...and Thanks for All the Fish!

It's a hell of thing to look back on 15 years of the Armchair Empire (AE) but I'm ready to turn my gaze forward and leave it behind.

For the last few years it has become increasingly evident – first in little hints then in crushing blows – that I'd gone as far as could with AE. What got me excited in the early days – creating the site, making contacts (when I got press kits in the mail), playing video games sent to my house, the metric ton of action figures, that feeling of endless possibilities – is the exact thing that has worn me down.

Without trying to sound too much like a question from the Riddler, all of it takes Time and once that Time is gone there's no getting it back and I just didn't ever seem to have enough of it.

My inbox is flooded with emails on a daily basis to the point where it was just static and rarely could I muster the energy to plow through them, sort them, or answer them. And 99.9% of my email is PR, indie's asking if I'll cover their Kickstarter campaign, follow-up emails from PR asking if I got the last email, and so on. An email from a friend? That's a rarity and I tend to miss them amoungst all the other email.

I look at my inbox...

Then I think I'll just play one of the six games I'm currently reviewing. But I have an hour, maybe a little more, to play with. So, which one do I slowly labour through an hour at a time?

But wait, I actually have to post something to the site. Maybe some news, finish editing a review? Oh crap, what about shoving stuff into the charnel house of so-called social media? Alerting the gaming news sites to recent updates? If I do that stuff for the next 20 minutes I'll still have a few minutes to play Witcher III.

And then it's 1:00am and I don't really have anything to show for it.

Trying to manage all this takes more out of my life than it adds to it. AE has become this soul-sucking thing that I started to resent but felt an obligation to keep operating. It's a feeling that occasionally bubbled to the surface throughout the last 15 years when things got tough. When something is supposed to be a hobby – and that's what AE started as, kind of a hobbyist gaming site – and it consumes you, that might be a problem, especially if you have other responsibilities you're not tackling.

Of course, the site also needed to support itself. Nowadays everyone surfs the web with adblocking software so what traffic was coming wasn't resulting in any ad revenue and we didn't have time – there it is again! – to really figure out a workaround or become a personality or video-driven website to capitalize on where video game coverage is going. The domain renewal is coming up and server bill is fast approaching and there's no money in the coffers. Would Patreon be an option? Could we encourage a meth dealer to launder money through the site and take a cut? Probably not.

The lack of funds and the soul-sucking tipping point of managing and maintaining the site collided almost 15 years to the day Jeff Nash and I started working on AE.

Over the last 15 years we've written and assembled thousands of articles and all of that will vanish when the site goes offline June 30, 2015. Maintaining AE as an archive (or as a bit of diary in gaming) was something that I always worried about. While not every article or review was a home run or even worth reading more than once, there were enough good ones that it seems a shame that all of it will disappear. So, if you see something you like, save the page, print it out, because there's no other way to save it unless you wander over to the Wayback Machine for a cobbled together version of the site.

I won't pretend that AE had some huge impact on the gaming public or that the site had a cult following, but for 15 years we quietly toiled away and had some fun in the process. Maybe the biggest impact will be when AE departs – there will be quite a few dead links!

Almost without exception everyone I ever had contact with in the world of video games – from publishers to developers to readers to members of the enthusiast and professional press – has been awesome. For all the negativity that seems to currently be vomiting all over video games and consumers of said video games – both from within and without – the people involved all seem to be fountains of positivity. They're involved in video games because they enjoy video games. There are too many people to thank individually here because over 15 years I've met and corresponded with a lot of people, many of whom I've never met face-to-face, which is a little incredible to me. Fortunately though a select few have become friends.

So, it's not without some emotion that I turn forward and leave video games and AE behind. Besides a lot of good memories – though I could probably do without the private and very surreal interview session I had with five (!) Nokia executives talking about the N-Gage at E3 one year – AE gave me a creative outlet and a bit of a voice in the context of the video game industry and a springboard to meet and talk to people that I otherwise would have never met.

A special “thanks for the all fish,” to the writers that have passed through AE. The list is actually so long that occasionally I'll come across an old review and not recognize the name! Without them AE would have burned me and Jeff out within five years. For all the hours of writing and game playing, I thank you!

I'd also like to thank my family for their love and support, especially during the early days! I'm not sure how much would have got done if you hadn't been there to encourage me. I'd especially like to thank my wife, who takes credit for sowing the seeds of the site in the first place, but she also got me motivated to attend E3 for the first time in 2003, which really was a turning point for me and the site. She's been far more patient and understanding than any human being I've ever met.

Maybe you're wondering what I'll be doing next. I can let it be known that I am certainly not getting into game development or moving to another video game site. I'm just moving on. To parts unknown with my wife, five kids, two dogs, two cats, and a rabbit. I have every intention to keep my own blog active, but intention doesn't always translate to “regularly.” Maybe you'll see my Millennium Falcon night light project there. Or the rabbit will do something hilarious and I'll just have to blog about it.

With more than few tears shed to see something I've poured so much effort into over the last decade and half blink out of (online) existence, I thank you for reading and for just being you.

I bid you adiós and good luck.

Now, has anyone seen my matches? I have a Viking ship that needs torching. Valhalla awaits!

- Aaron Simmer

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P.S. While armchairempire.com will go the way of the dodo, The Armchair Empire Infinite (this site) will stick around. Under the control of Jeff Nash, the focus will shift from the usual preview, feature, review cycle and drift to.... well, wherever Jeff wants to take it. I'm not involved so I have no idea what will happen next! Why don't you stick around and find out!