11.19.2000» Another month, another RPGamer staffer leaves. You could set your watch by it, if your watch was only accurate to within a month and had a setting for RPGamer staff departures. Why do websites such as RPGamer and the GIA have such high turnover rates and why do quasiprofessional fansites, which often start with tons of energy, often just seem to die after less than a month?

Well, having worked at one such site, and attempted to help launch another, I think I can safely say I know what gives.

The main problem, as it were, is work. A lot of people don't seem to get just how much backbreaking sleepruining work goes into starting and maintaining a good website. Yes, while others are playing the latest greatest Final Fantasy and standing in line for a PlayStation 2, you have to stay home and scour the net for screenshots while your boss starts pressuring you to make inane changes to the column you agreed to do -- all without pay.

When you put it in that perspective, its almost impossible for a site to stay open for more than a few months. Some of the best ones, like cosmo canyon and toastyfrog, manage to stay open for a span of years, but thats the exception to the rule. Readers need not fear, this site will be a different story, simply because personal pages, as a rule, do not die easily.

So what makes a site stay online? The big things, in my view, are time and money. Most gamers, especially the older ones prone to starting sites (like myself), need those little green slips of paper to keep minor things such as a roof and an internet connection. We also tend to be going to school, which sucks more time down. Finally, being gamers, we want to buy and play games, which takes more time and money.

All it really boils down into, in the end, is corporate sponsorship and a constant supply of new blood. The only sites which can stay online indefinitely are those with a good supply of money (read: banners) and enough fame to constantly attract a new group of talented writers. Apparently, an ass-ugly design helps too.

In the end, I don't really have a point to this thought, except to warn those who want to start new sites and those who want to work on game sites to understand exactly what you're getting into.