Pocket Tactics - Into the Future

[admin]

Hello everyone - we’re going to take a quick break from our usual schedule to talk a bit about the future of Pocket Tactics.

http://www.pockettactics.com/articles/p ... ew-editor/

[Narkulus]

Good luck in your future endeavors Mr. Joe. Not a big fan of mobile games, but I always took a look here for digital board game news and see if it might also pertain to PC. Hopefully this site will continue to cover that front as BGG seems to have faltered lately and their doesn't seem to be any real alternatives. It would be nice if the site could indicate if these games are available on PC too, even though it's not mobile news. I just found out the iOS version of Agricola is being released on Steam, and I found it by pure accident, no news of it anywhere.

[raketemensch]

BGG???s iOS blog has been mostly dormant for ages now. This has been a regular site for me since Owen???s days, and I appreciate the effort you???ve put into it.

[raindog308]

Um...WTF?

You could write a script to port over the articles. Seriously, you're making it sound like it's rocket science when instead it's a few hours with php or perl or spending a couple bucks on fiverr. That's where the value of the site is...years of reviews and comments.

"While obviously a great shame, it???s the best course of action as Pocket Tactics looks to move into the next phase of its existence."

If the content and its readers aren't not important to you, then yeah, I guess it is.

"you also need to take to heart that the types of things Pocket Tactics may or may not cover will change"

So...I guess the focus won't be on tactically-oriented mobile gaming.

Fellow PT readers, I guess we're no longer wanted here.






Evidently, the new owners don't care much about the site, so I'm not sure why any of us should.

[TannerH]

As someone who has written a few of the posts that will be disappearing, this is disappointing to see. What is the timeline for this, and is there any recourse for anyone who wants to save things for clips? Is there enough time to start an archive.org process for this? Stuff like Pete Whalen's tips for Dream Quest would be a shame to lose, and I still go back to read Owen's articles from time to time.

[EICJoe]

As someone who has written a few of the posts that will be disappearing, this is disappointing to see. What is the timeline for this, and is there any recourse for anyone who wants to save things for clips? Is there enough time to start an archive.org process for this? Stuff like Pete Whalen's tips for Dream Quest would be a shame to lose, and I still go back to read Owen's articles from time to time.

We're looking at the end of March/beginning of April. I can't be more specific than that at the moment.

I still have access to the CMS now, and it's highly likely that the existing library will still exist in the CMS once the migration has happened, it's just that those articles won't be live anywhere and won't be accessible to the public. They will still exist though as long as at least one of the remaining two sites - WG and SG - remain on the same CMS platform (we hope, anyway).

But if you need me to help try and preserve anything you've written, feel free to hit me up.

Some community members from Discord are already looking at archive.org and other ways of trying to preserve the website. If anyone wishes to join in those efforts they are more than welcome to, especially for specific pages they don't want to see lost.

[EICJoe]

Um...WTF?

You could write a script to port over the articles. Seriously, you're making it sound like it's rocket science when instead it's a few hours with php or perl or spending a couple bucks on fiverr. That's where the value of the site is...years of reviews and comments.

"While obviously a great shame, it???s the best course of action as Pocket Tactics looks to move into the next phase of its existence."

If the content and its readers aren't not important to you, then yeah, I guess it is.

"you also need to take to heart that the types of things Pocket Tactics may or may not cover will change"

So...I guess the focus won't be on tactically-oriented mobile gaming.

Fellow PT readers, I guess we're no longer wanted here.

Evidently, the new owners don't care much about the site, so I'm not sure why any of us should.

I mean, I can't personally write anything because I'm not a coder. Network N has a web-dev team. but they specialise in Wordpress, not SilverStripe, which is why we're porting PT over to begin with: to give it a stronger technical foundation and put it on something the devs know really well in terms of support.

The price of that is most of the content up till this point, and yeah, that sucks. But looking at the article library prior to 2016 also sucks and I hope something like that never has to happen again, If I'm honest. If that means hard choices now, then so be it.

And let's be real for a second here: I'm not going to indulge this fantasy that all of the 'OG' PT readers have been valiantly sticking with the website up till this point. Plenty of comment threads around the time I joined don't support that, and the traffic stats between 2016 - 2018 definitely don't support that - you all abandoned us first.

There are exceptions: I've said this plenty of times, and i will say it again; I am incredibly grateful to the likes of you raindog, and to Biff, Hustler and everyone else who's also decided to stick around for 'Joe's' version of Pocket Tactics. You've supported me and kept me honest and I'll never forget that.

But please, none of this "I guess we're not wanted here" rubbish.

Glen will have his own vision but he's already communicated with me that he's an admirer of Pocket Tactics' reviews library and the premium games that get covered. I'm not going to speak for him or spread false hope, but it sounds like he'd like to see it continue - he's just also got plenty of ideas of what he thinks will help the site grow on top of what I've been doing.

I'd like to think PT will always stand for premium mobile games in a way no-one else really bothers with anymore, but the amount of articles you can actually generate from those kinds of games is kind of diminishing, which means we as Editors need to improvise and fill the gaps.

So yeah, you're likely to see a change. There was a change when I took over from Dave, as I imagine there was probably a (slight) change when Dave took over from Owen. Dave and Owen always seemed very similar to me, but they are different people at the end of the day.

As I mentioned in my reply to Tanner, archiving efforts are already underway thanks to the Discord crowd.