Solitaire Times, they are a-changing
It's been a long time coming, so to most of you this won't be a surprise. We cannot keep up the website according to our vision. Solitaire Times was meant to be a daily newspaper, but after two years, life got in the way. Athena got a demanding job, JW a demanding illness. We've gradually run out of time and energy. So what do you do when you get sad and frustrated because you can't meet your goals week in week out? You lower them, that's what!
Here's the plan.
Instead of daily posts about every single crowdfunding campaign, we'll do an overview announcement of all campaigns for the coming week.
We will still put some of those campaigns in the spotlight, but they will be our personal picks.
If publishers or designers don't say how the solo mode for a game works, we won't go searching for hours anymore. Perhaps we'll mention the game in the Lounge, perhaps we won't bother. These games won't have any priority.
We'll get back to writing more personal posts again, even if this means one less news post that week. So, our musings and session reports will return.
We're glad Zerbique will continue to be our newshound, and hope our dear readers will keep sharing in the Lounge.
In short: we won't be your source for daily news anymore. Just like we weren't the last few weeks. But this time that's going to be exactly according to plan. We've got a new mission statement. We'll put the fun back in malfunctioning. Embracing our imperfection.
Solitaire Times, forever changing, always the same.
I'm catching up because I tend to read ST posts in batches – but the first thing I'd say is that this is meant to be fun. We already mostly have one lot of people in our lives telling us "it's not meant to be fun, it's a job", but even if we can't get away from them I think it's an error to turn one's enjoyable hobby into a non-fun job too. (I mean, then you need to find another hobby…)
So, JW, Athena, Zerbique: as far as I'm concerned, please do what works for you. You don't owe me anything. I enjoy your writing but it won't ruin my life to read less of it.
The posts I…
Just want to say a BIG thank you for all the time and work you put into this site. I'm glad you're scaling it down iso shutting it down all together as I find this small community here very pleasant. As a fellow introvert, I find smaller groups much more comfortable and relatable.
Hey guys. I think you’ve all done really well considering. Sometimes things hit a wall and seem like the perfect time for giving up, but instead opens some new possibilities. I look forward to hearing about your gaming exploits more than anything else. It’s hard to remember that you guys run a ”news” website (which you do an excellent job of) because I would rather read more about your random (mis) adventures in the world of gaming. I much prefer your opinions on things, since I hold your thoughts in high regard.
Thank you very much, everyone, for your love and support. It pains me to not be able to contribute to the site as much as I want to. I can now basically work on it once a week which is very little. It's better than closing it down, though.
As Z said, it appears that the website has reached its maximum readership potential. And that's fine. JW and I are a couple of old-fashioned introverts: we don't want to expose ourselves on YouTube, and we don't want to suck up to publishers for free preview copies. This makes us niche and unpopular, but also indie and intimate.
We'll see how it goes and hopefully we can keep things running one…
I'm so terribly bummed and frustrated by this turn of events. I am a completionist at heart and leaving stuff out always pains me. I enjoy the work when I feel like I'm doing it well, and picking games here and there instead of covering them all typically robs me of that feeling.
That said, I think JW and Athena took the right decision, and although this not what I wanted, this what I hoped would come to be, because there was no other choice.
Truth is, we can blame what we want, there are just too many releases. It's exhausting, overwhelming, nauseating. We had to face several weeks in a row with about 10 KS games launching the same…