STATUS

Damn, it always hits me when I realise how recent the net actually is, and how impermanent it is as well. Still, perhaps this is an easier way to think of it.

Just imagine the corollary. It's the year 2032, and rpgmaker.net still exists. It's just passed it's 50,000th game, in fact. Some new users occasionally log in and stare at the now-20-year-old reviews for games like Alter Aila Genesis, Star Stealing Prince and Legendary Legend. Pom has passed a million downloads a long time ago, while the newly submitted games are...

Honestly, even I can't keep this going for long. I think this is partly related to the relative popularity of the (post)-apocalyptic literature and settings: it's easier to imagine something, whether a world or a website, end outright, then to envision that it'll persist, but transformed by the passage of time in some way or another, even when it doesn't need you. Just the thought of some crazy person reading this very post in 2032 might be strangely unsettling - to the point that if the website does manage to have such legs, quite a few people can probably be expected to go all "it's not what it used to be back in 2010s!" and slowly hate on it from the sidelines, as that seems to happen with anything long-running.

And if the worst comes to pass, and it does get to the brink earlier, there's still The Wayback Machine, preserving what's important.