It happened that I was looking back on my old game reviews, and I hit a link to a game web site, and the site was gone.
Not a shock. Web sites vanish. It made me sad, though. I like those single-game, single-message web sites!
I doubt anybody loves building them. There's this sense of capitalist obligation. If you're shipping a game, you need to grab a vaguely suited domain name and put up (a) screenshots and (b) links to all the store platforms and (d) a press kit in case a journalist notices. Once the game ships, you go back and fill in (c) adulatory press quotes. That's how you get any google juice there is to get.
I did this for Hadean Lands, and now every time I mention Hadean Lands on my blog I can link to hadeanlands.com
. That's great. Search engines dig it.
But of course I am on board with keeping my web site alive over decades. I registered eblong.com
in 1997, I believe. It will run as long as I pay the bills. When I registered hadeanlands.com
in 2010, I put it on the same hosting service and the same bill. No extra effort.
(Yes, my will allows my beneficiaries to keep my web sites running. I said decades, I meant decades.)
Not everyone can; not everyone does. How many sites have we lost?