Today sees two long-time gaming sites shutting down. Gamespy and 1up.com are both being closed by Ziff Davis (their ownership group) to make for a more streamlined business model, with some of their staff and content being merged with IGN, ZD’s latest acquisition. We look at the situation as they ride into the sunset.
In a lot of ways this makes sense. Running three sites with slightly different agendas covering the same topic, paying different crews of people to run each, isn’t efficient. What hurts is that each site had its own fan base. I personally read all three now and again but there were stalwarts who only read ‘their’ site, and will be a little lost without it. Today is a sad day for them and for the many that lost their jobs in the process. If I could I would offer a few of the writers spots here at All Around Gaming Hub but seeing as how we’re currently running sans profit, I don’t see how we would be able to pay any of them, especially enough to make up for what they lost.
As a small site run by a small group without a huge corporation over our heads, we’re pretty safe to stay at this as long as we have content to share and people to read it. This is our 8th year online, believe it or not. I won’t go into any of our history because this article isn’t about us; it’s about the two sites that are closing today.
My largest issue with this is the consolidation of power in the large gaming site arena. Smaller sites still abound, and even flourish, but mega-sites are either dying off or being merged into a singular entity. Since allot of gamers, particularly mainstream (compared to hardcore) gamers, used these sites as their compass, this lessens the opinions they hear. It’s good to hear various sides of a story, or read various people’s take on a new game, to better form your own opinion. If all they’re hearing is one voice, they can lose perspective. That’s my worry – that this can be used to make form bias in the more casual amongst us.
That, however, is a problem for another time. Today we just look back at the site’s that are being lost, and move on. The internet, at the rate it moves, doesn’t lend itself to strong introspection. I personally drew some inspiration from Gamespy (among others) when I started this site back in 2005, and will miss it and 1up, despite having only been on the latter intermittently. Such is life on the internet; things come and go so fast. I look forward to hitting our 10 year anniversary here, and who knows what will and won’t be here in two years. Whatever comes and goes, I know we’ll still be around.
– Alphasim
