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.
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!
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.
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.
-------------------------
-------------------------
"After Careful Consideration, Bush Recommends Oil Drilling" - The Onion
Namely IGN - which shows no slow down in its Vault sections.
Sure it does. They just recently closed 10 Vault Network sites, and the company that owns IGN, Snowball (Nasdaq: SNOW), is being delisted.
Gamers.com is still around as is VoodooExtreme.
VoodooExtreme is on UGO, which is no longer paying affiliates and likely won't survive the balance of the year. Last time VE was on a network like that (GameFan) the network just suddenly went down one afternoon. I should know, my site was one of the ones that was thrown out in the cold along with VE.
And Gamers.com is likely in the same boat though I admit I don't know any details about their situation. Take a look at their site and see if they're selling anything. Think about how they're making money. Apparently, they're not (banner ads don't make money anymore). They likely won't be around much longer either.
And the worst part is... the more sites that go down, the more traffic it drives to the remaining sites, which increases their bandwidth costs and quickens their demise.
The VC has dried up. The end times for all the large sites are drawing near. You'll either be paying for quality content soon, or you'll be scrambling to find small, poorly-put-together sites that are the only kind that can afford to stay free.
NO CARRIER
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?
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
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
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.