Zarf Updates

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?

You might ask whether these single-game sites are meant to last. (Leaving aside weirdos like me.) They exist solely for rando gamers to google. Commercial games media sites never ever link to them. I suppose I should put that in past tense, since there may not be any commercial games media left soon, but even nu-indie rags like Aftermath are inconsistent about linking to the developer site.

Weirdos like me will do it, though! Since 2019 or so, I've been using a standard tag for my game reviews:

But what is the "game site"? I don't want to link to the Steam page! Why should Valve get my precious link energy? I should support the developer, right?

So every time I post a review, I try to hunt down the real game site. My order of preference:

• A dedicated game site domain -- the kind I've been describing.
• A game page on the developer's web site.
• A game page on the publisher's web site.
• The Steam page.
• The Itch page.

(Sorry, Steam is above Itch -- for this purpose. I love Itch. But if a game is on both platforms, then Steam is where they're making their money, and I want to support that. Obviously, if a game chooses to fly Itch-only, then I'll link there.)

Therefore, I have a good five-year history of links to game sites, game developer sites, and so on. I can poll them and count!

This is of course an extremely unscientific sample. It is almost entirely indie narrative, adventure, and puzzle games. A lot of it comes from the IGF lists, so it's relatively timely -- but I play some games a year or two after they come out. For IGF judging, I review some games before they come out.

I am testing whether the original URL, which I found for my review page, still works. No fair re-googling! This is about maintaining old links. An old URL is "alive" if it still shows you good game info, or redirects to a site that does. (Sometimes a developer takes down the game-specific site but keeps the domain as a redirect to their company site. That's fine.) A URL is "dead" if the server is down, or shows an error, or the domain has been taken over by an ad squatter. (Rearranged your studio site and the original URLs are 404? Sorry, that's a dead link.)

The links are categorized as dedicated game pages, company game pages, and platform (Steam/Itch) pages. This is fewer buckets than my list above, but it roughly describes how much effort goes into the upkeep.

This logic bakes in some assumptions about how web pages die. It's rare for someone to explicitly withdraw a game from circulation. (I don't think any of the games on my list did that.) Almost always the problem is an expired domain. Sometimes it's broken server tech (expired SSL cert, web framework busted, etc.) That's why it's useful to distinguish between "game-specific site" and "company site". If you have a lot of domains, your company site is probably worth keeping up, but you might stop thinking about old long-tail games.

And now, the numbers. Rotate the board!

(Totals are links in my review blog posts. Counted by hand; mistakes are likely. I didn't try to track 2019 or earlier years because I didn't have enough greppable links.)

I thought the wrap on this post would be "Don't make game-specific sites; they die quick. Create a studio site instead." But the numbers don't really support that conclusion. Yeah, game-specific sites die a bit faster, but only by couple excess deaths per year.

What this looks like is that indie studios have a death rate. When they go, the game page dies, whether it's a separate domain or part of the studio site. But the Steam/Itch page stays up -- presumably because it brings in a bit of money, and somebody is still happy to collect that.

(And you don't have to renew anything to keep the Steam/Itch listing up. Apple is its own can of worms, obviously, but let's not go there today.)

The death rate is low for studios that released something (that I played) in 2022, but heats up beyond that point. I don't have enough data for a real curve, but you can see the bump.

Also, for some reason, in 2021 everybody had a game or studio page. I only had to go to the Steam link once. Why? Say "COVID", why not.

Anyhow. I still think studio sites are easier to maintain than game-specific sites. When I registered hadeanlands.com, that was a fit of optimism! All my later games (Meanwhile, Leviathan, etc) have been pages on zarfhome.com.

(HL will never have a sequel, but... I'm holding the hermeticlands.com domain. You know. Just to have it handy.)

But then, I'm a tiny solo outfit, and I have to watch my action points like a hawk. If you're any larger -- even a smallish indie -- you probably want the extra visibility of the dedicated game site. Just remember that it does take effort, over the years. Budget accordingly.