When I started GGN, I wanted to create a site that had detailed guide content and a focus on gaming niches that rarely get down to the nitty gritty features that make them unique.
It started out rough and slow, but eventually grew into something with regular readership, and many guides (and even some reviews) ranked higher for some really big keywords than major publishers in search. Ad revenue finally reached the point to where I was earning more than I was spending to run the site.
Over the past year, however, that has changed; low-effort content farms have really overtaken the game guide space and have made it hard for the small indie publishers to stay visible with an SEO-optimized blog alone. In order to get a slice of the pie you need to be more than a blog; you’ve got to have strong video content, streaming and more to get noticed and retain that traffic, and.. Well, I just don’t have the time or energy for it.
GGN was always going to be a side hustle for as long as it was fun, but lately it’s become a slog. I had already backed off video production, just because it requires so much more time to create that content than I have available. I can create a detailed article on GGN in 1/5th the time it takes to produce a similar video.. And the video medium frequently requires more brevity in order to ensure full consumption.
With my health being rather sus as well, I just can’t keep that energy up.
It all came to a head over my vacation; There wasn’t a lot I wanted to cover, and instead wanted to play something different and enjoy an actual vacation, rather than a working one.
Even Ready or Not’s 1.0 release didn’t spark any interest for me, and looking at the upcoming release calendar? Not a lot in GGN’s niche will be out for months, which means I’d be struggling to produce regular content here in order to keep things alive.
That brings us to now.
The site content won’t be going anywhere; I’ll be converting the site to static in a week or two just to reduce the server load, but it’ll all stay up. Comments will be disabled, of course. The YouTube channel will stay up as well, but in case it wasn’t obvious, no new content is being produced.
For those of you who stuck around and followed the site, thank you.
Keep playing games, folks. I know I will (and with much less stress now)!