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Games Entertainment

DailyRadar.com Closes 149

Posted by Hemos from the end-of-another-game-site dept.
Fervent writes: "At first it seemed like an April Fool's joke but Daily Radar has closed. Apparently the same bug that's bitten every other game web site (like CNet's GameCenter) got to Daily Radar. Now for major publications we have GameSpot. And, uh... GameSpot." And don't forget OMM - there's a whole slew of sites in this area -- it will be interesting to see who can last through this downturn.
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DailyRadar.com closes More

DailyRadar.com closes

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  • Fuzzy Logic (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I always liked Fuzzy Logic [bbspot.com].

    Scooby Dooby

    "I never put on a pair of shoes until I've worn them at least five years."
    Samuel Goldwyn

  • Another alternative..... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ....is www.gameunit.com [gameunit.com]

  • Re:woah.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They should put up some banners to make some money of all the linkage from slashdot. Have at least a little cash in their pocket.
  • I'm not sorry to see Daily Radar go. I originally signed up for their mailing list long ago, and somehow, they propagated that signup to additional Imagine Media lists that I did not want to be on. Furthermore, in January when I followed their instructions to be removed from the mailing list (in response to their anti-Nintendo stunt, punishing their readers for their legal problems over unauthorized game guides), they did NOT remove me from their mailing list. I sent SEVERAL letters to newsletter@dailyradar.com, and also letters direct to the editors' addresses, over the course of SEVERAL months, and the e-mails never ceased. Just this last Friday, I got another "Blips on the Radar" e-mail, right on schedule. "Daily Radar, Weekly Spammer," I called them. Now maybe my inbox will receive just a little less CRAP!

  • Re:Reminder about the Advertising (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Daily Radar's problem was content. Far from being a hardcore gaming site, they attempted to become an entertainment portal. The content was basically the same recycled syndicated content available everywhere.

    I had read NexGen Online then DR for a few weeks and haven;t been back in a year.

  • Noooooooooo (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30, 2001 @05:41PM (#254736)
    My beloved Gamecenter closes, then Daily Radar. How do all the bad sites stay around? All the good ones are closing.

  • Shugashack (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30, 2001 @05:51PM (#254737)
    sCary's renamed Shugashack (now ShackNews [shacknews.com]) is still around.

    As is Blue's News [bluesnews.com]

  • Other Gaming Sites (Score:5)

    by Shaheen ( 313 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:00PM (#254738) Homepage
    There are tons of gaming sites out there that focus on news. The only "problem" is that they are usually platform specific, except for the big ones, but that can be solved by some perl scripts :) Here's a list of sites I visit often (too much?):

    • Gamers.com [gamers.com] - Not too much info nowadays (they got bit too)
    • The GIA [thegia.com] - Fairly good coverage of major events. Very review and gameplay heavy, rather than industry news.
    • Gamasutra [gamasutra.com] - Industry news in a simple format, though more finance and 3rd party tools related
    • FGN Online [fgnonline.com] - Pretty good coverage. It's now an IGN affiliate.
    • SegaDojo [segadojo.com] - Fairly good SEGA related coverage
    • MS Xbox [msxbox.com] - For the people who can get past the fact that Microsoft might just have a kick ass gaming machine
    • Final Fantasy Online [ffonline.com] - For any Final Fantasy freak. The site's down at the moment, though
    • IGN Games [ign.com] - Coverage of anything and everything in gaming
    • GameSpot [gamespot.com] - Okay, so it's GameSpot. At least they publish all their media in downloadable MPEGs
    • Core Magazine [coremagazine.com] - All the random things that other people don't cover, including interviews and stuff straight from Japan.
    • US Famitsu [famitsu.com] - Currently down, with no plans of coming back up, but it's the US branch of the standard gaming press in Japan - Famitsu [famitsu.com]
    • Stomped [stomped.com] - Lots of coverage of gaming in general, with some focus on FPS.
    • Blue's News [bluesnews.com] - Blue keeps going, and it's always focused on FPS for the most part.
    • OMM [oldmanmurray.com] - And of course, Old Man Murray.


    A good number of the above are fairly major publications. Snowball.Com is in trouble as well, but IGN is their biggest crowd attraction, and IGN Games has to be near the top too, so it should last a little while. Core is a major publication in Japan with a real circulation. ZDNet + C|Net together have enough muscle to keep GameSpot going.

  • Re:GamesDomain.com has always been my first choice (Score:5)

    by jnik ( 1733 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @07:13PM (#254739)
    GamesDomain's gratest yirtue, IMO, is that they take a week or two to actually play games before reviewing them.

    Well, I'm from another competing site [gamerspress.com], and that's generally what we do, too. Of course, there are always some exceptions, [gamerspress.com] even dramatic ones. [gamerspress.com] But we buy our own games, occasionally score an interview, and pretty much have fun losing money, since it's about the hobby and a chance to share a good game (and scorn a bad game) with other gamers.

    Plus the junkpile reviews are great (so cool of an idea, I took over them)--you know we aren't getting subsidized for those!

  • One where you can't get screenshots directly from the site, or movies. They don't have Schnazeriffic graphics. But maybe some colored frames and text. Only link to pictures on the manufacturers web sites, etc.

    You would keep your bandwidth relatively low, which in turn would keep cost low.

    The only problem I see would be industry contacts.

    Vermifax

  • I know I'm an old fart, but sometimes I just get more enjoyment out of roguelikes than the latest version of diablo with better graphics and less gameplay.

    Vermifax

  • Re:Don't forget... (Score:3)

    by Genom ( 3868 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:03PM (#254742)
    *most* of the "PlanetX" sites (where X is any one of several games, Quake, Halflife, Unreal, etc...) are owned by GameSpy, IIRC.

  • We'll end up being both the first video game magazine on the web [gamezero.com], and the last ;p

    To bad all of our writers got real jobs and we quit doing print. :(

    On the plus side, I think we actually update more frequently than OMM... cough...

  • Re:33% of my daily read gone (Score:3)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:09PM (#254744)
    I wonder if "Fuckedcompany" will end up on its own list ;)
  • There is a maximum size to any community, virtual or otherwise, beyond which it stops being a place where everybody knows everybody else, and starts being more like a small city, where you have your circle of friends but most of the people on the street are strangers to you. At which point you begin to form subcultures around common interests.

    I think of it as being like living cells, which can only get so big before they either divide or die of bloat.

    USENET was like that too, back in the day. There was a real online community there, and there were rules you had to learn or you'd be voted off the island (and they could make it stick!). It worked even though it was huge, because accounts were largely metered out by colleges and universities. So, every fall a new batch of students would arrive and go online, but by the end of September they would have been mostly civilized, and things would calm down again. This worked up until 1993, when AOL came online and there was a flood of newbies that never ended (Hence the term "The September that Never Ended"). The result was that large swaths of Usenet effectively died of overpopulation and spam, because the constant flood of newbies just couldn't be acclimitized before the next newbies showed up, and that culture was pretty much crippled. Fortunately, many smaller newsgroups that the masses just aren't interested in still survive (anything involving strenuous thought is generally safe).

    You even see the same thing happening in radio and TV. If your college has a single radio station, its programming is split up to try and cover every possible interest on the one channel. In a metropolitan area, though, there are lots of channels, and so the dominant formats each get their own stations, and the fringe formats get time in the late-night shifts. Sometimes a fringe format gets big enough to take over a station, like hip-hop or talk radio. But nobody listens to every channel at once.

    I'm assuming someone has already postulated this as a law of sociology, but since I never studied sociology, I wouldn't know.

    Jon Acheson
  • erm... just to check myself I checked gamers.com and it still looks active. I know that firingsquad.com is still going strong.

    UGO network is also still around but I believe their future is questionable. I do know they have a booth at E3 though.

    Let me clarify though, Gamespy is going to close down at some point - and that does include all of the planet sites. That really sucks. A lot.

  • Not really the last (Score:3)

    by OnyxRaven ( 9906 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @05:39PM (#254747) Homepage
    DailyRadar was a standby, but there are still a few left.

    Namely IGN - which shows no slow down in its Vault sections. Gamers.com is still around as is VoodooExtreme.

    I wont count Gamespy as they are ready to close down shop as well. Lots of sites are losing hosting in that deal.

    And so the internet hosting/banner/funding debacle claims another.
  • Neil is one of the best quake/quakeII/Half-Life mappers there are. His levels are innovative and always a hoot. Some of this is due to Daily Radar PAYING him to do some mapping. Hell I got a subscription to PC Gamer just to make sure I get his stuff without having to wait a month for it to get posted on Daily Radar. What am I going to do if I want to rescue Private Monkey? I'd include a URL for the games but it's gone. His site is http://planethalflife.com/manke

    Bummer.
  • We still have Voodoo Extreme [voodooextreme.com], which has somehow survived most of this. It's on UGO now, which while it has had problems and probably will eventually go under as well too, Billy Wilson isn't one to give up without a fight. It's been pretty widely reported(or rumored?) that he and the rest of the VE crew have been trying to take the site independent.

    In my opinion, its one of the best sources for gaming news, and has been for a very long time. So as long as VE & /. are around, I'll be happy.

    -Julius X
  • How can this be redundant? I liked Timothy's article better. I thought it was better written than Hemo's. That had not been mentioned until I said it, as it was my opinion.
  • ZD in the 80's and ZDNet in the 1990's/2000's are entirely different creatures. Times change, editors move on, standards shift... And ZDNet has never been much more than a whitewashed politically correct channel for wire stories and chopped down articles from ZD magazines anyway. Beyond that, ZDNet hasn't even been owned by Ziff-Davis in three years - their corporate parent Softbank spun it off to take advantage of the dotcom stock boom and CNET recently bought them out. (So why does ZDNet still run ZD magazine stories? Licensing.)

  • Gamecenter (Score:3)

    by PRickard ( 16563 ) <(moc.cb-sm) (ta) (rp)> on Monday April 30, 2001 @07:01PM (#254752) Homepage

    Gamecenter didn't close because it was losing money, but because CNET bought the ZD whores and their game site Gamespot was slightly more popular and has an international presence. Now Gamespot has been spun off as a separate company owned by CNet, instead of just being a ZD site. That notwithstanding, Gamecenter was a lot better than GS will ever be.

    ZDNet - Diluting quality since 1995(TM)

  • Wing Commander 1-4, Privateer

    Try the FreeSpace series. Really very good (and the "Descent:" part on the first one is a misnomer, and only exists because Interplay originially didn't think FreeSpace could do well on its own).

    King's Quest 4-7
    Dagger of Amon-Ra, Gabriel Knight 1
    Loom, Fate of Atlantis, Sam and Max

    While it's true there's little left in the way of adventure gaming these days, why not try out Gabriel Knight 3, Escape From Monkey Island, and The Longest Journey?

    Ultima 4-7

    Try the first two Fallout games (yes, they're post-apolcalyptic, not fantasy, but they're good role-playing games), or the Baldur's Gate games and expansions. Or on the console front, check out Final Fantasy IX.

    As you see, there are plenty of current games that fit the bill. Sure, they may not be King's Quest 26, or Wing Commander 18, or Ultima 10, but that's okay -- I'm of the opinion that a series can only go so long without getting stale and unimaginative.

  • Re:33% of my daily read gone (Score:3)

    by Osty ( 16825 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @08:43PM (#254754)

    I wonder if "Fuckedcompany" will end up on its own list ;)

    I know this is in jest, but I couldn't help but respond. Fucked Company won't ever be on Fucked Company, because Pud has a clue -- Fucked Company isn't a company at all. He's ripped on fucked companies time and time again for hiring a shitload of people to do nothing, while he runs a successful site essentially by himself (I'm sure there are a few more FC "employees", but I doubt they number more than 10 or 20, certainly not in the 100s or 1000s that many dot-bombs felt they needed).

    <obvious>Besides, if Fucked Company gets fucked, who would run the Fucked Company list to list them?</obvious>

  • Re:Gaming's taken a dive.... (Score:4)

    by Osty ( 16825 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @08:36PM (#254755)

    I've seen this attitude a lot, and in more areas than just gaming. People will always rave about the "Good ol' days", while simultaneously blowing off all but a very few of the current crop of <whatever we're talking about>.

    What people fail to realize is that when you look back on the past, you don't remember all the failures. You only remember the successes. Yes, all the successful games had great gameplay (and lots of them had groundbreaking graphics, for their time -- such as Final Fantasy 6j/3us and Chrono Trigger, to name a few from the recent past). However, for every one of these great games, there are tons of bombs. Anybody remember the Home Alone games on the NES and SNES? How about the deluge of bad Simpsons-inspired NES games? Or to get away from the licensed games, what about the "original" clunkers, like Vortex (a StarFox rip off, and one of the few games to utilize the original SuperFX chipset)?

    The point here is that while most of today's games may be crap, we're going to look back in five years and only see the "good" games (for whatever definition of good), like Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Tribes (to get the FPS games out of the way), Black & White, the Fallout series, the later Final Fantasies (oddly, everybody thinks FFVII just plain sucked, yet I really enjoyed it -- had a great story), and more. We'll all have forgotten about games like SiN, Soldier of Fortune, Frogger 3D, and all the other lamer games. And of course there will be a few that will take on "Atari ET" status, like Daikatana, and most likely Duke Nukem 4Ever (assuming it ever ships).

    Looking back on the past fondly is one thing, but to hold up the worst of today's games to the best of yesterday's and proclaim that all of today's games suck is just being naive. Don't live in the past. Seek out the good games of today. I guarantee you that you'll find more than a few worth spending some change on.

  • One notable addition (Score:3)

    by wandrLST ( 19416 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:47PM (#254756) Homepage
    I must be the only one still (or ever) reading Adrenaline Vault [avault.com]. The reviews are fair, and the news is as current as anywhere else. Not as much attitude as DailyRadar, though.
  • How can you say there aren't any gaming sites left except for GameSpot? Jeff K. [somethingawful.com] is the leading provider in game content and news. It isn't unusual for him to scoop bluesnews, and his comics are much better than Penny Arcade's. He interviews big gaming celebrities like Cliffy B and John Carmack.

    He also reviews the PC games that matter, and wrote a brilliant editorial on the upcoming console wars.
  • For shame. www.captured.com [captured.com]. I barely even have time to play games anymore, but at least I can virtually enjoy them through kerbuffel & crew.
  • I concur. It also reads like the reviewers went to the store and bought the games...although I'm sure this isn't ALWAYS the case, it's nice that these are people like me who want to know what's worth dropping my cash on, rather than people who have to make advertisers happy by shilling the latest new stuff.

    It might be an elaborately contrived ruse, but I've yet to play a game that rated well on GD that sucked.
  • Decent coverage, although updates are sometimes sporadic. Oh, and they're British. So all you people who hate theregister because they talk funny...don't waste your time.

    Good reviews, excellent demo archives...what else do you need?

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @12:38AM (#254761)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Now there was a site. I somehow got sucked into reading Daily Radar all the time after Next Generation went away... I'll miss Daily Radar somewhat, but I'll agree the real loss was long ago went Next Generation was taken from us.

  • Daily Radar made me disable Javascript (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @08:16PM (#254763)
    Sure, use of Javascript had been annoying for some time - but Daily Radar was the site that made disabling Javascript mandatory! Two popup windows (one huge) was quite enough for me.

    Like the other post, I was going to leave for good as well - but I still liked the site for some things, so I stuck around.

    I think the thing that probably canned the site though was that despite all of the factors you mentioned, they had to use a LOT of bandwith. I downloaded a lot of preview movies, most between 5mb and 20mb. Even with a bandwith limiter of some place (I could only get 10k/sec when I used to be able to get 160k/sec long ago), I still downloaded a lot of movies... That cost must have been too much to bear even with all of the other great things going for them. I think a site with all of the factors you mentioned woul;d be able to survive just fine with smaller content.
  • We don't get a ton of hits, just enough to feed our egos. And we sont mind operating the site at a loss. Labor of love and all that.

    S.

  • I see duplicate posts. (Score:3)

    by inio ( 26835 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @05:33PM (#254765) Homepage
    All the time.
    They don't know they're duplicate posts.
  • I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Magic Box... great meaty news site.
    www.the-magicbox.com

    i also love The Gia.
    www.thegia.com
  • That's true, there are sites that are very profitable because of the content they provide. The Wall Street Journal (and a slew of porn sites) have all been very successful, and they all charge quite a bit of change (WSJ is something like $80 a year.)

    I think alot of media companies are going to realize they can't give their commodities away. It'll only be time till the magazines (time, usnews) and newspapers (mainly, the NY Times) start to charge for content. It HAS to start denting their paper sales eventually. Besides, I'd pay for an NYT online subscription (if it is a bit cheaper than paper of course.)
  • say goodbye to the next 3. [firaxis.com] Oh wait, did someone say something bad about hype?
    --

  • Re:PXCL (Score:1)

    by Wah ( 30840 )
    it sucks, but you're probably on to something. That bad thing is that if that works for someone, everyone else will start piling on the ads to illustrate the value of not having them. Curious, that. (oh, and it happened to pr0n sites about 2 years ago)
    --
  • Now for major publications we have GameSpot. And, uh... GameSpot.

    There's more than just Gamespot out there. Check out Stomped.com [stomped.com]. I know one of the news guys, Sean "redwood" Martin, and he's quite dedicated. And yes, it's more than just "Quake" ;)

  • I read that site every day after lunch. No more peep show... Now what do I do?
    --

  • Alternative (Score:3)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @05:48PM (#254772) Homepage
    If you're in it just for the reviews, GameRankings.com [gamerankings.com] is a good alterternative. It's a meta-review site, averaging and linking to almost every online review of console/PC games.

    Still, I'm gonna miss the peep show. I'm sad to see you go, Daily Radar.
    --

  • Personally, I hope the "Internet" fails compeletly and it we go back to the good ol' days of Archie and Gopher, bring back mosaic!

    About three days after the death of the internet (it would have been the day, but it took a bit to learn why Slashdot wouldn't load):

    Señor Budda Elf Duder: Lesse, I'll stick the archie server on 192.168.0.1 and the gopher one on 192.168.0.2, use my 56k to log into 192.168.0.3, and...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Even though I am from a competing site, I am saddened to see this site go. While there is SOME online competition (there has to be, right?) it is always sad when a prominant member of the community like Daily Radar goes down. I'd like to wish the best to the staff of the site -- guys, thanks for running such a fantastic site, and good luck on any endevours that you undertake in the future.
  • I wont count Gamespy as they are ready to close down shop as well
    What is the basis for that? While I have yet to speak with anybody in accounting, I can assure you that we are NOT going anywhere any time soon. 3DActionPlanet [3dactionplanet.com], PlanetQuake [planetquake.com], PlanetHalfLife [planethalflife.com], and the rest of your favourites are NOT going anywhere.
  • I know the digerati keep telling us that micropayments will solve all these problem...bah, ain't gonna happen.

    What I think could happen is content / ISP partnerships where you pay say 19.95 for the basic Earthlink account, 21.95 gets you subscribtions to ESPN and CNN, 25.95 gets you even more, etc etc. The ISP splits the marginal revenue with the content sites, and everybody makes a little more money without bankrupting the consumers. They could even start to segment - have a sports subscription with access to all the premium sports content, a gamers subscribtion, etc. You get the idea...

  • and gaming sites just go off the deep end about how great the trees look.
    Um, yeah. B&W has a good reputation. Now, I haven't actually played it, and I have friends who've been hooked by it, but most of them seem to still admit minor problems. I found FiringSquad's [gamers.com] review [gamers.com] (78% [slashdot.org], blam!) refreshing. ;^)
  • I visited the site a few weeks ago, and signed up for the mailing list. I received no indication about this subscription deal, or else I would gladly have paid.
  • There's still tagor.com ...

    Tee hee.

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
  • Seriously, I've seen this site grow exponentially since 1998 when I first started reading. What's to stop /. from falling off the face of the Earth like DailyRadar?

    -----

  • Here's my favorite gaming sites to visit almost daily:

    VoodooExtreme [voodooextreme.com]
    Shacknews [shacknews.com]
    Stomped [stomped.com]
    Computer Gaming Online [cdmag.com]
    GamesSpy [gamespy.com]
    3D News [3dnews.net]
    Firing Squad [firingsquad.com]
    Avault [avault.com]
    Games Domain [gamesdomain.com]
    GamesMania [gamesmania.com]
    IGN News (PC) [ign.com]

  • The next logical step. (Score:4)

    by mhelie ( 83207 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:21PM (#254784)
    Once all the free hosting for mods and fan sites goes bust, how long until gaming companies are forced to create their own networks to support them?

    I know for certain that Valve would be one of the first to jump in. Counter-Strike is the major reason why Half-Life is still selling well today, over 2 years after its original release. Valve has always been supportive of the community, and I see them pioneering a service like that to support their fans.

    -------------------------

  • With their entertaining and (+1!) insightful goodbye message. [pcxl.com]
    -----

  • Re:What happened to the excitement? (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:42PM (#254786) Homepage Journal
    It's unavoidable once everyone gets on the damn thing. Even if you talk to a thousand people on a regular basis, you still don't know anyone in terms of how many people are on the net, and it's now as commercial an experience as watching TV. Most of the E-Mail I get these days is from spammers and you can't go anywhere on the web anymore without encountering a banner ad. If you try to partake in any community experience, some damn company will probably try to sue you for it, if only because you don't fit into their comfortable demographic model of how their customers are supposed to behave.

    The only way I can see out of this is virtual isolationism. As more people find that the net is mostly useless, I suspect they'll start either moving off it to private networks run by individuals or VPNs, using the internet only for transport of their encrypted packets.

  • You babble on about loser posts and loser mags, and then say that cheap pr0n has more staying power? baah!

  • woah.. (Score:3)

    by BierGuzzl ( 92635 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @05:31PM (#254788)
    dejavu
  • gamecenter disappeared because of the zdnet - cnet merger, not because of the banner ad fallout. The combined company decided not to run 2 websites on gaming, so dumped the gamecenter site.

    That was, of course, according to the message posted at gamecenter on closing day, and could have been outright lies for all I know.

  • To some extent, I agree. But in the good-old-days, I played:

    Wing Commander 1-4, Privateer
    King's Quest 4-7
    Dagger of Amon-Ra, Gabriel Knight 1
    Loom, Fate of Atlantis, Sam and Max
    Ultima 4-7

    Now I play... almost nothing. Where are the modern equivalents? Now I spend all my 'gaming' time trying to reverse-engineer Ultima7.

  • I would also say they extended their coverage way farther than they should have. There's nothing wrong with a online magazine that covers one platforms(like PC Gamer Online) or even many platforms(like Next Generation Online), but Daily Radar had to be the end-all-do-all website that covered Games,Showbusiness, Technology/Gadgets, and even its own humor section. They had way to big of staff with alot of time on their hands. Especially one that was funded by banner ads

    I knew their death was on the wall when you couldn't browse the site with out getting pop-up ads all over the place. That was already with the banner ads that were already plastered on the page and clever little link box ads for Online Gambling (Did they even think about their Demographic audience?) that would pop-up if you left your mouse cursor idle.

    Screw Daily Radar and screw Imagine Publishing [imaginemedia.com] for creating it. I still blame the death of many good websites(NGO, PC Gamer Online)on Daily Rader and it won't be missed in my opinion. There are much better websites out there.


    Backyard Boxing online? [stevesbackyardboxing.org]That's unpossible!
    ICQ:47685501

  • Re:Reminder about the Advertising (Score:3)

    by gargle ( 97883 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @10:44PM (#254792) Homepage
    The trouble with sites like dailyradar is that they take an army of paid staff to do what a couple of hobbyists do just as well.
  • I called them dailySpamdar as when you went to their site, you would get a page with 3 banner ads and TWO popups! It was pretty outrageous and it made me quit going there, but I still hate to see them go under.
    ____________________
    Remember, not all /. users hate Windows or think Microsoft is out to get them!
  • First they send me a notice asking me to subscribe to Total Movie for 2 years (luckily I didn't) then the last issue of Total Movie says they are going monthly. Then they take down www.total-movie.com and I have to do a search on google to find out the magazine is canceled. They still owe me money!
    Meanwhile, I suscribe to Maximum PC back in Feb. I still have yet to recieve an issue. I emailed them last week and even though their web site promices replies within 48 hours, I have yet to get a responce. They owe me money for that too!
    So I think the whole damn company is in trouble.
  • I'm a litle confused... When I interviewed at Daily Radar about a year and a half ago, I was told (and saw) that the site was PHP-cached-as-HTML files. And I don't think it was Linux back then, but actually Solaris (I may be wrong about that last one though...)

    psxndc

  • You know, I really can't stand GameSpy, and I'm not alone. Two years ago, my feelings were different. They employed some very cool people, had some cool sites, and released cool software. The they slowly started to suck more and more ass, and their two best people (Fragmaster from planethalflife.com and Lowtax from planetquake.com) left under bad circumstances. These days, their PlanetEverything sites (10 more added every hour!) are of astoundingly bad quality, lacking almost any actual content and run by complete amateurs. Their software is bloated and slow; back to in-game server lists for me and many others. They're really nothing but a bad joke at this point.

    FYI, Lowtax went off and created SomethingAwful [somethingawful.com], and while he's had horrendously bad luck with various hosting networks, the site is pretty cool. If you haven't checked it out yet, make sure to spend some time in the Jeff K and Cliff Yablonski sections. :-) Lowtax was also able to bring along one of my favorite parts of PQ, Cranky Steve's map reviews. The reviews aren't done by Lowtax anymore and are lacking in quality, but it's a nice blast from the past. (Even if this past is just two years ago.)

    Coincidentally, Lowtax recentally brought the afore-mentioned Fragmaster on board as a guest editor. Now if only Frags would resurrect Walter. ;-)

    GameSpy's only redeeming value is FilePlanet. I know a lot of people here hate it, and I agree that the format and bandwidth suck, but I usually have better luck downloading from FilePlanet than anywhere else.

    --

  • Re:What happened to the excitement? (Score:3)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @07:03PM (#254806) Journal

    57 million channels and nothing on.

  • Dude, I doubt it. You see, Gamespy LICENCES out their browsing technology to various game companies, who incorporate it into their games. Gamespy is not entirely relient upon banner ad's, and in fact few people seem to remember that they started off as a PROGRAMS website (oddly enough, called gamespy, which totaly sucked and those who did use it used a crack version, but. . . .:)

  • Re:Not really the last (Score:4)

    by Chester K ( 145560 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:12PM (#254815) Homepage
    Namely IGN - which shows no slow down in its Vault sections.

    Sure it does. They just recently closed 10 Vault Network sites, and the company that owns IGN, Snowball (Nasdaq: SNOW [quicken.com]), is being delisted.

    Gamers.com is still around as is VoodooExtreme.

    VoodooExtreme is on UGO, which is no longer paying affiliates and likely won't survive the balance of the year. Last time VE was on a network like that (GameFan [slashdot.org]) the network just suddenly went down one afternoon. I should know, my site was one of the ones that was thrown out in the cold along with VE.

    And Gamers.com is likely in the same boat though I admit I don't know any details about their situation. Take a look at their site and see if they're selling anything. Think about how they're making money. Apparently, they're not (banner ads don't make money anymore). They likely won't be around much longer either.

    And the worst part is... the more sites that go down, the more traffic it drives to the remaining sites, which increases their bandwidth costs and quickens their demise.

    The VC has dried up. The end times for all the large sites are drawing near. You'll either be paying for quality content soon, or you'll be scrambling to find small, poorly-put-together sites that are the only kind that can afford to stay free.

  • Re:Don't forget... (Score:3)

    by DeeKayWon ( 155842 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:14PM (#254817)
    The funny thing is, IGN originally was a product of Imagine Media (IGN = Imagine Gaming Network), but is now with snowball.com. So what did Imagine replace IGN with? Daily Radar. Figures.

  • Joystick101 (Score:3)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Monday April 30, 2001 @07:02PM (#254819)
    Time to pimp. It doesn't specialize in breaking-news or up-to-the-minute reviews like some other sites, but Joystick101.org [joystick101.org] is a gaming site I've found myself spending a lot of time at. A community driven site (running Scoop) that posts articles by editors, and allows users to vote on submitted material. Sort of a cross between Slashdot and Kuro5hin.

    Good place to find some intelligent, thoughtful discussion on just about anything gaming related. I invite everyone to check it out.

  • Re:GameSpy closing shop? I think not. (Score:3)

    by elfkicker ( 162256 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:26PM (#254820)
    Didn't you get the memo? Please clean out your cubicle by 4pm. Thanks.
  • Decent coverage, although updates are sometimes sporadic.

    GamesDomain's gratest yirtue, IMO, is that they take a week or two to actually play games before reviewing them. Where other review sites give you the reviewer's impression based on perhaps 48 hours of gameplay, GamesDomain reviewers can actually comment on how much replayability and lasting appeal a game has.

    TheFrood

  • Surprise surprise (Score:4)

    by proxima ( 165692 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @07:45PM (#254822)
    This website only drives in the same point again. Commercial companies will continue to struggle to be close to successful with ad-based revenue sources. I'm of the opinion that the most enduring gaming sites will be those hosted by fans - without the need to make a profit. Sure, they may not have the resources or the sneak previews that commercial sites can get - but these web site developers are dedicated to their sites for the mere enjoyment of putting out good, informed information about the games they love.

    Advertising is a great way for sites to help recoup the costs of hosting, but definately not paying the salaries of dozens of employees (with a few exceptions, obviously). I count 34 employees on their website. Even if many of them were part time, that's a lot of money simply in payroll.

    In the end, this model may work for a very few popular commercial businesses (Yahoo, for example), but most of these websites will either be bought out or go out of business. The best thing is for a decent website to be bought out by a decent non-online company. This way, the parent company can afford to lose some money on the child company as long as it helps branding (thus making the child company an advertising expense). Granted, the Go Network [go.com] isn't my favorite search engine/portal, but they do seem to have survived ok after being purchased by Disney.

  • Reminder about the Advertising (Score:5)

    by glassware ( 195317 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:36PM (#254828) Homepage Journal
    We should keep in mind...

    Just before Daily Radar closed down, they started experimenting with advertisements. When banner ad revenues dropped precipitously, they added affiliate programs, popups, floating javascript banners, interactive ads, site sponsorships, and more.

    What frustrates me is recognizing that these ad technologies - despite being clever, and, in rare cases, useful - did nothing to improve the site's revenue position. Daily Radar had pretty much everything a web site can ask for: daily rotating content, a loyal and excited fan base, community building features, a direct link to sales tools (they had buy buttons on every game review), and more.

    What does this say about the state of every other website out there? Daily Radar did not appear to be mismanaged, nor did it appear to lack technical innovation. Most of the attributes Daily Radar had, I have come to regard as essential for a website's success.

    I think this means that if you run a website that provides content:

    You are probably out of luck.

  • What happened to the excitement? (Score:4)

    by Ergo2000 ( 203269 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:15PM (#254832) Homepage

    It's strange but it's like a world of overloaded sensors, and we're all so numb we just don't give a crap anymore.

    Seriously though when "The Internet" was but a network hooking a couple of colleges, local BBS' with a very limited market had vibrant online communities, incredible download sections where you fervently awaited the next issue of Commander Keen (I recall begging a sysop to extend my time limit so I could download the Falcon 3 demo as at 600KB I just didn't have enough time...wow is that game really that old...). Now we have enormous bandwidth and literally a world of people to converse with and generally the sense of community has disappeared. I don't want to sound like an "old-timer" talking about how good things used to be, and of course it could be just my perception, but there certainly doesn't seem to be the interest in the computer game market, or really online communities. Have we all been there/done that?

  • This is a sad day. One of the best content sites on the net has vanished. My faith in humanity in ruins. You know why all this shit has happened? Because bandwidth costs never fell like they were predicted to. Hell, if things went like they were supposed to, I could host DailyRadar from my house for $40 a month. Curse you, Cisco... Microsoft... HP... Linksys... AT&T... Sprint... TimeWarner... and everybody else who held on to their 1 year plans instead of investing in a medium that could garner real returns. I'm crying.

  • Good sites closing? Bad ones still here? (Score:3)

    by Gannoc ( 210256 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:40PM (#254834)
    I've read a few comments like that:

    Think about it. The best sites with the most traffic have the highest bandwidth costs. Since they cost the most to maintain, they're the first to close.

    Then, you bookmark the not-as-great site, but so do the other 100,000 people. Soon, THEIR bandwidth costs are too high, and they have to close.

    Then you go to the somewhat-crappy-site, and the closings go on...

    Eventually, the only gaming sites will be on Ziff Davis-type sites, which will rate and evaluate all games on a scale of 85%-100%.

    OMM [omm.com] is the only site on the web I would donate to.

  • Re:PXCL (Score:3)

    by tswinzig ( 210999 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @09:27PM (#254836) Journal
    You didn't pay for it. Now cram it.

    Ahhh... they didn't pay for it because the need wasn't there. They could fulfill the same needs at other (free) websites.

    The sites that will be successful at pay-per-view will be the ones that generate great content. I consider CNET News.com one such source. I've even emailed them, begging them to let those of us who read them all the time to pay a monthly fee, and get an ad-free view of their site. Jai Singh (editor) seemed interested, asked me what I'd be willing to pay, and said they'd look into it.

    Just like Eudora, CuteFTP, et. al. offer versions of their software for free with banner ads, I think you'll start seeing content sites offering the reverse -- an ad-free subscription to their site.

    There are only a few sites I'd pay for if they didn't offer their content for free. News.com. ESPN. Maybe CNN.

    The best-of-breed content sites will survive and flourish as their crappier competitors go down the tubes.

  • Re:Surprise surprise (Score:4)

    by Spinality ( 214521 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @08:11PM (#254837) Homepage
    Commercial companies will continue to struggle to be close to successful with ad-based revenue sources. -- proxima

    Right. For a while, when so much ad and click-through revenue was there for the taking, it appeared (to the shortsighted) that there was a simple ad-based business model for nearly any web-based company. But the bottom line is (and always was): A viable business must deliver something of value to a willing customer for a fair price. Therefore, the only valid ad-based business model delivers...well, valuable ads. Like TV Guide or Playboy, with a proven track record of delivering or influencing sales through advertising. And NOT like a game site that displays annoying banner ads to clever dudes who just ignore the lame ads.

    I wish that every 'new economy' company decision-maker were forced to read your post.

  • Re:Gaming's taken a dive.... (Score:3)

    by JWhiton ( 215050 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:55PM (#254838) Homepage
    I'd say there's some merit in what you have to say about hardcore game designers appealing to a hardcore gaming audience. I personally don't feel as involved in RPGs as I did back in the days of the good ol' epic Square RPGs on the SNES. But I think you're making a rather hasty conclusion about the state of games today.

    I would argue that games like Half-Life (a little old, but still alive and kicking), Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, Baldur's Gate II, and Icewind Dale are all good examples of a group of dedicated designers trying to appeal to gamers using their prior experience with games. Admittedly, Unreal Tournament was kind of a graphic romp, but it had very solid and open-ended gameplay nonetheless.

    I'd say the best example of a (somewhat) recent game that strictly appealed to a group of hardcore gamers was System Shock 2. I suggest you pick up a copy post-haste to see what I mean. It's a great game for those who have become jaded by simple tricks that developers try to pull on many gamers today.

  • Good find, I hadn't saw that one. Nice to know SOMEBODY spent enough time with the game to derive a score indicating some level of imperfection.

  • Gaming's taken a dive.... (Score:3)

    by kstumpf ( 218897 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:29PM (#254841)
    Let's face it, quality of content in the gaming scene has been dwindling for some time. I worked in gaming for a while (insert exhaustive tales of woe here, blah blah blah) and saw it all first hand.

    Rewind three or four years back. Most content is written by die-hard fans. People who are monogamous to a game and devoted to a community of people like them churn out good sites with strong content and relatively heavy traffic.

    Unfortunately, the last few years turned into a sort of online gold rush when everybody simultaneously got the idea that they could cash in big on something fun.

    But instead of hardcore gamers writing content, you often ended up with designer imposters funded by big names who know nothing about the subject matter at hand. And now these folks are running out of gas.

    And the games themselves... well... theyre to blame also. Now that computers are to the point where they can make a ray-traced dinosaur holding a multi-colored chainsaw with a flame texture and a 3D drink holder, selling computer games is all about dazzle rather than gameplay. Smoke and mirrors! Most game developers are too busy making goofy effects to worry about gameplay these days.

    The amazing thing is that gaming sites fail to realize this or dare criticize it, for fear of upsetting the publishers and developers they like to be in bed with to succeed. I think Black & White is a great example of this. Here's a beautiful game with some big issues (redundant gameplay, sluggish controls, etc.), and gaming sites just go off the deep end about how great the trees look. Personally, I dont respect any gaming site that ships a game to some cheap freelancer who writes little more than a beefed-up version of what I could have read on the back of the box and slaps a high score on it. Oh why not toss in some pictures of models to save face! Invent some new buzzwords, that'll work!

    Perhaps I'm just a relic because I was around for gaming's glory days.

  • PXCL (Score:5)

    by kstumpf ( 218897 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:45PM (#254842)
    If you haven't seen it yet, check out http://www.pcxl.com [pcxl.com]. Good food for thought if youre one of those people who thinks pay-per-view websites would float...

    We had a standing bet.

    Tens of thousands of people emailed us after we closed PCXL. They told us that if we brought it back in any form, they'd pay for it -- pay even more for it than before.

    We knew it wasn't true. So, just to prove the point, we brought it back.

    You didn't pay for it. Now cram it.

    Love,

    The staff of PCXL

  • gamepower [gamepower.com] puts up a new review once a day. It's a pretty decent site all around, with all its reviews archived in a database, links to demos and patches, etc. -- the only thing it's missing is a regular feature.

  • I don't know what bothers me the most. The cranking and grinding about every failed dot com or the fact that I've never even heard of most of the dot coms that people are cranking and grinding about.

    Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who looked at the dot com boom knew that more than 90% of dot coms were going to fail. 90% of ALL new businesses fail. In a brand new market where no one is an expert you have to expect that 99% of all new businesses are going to fail. We all knew that. So why do we care when one more me too dot com with a bogus business plan bites the big one?

    It is not a bad thing that poorly run companies with no revenue and no viable business plan go out of business. It is a good thing.

    Most of the really sucessful dot coms haven't even been established yet. The GMs, Fords, AT&Ts, and IBMs of the Internet will be spawned over the next 10 years. And they'll be spawned by people who learned their lesson in the great dot com bust.

    StoneWolf

  • Micropayment please! (Score:3)

    by Codeala ( 235477 ) on Tuesday May 01, 2001 @03:58AM (#254849)

    It is time like this that I wish we have a good micropayment system. There are many sites on the net that I enjoy and visit often (eg /., GameCenter), and I can honestly say that I have contributed exactly Zer0 to their income.

    I don't click on ads for various reasons: poor exchange rate, high S&H when you don't live in US, etc. So yeah I like to give a little to you guys, say $1/day? For me, it is very cheap and reasonable when compare to other daily spendings like bus fare, snacks, price for a newspaper, etc. For a site operator this is pretty good. How many "click-through" do you need to get $1?

    For a large site lik /., asking for $1 donation every week or month can add up to good incomes; even if only a small percentage of people are willing to pay. It certainly wouldn't hurt as long as there is a easy and cheap way to collect these small payments.

    ====

  • Don't forget... (Score:3)

    by pimpinmonk ( 238443 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @05:35PM (#254851)
    Don't forget ign.com. That site is quite good. Perhaps it's a gamespy affiliate. Also, the not-for-profit (at least I don't think so) PlanetX sites are good, such as planethalflife, planetunreal, planetdeusex, especially in terms of the mod scene. Also, voodooextreme is on top of all gaming news. So without daily radar, we're not missing a whole lot. Sorry to hear them go bust however.
    ________________________________________ __________

  • Re:Reminder about the Advertising (Score:4)

    by Baddas ( 243852 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @07:16PM (#254853) Homepage
    I don't know about anyone else, but as soon as they put a pop-up on every page, I left. For good.

    I've been back only twice, both times through an anonymizing proxy to see if they'd taken down the ads. They hadn't.

    I even submitted a story to F***ed Company, but was turned down. I said that the pop-ups were a sign of impending doom. Guess who was right?

  • Interstitials, anyone? (Score:3)

    by t1nman33 ( 248342 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:39PM (#254854) Homepage
    On my worst days at work, I'm happy that I'm not scraping gum off the floor of my old convenience store. And on the best days, I'm thankful that I ended up at a dot-com where a) I have to wear a tie to work b) there is no foozball and c) we're not going out of business. "C" makes up for the other two. Seriously, though...I'm ready for interstitials. No, not popup windows. I hate them and close them immediately. I'm ready to go to The Onion [theonion.com], click on a story, see a full-window ad for a product, which disappears in 5 seconds, or when I click. Why? Because while I love the wonderful and boundless and free exchange of information made possible by this Network of Networks, I am realistic. The Web is no longer academic. You can argue for the free exchange of useful (i.e. "educational" in the traditional sense) information, and I will agree 100%. But academic media is subsidized by universities and research organizations that make money, perhaps indirectly, through that research. Meanwhile, all traditional media (i.e. non-useful, entertaining, fun, like Daily Radar and its ilk), like it or not, makes money from advertising. Whether banner ads work or not is moot; the advertisers have said that they don't work, and because they're the ones with the checkbooks, they can write reality any way they see fit. But if you're guaranteeing that every time you click on a story, that advertiser is getting a guaranteed full-screen impression, maybe...just maybe...the same people that put ads for laptops in PC Computing will pay the same CPM for ads on PC Computing online. Which means that good people like the folks at Daily Radar and countless other dot-coms might keep their jobs and be able to feed their families. Frankly, I like good ads. I don't want to shock the monkey. I don't care if "there's a message waiting for me." And that flashing "WINNER" ad--you know what I'm talking about--makes me refresh every time. I'm talking about stuff the caliber of the John West Bear Fight [adcritic.com] ad on Adcritic. Interstitials might just give ad designers the space they need to produce more ads that aren't just annoying wastes of time. No, I don't work for an ad firm, and yes, I do believe in subsidized Federal health care and a bunch of other hippie causes. But I do recognize that as long as most of the free world operates on a capitalist economy, somebody has to pay the bills. Advertisers have done that for a good long time now. Nobody is forcing you to drink Soft Drink Product A (tm). I ignore as many ads as you do. But that bottom line is, any business--no matter how noble and free-expression oriented the cause--needs to make money just to pay the bills. Daily Radar is just the latest casualty. Hopefully Slashdot won't be next. I'll suffer for 5 seconds to keep the sites I love online.

  • 33% of my daily read gone (Score:3)

    by thejim ( 254413 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:03PM (#254856)
    Damn!

    I read these sites every day without fail:
    1. DailyRadar
    2. Slashdot
    3. Fuckedcompany

    Now there are only 2
  • I'd rather read multiple reviews of a game than listen to the opinion of one person only. If there was only one video game website then the one person to review the game would be the only way for you to judge whether you should buy it or not. not good...

  • Since the posts thus far are mostly redundant - I should say that dailyradar.com which was; at one time PCXL was a decent site. Really the best thing about the site were the downloads sometimes. They gave previews that lauded a game, but then when it came out said "It's just like Tomb Raider, but different maps" to name a Prince of Persia DC review which no one else had reviewed the game. New PCXL; that was awsome. Every month I used to get this rocking magazine that talked about games and if I got really bored - you could beat off to it - there was enough T&A. But then someone sold me PC Gamer - that mag just blows. Every other page is either MS is cool as shit or Buy Babbages! PCXL Rocked! I loved when parents wrote in about how much smut there was. Too bad they didn't continue the style on DailyRadar.com. Naked women and some witty writing about games that sucked would have kept it alive.
  • Woah! A *dot com* closes??????? I never saw that coming :)

    Well IGN is the other competitor besides gamespot. I see a bright future for them, as they have a pay program (which I joined). Hopefully that will give them the revenue they need.

  • And again, sorry, but please GOD let IGN [ign.com] be next. Living day to day without them pandering to my manly needs for babes and alchohol is sure to have it's downsides [ign.com], but I think I can cope, and I really can't think of any.

  • Awww (Score:5)

    by Sarcasmooo! ( 267601 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @05:53PM (#254867)
    Sorry, but good riddens. I've read so many rediculous reviews on that site that I can only say I'll miss the comedic value. Reviews that liken games to works of incomprehensible genius [dailyradar.com] for their obviously intended commentary on the world as we know it. Articles with shocking revelations [dailyradar.com] like 'online games are going to be big'. WHA!??!!? [dailyradar.com]

    I will say that I'm surprised they could be short on money when even I accidentally click one of the 100 ads on their front page when I go looking for rediculously stupid articles. Forgive me for my cynicism, I just think that sites like OMM will do fine (despite the tragic loss of Daily Radar), simply because OMM doesn't suck.
  • The funny thing is, IGN originally was a product of Imagine Media (IGN = Imagine Gaming Network), but is now with snowball.com. So what did Imagine replace IGN with? Daily Radar. Figures.

    Yeah, and Snowball is about dead as well, at least that's the last I heard on FC [f---edcompany.com].

    This is really disappointing news though. I used to read Gamecenter. When it died I moved to DailyRadar because I felt their articles were well-written and intellegent. Now, they're gone. The only two major sites left are IGN and GameSpot. Problem with those two is IGN seems to be written by a bunch of 13-year-olds, and GameSpot is entirely too corporate. So now what? What is a gamer supposed to do when he/she wants to find out about the newest games?

  • Rolling your own. (Score:5)

    by McCarrum ( 446375 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .grubmil.kram.> on Monday April 30, 2001 @06:49PM (#254874)

    Is this just me, or does the whole rise and fall of the dot.com scene feel like the BBS scene? Many sysops saw potential in their BBS's (myself included) and went mainstream (well, as mainstream as a closed audience could provide) and they nearly all went by the way of the dinosaur. It was the original content and customer supported sites that remained. My only semi-supported site that worked was designed to cater for the hearing impared, allowing them access to a large wealth of public information - basically a better version of existing TTY services all in one place.

    Suppose the more things change, the more they stay the same. A few lessons from those days should be tinkered with and applied. Before we had to worry about dialing OUT costs (mumble international calls) and today it's bandwidth OUT costs.

    Just my $0.07 cents (price adjusted for tax).

    --
    McCarrum!

  • Other sites (Score:3)

    by no parity ( 448151 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @05:45PM (#254876)
    Well, for RPGs there's still www.rpgamer.com [rpgamer.com].

  • the man who pulled the lever (Score:5)

    by AndersBrownworth ( 448236 ) on Monday April 30, 2001 @09:07PM (#254877) Homepage
    alright, i give. i'm the guy who did the deed. i executed the 'mv' command to switch dailyradar.com off. however, the real story is probably the fact that imagine media pulled the plug on just about every one of its internet properties. this includes pcxl.com which was a pay companion of dailyradar.com launched less than a week ago. (and yes, i did the honors there as well) this is all information you can glean from press releases, but it's a whole other matter to be the guy who actually throws the switch on such a popular site.

    all of the imagine properties were run on a linux farm concieved of an built by myself and jeremy wohl. quick stats: 2 million dynamic pages per day from a 3 tier linux farm. lvs / apache / resin / oracle / java / xml and a myriad of other tools. the power of open-source here was truly awesome.

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