racketboy.com

J T wrote:If people want more gaming posts, then I encourage them to make them. I like to talk politics because it is central to my being, but I also like to seek retro game spirit animals, start retro game rap battles, make mixtapes, write poetry about Shadow of the Colossus, and talk endlessly about retro video game music. You have to make the threads you want to see on the forums.

Thing is i have made threads and posts on the forum only to have them ignored mostly unlike some of the ones you guys have posted >_>

jp1 wrote:Ah, I missed that one. Your side has all the guns anyway.

At first I was thinking "hey man that's a stereotype", but in reality I do own an arsenal of assault rifles, military grade shotguns, and large caliber pistols. So yeah...

miked here. Just some guy that claims he will become involved with this forum but never actually does. I was going to make a new thread about this, but it seems like its lightly being talked about here already, and might as well use this one, as there is already a thread for that.

I have been visiting the site for what i would like to say is 12 years, or possibly more.(Back when this site was really nothing more than a blog. If someone knows the original URL so i can type it up in the wayback machine, i would greatly appreciate it. This one only goes back to 2005.) For some reason I still stop by about once a month to see if any new articles have popped up, and I lurk the forums for a bit. Every time i stop by it feels more and more like this site is well.... dying.

Back in this sites heyday, articles on this site were posted constantly, several times a month if not more. Hell this place was a bible for people such as myself, especially in a time when "retro" gaming wasn't really a mainstream hobby. Now we have hundreds, if not thousands of youtube channels, various websites and blogs, and even print magazines dedicated to the hobby, but this site has been around what feels like so much longer.

When I first started coming here there was obviously a love for old games. A true passion. I understand people get busy, get jobs, have kids etc. and racket himself was the guy creating the majority of the articles. But it still surprises me that nobody has stepped up to the plate to create new content. Granted i did see the thread mentioning a new podcast, which would be a step in the right direction.

Still, when i do stop by it seems like I learn something new just by reading a few posts in the forum, and it kind of boggles my mind why this never gets turned into an article for the front page. Yeah the forum is what you could call active but it seems like this place maybe has 100 people actively posting, and it feels like less every time. With a dead front page it almost feels like this community doesn't want to grow anymore.

I do appreciate the attempt last year at new articles, but even those felt a little half assed to me, at least compared to the older one. I mean, sure there might be thousands of PC games from the past, and would be damn impossible to make a definitive list, but the hidden gems article only briefly mentioned 5 games, one of which was Street Fighter Alpha 2, hardly a hidden gem in my eyes. No offense noise, SFA2 is my favorite in the series.

More confusing is that retro gaming and retro themed titles are for popular than ever. Does the AT Games Sega system suck? Of course it does, but why wouldn't you post a review of it, or the newly released NES classic? Or the RetroAVS? How could you not post reviews of modern retro themed games like ShovelKnight, or the endless supply of indie titles on steam? While the rest of the internet grows with new content related to this hobby, racketboy only seems to grow smaller.

It sucks to swing by and see you guys bickering about politics in the world thread. i honestly miss what this site used to be. A positive place to learn and talk about old games. It never came across as big headed, or highly opinionated, but mostly factual. Probably the closest thing i have ever encountered online that felt like true gaming journalism. Whether it be from a viewpoint of nostalgia, or whether you just never stopped playing these games in the first place, you could always learn something new. And remember folks, its not possible to be nostalgic about something you never stopped doing.

Not sure what I'm trying to say here, but I don't want this site to disappear. It has taught me 95% of what i know about his hobby. Not trying to get too wishy washy, but it makes me sad when I see the dead front page with articles from 6 months ago and a link to a podcast that has been dead for almost 2 years. Hell, all of the guides are riddled with outdated prices, dead links and missing images, and that just sucks.

Don't let this place die guys. I don't post, but regardless this site has been very special to me for a large part of my life. I really am rooting for you guys to pull this place back together, and i will always stop by from time to time to see wants going on. I just don't want it to be a 404 error someday.

jp1 wrote:What? It was a joke.

Apologies if that crossed some line.

You owe no apology, that was directed at bogus who I recently had to restore my foe block on because I'm sick of reading his abusive crap. Not so much it actually gets to me as it doesn't, but I tend to not let shitty comments end up not being responded to so if I can't see it I'm not motivated to respond to it.

Tanooki wrote:

jp1 wrote:What? It was a joke.

Apologies if that crossed some line.

You owe no apology, that was directed at bogus who I recently had to restore my foe block on because I'm sick of reading his abusive crap. Not so much it actually gets to me as it doesn't, but I tend to not let shitty comments end up not being responded to so if I can't see it I'm not motivated to respond to it.

I love you to.

Tanooki wrote:

jp1 wrote:What? It was a joke.

Apologies if that crossed some line.

You owe no apology, that was directed at bogus who I recently had to restore my foe block on because I'm sick of reading his abusive crap. Not so much it actually gets to me as it doesn't, but I tend to not let shitty comments end up not being responded to so if I can't see it I'm not motivated to respond to it.

Yeah, he's the one with the shitty comments ...

Thanks for popping in to say 'hi' miked. Some valid criticisms. I have a article in the works. Hopefully others do to. I've never made a main page contribution before though.

Agree with miked and I'll echo JT. Thanks for chiming in. I have very similar feelings.

I first discovered Racketboy in 2007 and after two years of lurking finally created an account. Can't say I've done much good here with less than 2000 posts in 8 years but I'm always here reading and I don't recall being involved in anything negative.

Maybe it is time for this site to roll over and die but I don't know where else I'd go. Truth is even though I don't participate like I should I still feel like I know 20 to 30 of you all as though see and chat with you every day. I don't want that to go away.

Weird to wake up in the middle of the night - grab some OJ - and check the Racketboy front page. Pretty tired And not sure where to go from here. Plus typing on shit iPhone.

Can't wait for my new old laptop to come in tomorrow! First laptop I can truly call my own. That sounds weird but it's true. Picked up Noise's used one.

It's almost 2017 and I just bought my first laptop... for very cheap. All thanks to this site. First thing I'm doing is throwing Starcraft on that thing!

darsparx wrote:

J T wrote:If people want more gaming posts, then I encourage them to make them. I like to talk politics because it is central to my being, but I also like to seek retro game spirit animals, start retro game rap battles, make mixtapes, write poetry about Shadow of the Colossus, and talk endlessly about retro video game music. You have to make the threads you want to see on the forums.

Thing is i have made threads and posts on the forum only to have them ignored mostly unlike some of the ones you guys have posted >_>

I knew it!

miked comes and drops a lot of truth!

I'd say that there's a few problems that he pointed out that have larger structural issues that would need to be addressed:

1) Most of the primary content creators behind the site's heyday have not nearly the time, resource investment, nor motive to maintain that level of work today nor to train new folks to do it. As far as I know, Nick is not really able to devote any substantive time to this site (nor has he been for some time) because of other commitments. I don't know that the site changes significantly without the leadership of its owner. I also know that Nick does enough to make sure the site is self-sustainable and the forum lights are kept on, and for many of us that's important and that's enough.

2) The web - and retro gaming on the web - has changed dramatically since the heyday of this site. It launched before social media took off (Twitter and Facebook both have only been a significant thing since like 2006/2007). At its peak popularity, it grew in large part to exposure on Digg and promotion across forums. Returning the site to something like its "former glory" and prominence would entail much more than just generating new content and posting it to the front page. The entire "front page & forums" model of content creation is largely gone by the wayside and is unattractive to many web users today.

3) There are a number of things which work against making this site attractive to new audiences. Those include

-the name of the site (sorry!), which in itself doesn't suggest anything about video games
-the fact that so many of the active forum members have been here a long time makes us come across (fairly) as a small, tight-knit, already defined community
-the age of much of the main page content suggests (fairly) a lack of concerted effort and interest to stay "in the loop" with retro gaming, so we are not seen as a valuable news resource (even if we stay up on things in the forum)

This isn't the limit to the larger set of considerations that exist in order to "Make Racketboy Great Again". I don't think that a political thread (most forums have them) is a major deterrent to those goals, though.