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.
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!
*most* of the "PlanetX" sites (where X is any one of several games, Quake, Halflife, Unreal, etc...) are owned by GameSpy, IIRC.
I wonder if "Fuckedcompany" will end up on its own list ;)
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--
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 ====
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
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
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
All the time.
They don't know they're duplicate posts.
Still, I'm gonna miss the peep show. I'm sad to see you go, Daily Radar.
--
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.
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
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?
dejavu
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.
57 million channels and nothing on.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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._ __________
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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?
Damn!
I read these sites every day without fail:
1. DailyRadar
2. Slashdot
3. Fuckedcompany
Now there are only 2
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!
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.
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.