Wow.  How does the saying go?  When it rains it pours?  Well right now it’s actually hailing in my little virtual world.  In fact, I don’t even know where to begin.  So lets just start at Sunday night?

Sunday night I was made aware of a few podcasts out there that were having some issues with being treated differently and unfairly as compared to say – an IGN.com.  Something happened this generation of consoles where community and fan based sites were suddenly recognized as a valuable asset to a product’s life cycle, and with that the average joe was suddenly rewarded for their hard work with things like games, interviews, assets, and events.   Over the past 6 months or so though, things have been changing a bit – the well has dried up.  So what happened?

Lets start at the beginning.

It’s September 2005 and it’s only a few weeks before the Xbox 360 launches.  Microsoft has a great PR Firm in a company named Edelman.  Edelman worked with Microsoft’s internal PR team on the product launch of the Xbox 360.  On the Edelman side it was lead by a lovely gal name Sara.  Sara had an idea – Sara realized something.  Community sites, podcasts, blogs and forums were a powerful voice in the gaming world.  These sites could get the message out to the hardcore about the Xbox 360 and other products.  So October 2005, I was invited to play the Xbox 360 a full month before it launched in NYC, and I was invited to represent Evil Avatar.com – a community site.  This was the beginning of it all for me, and for a lot of other sites in the industry.  It was the foot in the door, for the first time a major player in the game industry recognized our efforts.

Things were good for a while, we were treated like press.  In fact we were lumped in as a press site a lot of times getting access to the same resources as sites like IGN, Gamespot and others.  This was at a time before the Joystiq’s and Kotaku’s were very big,  blogs were just beginning to really grow – and they were lumped in with the community as well.  Eventually these sites were more tailored to presenting news and information and they grew in part because of this.

Other companies began to catch on, and soon third party publishers realized the importance of community sites.  I was lucky enough to attend numerous local events previewing new products before they came out, and I began to make some great contacts and friends at companies like Atari, RockStar, Microsoft and Midway.   As time went on, things got better and better, with more events and exclusives passed our way.  We even managed to get invited to the new and exclusive E3 in 2007.  Our list of contacts grew, our list of assets grew, and everything was grand.

Something changed though after E3 2007.  The return on investment for a lot of these companies stopped happening.   With a failing economy in the US the money grew tighter and tighter for PR.  Combined with the fact there are now no less than 6 major gaming shows a year (GDC, E3, Leipzig, TGS, PAX, and E4All) – time and money became extremely valuable.  So a lot of companies decided they’d try their hand at the community oriented PR.  With the success of sites like Major Nelson it’s easy to see why they might try to go that route.  And so, the well began to dry up for folks like myself.

The absolute boiling point for a lot of folks was E3 2008 this year.  In an event where everyone that was invited to go was “supposed to be there” – it was increasingly difficult for the smaller sites and podcasts to get appointments.  Suddenly we didn’t have “the numbers” or weren’t “the right focus” to talk to the same developers and publishers who we were having beers with not a year earlier.   It hurt a lot of people, it upset a lot of people, and it made a lot of folks angry.

After taking some time to reflect on everything, I believe this is simply the natural ebb and flow of the product cycle and where we as communities and pocasts and whatever else we are fit in.  At the beginning, we are part of the underground movement, the get the word out type people.  We cater to the hardcore, the early adopters, the trend setters.  As the life cycle reaches it’s peak, so do the people we reach out to.  After that peak it’s back downhill, with diminishing returns I believe for all parties involved.   I’m confident that this cycle will repeat itself when the next big game, systems, peripheral, service or whatever comes out.

I am extremely grateful for everything I’ve seen and done over the past five years.  If you would have told me half of the things that I have done, or got to see 10 years ago – hell even 6 years ago – I would have been as giddy as a school girl.  I LOVE what I do, I love the people I work with, the friends that I have made.  My place in all of this has never changed, I still do what I do.

You need to decide for yourself what you want to be.  If you want to be the next Kotaku – god I don’t know why you would – then do it.  Remember, Kotaku has corporate backing.  It’s a company, so it’s bound by the rules of it’s employer.  So build your empire, sell it to the highest bidder and reap the rewards.

Or continue to do what you love for the reason you love it.  Let the chips fall where they may, and in the end it’ll be just as rewarding.

Everyone needs to understand what their site’s focus is.  Who their podcast talks to.   You can BE anything you want to be, but when you give off conflicting ideas and goals it’s tough to maintain a strong userbase.  Whether that user base is just everyday readers, or strong community members; you need to be consistent with them.

I tried to stay as neutral as I could in all of this.  I tried to see both sides of the argument.   There’s a lot of conflicting emotions going around in my head right now, not just because of this whole “Press vs. Community” argument that keeps popping up, but a whole slew of things in my life.  Sometimes you need to just take a step back and enjoy what you have.