RIP Assemblergames forum

[zyrobs]

I am wondering if reading-based websites like forums are just dying down in their usage, in general... due to the easy availability of video playing nowadays (so people would rather watch YouTube rather than read something)

Forums like these are dying off for several reasons. One is old age: the people generally interested in older games just don't have time to invest in them anymore (having a family, etc), or just not as much interested because they've already seen everything. Another reason is that these types of forums are best enjoyed on a computer, but the internet itself is transitioning away from that to mobile usage; on mobiles, microblogs are more powerful and popular.

It's why newer forum engines like Xenforo prioritize having social media connections, post likes, tagging, and notifications for everything. It's more user friendly today, to get a popup on your mobile after a new reply, than to check an entire forum (which doesn't even fit on your phone screen) once every few hours.

[BonusKun]

I'm in the same boat as Segata as in I prefer older style forums. I don't mind reddit but it's just not for me.

[Team Andromeda]

One would like to think, what with all those members and their huge collections,one would have money to spare, for the upkeep.
To me, the site owner has always been dodgy.

[Leynos]

Many have offered to buy it form him.

[joyeux]

I vividly remember when there was a feud between Sonic Cult and Assembler Games, back in the beginning of the century regarding a Sonic X-Treme prototype. Also Assembler's inflexibility was a key factor for Castlevania Bloodlines proto 0.5 not to resurface.

[OverDrone]

I'm in the same boat as Segata as in I prefer older style forums. I don't mind reddit but it's just not for me.

Same. Nothing beats the classic forum format IMO. Reddit hasn't clicked with me for whatever reason either.

[Blades]

lol that Xtreme prototype was barely anything. Wasn’t that ~2006?

[Greg2600]

Many have offered to buy it form him.

They've offered alternatives to host the forum cheaper as well. The guy doesn't care, he's a jack ass.

[xelement5x]

It's not so much as videos. People transitioned more away from dedicated forums to have a subreddit. Not a big fan of Reddit. Personally, prefer to go back and read posts from long ago often. It's much easier to do that on a forum. I also like having Avatars and sigs and a tighter community. I don't wish to feel like I'm talking to a group of people at a Costco. A smaller and more intimate place to talk is more engaging.

I agree 100% and certain forums also have lots of legacy information that is incredibly important and not archived otherwise.

[joyeux]

lol that Xtreme prototype was barely anything. Wasn’t that ~2006?

2006 yes, but conflicts between these forums predates this, I remember people from Sonic Cult (or was it SCARZ?) referred to him as ASSembler.

[MachineCode]

I agree 100% and certain forums also have lots of legacy information that is incredibly important and not archived otherwise.

Numerous members have done full backups of all the public and private content (except PMs as those have to be done by the individual user) so we won't be losing all the info. A large portion of us have migrated over to ObscureGamers. They made us assemblergames refugee tags . Hopefully our new home is devoid of some of the nonsense of the previous spot. I knew after the last long term shut down that it was only a matter of time until this happened. I, and many others, started to pull away after that. Oh well. As long as we have the people and the content, it doesn't really matter where we congregate, as long as its a proper topical forum and not "social media". ASSEMbler can keep on being how he's being about things if he so pleases. We don't need him. As I'd posted over there, normally I have a your site your rules point of view, but the majority of the site was user generated content and he's not done anything to facilitate the users backing up said content. Oh well, luckily it's easy to crawl and scrape sites.

[monsterG]

It's not so much as videos. People transitioned more away from dedicated forums to have a subreddit. Not a big fan of Reddit. Personally, prefer to go back and read posts from long ago often. It's much easier to do that on a forum. I also like having Avatars and sigs and a tighter community. I don't wish to feel like I'm talking to a group of people at a Costco. A smaller and more intimate place to talk is more engaging.

subreddits are searchable.

Also, there's a lot of talk in this thread about people frantically archiving forums. Aren't those posts already cached by Google? Click the little green arrow beside search results to see cached pages.

[Greg2600]

Hmm, I just noticed that PCEngineFX.com ceased as of January. Wow, another great forum dead. Damn.

[zyrobs]

2006 yes, but conflicts between these forums predates this, I remember people from Sonic Cult (or was it SCARZ?) referred to him as ASSembler.

I think that may have been because you could type in "ass" into the address bar of the browser, and it would autocomplete to assemblergames.com.
Also there was this:

[Gentlegamer]

Hmm, I just noticed that PCEngineFX.com ceased as of January. Wow, another great forum dead. Damn.

We moved here http://pcengine.proboards.com/