The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I haven't been much a fan of GIA except that Madman's Cafe was down for a long time so I never got around updating my bookmarks. Well, the site is pretty to look at, but if there's supposed to be any exclusive stories on GIA it's stolen so fast that I don't notice it, and besides it's not like they don't steal other source's 'exclusive' stories either so I don't see as special or anything. Still, I think the way they go shows some pretty twisted sense of humor. No there's no law that says you can't close your site down on April 1st but GIA is known to do such things and everyone's expecting one. And where did all the money they raised just 3 months back that was supposed to pay for the next 9 months? I'm guessing it went to fund Game Forms. I know they throw around numbers like 30GB per day of bandwidth or something but it's really not a high amount of bandwidth (figures to less than 100K/second) unless the load is very concentrated during certain times of the day.

I also don't understand why GIA has such a bloated staff. Does it really take 18 guys to run a website about games? I know they're not all on the staff all at the same time, but that's still a lot of people to run a single website.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Their content wasn't exclusive, but in many ways, they were like slashdot: one place to get console videogame, usually RPG related, information. I at least read the headlines every day, but I think somehow, I'll find the strength to carry on.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Yeah, well I wish one of the guys who ran the site would go to the fourms and actually confirm it, having a "We're closing our site!" on April 1st isn't very convincing.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Look at a site like PGC, it has 7 or so running the site, and they update around 10-15 times a day and with an average of about 20 pages of exclusive content and commentary. Of course, normally IGN and Gamespot will pick up the stories, but they're usually a day or so behind.

I agree on the site having a nice look to it, it also has a lot of valuable information on it, however, it's nothing that can't be found on Gamefaqs or RPGamer. I especially like the Gamefaqs set-up, messageboards exclusive to each game, then the central boards, as well as many Reviews, FAQ's, and walkthroughs (if you need them). Also, it links to Gamespot for convenient daily gaming news.

This is the second site in recent times to go, a few months ago it was IGN, well, currently IGN is by far the best site available, but it's a paysite, not very convenient unless you are certain you're going to visit it at least 3-5 times a week. I made a choice, it was either IGN or Advanced Wars, I picked Advanced Wars =)

I generally don't visit game sites unless I'm tipped off over ICQ. I visit RPGamer every month or so just to see if anything new has arrived, I like the site, they chose Skies of Arcadia as their game of the year for 2001 =)</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '>I liked the humorous spin they'd put in their news articles, and the amusing features like the Badass Contest and of course, their April Fool's Day jokes. I only hope that this kind of quality gets passed on to Gameforms.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>1) It's past the first and nothing has gone up since that update. 2) Other places have echoed it (PA being one).</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>I am grimly reminded of Bob Rorke and the Mana Treehouse</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '>I was away when that happened. And judging from what I've read in the archives, I'm glad I was.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt Agatha; text-align: left; '>I think the point Eric is trying to get at is that because of the day they posted and their past history of jokes, some kind of "Hey, this isn't an April Fools Joke" note on the GIA main page would have been warranted.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt Agatha; text-align: left; '>I'll miss the GIA. It was a good place to get all the video games news I cared about without having to dig through info on games I wasn't interested in. And I enjoyed reading the DA quite a bit, even though I didn't always agree with what was said there.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I'll miss em, they provided good coverage of console RPG games, and other assorted types of 'thinking man' games.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>That's the beauty of it - I think they wanted people to think initially it was a joke, then when they don't say anything, it's obvious it's not. Coming out and saying it's not a joke would ruin it - if they had this in mind.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Yes, they want to have the last word. They want to play around with people's minds by having it close on April 1st.

A very unprofessional way to end a site. If they want to go out with a bang, don't try to get tricky and pick April 1st to do it.

Doing it on April 1st only shows that they don't really care about their site ending... and perhaps they do not... but a lot of their fans do. I don't really care for GIA, but I think it's just a rude way to go in general.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Technically, the announcement did go up March 31. People figured that the person updating was probably a little jumpy.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Unprofessional? Geez, lighten up. I mean, they always maintained a air of complete and total seriousness during the sites operation, right?</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>11:55 pm and midnight? Whatever</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>They chose to update when they wanted, what they wanted...it wasn't supposed to be like IGN or another all-comprehensive site. The way the site worked was basically "You want to write an article on that game? Good, go write an article on that game. Just go make sure it's intelligent and informative."

Both you and Don are making assumptions based on the number of staffers. Remember, this was a part-time and close to fun-only (though at times it wasn't so much) project for all of them. Holding them up and saying "Boy, these guys output sucked for having this many people on staff" is holding them to a standard that says they had to cover x numbers of games per week, which is never what it was all about.

Besides which, it's not like the number of staff contributed to the financial woes of the site. ;)</div>

<div style='font: 11pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light"; text-align: left; '>Well, I always used this place for my gaming news.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>If anything it tends to make the problem worse when you don't have anything at stake other than your pride, perhaps. If the Fanart section isn't updated because of this whenever policy, I'll get them elsewhere (e.g. RPGamer). In fact I would go to RPGamer for information if their layout isn't so horrible.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>Longest eApril Fool's Day Joke ever. I wager it's one week in length.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>mmmf...I no longer try to descend into the realm of internet argument. give me your phone number so that I may argue with you with the aid of voice and verbal cue.</div>