is, IGN originally was a product of Imagine Media (IGN = Imagine Gaming Network), but is now with snowball.com. So what did Imagine replace IGN with? Daily Radar. Figures.
A really good vidgame mag was "Ultra gameplayers". Now there was a quality magazine... too bad they went the way of acid-washed jeans. I want my chicken cookies and haggis!
"Ask me about Loom"
Time to pimp. It doesn't specialize in breaking-news or up-to-the-minute reviews like some other sites, but Joystick101.org is a gaming site I've found myself spending a lot of time at. A community driven site (running Scoop) that posts articles by editors, and allows users to vote on submitted material. Sort of a cross between Slashdot and Kuro5hin.
Good place to find some intelligent, thoughtful discussion on just about anything gaming related. I invite everyone to check it out.
Didn't you get the memo? Please clean out your cubicle by 4pm. Thanks.
GamesDomain's gratest yirtue, IMO, is that they take a week or two to actually play games before reviewing them. Where other review sites give you the reviewer's impression based on perhaps 48 hours of gameplay, GamesDomain reviewers can actually comment on how much replayability and lasting appeal a game has.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
This website only drives in the same point again. Commercial companies will continue to struggle to be close to successful with ad-based revenue sources. I'm of the opinion that the most enduring gaming sites will be those hosted by fans - without the need to make a profit. Sure, they may not have the resources or the sneak previews that commercial sites can get - but these web site developers are dedicated to their sites for the mere enjoyment of putting out good, informed information about the games they love.
Advertising is a great way for sites to help recoup the costs of hosting, but definately not paying the salaries of dozens of employees (with a few exceptions, obviously). I count 34 employees on their website. Even if many of them were part time, that's a lot of money simply in payroll.
In the end, this model may work for a very few popular commercial businesses (Yahoo, for example), but most of these websites will either be bought out or go out of business. The best thing is for a decent website to be bought out by a decent non-online company. This way, the parent company can afford to lose some money on the child company as long as it helps branding (thus making the child company an advertising expense). Granted, the Go Network isn't my favorite search engine/portal, but they do seem to have survived ok after being purchased by Disney.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
What I don't get is why so many people hate GameSpot! Sure, it's a Ziff-Davis site, but they give fairly good reviews, and aren't afraid to say a game sucks when it sucks. What is wrong with them? That's the only site I have ever visited anyway! I never went to GameCenter, I never went to avault, I never went to Daily Radar. At least my favorite site is still around. For now anyway.
If you haven't checked it out yet, make sure to spend some time in the Jeff K and Cliff Yablonski sections. :-)
Cliff Yablonski Hates You is one of the funniest things I have ever seen on the internet. Found it off of Cruel.com. Check this out. (http://www.somethingawful.com/cliff/ihateyou/ for the goatse.cs weary)
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Ever since imagine began watering down their online and print publications, they've been less and less relevant. Next Generation Online (before the "Editor's Choice" debacle) took its audience seriously. Daily Radar got into this whole "game geek" lifestyle thing that I feel alienated their core audience. They're doing the same thing to Maximum PC (another hardcore magazine for PC addicts). NextGen remains somewhat respectable, though it's never really been the same since they went with the cheapo covers. It's as if they're ignoring their own demographics. Listen up Imagine: Gamers are getting older, a stat that is almost certain to increase when Xbox comes out. Give us something that respects both our age and intelligence, and we'll shower you with our hard earned gen{x-z} dollars. And sell your print magazine, not popup ads... That is your primary business, right?
Julian Rodriguez
Hah... I only found out about the subscription announcement last week, and planned to do it this week. Guess I missed my window of opportunity.
Fuckedcompany *has* been put on its own
list. Pud put it there to acknowledge
the server problems he's been having
lately (nothing really severe, but
irritating). He only gave one or two
point, though.
Chris Mattern
Just before Daily Radar closed down, they started experimenting with advertisements. When banner ad revenues dropped precipitously, they added affiliate programs, popups, floating javascript banners, interactive ads, site sponsorships, and more.
What frustrates me is recognizing that these ad technologies - despite being clever, and, in rare cases, useful - did nothing to improve the site's revenue position. Daily Radar had pretty much everything a web site can ask for: daily rotating content, a loyal and excited fan base, community building features, a direct link to sales tools (they had buy buttons on every game review), and more.
What does this say about the state of every other website out there? Daily Radar did not appear to be mismanaged, nor did it appear to lack technical innovation. Most of the attributes Daily Radar had, I have come to regard as essential for a website's success.
I think this means that if you run a website that provides content:
You are probably out of luck.
Not bad for a site originally hosted on a pretty basic RS6000 lent to Dave (Stanworth)'s employer by IBM for research purposes, but never destined to do any actual work (at least it hadn't when I was last there) - how Dave got away with it I'll never know!
There are new "news" items once every other week, including the most recent gem, a complaint about a Windows messagebox without a message attached. No, not in a game they were playing - in the driver update to their sound card.
Here's the list of shame:
Last "news": 4/27/2001
Last Feature (Serious Sam Interview): 3/27/2001
Forums ("Shack Attack", complaining about Steve of shugashack asking for donations): 3/06/2001
Long Review ("Freedom", review of Freedom, the First Resistance - it blows up your monitor): 12/21/2000
Short Review (8 Quickies - Including Rune, No One Lives Forever, and Gunman Cronicles): 10/27/2000
Rants (Pop-Up Apology - a letter about something that happened on a different portal of evil site): 8/12/2000 (Last true OMM rant, about Paul Steed(!) , 2/10/2000)
The site is dead. If they are playing games that companies send them, then they are not telling us about them. Their latest contribution to the world was publicizing Serious Sam, which is a good thing. However, the lack of updates is a Bad Thing. Eventually, people will stop coming by to see if it is updated, even the hard-core OMM worshippers will stop coming by the forums, and the site will be another link in someone's link list that never got updated (OMM! That must be a dead link by now - Wow! Chet posted a complaint about philips-head screws!)
Maybe it's a money thing. Maybe they have budgeted bandwidth, and, when they reach the monthly quota, they stop posting new stuff. Maybe they need ad-banner click-throughs, saving up enough money for a modern machine to play the new games. Maybe they moved, and forgot to tell game companies the new address, so some undeserving college kid is getting all the cool new games. Who knows. And, increasingly, who cares?
IMHO, the whole Slashdot Cool Links box displays a bad trend toward the unneccessary, starting with the OMM link. Who would use Everything2 as a resource, or sees it as other than a interesting idea unfortunately turned into a Community? I think themes.org is up there because Rob Malda once posted a Enlightenment theme that never got updated to new versions. The list doesn't change, but stays a testament to what the Slashdot editors were thinking about a year ago, much like the other static content on the site (the FAQ, etc.)
Wow, that's a lot of bitching for a Tuesday. That Karma Kap makes you old and bitter pretty fast...
Weeks? Take a look at those dates again: the last formal review was last year. That's months, not weeks.
OMM was a good gaming site, but Chet and Erik have gotten bored with it. At least Daily Radar was updated on a nearly daily basis, and I could see someone's opinion on a new game. Instead, I have to wait for the Game of the Trimester from OMM. I was a little surprised that Hemos thought OMM would be a good replacement for sites that actually reviewed games.
It's strange but it's like a world of overloaded sensors, and we're all so numb we just don't give a crap anymore.
Seriously though when "The Internet" was but a network hooking a couple of colleges, local BBS' with a very limited market had vibrant online communities, incredible download sections where you fervently awaited the next issue of Commander Keen (I recall begging a sysop to extend my time limit so I could download the Falcon 3 demo as at 600KB I just didn't have enough time...wow is that game really that old...). Now we have enormous bandwidth and literally a world of people to converse with and generally the sense of community has disappeared. I don't want to sound like an "old-timer" talking about how good things used to be, and of course it could be just my perception, but there certainly doesn't seem to be the interest in the computer game market, or really online communities. Have we all been there/done that?
This is a sad day. One of the best content sites on the net has vanished. My faith in humanity in ruins. You know why all this shit has happened? Because bandwidth costs never fell like they were predicted to. Hell, if things went like they were supposed to, I could host DailyRadar from my house for $40 a month. Curse you, Cisco... Microsoft... HP... Linksys... AT&T... Sprint... TimeWarner... and everybody else who held on to their 1 year plans instead of investing in a medium that could garner real returns. I'm crying.
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
Think about it. The best sites with the most traffic have the highest bandwidth costs. Since they cost the most to maintain, they're the first to close.
Then, you bookmark the not-as-great site, but so do the other 100,000 people. Soon, THEIR bandwidth costs are too high, and they have to close.
Then you go to the somewhat-crappy-site, and the closings go on...
Eventually, the only gaming sites will be on Ziff Davis-type sites, which will rate and evaluate all games on a scale of 85%-100%.
OMM is the only site on the web I would donate to.
Bull. How are people going to see this great content that has been generated if 99% of the people are too stingy to spend a few bucks a month on a site
This is the best rebuttal you can come up with?
It's called MARKETING! The first, most basic idea is to offer a 30-day free trial.
But honestly, use your imagination. Sheesh.
"And like that
You didn't pay for it. Now cram it.
Ahhh... they didn't pay for it because the need wasn't there. They could fulfill the same needs at other (free) websites.
The sites that will be successful at pay-per-view will be the ones that generate great content. I consider CNET News.com one such source. I've even emailed them, begging them to let those of us who read them all the time to pay a monthly fee, and get an ad-free view of their site. Jai Singh (editor) seemed interested, asked me what I'd be willing to pay, and said they'd look into it.
Just like Eudora, CuteFTP, et. al. offer versions of their software for free with banner ads, I think you'll start seeing content sites offering the reverse -- an ad-free subscription to their site.
There are only a few sites I'd pay for if they didn't offer their content for free. News.com. ESPN. Maybe CNN.
The best-of-breed content sites will survive and flourish as their crappier competitors go down the tubes.
"And like that
I would argue that games like Half-Life (a little old, but still alive and kicking), Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, Baldur's Gate II, and Icewind Dale are all good examples of a group of dedicated designers trying to appeal to gamers using their prior experience with games. Admittedly, Unreal Tournament was kind of a graphic romp, but it had very solid and open-ended gameplay nonetheless.
I'd say the best example of a (somewhat) recent game that strictly appealed to a group of hardcore gamers was System Shock 2. I suggest you pick up a copy post-haste to see what I mean. It's a great game for those who have become jaded by simple tricks that developers try to pull on many gamers today.
I agree. Monkey Island 2 is simply the best computer game ever produced. It's sad during the past few years we've seen less and less games like it.
Good find, I hadn't saw that one. Nice to know SOMEBODY spent enough time with the game to derive a score indicating some level of imperfection.
Rewind three or four years back. Most content is written by die-hard fans. People who are monogamous to a game and devoted to a community of people like them churn out good sites with strong content and relatively heavy traffic.
Unfortunately, the last few years turned into a sort of online gold rush when everybody simultaneously got the idea that they could cash in big on something fun.
But instead of hardcore gamers writing content, you often ended up with designer imposters funded by big names who know nothing about the subject matter at hand. And now these folks are running out of gas.
And the games themselves... well... theyre to blame also. Now that computers are to the point where they can make a ray-traced dinosaur holding a multi-colored chainsaw with a flame texture and a 3D drink holder, selling computer games is all about dazzle rather than gameplay. Smoke and mirrors! Most game developers are too busy making goofy effects to worry about gameplay these days.
The amazing thing is that gaming sites fail to realize this or dare criticize it, for fear of upsetting the publishers and developers they like to be in bed with to succeed. I think Black & White is a great example of this. Here's a beautiful game with some big issues (redundant gameplay, sluggish controls, etc.), and gaming sites just go off the deep end about how great the trees look. Personally, I dont respect any gaming site that ships a game to some cheap freelancer who writes little more than a beefed-up version of what I could have read on the back of the box and slaps a high score on it. Oh why not toss in some pictures of models to save face! Invent some new buzzwords, that'll work!
Perhaps I'm just a relic because I was around for gaming's glory days.
We had a standing bet.
Tens of thousands of people emailed us after we closed PCXL. They told us that if we brought it back in any form, they'd pay for it -- pay even more for it than before.
We knew it wasn't true. So, just to prove the point, we brought it back.
You didn't pay for it. Now cram it.
Love,
The staff of PCXL
will P.A. have to make fun of? What a shame.... ;)
--The space between my ears was intentionally left blank--
VOODOO EXTREME
If we could just get Chet and Erik to update their page more than once a month I'd be a happy man. What's up with those two lately??
I gave myself to Jesus, but now he never calls
Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who looked at the dot com boom knew that more than 90% of dot coms were going to fail. 90% of ALL new businesses fail. In a brand new market where no one is an expert you have to expect that 99% of all new businesses are going to fail. We all knew that. So why do we care when one more me too dot com with a bogus business plan bites the big one?
It is not a bad thing that poorly run companies with no revenue and no viable business plan go out of business. It is a good thing.
Most of the really sucessful dot coms haven't even been established yet. The GMs, Fords, AT&Ts, and IBMs of the Internet will be spawned over the next 10 years. And they'll be spawned by people who learned their lesson in the great dot com bust.
StoneWolf
It is time like this that I wish we have a good micropayment system. There are many sites on the net that I enjoy and visit often (eg /., GameCenter), and I can honestly say that I have contributed exactly Zer0 to their income.
I don't click on ads for various reasons: poor exchange rate, high S&H when you don't live in US, etc. So yeah I like to give a little to you guys, say $1/day? For me, it is very cheap and reasonable when compare to other daily spendings like bus fare, snacks, price for a newspaper, etc. For a site operator this is pretty good. How many "click-through" do you need to get $1?
For a large site lik /., asking for $1 donation every week or month can add up to good incomes; even if only a small percentage of people are willing to pay. It certainly wouldn't hurt as long as there is a easy and cheap way to collect these small payments.
====
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
Was busy adding your links to my favorites, when I hit this POS... Disables the back button. I don't think I'll ever bother returning.
Don't forget ign.com. That site is quite good. Perhaps it's a gamespy affiliate. Also, the not-for-profit (at least I don't think so) PlanetX sites are good, such as planethalflife, planetunreal, planetdeusex, especially in terms of the mod scene. Also, voodooextreme is on top of all gaming news. So without daily radar, we're not missing a whole lot. Sorry to hear them go bust however._ __________
_______________________________________
doh, this is just like PCXL dying all over again
On my worst days at work, I'm happy that I'm not scraping gum off the floor of my old convenience store. And on the best days, I'm thankful that I ended up at a dot-com where a) I have to wear a tie to work b) there is no foozball and c) we're not going out of business. "C" makes up for the other two. Seriously, though...I'm ready for interstitials. No, not popup windows. I hate them and close them immediately. I'm ready to go to The Onion, click on a story, see a full-window ad for a product, which disappears in 5 seconds, or when I click. Why? Because while I love the wonderful and boundless and free exchange of information made possible by this Network of Networks, I am realistic. The Web is no longer academic. You can argue for the free exchange of useful (i.e. "educational" in the traditional sense) information, and I will agree 100%. But academic media is subsidized by universities and research organizations that make money, perhaps indirectly, through that research. Meanwhile, all traditional media (i.e. non-useful, entertaining, fun, like Daily Radar and its ilk), like it or not, makes money from advertising. Whether banner ads work or not is moot; the advertisers have said that they don't work, and because they're the ones with the checkbooks, they can write reality any way they see fit. But if you're guaranteeing that every time you click on a story, that advertiser is getting a guaranteed full-screen impression, maybe...just maybe...the same people that put ads for laptops in PC Computing will pay the same CPM for ads on PC Computing online. Which means that good people like the folks at Daily Radar and countless other dot-coms might keep their jobs and be able to feed their families. Frankly, I like good ads. I don't want to shock the monkey. I don't care if "there's a message waiting for me." And that flashing "WINNER" ad--you know what I'm talking about--makes me refresh every time. I'm talking about stuff the caliber of the John West Bear Fight ad on Adcritic. Interstitials might just give ad designers the space they need to produce more ads that aren't just annoying wastes of time. No, I don't work for an ad firm, and yes, I do believe in subsidized Federal health care and a bunch of other hippie causes. But I do recognize that as long as most of the free world operates on a capitalist economy, somebody has to pay the bills. Advertisers have done that for a good long time now. Nobody is forcing you to drink Soft Drink Product A (tm). I ignore as many ads as you do. But that bottom line is, any business--no matter how noble and free-expression oriented the cause--needs to make money just to pay the bills. Daily Radar is just the latest casualty. Hopefully Slashdot won't be next. I'll suffer for 5 seconds to keep the sites I love online.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
I agree 100%. That site was a painful reminder of the damage done to Next Generation Online and Next Generation Magazine. They were both the best in their fields, until they sold out and became another "me-too" advertisement vehicle.
Damn!
I read these sites every day without fail:
1. DailyRadar
2. Slashdot
3. Fuckedcompany
Now there are only 2
I don't think they're dead, they're just trying to work on too much all at once. Trying to maintain and update sites as large as OMM and POE. Chet and Erik have other things to do as well, i'm sure.
The Portal Of Evil just underwent a little redesigning, which might explain in part why there's been so little updating at OMM in recent weeks.
Shameless Self Promotion : Webhosting at Blender Networks.
are you talking about OMM or OMM?
Shameless Self Promotion : Webhosting at Blender Networks.
When I said "updating" I was referring to any sort of updates to their site, not just reviews. Yes, OMM has updated in the last few weeks. When did this discussion turn into talking about game reviews ONLY?
I don't think the point of OMM is to be the best gaming site out there with the most reviews and most groundbreaking news in the world of games. I think they're supposed to be the site that sits back and calls the gaming industry a fag.
Shameless Self Promotion : Webhosting at Blender Networks.
Since the posts thus far are mostly redundant - I should say that dailyradar.com which was; at one time PCXL was a decent site. Really the best thing about the site were the downloads sometimes. They gave previews that lauded a game, but then when it came out said "It's just like Tomb Raider, but different maps" to name a Prince of Persia DC review which no one else had reviewed the game. New PCXL; that was awsome. Every month I used to get this rocking magazine that talked about games and if I got really bored - you could beat off to it - there was enough T&A. But then someone sold me PC Gamer - that mag just blows. Every other page is either MS is cool as shit or Buy Babbages! PCXL Rocked! I loved when parents wrote in about how much smut there was. Too bad they didn't continue the style on DailyRadar.com. Naked women and some witty writing about games that sucked would have kept it alive.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I think that's funny....considering they called me yesterday asking me to advertise on their site. Could I have saved them?
Bungie.org
Rampancy.net
Don't worry, there are plenty of great sites left!
Douglas Adams
1952-2001 :(
-nt-
And again, sorry, but please GOD let IGN be next. Living day to day without them pandering to my manly needs for babes and alchohol is sure to have it's downsides, but I think I can cope, and I really can't think of any.
Sorry, but good riddens. I've read so many rediculous reviews on that site that I can only say I'll miss the comedic value. Reviews that liken games to works of incomprehensible genius for their obviously intended commentary on the world as we know it. Articles with shocking revelations like 'online games are going to be big'. WHA!??!!?
I will say that I'm surprised they could be short on money when even I accidentally click one of the 100 ads on their front page when I go looking for rediculously stupid articles. Forgive me for my cynicism, I just think that sites like OMM will do fine (despite the tragic loss of Daily Radar), simply because OMM doesn't suck.
It's about time. Daily Radar was one of the most fanboyish and unprofessional gaming sites on the web. It's about time they were put out of their misery.
I don't understnad it really, especially considering the erport I heard today on Morning Edition. The PC game industry has grown 15% yearly since 1997, and stands to rival movie profits if it keeps on track.
Oddly, though, they lumped console games in with those numbers...
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
Damn, the ONLY downside of this that I can think of is no more hot women at the Daily Radar booth at E3 this year. *drool* :D
PA had some funny Daily Radar toons. A snippet from Tycho & Gabe's trip to the Daily Radar:
Part Three: Ha Ha Ha
Funny shit. www.penny-arcade.com for more.
Is this just me, or does the whole rise and fall of the dot.com scene feel like the BBS scene? Many sysops saw potential in their BBS's (myself included) and went mainstream (well, as mainstream as a closed audience could provide) and they nearly all went by the way of the dinosaur. It was the original content and customer supported sites that remained. My only semi-supported site that worked was designed to cater for the hearing impared, allowing them access to a large wealth of public information - basically a better version of existing TTY services all in one place.
Suppose the more things change, the more they stay the same. A few lessons from those days should be tinkered with and applied. Before we had to worry about dialing OUT costs (mumble international calls) and today it's bandwidth OUT costs.
Just my $0.07 cents (price adjusted for tax).
--
McCarrum!
Robert Anton Wilson
Well, for RPGs there's still www.rpgamer.com.
alright, i give. i'm the guy who did the deed. i executed the 'mv' command to switch dailyradar.com off. however, the real story is probably the fact that imagine media pulled the plug on just about every one of its internet properties. this includes pcxl.com which was a pay companion of dailyradar.com launched less than a week ago. (and yes, i did the honors there as well) this is all information you can glean from press releases, but it's a whole other matter to be the guy who actually throws the switch on such a popular site.
all of the imagine properties were run on a linux farm concieved of an built by myself and jeremy wohl. quick stats: 2 million dynamic pages per day from a 3 tier linux farm. lvs / apache / resin / oracle / java / xml and a myriad of other tools. the power of open-source here was truly awesome.
Is there one? Should there be one? I mean, /. is surviving quite well from just regular user support. Could a gaming site ala a Slashdot-type portal work out to the point of being useful? I ask in part because I was looking into putting up a portal of a similar nature. But with those company run ones dropping off like fraqs in a Quake Tournament, could gaming news move to that format and survive? Any publisher(ing) types out there want to respond? (and/or reply to me)