The reason this site is dying.

[Kritter]

Popping my head in. I remember saying I wouldn't leave this place until either I or the site died. You might notice I haven't been here in a while... and I'm still alive.

MFGG died when it became boring. That's what it is, it's dull, and it fought against that for as long as it could but that's where it is.

The site needed to evolve a long time ago and that time came and went, nobody has the resources, knowledge, time or commitment to have made those changes happen. Changes to the forum itself weren't ever going to be enough to re-invigorate things around here, it was just a temporary band-aid.

Also fact is, making fan games weren't as much of a stepping stone in the old days, people were just having fun making cool Mario games. These days you grow up hearing about an indie hit taking off and making millions. Coverage of those kinds of things is far more vast and people are growing up with their sights set a lot higher. And for those who still want to make fan games, getting resources for those things is now much more easily done elsewhere on websites like TSR.

MFGG is old, clunky and broken and is solely focused on a single brand where it probably should've evolved long ago to cover a wider range of Nintendo things in order to have had a hope of surviving. Not only that but as mentioned, none of the parts of this site are linked well with other parts, it's disjointed and there's no real reason for people to register on the forums if they have a site account. Frankly I'm shocked it survived as long as it has until now. The whole site feels like something stuck in the past, because it is.

Sharing your games is even easier now thanks to the myriad of social platforms we have available. Back in the old days, forums were life and chat programs like AIM and MSN were secondary that you'd mostly use with your friends, but that's tipped vastly in its head in this day and age where Discord, Twitter and other platforms make life so much easier for many budding fan game and indie developers to share their work. Who would come to a small Mario forum when it's so much easier to get an audience out there in the world of social media?

There are probably ways to salvage or save this place but who could put their hand up and say they have the resources, knowledge, time or commitment to make that happen? I used to love this place like it was a weird, blue and red child but even I ran out of those things long ago. Turning things around would probably take money above all else.

Anyway, apparently my last visit was a good 7 months ago, so that's me done again for a while. Take care.