This is sort of a first part of
something that I'm not sure will have more than one part.
A while back, I mentioned that one of
my favorite web sites in recent years, County Line Gaming, had been
down for awhile, and that I've got a few ideas as to why that might
be. I'll just be tossing a few of them out there as possibilities.
I don't really mean them to be taken terribly seriously or anything.
These are more just potential discussion starters. Speculation,
really, and not much more.
Of course, a little history would
probably be a good thing to begin with here. This is likely to be
quick and dirty, even for my standards, but it'll do for the purposes
of this post.
My first encounter with the group of
YouTubers collectively known as County Line Gaming came by way of a
little “TubeCeption” in 2007 or 2008, I believe. I'd been
looking up videos relating to Final Fantasy 4, my all-time favorite
video game, and I'd found a Let's Play of it by a guy calling himself
AppleGodZMG, or Apple for short. I liked the man's commentary and
the sound of his voice, so I started following him. It's why I'm
still following him all these years later, really. I know I've
linked to his channel a few times before, but here
it is again anyway, just as a refresher. He was part of a group
of Let's Players called County Line Gaming, or CLG for short
The County Line Gaming group itself
started out as a YouTube channel, which can still be found here,
for those who may be interested. There have been a few roster
changes over the years, because, well, such things tend to be natural
in these groups, really, but there have been a few core members that
have been there the entire time I've been following them. Apple's
one, GalufBlackMage is another, and I think users called RekiWylls
and Aura have been long-time members of the group as well. What I
think of as the “classic” CLG team is rounded out by users going
by Dtothedon and Hypersquirell, as they've been with the group for
awhile now, too
As time went by, the group gained a
fair amount of followers, which lead to the foundation of a group
website, sometime in 2008 or 2009 or thereabouts. As with so many
sites, this one had a user forum, and I was among the earliest
non-group-members to join it. It was a good place to keep in contact
with other fans of the group and its members, and also a convenient
place to find their latest videos. For as screwy as YouTube has been
recently, it was worse back then, so something like that was a real
help.
There were loads of group projects they
did. The most memorable ones for me were the one where they did
round-robin LPs of a good chunk of the classic Mega Man games and the
group LP of Final Fantasy 8. The Mega Man one was a favorite because
back in the day, I was quite a Mega Man fan myself, though that did
change over the years, somewhat regrettably. The Final Fantasy 8 one
I liked because I was doing a Text Play of it here on my blog at more
or less the same time, and from the looks of things, they wound up
stopping at about the same place I did. Not sure how close the
reasoning would be, but it's an interesting coincidence either way.
One thing the group did that I wish I'd
put more time into while I had the chance was a side feature called
Fanfare Theater. The premise behind that was that they were going to
do voice-acted versions of popular games. The only one they managed
to pull off was Final Fantasy 9, but given how much of a chore it
seemed like it was, from the behind-the-scenes stuff I recall having
heard, I can understand why nothing much happened with it after that.
I kind of regret not putting any real time into listening to it, now
that it's too late, but that's my fault.
One other thing I remember from the
main site's run was an early logo contest they did. It's one of a
few artsy-type contests I'd at least tried to enter around that time.
In this case, it was a contest to design a logo or image of some
sort for the group and/or web site. What I had intended as an entry
can be found here.
I'm not sure I was ever officially entered, and I don't recall if
there was ever a winner announced or not, but that's been seven
years, as of this writing, so things are a little hazy. About all I
really can say for sure is that it's most definitely the best piece
of fan art I've ever done, and most likely the best piece of overall
art I've managed to pull off as well.
But as I was mentioning above, I did
that image seven years ago now, and a good many of the websites I was
a fan of in college, for sure, and even the last year or so of high
school, didn't even manage to last that long. I even remember doing a
piece here about how a handful of sites I frequented actually wound
up closing down or going archive-only after being active for a dozen
years, more or less, with a lack of usage or new material being a
common reason for such things.
And really, if I'm going to speculate
as to why the group's site is down now, I think that's where I should
probably start. Even today, and perhaps especially today, web sites
aren't exactly cheap, after all, and I suspect the CLG site wasn't
getting nearly enough traffic to make it worthwhile for whoever was
paying for hosting to keep it going past the end of March or early
this month. I'm not privy to the actual stats for the site, but from
my last few visits there, I'm guessing viewership was pretty low, and
that I may have been one of the only few left who even bothered with
the site any more. I kind of wish I'd been able to post more in the
forums than I had been at the end, but I'd had other things going on
in my life that had to take priority.
I suspect similar things were going on
for most of the core members as well. I get it, of course. That's
how life is once one hits adulthood, and my impression is that most
of the folks involved in CLG were at least college aged, if not
older, which meant that there were concerns beyond gaming that had to
be dealt with first.
With all that in mind, if the County
Line Gaming website is history now, I've gotta say, it was a good
run, fun while it was lasted. I got to experience a few things and
do a few others that I might not otherwise have. I met and
interacted with some interesting folks along the way, and I'd like to
think I learned something from them.
I'd like to think it's not over yet,
that there's a comeback in the works, and that there's more to come.
The adult in me knows, however, that such may not be the case, and
very likely that even the CLG site had to go down for good at some
point. If that really is the case, it's been a good run, and I'm
glad I got to be at least a small part of that something special in a
few people's lives.
With that in mind, I'd like to say
thank you to all those who were involved in the group and the site in
some way, shape, or form over the years. It was fun. I really
enjoyed it, and I hope everyone else did as well.
I would also like to apologize in
advance for the things I've almost certainly gotten wrong in all of
this. I'm sure there are things I'm wrong about here, but I'm not
sure where to even really begin looking to correct them. I just want
everyone to know that what I've said here is to the best of my
knowledge and memory of these things, and speculation based on that.
Once again, I would very much like to
thank everyone involved with the County Line Gaming website over the
years. I'm subscribed to a fair number of group members individually
on YouTube in addition to Apple, as mentioned above. Here they are:
Here's to the future, everybody!
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