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It has been 3 years since I became CEO of Shacknews, and I wanted to provide our most loyal users an update on how the site is doing. Shacknews has grown our monthly unique visitors by 152% in that time. We continue to refine our process and have consistently put out quality content.

The team was planning a cosmetic design update to the site that would have gone live this month, but I scrapped that idea. Instead, we are focusing our efforts on a major redesign of the site that includes the Chatty, Mercury subscribers, and new ways for users to express their opinions.

If there is one thing I have learned in my time here, it is that Shackers love to share their opinions. This site needs user reviews and a more modern way for users to share content. Shackers deserve profile pages with game libraries as well as integration of tagging.

We face several problems as a company going forward. On the monetization front, it is becoming more apparent everyday that display advertising is not the way forward. We will be shifting our focus towards sponsored content, like the Show Important live streams you may have seen on our Twitch channel, as well as incentives to subscribe to Mercury. Another issue we face is user retention. Over 90% of our visitors last month were new to Shacknews, but not many of them stick around. These are issues that are not unique to Shacknews, but I believe we have a plan in place that will address both of these very important problems.

Shacknews is bigger than most folks on here think. We are held in high regard by many developers and our competitors in the games media are even taking notice. Features like or Doom Select highlight how we are approaching the changing landscape of games media by creating what we believe is needed. We are currently working on a massive Quake feature and its release will be a moment that Shacknews reclaims its identity. So many sites are struggling to find their voice in 2017, and I hope our mission is becoming more clear to you.

Shacknews will provide gaming news from the cutting edge of technology, but that requires a site that functions better than it currently does. Yes, functional search is a priority in the current redesign as is better mod tools that allow users to help flag threads for moderation. Beyond this, our Shacknews community has to become more welcoming to the new generation of gamers while staying true to our roots. This has proven to be one of the most difficult parts of my job.

About a month ago, eonix asked me what keeps me motivated? I didn't answer at the time, because that question deserved a proper amount of thought.

http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=36728580#item_36728580

I love video games. I have ever since I picked up a controller back in the 1980s. I think games provide an escape from things going on in a person's personal life and in the real world. Shacknews has given me the opportunity to share my opinions with millions of people, and meet some of my heroes along the way. Shacknews also provides a sanctuary for many of our users. The Chatty is the best online community I have ever been a part of, which is why so many people come here before they go anywhere else. We celebrate here, we grieve here, and we post dank memes here. This community holds a very special place in my heart.

Running this site is taking up the majority of my time these days, and it doesn't actually make me any money. I continue to do this because I love to do it. Most days don't even feel like work. It is that love I feel for video games and this community that keeps me going.

There will be a day when I am no longer needed here, and I will go the way of Steve and Maarten. This job requires 100% of your heart, and it can be draining, but what I have realized is that the joy is in the journey. I promise to continue to give my all to this site and this community as long as I am needed.

I will be providing more updates about our 2018 plans and reaching out to the community for feedback as we approach the biggest relaunch in the history of Shacknews.

Thank you,

Asif

[deleted]

Happy Trans Day of Visibility

I wouldn’t be here if not for the Shack. 20 years ago it was Diane’s posts about herself that clued me in on what it was I had known was wrong since I was 10 years old. Living in the south and mostly alone at the time it took me another 15+ years to come to terms with it and build up the support network I needed in order to finally take that step myself.

Which is why it saddens me there are so few trans voices left here today when once there were *many* whether you knew it or not. I myself only come here infrequently anymore and mostly out of a sense of responsibility of being one of the last old shack trans voices still standing.

No one chooses to be Trans. It’s just who we are, and we are trying to live our best lives the same as anyone else. Why would I choose the hardship and hate I have faced since transitioning. In the last year alone I’ve lost my marriage, car, home, and as of a week ago my job. But still I keep carrying on because I have the right to be myself.

As with anyone else on the planet, there should be no debate on Trans rights because there should never be a debate on anyone’s human rights. On anyone’s right to exist and be themselves. Just remember that and keep that in your core when discussion around trans people happens. And, help stand up for us in all things because there aren’t enough of us to defend ourselves alone.

If you have any trans friends or family members make it a point to reach out to them today and tell them how much you care. Then make it more than words and show it every day, not just today. They will love you for it.

https://i.imgur.com/ewOw9Xz.jpeg

Asif Khan posted a new article, <a target="_blank" href="/article/101298/pewdiepie-stop">PewDiePie, Stop</a>

Update on the State of Shacknews Chatty

I have seen a few threads over the past week asking if this place is dying from lack of users and posts.

I have compiled some figures on Chatty usage for you folks to consider.

According to our analytics, for the period of Jan 1-April 30, 2024 Chatty pageviews have declined by 13.45% from Jan 1-April 30, 2023.

In that same time period, the number of active users (defined as people who view the Chatty) has increased by 31% from 2023.

We do not keep track of the number of active posters, but if anyone wants to check the "health" of this place, we do publicly disclose how many active threads and comments there are at the top of the website for Chatty. It also shows up where the Chatty button (which says Forum) is located for people who are not logged into the site.

From my perspective, it is true that there are less threads now than there were a year or two ago. Most days we don't even get to a third Chatty page anymore. Weekends are usually just contained to one page.

Shacknews Chatty's traffic peaked in the mid-2000s (around 2006) and has largely been on a downtrend ever since. We have seen some signs of bottoming over the past three years, but no sustainable growth has ever materialized.

I don't have any comments or suggestions on how to reverse this, but I wanted to provide some data.

As for what this means for the future of this place? Nothing. Like the rest of the Shacknews company, it will keep going as long as I keep going.

It's nuts to me that people still don't realize how much fucking harder it is to play a game in a studio setting, while you're focused on trying to keep an intelligent conversation going, on a TV that may be too far away or is sitting at a weird angle or being blown out by studio lights. Throw in your everyday garden-variety performance anxiety and it's a recipe for fumbling around and playing worse than you do on your own time. Making the type of videos we make is so far removed from you sitting in the dark at your PC with the headphones on that they aren't even worth comparing but you're doing it anyway.

Nevermind that you, the passive viewer, are able to notice all kinds of shit onscreen that the person whose head is full of "what features should I show off next/is that a funny quip oh well I'm gonna throw it out there anyway/how do I just keep my mouth running so there's no dead air" lacks the spare mental capacity to keep up with. Some people are better at multitasking than others but nobody is playing at their best when they're playing for an audience.

Jeff mentioned something on I think UPF last week about how he basically fails to read any text on the screen when he's in the driver's seat and that baffled him. It's a basic cognitive thing. You just can't split your attention that many ways at once. Devs who come in are constantly saying the same thing -- look at the XCOM 2 dev QL we did a few weeks ago where Mark kept asking Garth to do the talking because he was getting worked by the game every time he stopped to explain something. Apparently this is not intuitive wisdom though and a lot of people will never understand it until they try to do it themselves.

I realize this post is overly defensive and explanatory but that's what you get when I run across this at 6:30 in the morning. Where's my coffee.

http://chattypics.com/files/ScreenShot20170821at93943AM_p2spg4y6f7.png

I don't even know why I'm adding into this, since the decision has already been made, but I guess I'm hoping this gets read by the mods and considered regardless.

First of all, I don't visit the chatty for the porn. However, the chatty is pretty much my single source for NWS material, simply because I don't ever really go searching for porn. Those of you that keep saying "there are plenty of other places you can go look at porn" are correct, but you are missing the point: we ARE NOT coming here looking for porn in the first place.

What I come to the chatty for is a filtered down aggregation of "Best Of What The Internet Has To Offer Today" I've been lurking/posting for 13 years, and the "chatty" (previously First Post/Werd/Evening Reading) has NEVER been a "video game forum"; it has been "anything we want to talk about" in a community of video game nerds. Sure, we discuss video games in the chatty all the time, but the community was specifically given an "any topic allowed" outlet for us to grow and bond together over the sharing and discussion of similar interests. To argue that "porn doesn't belong on a video game forum" is completely flawed, because again, the chatty is not, nor was it ever, a video game forum.

For over a decade, the chatty has been the only website I visit on a daily basis. I could come to the chatty to keep up to date on current events, politics, funny meme's de jour, gaming topics, and see quality NWS content. The community has had it's ups and down, but I've always kept coming back because I could always find something that interests me, and ignore the stuff that didn't. I never came here searching for political posts, but I would still read some and skip others. I never came here searching for food posts, but I would still read some and skip others. I never came here for NWS posts, but I still read some and skip others. See the pattern? What I'm getting at is that I understand that although I am a part of the community, I recognize that this is not my community. This is no one's community. The community does not belong to anyone, and it cannot be defined by how someone chooses to perceive or it what they think it should be. The community will will always define itself by the input of the contributors. That's not to say we shouldn't have mods, but they should be here to police abusive behavior, not define what this community is.

This is the first community guideline change I can remember being changed for the sake of content censorship without an undeniable underlying harmful aspect. We killed off MP3's because of the liability; we killed off pirated games/software because it hurts the gaming community we all love; etc. The closest comparison I can make between this new guideline and an existing guideline based solely on content would be banning meme overuse. One might say that banning overused meme's is content censorship, but I don't agree that it's the same as banning porn posts. Overused meme's truly offer NOTHING new and unique to the chatty, it's just rehashing the same annoying bullshit over and over again. However, so-called "contextless" porn dumps are introducing new content to users. Just because some people may think that content isn't appropriate doesn't change the fact that the it's new content and therefore it cannot be considered contextless. If you don't like people going "HOLY SHIT I WAS TO EAT HER SKID-MARKED THONGS" can scare people away, then ban those types of comments. Again, police the user behavior to curb the negative tone of the community; don't try to police the content. We already have filters to keep people from seeing the topics they aren't interested in. Leave it at that.

Anyway, I really hate even arguing about this topic, because I'm sure many of your who are in favor of killing of porn posts in the chatty will just assume I'm some greasy neckbeard neanderthal who just needs more material for my wank bank so I can squeeze one out. Well, I'm not...I'm just a guy who enjoy video games, and movies, and sports, and politics, and yes I enjoy me some nice looking nekkid womens. I liked being able to come to my one-stop shop for most of the things I enjoy seeing. Now one of those things is going away, which sucks. It's not going to stop me from coming here, but I'm going to miss the so called worthless "porn dumps". A great example is when I would see an NWS post from grendel I usually checked out the pics because it was pretty much guaranteed to be some quality hot women. Now I'm not going to get that quality hotness delivered up mixed in with everything else. I can accept it, but damnit that sucks.

Again, no clue why I'm even wasting my time typing this out since the decision has been made. But it's a sad day in the chatty for me. :(

So as some of you may know through various situations when I have posted about it in the past, I am a personal trainer. While my goal for everyone I work with is to improve their quality of life, I had a client recently that really made me appreciate things and put some perspective on things.

So my business partner is actually someone who grew up in the next city over from where I did, the two cities run together and each had 1 high school. I went to one towns high school and she went to the other, and we graduated the same year. As time has gone on we have had several instances where our friend circles had crossed paths before and it was just kind of a cool thing to talk about whenever they came up.

A few weeks ago, she gave me a call and told me a story about a guy who she had went to high school with who posted on facebook a picture that had a caption "What people think of me" and it had a soldier smiling with his dog and it was all good. then below that it said "how I really feel" and it had a soldier with a gun to his head. So she reached out to him, and had the vet suicide hotline give him a call and talk with him. The next day she gave him a phone call and met with him for lunch and the guy is really struggling with PTSD from his deployments when he was in. So, she offered him some personal training free of charge, thinking it would give him a healthy something to do, and increase his self confidence.

So he comes in to get all setup, and she introduces him to me, he is 37 years old, just like me, had a nice beard going, some pretty badass arm tattoo's and he works as a Jeep tech at a local jeep place. I tell him I have and love a 91 wrangler and so it kinda broke the ice for conversation. He is mostly reserved, and constantly has this kind of pained look on his face, even while talking about something he clearly enjoys.

Fast forward to the training, Im training him and he is doing some reps and after he finishes he's taking his rest period between sets and he goes "you know, you dont have to pretend to want to do this or talk to me, I get it and I know that you were asked to do this for free, im no charity case" it kind of caught me off guard and I instantly felt awful because I didnt know what to say. I replied "nah man, its not like that. I wont ever understand it like you do, but my entire family has a military background, everyone from my father, step dather, and even my wife spent time in the active military so I have always had an appreciation for what you guys who serve did." He was curious as to why I didnt join, having had the kind of upbringing and family experience with it and I told him the truth which was "i wouldnt have ever made it" because it was the honest to god truth, I have never been cut from that cloth and knew it very early on.

He actually laughed a bit and responded with "well, we cant all be badasses can we?!" I laughed and said "you got that right!" Anyhow, since then, the guy has really gotten into training and is loving the gym and feeling a lot better about himself. Conversation just flows so well now and today he came in and had a gift for me, so I opened it and it was a bullet, I looked up, puzzled -- he responded with "that bullet was going to make everything ok for me, it was how I was going to stop being a burden to people". I again had no idea what to say. Luckily I didnt have to, he followed up with "I cant express how much your time and honesty has helped these last few weeks, Im starting to feel like me again, and thats more than I ever thought was going to be possible" I told him that iwas no problem, and that he was the one who did all the work, and that I was just trying to give him the right tools to fix things as best I could.

This experience and new found friend has taught me just how fragile we can be. Ive been around people who have PTSD before, and its always different depending on the individual, but Ive never been directly involved in their lives before. I feel like Im the one who got the better end of this deal, and knowing that I somehow was able to help this man, was just the best feeling ever. I just wanted to share, and encourage actually just talking and being real to people. I know its easy to just go about your life and have that tunnel vision but sometimes...just talking can help. Previous to this situation I was a huge skeptic about all that kind of stuff. This tho, was a truly an amazing experience and ill never forget it.

TLDR - I helped a vet with PTSD, but it helped me too.