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blubberquark · 3 months

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Are Game Blogs Uniquely Lost?

All this started with my looking for the old devlog of Storyteller. I know at some point it was linked from the blogroll on the Braid devlog. Then I tried to look at on old devlog of another game that is still available. The domain for Storyteller is still active. The devblog is gone.

I tried an old bookmark from an old PC (5 PCs ago, I think). It was a web site linked to pixel art and programming tutorials. Instead of linking to the pages directly, some links link led to a twitter threads by authors that collected their work posted on different sites. Some twitter threads are gone because the users were were suspended, or had deleted their accounts voluntarily. Others had deleted old tweets. There was no archive. I have often seen links accompanied by "Here's a thread where $AUTHOR lists all his writing on $TOPIC". I wonder if the sites are still there, and only the tweets are gone.

A lot of "games studies" around 2010 happened on blogs, not in journals. Games studies was online-first, HTML-first, with trackbacks, tags, RSS and comment sections. The work that was published in PDF form in journals and conference proceedings is still there. The blogs are gone. The comment sections are gone. Kill screen daily is gone.

I followed a link from critical-distance.com to a blog post. That blog is gone. The domain is for sale. In the Wayback Machine, I found the link. It pointed to the comment section of another blog. The other blog has removed its comment sections and excluded itself from the Wayback Machine.

I wonder if games stuff is uniquely lost. Many links to game reviews at big sites lead to "page not found", but when I search the game's name, I can find the review from back in 2004. The content is still there, the content management systems have been changed multiple times.

At least my favourite tumblr about game design has been saved in the Wayback Machine: Game Design Tips.

To make my point I could list more sites, more links, 404 but archived, or completely lost, but when I look at small sites, personal sites, blogs, or even forums, I wonder if this is just confirmation bias. There must be all this other content, all these other blogs and personal sites. I don't know about tutorials for knitting, travel blogs, stamp collecting, or recipe blogs. I usually save a print version of recipes to my Download folder.

Another big community is fan fiction. They are like modding, but for books, I think. I don't know if a lot of fan fiction is lost to bit rot and link rot either. What is on AO3 will probably endure, but a lot might have gone missing when communities fandom moved from livejournal to tumblr to twitter, or when blogs moved from Wordpress to Medium to Substack.

I have identified some risk factors:

Personal home pages made from static HTML can stay up for while if the owner meticulously catalogues and links to all their writing on other sites, and if the site covers a variety of interests and topics.

Personal blogs or content management systems are likely to lose content in a software upgrade or migration to a different host.

Writing is more likely to me lost when it's for-pay writing for a smaller for-profit outlet.

A cause for sudden "mass extinction" of content is the move between social networks, or the death of a whole platform. Links to MySpace, Google+, Diaspora, and LiveJournal give me mostly or entirely 404 pages.

In the gaming space, career changes or business closures often mean old content gets deleted. If an indie game is wildly successful, the intellectual property might ge acquired. If it flops, the domain will lapse. When development is finished, maybe the devlog is deleted. When somebody reviews games at first on Steam, then on a blog, and then for a big gaming mag, the Steam reviews might stay up, but the personal site is much more likely to get cleaned up. The same goes for blogging in general, and academia. The most stable kind of content is after hours hobbyist writing by somebody who has a stable and high-paying job outside of media, academia, or journalism.

The biggest risk factor for targeted deletion is controversy. Controversial, highly-discussed and disseminated posts are more likely to be deleted than purely informative ones, and their deletion is more likely to be noticed. If somebody starts a discussion, and then later there are hundreds of links all pointing back to the start, the deletion will hurt more and be more noticeable. The most at-risk posts are those that are supposed to be controversial within a small group, but go viral outside it, or the posts that are controversial within a small group, but then the author says something about politics that draws the attention of the Internet at large to their other writings.

The second biggest risk factor for deletion is probably usefulness combined with hosting costs. This could also be the streetlight effect at work, like in the paragraph above, but the more traffic something gets, the higher the hosting costs. Certain types of content are either hard to monetise, and cost a lot of money, or they can be monetised, so the free version is deliberately deleted.

The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to link between different sites, abandon a blogging platform or social network for the next thing, try to consolidate their writings by deleting their old stuff and setting up their own site, only to let the domain lapse. The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to mess with the HTML of their templates or try out different blogging software.

If content is spread between multiple sites, or if links link to social network posts that link to blog post with a comment that links to a reddit comment that links to a geocities page, any link could break. If content is consolidated in a forum, maybe Archive team could save all of it with some advance notice.

All this could mean that indie games/game design theory/pixel art resources are uniquely lost, and games studies/theory of games criticism/literary criticism applied to games are especially affected by link rot. The semi-professional, semi-hobbyist indie dev, the writer straddling the line between academic and reviewer, they seem the most affected. Artists who start out just doodling and posting their work, who then get hired to work on a game, their posts are deleted. GameFAQs stay online, Steam reviews stay online, but dev logs, forums and blog comment sections are lost.

Or maybe it's only confirmation bias. If I was into restoring old cars, or knitting, or collecting stamps, or any other thing I'd think that particular community is uniquely affected by link rot, and I'd have the bookmarks to prove it.

Figuring this out is important if we want to make predictions about the future of the small web, and about the viability of different efforts to get more people to contribute. We can't figure it out now, because we can't measure the ground truth of web sites that are already gone. Right now, the small web is mostly about the small web, not about stamp collecting or knitting. If we really manage to revitalise the small web, will it be like the small web of today except bigger, the web-1.0 of old, or will certain topics and communities be lost again?

#small web #blogging about blogging #link rot #bit rot #games studies

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okayto · 29 days

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EVIL BOOPS?????

#boops boops boops boops boops #blogging about blogging

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lensman-arms-race · 5 months

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It's annoying how many unskibbed posts have the tag 'skibidi toilet' because people think it's just a general meme tag. Some of us actually LIKE the web animation with the funny robots!

(I expect every fandom gets this to an extent. I'm just talking about Skibidi Toilet specifically right now, because that's what this blog's about and I don't see it nearly as much in the other fandom tags that I track.)

#blogging about blogging

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paulgadzikowski · 26 days

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I haven't been keeping up with my scrolling lately, as you may have realized from the sparseness of posting/queueing. But I am being a Responsible Adult instead of a Main Character and am seeing a doctor Friday morning about the diarrhea and nausea that's been coming-and-going since Sunday. Meanwhile there will still be at least Three Faces link posts at 10:00 (as long as I'm still producing a comic strip or a sketch every day, no promises) and at 22:00 (cuz those are reruns). I appreciate the well wishes that've been sent.

#blogging #blogging about blogging #sick #hero of three faces

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iloveannaliese · 5 months

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Blogger Aesthetic pt I

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flechettestorm · 3 months

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Found a robot-themed vore blog in my For You tab, nice.

The header said 'NSFW/kink blogs do not interact'. Mate... you ARE a NSFW and kink blog.

(I wanted to reblog some of their art to here, but I will respect the DNI request even though I think it's daft.)

#blogging about blogging

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tuesdayisfordancing · 1 year

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I’m against putting anything like this in my bio or a pinned post because of aesthetics and a resistance to shaping my blog around other people’s preferences but like. Fleeting announcement:

If there is any type of fictional scenario or person or being or whatever that you consider it unethical to get off to, I prefer you assume that I get off to it. I feel no obligation to disclose whether I have any particular kink (or for that matter intellectual curiosity that makes me find a kink interesting to read) and no desire whatsoever to disavow any kink no matter how horrifying. So if you don’t want to interact with people who have certain kinks (or ever read about certain kinks for other reasons), consider this the Creator Chose Not To Warn of, uh, blogger interiority. (And, in a way, blog content, though I would put warning tags on specific posts, so not exactly. But to clear, this blog is not inherently a “horrifying kink” free zone.)

#blogging about blogging

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heroofthreefaces · 1 year

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tryna make an unrebloggable post just to work out how it’s done

ah okay, it's done in the beta text editor, on the gear menu at the upper right of the text box

where there's now also a function for dating your post to the past, like at lj or dw

(not me putting all this useful information in a post you can't reblog)

#blogging #blogging about blogging

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ihfsttinuf · 1 year

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Jesus, I’ve been blogging on this platform for ten years as of last Friday.

I have really nothing to add there, just… wow, I guess. Extremely weird feeling. Still odd that I only started a Tumblr when I was twenty-one, all things considered, but jokes about being a different kind of embarrassing teen aside, I dunno, at the time I thought I was late to the party, but I guess I was early to a different one, kinda? I’m rambling. Happy May everyone.

#blogging about blogging #ten years!#you're older than you've ever been and now you're even older

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benbamboozled · 2 years

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I like when I see a bunch of people reblogging something specifically from my blog.

Like, not the popular-blog-reblogs pipeline, but when they reblog straight from the sweet, sweet source (me).

Where did you come from? How did you find that random post about Tim Drake? And from my blog, specifically?

#mostly it’s just baffling because I am not popular.#did people suddenly get an interest in the particular tag keywords???#it has to be attached as one of those ‘more like this’ squares? i assume?#blogging about blogging #anyway it makes me happy.#my popular posts about Tim are cute but actually I’m like ‘god I love watching you destroy yourself’#‘you are your best when you have nothing and your life is a toilet’

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sparkles-and-trash · 1 year

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5.800 is crazy, thank you guys sm for being here, and sorry for the lack of writing lately, it’ll be better soon, I promise 💫

#feels like I just did the 5k raffle damn #blogging about blogging #personal #follower milestone #kinda #idk I’m just grateful <3

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okayto · 28 days

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Boops and love on the planet earth for one glorious day

#boops boops boops boops boops #blogging about blogging

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lensman-arms-race · 6 months

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We're so normal on the Discord.

(Thanks to @gamie99 for the screengrab)

#blogging about blogging

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paulgadzikowski · 28 days

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For what must be the first time in years, my Tumblr queue is empty (except for the next 24 hours' Three Faces link posts)

I'm sick and tired

#blogging #blogging about blogging #sick #looking after mom

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tuesdayintheservantshall · 2 years

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Attention Followers!

You may have noticed that I am absolute shit at tagging. The more things I try to tag, the less reliable I am at actually tagging them, starting literally at 2 and getting worse at 3. When I was tagging spoilers I accidentally changed what tag I was using without warning twice, it’s bad.

So, I’d like to get a sense of what would be most beneficial for me to tag if I limit myself to 2. If I currently have followers with either Mr. J. K. (and his relationship with Thomas) or Mr. G. D./Q. S. (and his relationship with Thomas) blacklisted, could you let me know? I can make no promises, but it would be good to at least decide where to put my efforts instead of aiming for 3 and failing entirely at them all!

Or for that matter if there’s another character or ship you’ve been wishing I would tag, speak up, that second slot is open to all bids! Reply to this or send me an ask, or a carrier pigeon - whichever!

#blogging about blogging

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regallibellbright · 2 years

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*Queues up another like 35 screenshots in my drafts that I will then save to my laptop rather than my phone I am reading on, and probably manually transcribe in at least some cases, because this is STILL somehow the easiest way for me to do screenshots and meta from ebooks*

*I am not even at the section I have referred to as ‘What The FUCK Is Your Deal, Oleander’ yet. Close but not quite!*

So anyway the reread’s going well.

#be the serpent reread project #blogging about blogging

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