Indygamer Is Dead

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: December 27th, 2007

Alternate Title: Tim Sells Out Once Again

Hey, remember a little while ago when Tim was talking about selling his blog, getting out of the game, and living the rest of his days in quiet solitude atop a tower of pure currency? Well, thank goodness, he has changed his mind! Sort of.

It seems Simon Carless has finally found the true purpose for that (sweet, juicy) “IndieGames.com” domain that’s been lying around. Classy ladies and fine gentlemen, I present to you: Indie Games: The Weblog — Tim’s new and improved blog (and latest member of the CMP Game Group).

Update your bookmarks, folks! Indygamer is now officially defunct. But no worries — Tim and Simon (who I hear is “made of unicorn giggles and other
miracles”) have made it clear that this partnership will only improve upon the Indygamer foundation, not alter it.

In short: new name, new domain, higher visibility, funding…
Same great taste.

Read the official announcement here.
Find the new site here.

Oh, and best of luck to you, Tim! Here’s to many more years of unrelenting journalism. :)

Posted in Community, Nerd Love | Tags: TimW

http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Apparently I get crazy with formatting when I’m up ’til 5AM…

Anyway, congrats, Tim! I hope this works out well for you.
http://www.shotbeakgames.za.net/niche Tr00jg

So… nothing really changes? Its just prettier and linked to an awesome domain right?

Kewl.
mr. podunkian

i think it’s worth mentioning that the site is no longer really ‘his,’ meaning that he doesn’t have full control over the content. he was telling me earlier that he didn’t have the ability to appoint new editors, which is kind of a shame. at the same time, he’s been one of the most thorough indie game reporters, and i hope he doesn’t let the loss of ownership get in the way of that.
http://gnomeslair.blogspot.com/ gnome

Still, I feel we could trust the new site to be improved and it seems that Tim still gets to manage editors…
http://ithamore.blogspot.com/ ithamore

That’s wonderful news for the indie gaming community. Congratulations Tim.

I’m sure they had their reasons, but did they really have to strip Independent Gaming of nearly all its posts and links? At the least, I hope they end up giving credit to all the other editors for their posts. Currently, every post reads “Posted by timw” with the correct date of the post.

If they were able to preserve the dates, why didn’t they bother to preserve the authors (even if they had to create ghost accounts to do so)? I know it might be a bit of work, but this is coming from the librarian/archivist side of me. There is a proper, logical way of providing information. Also, should they want to correct this, I suspect they must contact Google (the owners of Blogger) immediately if they don’t have a complete and accurate backup of their own.
Dan MacDonald

awesome, great to see the greatest blog (no offense to tigsource) continue on. In fact I think that’s what I’m going to refer to it as from now on. “saw this posted on ‘the greatest blog’ yesterday, check it out”

no seriously…
simonc

‘he was telling me earlier that he didnâ€™t have the ability to appoint new editors, which is kind of a shame.’

This was only because he didn’t know how to do it in Movable Type. :) Now he does! So he will be.
Splinter of Chaos

Shouldn’t the name of this post be “Indygamer Is NOT Dead”? Seeing as they’re NOT dead? They’ve just moved?
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

D-Mac: No, seriously… BANT. :P
http://www.awesomenessinabox.com oranda

@ithamore

They couldn’t import the editor’s names into the links because none of us had accounts at the time. So when they did the import, they just put Tim’s name on everything. The credit is still there, though; if you look at the bottom of each post it indicates who the original author was before the import.
rinkuhero

Tim is now able to add new editors, he just couldn’t figure it out at first. I can post in it now as usual.

I wouldn’t exactly call it selling out because Tim told me he hasn’t actually got one cent (yet). I don’t know the details of it though, so consider that just a rumor rather than fact.

I’ll continue to write for them as long as they aren’t too intrusive. I only hope the ads don’t scare some of its normal readership away (everyone should get adblock in Firefox installed).
MattC

Yes, now that they’ve helped indygamer with financial trouble, let’s disable the ads used to pay for the site.
rinkuhero

The corporation that bought the blog is twice the size of Nintendo (in terms of employees anyway). I doubt they bought it for the ad revenue.
MattC

Yeah, but show your support for Tim, or something. Come on, you’re an editor there (still, presumably). I’m kind of surprised you advocate the undermining of their operation. Perhaps they’re hoping the blog will sustain itself.

Anyways, they’re only gifs. It’s not like they have annoying flash ads that cripple my laptop and I have to right-click and uncheck “Play” to get them to stop!! Those kinds of ads I understand blocking but I sometimes don’t get why people are so offended or bothered by ads in general. Do you fear that your decisions will be influenced by them? Is it that you are constantly being told what to buy? Haven’t you ever found out about something interesting because of an advertisement? Haven’t you ever advertised your game?

So go ahead and block them. Not to sound inconsiderate, but it’s quite late and I don’t really care what you do. The thing that got me to post before was the campaigning for people to block them. (You might as well put up an ad telling them to do so. <-joke)
rinkuhero

It’s not the file format that makes certain ads annoying, it’s when they’re large, flashy, and animated that they distract from reading. It takes me a lot longer to read an article if there’s huge glowing, flashing squares next to the text, and I think sites that use ads that are animated in that way are doing a disservice to their readership by distracting them from the the contents of the site.

I’m not campaigning for people to block ads, but I do recommend that people install adblock and use Firefox because I think it improves the experience of the internet.

I have nothing against ads which aren’t distracting. For instance, I like the ads for other movies that are put prior to a movie starting in a movie theater. I also like Google ads, small button ads, and that type of thing. I like signs on shops, I like television commercials. None of those interfere with the content.

I’ve never advertised my games using large flashing, animated ads, no.

I also don’t see how this is related to showing or not showing support to Tim, nor do I see what you mean by undermining their operation. Could you elaborate? As I mentioned, it’s very unlikely that either CMP or Tim rely on the ad revenue from the meagre 3000 or so visits per day that it gets. It will probably make the site, what, 10 dollars a month? I’d be happy to personally donate 10 dollars a month to Tim instead.
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Remember that time I was _clearly_ joking about Tim selling out? That was a fun time.
rinkuhero

I thought that was a possibility, but it seemed ambivalent; even Eden and Tim were confused a bit about what to make of it. Glad to hear you don’t think that way.
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

You kids are easily confused.

PROTIP: Read the entire post.
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

And I apologize in advance for the attitude in the above post. I’m just in a mood. :P
Indy Mastermind

Thank the heavens for this great announcement.
I was really worried about the future of the site, but it seems it will continue with its greatness.
Success People!
MattC

Let my above post be an example for those who think they can communicate on the Internet when deprived of sleep. I still mean what I said, but I could have thought things through and thought about what I was saying. Of course people hate ads.

That said, however, the ads are put there for a reason. I don’t know why they are but by subverting them you are subverting the intentions of the people who run the site and put them there.

I also don’t think Tim has “sold out” so I apologize if that seems the case.
rinkuhero

I think there’s a few miles of distance between saying that ads distract from reading something and recommending a way around that problem so that the blog doesn’t lose what audience it had and “subverting” a site. If anything I was trying to keep the blog popular, because a lot of people who liked the old location will see the ads and be turned away by them and miss the otherwise great content.

I know they put them there for a reason, but I’d have to know what that reason is before I endorse it. If you have any insights into their reason, let me know, because I honestly have no idea.

And if you notice, all of the ads are for other things CMP also owns — Game Developer magazine and the IGF. So I suspect they aren’t even generating any money.
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

You know, I kind of hope the ads _do_ turn away some of the readership… I’ve noticed Tim’s blog more and more becoming a haven for the rejects of the indie games community. (There, I said it.)

I’m hoping this new ownership will clear out the riffraff and (more importantly) give Tim greater freedom to continue his excellent, excellent coverage.
http://www.planetfreeplay.com Mosh

If the ads were targeted just to annoy the rejects of the indie community that would be an awesome theory.
Zeno

Never noticed the ads, I use Firefox.
rinkuhero

I think reject thing might be because TIGSource tends to ban people or delete comments that annoy people, whereas indygamer has a more free speech and uncensored approach. Mainly because Tim’s a very tolerant person, to his great credit. So people like Kon Tiki, who annoys just about everyone, are still free to write what they want on indygamer. I’m not sure I’d want to change that. Besides, I thought we were trying to grow the independent games movement, not shrink it?
http://www.planetfreeplay.com Mosh

Well actually each editor has on Indygamer has always been free to choose which comments to delete from their own news/review posts. I believe Kon-Tiki’s comments have been deleted on occasion (not by me though).
rinkuhero

That makes sense. The only comments I’ve ever deleted or requested deleted are spam, extremely inappropriate comments (the kind that use ten curse words in an eleven-word comment), and links to pirated games.
Secret

One of the reasons some people weren’t banned from the old blog is that Tim wasn’t able to ban anyone. That feature was not available with the blog he used.

I don’t think he enjoys the big fights that ensue when people get too grumpy. Otherwise he wouldn’t have closed some posts for comments, right?
http://ithamore.blogspot.com/ ithamore

Woot! Indygamer is back from the dead. Now we can have the best of both worlds.

Also, it looks like Indie Games took out all the posts that weren’t by Tim (and at least one of his questionable ones), and the the other editors’ posts are being added once they’re correctly sited. It’s good to see the move is now being handled more professionally.

I feel like I was a bit imprudent earlier: such a big blog relocation is going to take awhile to properly complete of course. However, since the new blog is still in beta/release-candidate form, all comments on it should be at least a tad helpful or insightful.