It might be useful if you had stats for a three year period, but as it stands it looks, simply, like people have better things to do during the summer. If you continue sliding down through the holiday season, then I'd be worried.

Does this include your RSS figures? Alot of people i know are switching to using an RSS reader to look at all their fave blogs in one place. I've been doing it for ages, and I know I read every post, but it's only if I comment or want to see pics etc. that i end up actually on the site.

I'd also agree with n0wak, the timescale is a bit small. To suggest that things are going downhill you'd really have to look at year on year figures. Looking at Feb - Aug figures for Ski-ing equipment wouldn't tell you the whole story because it's a year long cycle, same thing here, especially because alot of people are out more in the summer months. Other things that could be an issue may just be the amount of competition. People are starting websites all the time, and there's only so many hours in the day someone can goof off work to read stuff.

I can't really say why i don't love you anymore, as i do, so that would be tricky. Hope things pick up!

Part of the reason is that the industry is trying to change by giving info out throughtout the year. Also now that games have online built into them just makes a game last so much longer now a days. Giving way for less computer time. As we get closer to the fall and there is less time to be outside you will see the numbers go up again. Also websites sites don't seem to be as regular as they use to anymore. Less Features, everyone has the same news, same faces, where we are in the console cycle, and less drive for some websites are all factors. You can't just point to one thing or the next it's all different factors. ( Think of it like this) When cell phones came out there were 4 companys, then came the cellphone boom when like 500 hundred companys opened over night.(Some in in basements) What happen 8 where left standing and now we have like 4 or 5 left again.(Just talking North America) Right now you have so many blogs and gaming websites. How will you stand out in a field of a million?

Basher steps down off his soapbox

I'll echo the previous commenters- you need more data history. Are there yearly trends at work here? Does the lifecycle of the consoles have any impact? I suspect the answer to both questions is "yes." Also, how are those statistics gathered? I also read most of the site's content via RSS reader, which keeps my bandwidth lower while at work.

You guys have recently started posting a lot of unique content- the game reviews of smaller titles, for example. This is fantastic content, but it takes time to get the numbers to start showing up.

What's the Y axis in these charts? It's hard to compare them without knowing if they're even the same scale.

They look like "reach" charts from Alexa.com, which purport to magically measure what percentage of Internet users are using a particular site. I think there's lots of noise in their estimate of Internet users. If you look at the "page views" tab of TheBBPS chart, it's pretty much flat, while the "Reach" chart has significant spikes and valleys.

I think maybe part of it is the content ideas are drying up or getting tired. For news, everyone pretty much gets to post the same thing all over, that's why it's news. For content, well, how many 10/10 reviews of Metal Gear can the market read and how many lists of "Top Nintendo characters" can blogs produce?

While I'm gaming more than I have in a while, I have been on a severe drought of ideas for gaming based content on Lameazoid.com . I'm tired of writing reviews. They all turn out more or less the same with 4 or 5 basic formulas.

I just wanted to take a brief pause in the comments and thank everyone for their input. It seems as though there's a lot of disdain for the same ol' same ol'. This is the kind of feedback we need. If there's anything specific you like or dislike about what we do, let us know right here.

I really don't like that Jim Squires guy but I love all the stuff that Kevin posts. Grandiose!

I'll second the RSS question. I do almost all of my reading through a feed reader and only stop by the site itself if I want to comment. I have no idea how Alexa gets the stats or if RSS is figured into that at all, but that could be a huge part of things. Personally I have 50+ gaming sites in my feed reader, going to the sites individually is time prohibitive (I'm at work, lol), so I just hit the reader and go through them when I can.

Gaming blogs do tend to get a bit repetitive, so if I see the same thing over and over I'll usually skip over the site--but if you offer a unique voice you're sure to attract traffic. You're one of the sites that I actually make time for on a daily basis, so for what it's worth I think you're doing a good job.

Nah, I heard that Kevin guy is lame and that he hates Nintendo...

@OH: I do the same thing at work.

In addition to the RSS vs direct visits issue, another possible reason is that people are simply burrowing deeper into the blogosphere, finding niche gaming blogs more in tune with their gaming habits, choosing to follow those instead of the big news-based blogs.

Nearly all the blogs you used to illustrate this downward turn are gaming news providers. They all tend to report on the same stories in pretty much the same style. Once upon a time these sorts of blogs were much smaller enterprises, with only one or two writers who had to cherry-pick news stories. Readers had to subscribe to multiple blogs to cover all their bases. Now these blogs have grown and have whole armies of writers and contributors, thus everyone covers the same stories.

What we're possibly seeing, with these declining figures, are the readers who once regularly visited dozens of gaming sites now choosing just one or two from which to get their gaming news. I mean, there's only so many ways you can be told there's a Team Fortress 2 update on the way, or so may times you can see the same set of MGS4 screenshots.

Not that all these sites are clones of one another. There's enough unique content on each to ensure the loyalty of a particular type of reader. Those aren't the readers who are disappearing -- just those who don't want to see the same news stories on every gaming blog they stumble upon.

Instead, they're subscribing to the guy who blogs about nothing but old Ultima games, or Nintendo DS-only blogs, or blogs about the interactive fiction scene, or an Atari-centric retrogaming blog, etc. Something has to give and it's the cookie-cutter news blogs that inevitably get ditched.

Well - we're all using readers now, like everyone's saying. I use the one in opera, cuz it's like outlook. Do you guys track RSS readers or anything? like through feedburner?

That being said though - Have you read through any of the Kotaku posts lately? Especially after e3? How many times can we read that e3 sucked? or the same Miyamoto quotes, over and over and over again. There are barely any blogs that are covering original content. Kotako, 1up, Destruc - all have the same content. It all appears to be a quick-sensationalist grab @ page hits.

For example, i just got notified that:

'MadWorld' Ruins the "family fun image of the Wii"

- and seriously, how many times do we have to hear about the great console 'wars?'




-Ender

Why do you care about the Alexa ratiings? This shows that you want higher ratings so that you get more advertisers and so on and so on. Care about GAMES and the true content will come out. There are a million blogs & sites out there that all have the same exact news and comments and all try to put a funny twist on them. You can make a laundry list of items that every gaming blog has, you guys fit right in:

-Updated news daily
-Comedy
-Embedded Videos
-Podcast talking about "whatcha' playin" and industry rumblings
-User comments after every article
-Editorials about top 10 this and least favorite that

To put it bluntly, for news, you guys don't hold a candle to the big 3 of gaming blogs [destructoid, kotaku, joystiq]. Most of the stuff you post is about gaming clothing or something along those lines. They have a HUGE staff with insider info who put things up a lot faster than you guys. Us gamers like all info at once as fast as possible, so when DTOID busts an exclusive and you post it an hour later, it's old news.

As you can see from your nifty graphs, the gaming news site industry seems to be cannibalizing itself, but this will never end. If something succeeds then imitators will be there, the trick is to stay ahead and always be new.

@ ender.xeno:
We do use RSS reader numbers and those do keep going up and up, which is a good sign naturally.

@ genz0:
I wouldn't necessarily say we "care" about alexa ratings, in fact seeing Jim's pictures above was the 1st time I'd taken a look at our in over a year. But I get what you're saying. Problem is it's hard to measure whether or not what you're doing is finding an audience.

Oh, and don't worry... we know we don't hold a candle to the "big 3" and actually don't care to. We have our complaints about how they operate and quite honestly unless you do it full time couldn't possibly compete anyways, even if you wanted to.

For a group like us, we all have regular full time jobs and do this on the side cause we enjoy it. We like to focus on the culture type stuff, and try to review and spend time talking about smaller titles instead of just the big AAA titles.

In a rare look behind the scenes, it's difficult as an editor-in-chief to pick a direction to steer towards, and even harder to know if it's a path worth taking. You can get lots in the "hits and visits" of the site to just try and gauge how you're doing. It's hard to separate comments from hits, since routinely less than 1% of readers leave a comment. So when you're looking for a sign, sometimes it's just plain impossible to see what's working.

Which trust me, is rough.

I'm pretty sure it would have something to do with it just being summer. They have more fwee time(to play MORE video games and whathaveyou) and less wrk time(which would be an ideal time to visit your site).

@genz0


What you said is very true for other things to. Prime example is X-Play. They used to be focused around being funny. Now they are a big gaming news show, which has it's goods and bads.

Well traditionally this is a slow time for blogs due to the season. For the same reason you don't post news on weekends due to light traffic, the summer is essentially the weekend for blogs.

As for the RSS question, Alexa only pings based on page views and not on RSS views so the numbers are skewed somewhat. Also, any special feature page views (gallery features) or internal video numbers aren't calculated with Alexa.

Some blogs are thriving. Big Download's traffic has been climbing since launching in May and X3F hit record numbers in July.

I don't think blogs are on their way out just yet.

I enjoy coming to thebbps.com specifically because you offer something out of the ordinary. I can be assured that I'm getting something unique everyday. In fact, this direction has inspired certain elements and directions I'll be taking with my own site, once its final construction is all settled away.

I would weather this storm for now as many lulls are quite cyclical. Don't forget as well that in the weeks and months following E3 there isn't a dirge of news and software to report about, which likely discourages readers from checking their sources regularly.

Keep delivering the goods you've been delivering, and I'm sure things will come around. Besides, if one thing's for certain, videogames aren't going away any time soon

Add one to the "it's summer" vote. I wouldn't worry too much about that. Personally, this Autumn's line-up looks phenomenal, so I know that I'll be paying a bit more attention to gaming news and article by then.

I used to read Joystiq every day until the post count started going up, less and less original material was written, more "here's a link to something" or "here's a picture" started happening. I found, linked from Joystiq I think, this cute little blog called Bits and Bytes and Pixels and Sprites. Now, joystiq just sits up there in my RSS toolbar, and every day I mouse over it and become word-blind by the glut of articles I'm not really interested in.

However, this new Bits&Bytes&Co was awesome! I loved it and I loved it. But gradually, it got more popular and the posts per day went up and it started losing that originality that I'd loved. Linked from this new thebbps one day was Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Now, this thebbps just sits up there in my RSS toolbar, and every day I mouse over it and maybe click a link, maybe not.

This RPS blog is awesome! I love it and I love it! However, now that it's getting more popular the articles are starting to get a little thinner...

@ Will:

Excellent feedback, thanks a lot for sharing. It's something we've struggled with, to be sure. I appreciate the honesty I really do. Hopefully we'll win you back to click on every story

I can see where Mark Stevens might be correct about moving to nichey game blogs. I dropped both Kotaku and Joystiq ages ago because their content is almost a complete mirror and I found it much more interesting to subscribe to the blogs they quote from instead.

i COME to this site because it's not like the other blogs. I think it rocks that randomly, I can find an article on a new super mario knit pattern!! Or something cool from Etsy...

Well Kotaku is just full of meanies and that's why their traffics sucks, but the rest of the blogs I think it is the summer months and the RSS feeds thing. Alot of people have moved onto RSS feeds for the bigger blogs as they just don't have time to surf everywhere.

I believe gamers are still addicted to their blogs. Numbers are low because news is slow.

You guys do one thing way better than Joystiq and Kotaku: you post less. Joystiq and Kotaku both update so frequently that it's impossible for me to keep up. This site is much easier to track and still gives me most of what I need to know.

In my opinion, Kotaku is one of the best sources for mainstream gaming news, i.e. E3 coverage, and some of their commenters are pretty good. Joystiq, on the other hand, has the absolute worst commenters of any blog I've ever seen. I don't read comments that often, but when I do, I want to read something worthwhile.

@Xerxes3rd: Some of the people who comment can be quite... vocal.

@Xav: I got tired of the same 5 people always taking the discussion off-topic within two comments. I haven't read any comments on the specific sites (like X3F), however.

X3F? Do we know someone that writes there??

People, it's summertime. All the kids are outside or on vacation. You should be happy because this is proof against the stereotype that we all live and play in dark basements.

Don't worry, come October the numbers will be back where they should be.

@Dan: I heard about one guy once. If I ever remember his name, you should invite him as a guest on the BitCast. You probably won't even know that he writes at X3F.

aaah! the summer hole!