200k Visitors Rant

Read this News.com article about Swapoo. Swapoo is a Napster-like file sharing utility that allows you to trade ROMS.

But, it seems Sega busted his little party. After, oh, one week of being up, the author (his nick is Freemo) has decided to boot all users using Swapoo to trade copyrighted material (aka ROMS). The focus of Swapoo has been changed, the article basically says. To nothing copyrighted.

Does this mean that ROM trading on Swapoo will be over? God, I hope so. While one part of me says it would be nice if everyone could easily find an ROM they wanted, I sure as hell don't want Emulation going so mainstream (here come the $$$$$!). Emulation isn't exactly underground, it sure as hell isn't warez, but ask your 45 year old uncle about emulation. Most likely, he'll say "Huh?". If you explain it to him, I'll bet he'll be interested. But I kind of like it that way, word of mouth getting people interested in emulation. When emulation is shown to people by word of mouth, its more like "Let's play Rampage!" than "c00l g0ld3n3y3 4 fr33!!!" which I felt Swapoo was bringing to the scene. All we need is for you to be able to easily find N64 roms. Please just keep that to the warez sites, which come up and go down each day (laced with GetPaid4Surfs and Pornographical Banners, of course. Got to make a profit!!!)

In the article, it states that the author's idea was partly "to have something impressive on my resume". I think that's great. If he was going to choose something illegal like ROMS though, he should have kept it to himself, for above mentioned reasons. It seems Swapoo will now become a god-knows what trading post. Maybe pictures or something. Can't be something with a copyright. Does he still have a good example of his programming skills? Most definitely.

It seems Swapoo was created with good intention, but only brought some infamy and probably helped distribute some N64 roms for a few days.

Seems Zophar's Domain hosts the site.

A)Why are you hosting what is pretty much a ROM site?
B)What are you going to do now? Deny the guy hosting because he probably will not have an emu-related site?
C)Was this basically a ploy for fame? You probably got it.

There was a time when Zophar's Domain was my mecca for emulation things. I came to SGC back when this site had nothing but the SNES, NES, GB sections and the freshly added Genesis and Colecovision sections. Within a few weeks, we had added basically every other console emulated. I had this goal that we could be just like Zophar's, and people would flock to us. Perhaps my zeal helped motivate Jandar, because he did a good amount of the section adding too. It was a bit sloppy (I'd usually start with just two emulators per section [Dos/Windows]) but we had them there. We tried promoting the Message Board (I was really into the old ZMD2).

Well, we didn't really overtake Zophar's at all. Our message board was frequented by maybe two-three people. We had a massive update called the "Apocalypse" where we added NES Roms, tons of emulators for non-Dos/Windows Operating Systems, and even a fancy piece-of-junk I made called the ROM Locator (It could have been great, but it had no search capabilities. Basically making it nothing but a list of ROMs each site carried.). Nothing really helped us break through the tape, like ZD had.

Well, we just kept hammering away at what we did. We updated about emulator releases. We added thousands of Translation Patches (not discriminating against various languages such as Spanish/French/Russian. . . even Esperanto!). Of course, our hit stream slowly increased. I noticed maybe five extra unique visitors each month.

To me, this was disheartening. If you look in the archives, you'll notice I appear to be a lazy ass. Well, all the evidence points to that, does it not? Sadly, I agree with that assesment. I've gone a whole month making a single post. That's just wrong. I was always frequenting emulation sites, and getting excited over different advances in emulation, but I didn't act dedicated enough to SGC (Apocalypse Emulation). Jandar kind of, fired me, after about a month and a half no posts (after my asking him to be changed to a measly links maintainer). I came back about four months later determining regardless of how many posts I make, I would always be involved in SGC as much as I could be.

Well, if you notice, my posts are always in spurts. My lack of posts are in longer spurts. But, I feel I show more of a dedication to SGC then I ever did. I got bored with emulation for a good stretch, but I didn't quit SGC. I knew things would come around again. Now they have, of course. The new Netplay Activelist, and somewhat daily "New Ideas" to make SGC better come to my head help me keep at it. Will these run out sometime? Well, my name is still airety :P But I'll try to extend it as long as possible.

I remember we had an IRC channel for about a week. Nobody ever visited it except Jandar, Ponchoman (the 3rd official staffer, but from what I understand he helped Jandar out now and then unofficially), and myself. We were kind of bummed about it, and that was my whole dive into the IRC-aspect of emulation.

I was always telling Jandar about "New Ways We Can Make Money". I had once popped the question about how come you (Jandar) don't have any revenue bringing ads? I asked why he would pass the opportunity to bring in a little cash from it. His response was simply that he would never do it, because a hobby is a hobby, a job is a job. He said when emulation becomes a job, I'd rather quit than make money from it. At that time, I didn't really understand him.

In a later dive into the IRC-aspect of emulation, I met some pretty cool people. I got to talk to the authors of Pretendo, I talked to TNSE briefly, and I hung out with Jandar and a few other people I knew/didn't know. I must say, it was surely motivating. I saw how this was a hobby, not some dumb job. I wasn't a staff member at SGC, I was more like an enthusiast. That really made me happy. It has also made me realize that as long as I am an enthusiast, I should not make money from emulation.

Jandar and I have this grand idea of creating SGC related merchandise and giving it away. I would love to, most definitely. But of course we'd need money for it. We haven't thought of any way, but we laid a ground rule immediately. We will not make money from emulation or SGC.

Some sites have fallen into the pit of "Let's Make Money!". Some may remember the April 1st spoof "Airety's Domain". Well we were spoofing none other than Zophar's Domain, and their fall from grace (in our eyes).

Once Zophar's Domain had posts regarding Windows 98 and various non-emulation related things, my faith in them wavered. Once Zophar started running contests featuring pretty decent prizes, I started to worry that ZD was becoming more commercial, and that I doubted Zophar would constantly dive into his own pocket to fund these contests. The fact that Zophar's Domain recieves money from the advertisements was revealed at some time, I found out about it a while ago.

Anyways, more and more people kept flocking to the site. I couldn't understand it. SGC's hits were actually DECLINING in a time when emulation was in somewhat of a huge boom. I was sad when I put two and two to figure out why this is so.

Jandar's policy has been no-next generation emulators. Until the console is officially considered "dead" in America by us, we won't post programs that emulate it (the lone exception to that rule I believe is Gameboy. But the Gameboy is extremely old. Its impossible to find some of its older titles, therefore requiring an emulation scene to it. Believe us, we didn't put up Gameboy emulators with the idea people could download them and play Pokemon Gold.)

Anyhow, it seems that Zophar's Domain went through a lot of changes. Zophar started hosting a real video show called "Zophar's Underworld" which a lot of people insulted him about. I absolutely could not get that at all. I watched the first few episodes (the only episodes, I believe), and I thought they were pretty decent. People criticized his appearance, his "Ummmms" and various other mishaps. I found it hilarious. "Where is your show, insultor?" I thought to myself. I think it was a brave effort by Zophar, and its too bad I don't see anymore episodes.

Only one thing about the episodes perturbed me, and that was the fact that he stated he keeps open lines of communication with every Emulation site out there. Well, we aren't the Goliath of the emulation scene, but we aren't the David either. But, Zophar has never contacted us about anything. I personally haven't contacted him about much, but I don't know about Jandar. If he had, I wouldn't be surprised. We admired Zophar's work for a good amount of time.

So here comes a little more SGC stuff. We made a bit of a rebound when Neil_ joined. I must say, I definitely admire Neil_. He had his Tidbits every day, and he made any other site claiming they had up-to-date Translation News look like fools. He wrote an article about the FF Translation Wars (see it in the Articles section.) which gave us our largest one-day hit total ever. He helped SGC rebound from the depths of 150 hits a day to around 400 hits a day currently. I don't really like to talk about "hits" too much, but a 250 hit increase per day is definitely something to credit Neil_. It really is a pity that he had to leave.

All of our staff, past and present deserves some credit at least. Ponchoman did an incredible job with NES roms section. Magitek Knight did a swell job maintaining the SPCs section. YDD may not have made a lot of posts, but he's just as enthusiastic as I am. Bokuduno is a great Spanish translation maintainer. Heero_Yuy had huge shoes to fill after Neil_, but he's doing ok. Chuwim got off to a bit of a rough start, but he did a good job considering we were neglecting utilities. Evanidus definitely made a lot more posts than I did in the early days. SirYoink fills a position none of us can with his Mac Emulator maintaining abilities. PKT Paladin is an avid romhacker, and definitely does a great job with the Tables Section. Dream Doctor did well as pretty much our first Translations Maintainers. (I hope I didn't miss anyone who actually did something at this site. If I did, E-mail me quickly so I can add you to this list. I probably remember what you did, just not your name.)

And then there's Jandar. Damn, how does he keep this site going? I've had over ten different websites already. All have started strong, and then tapered off (due to my laziness). But Jandar has kept at it for so long, faithfully, in all times. He's kept his stance strong, and never waivered.

I like to think of SGC's viewer base as a more educated bunch. I don't really recieve too many "stupid questions". Some questions like "How can I hack roms?" are usually because people have no idea what utilities to download, docs to read, or that sort of thing. Questions like: "CAN U TRANSLATE TALES OF PHANTASIA ITS A GOOD GAME AND ITS NOT TRANSLATED THANK U" usually follow into a "Stupid Question" category. I mean, I can't even hack Metroid. :)

We've slowly progressed over these years. You know what, we don't always get every emulator release on time. Some we miss completely. Are we going to improve on that? Sure. But as Neil_ said in his goodbye message:
Emulation was meant to be supported by the hard work of VOLUNTEERS. Not paid staffers. We at the SGC might not have always be the first to post news. We, however, posted with pride the news we covered.

I think that sums it up. We are going to work towards being the best site for emulation enthusiasts. That's what SGC is all about.

This pretty much concludes the 200,000 visitor rant. I know it hasn't happened yet, and it won't happen for about three more days, but I feel like talking right now. Thank you for actually reading it. If you feel like complimenting any forementioned people, please use the Message Board. They all deserve a nice hand. All of them can be considered enthusiasts, and not staffers in my mind.