Topic: Will DF survive?

while nothing is for certain, im very confident that this decision was not made in haste. Rich is very measured and considered in everything he does and im sure he went into this with those same qualities at the forefront. He's got an incredible team putting out incredible content almost daily. Success is never guaranteed but i am happy to be a new patreon supporter to help make that success a reality long into the future.

I'd love to see the DF website become more than just a text summary of the latest video. As Eurogamer seems more interested in writing about pretty much anything other than video games, and other big sites, such as Polygon are now as much about the latest Netflix show as they are about games I feel there's a gap here. Not to become another game review site, there are plenty of those, but to be a real destination for the latest gaming and gaming tech news.

Basically like a website version of Edge Magazine, but with more tech (as Edge itself used to do). I'm thinking lengthy text interviews with devs and hardware makers, in depth previews of games with interesting tech (not the latest UE5 splutter-fest), pieces on interesting indie devs about their experience of the industry, retrospective pieces about groundbreaking games and hardware... and so on.

Make it a real destination to read interesting long form articles. It wouldn't be for everyone, what with the average attention span being around 3/4 of a second now, but some of us still like depth and context. And once you have the content strike deals with the aggregators, such as Apple News to get your content in front of more eyeballs.

@ramu-chan Hi there, thanks for the input. We've got three months of data now on what people are reading when they come to the site, along with insights on which reviews/video adaptations are doing well and which aren't doing well. We also have good background now on the importance of news, which reflects how important DF Direct is on the video side. There's a good argument to continue what we did with Monster Hunter Wilds PC or the PS3 on PS5 emulator - run on the site first and then feed into DF Direct.

We're also going to do more in terms of articles that aren't featured in video - like the budget PC build piece I did the other day, the piece on the expected capabilities of the PlayStation handheld etc.

So right now, we're looking at the first three months, consulting with our friends at Hookshot who have a vast array of data on what works and what doesn't, then we'll execute a revised strategy.

Long form pieces/interviews? Well, we did that with the Sucker Punch Yotei interview, but interesting to note that basically everyone who specialises in long form eventually gives it up. There's a place for it, for sure, but the stories really have to be astonishingly good!

Not entirely sure it's "long form" as such, but this piece from Eurogamer is one of the biggest/most read it has ever done: https://www.eurogamer.net/the-boy-who-stole-half-life-2-article

@Rich_Leadbetter Thanks for the response. I recall reading that EG article on Half Life 2, although I already knew most of the story. I guess this is why I still read Edge, as they're still writing long form articles to satisfy the last few people who subscribe. As you say though, it has to be interesting to justify the length. Perhaps this is something that John could help with, stories from gaming past. One of the finest videos I ever saw on YouTube was My Life in Gaming's deep dive into M2. There's even a preservation angle to this as those devs who were active in the 80s breaking all that new ground will be retiring sooner rather than later.

That aside, I would certainly call back daily were there to be a regular stream of news stories. Not press releases, they're easy enough to avoid already, but actual news about gaming tech. You could perhaps surface interesting video content from devs too, maybe if one announces a new path tracing patch with a shiny video it could be on the DF home page.

Whose paying for Alex's health insurance? His bad back has to be taken care of. Hopefully he's getting the best care in his time of need.

@sanmansan
Alex lives in Germany, it's healthcare is a fixed percentage of salary paid 50/50 by employer and employee. It functions very differently to the horrific system of health insurance in the USA.

@sanmansan does Germany have free healthcare? I would assume he must pay for it himself as I don't believe DF is big enough to provide employee healthcare.

It is slightly more complicated than "free", as it has a compulsory contribution system, but nothing like the system in America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany