IGN Erases “Planet”s

IGN are to discontinue their hosting service.

At first sight, this statement might not sound neither all that unexpected nor meaningful, but let us take a step back into the year 1998, when Half-Life 1 was released. With it, the complexion of the internet gaming community was forever changed (arguably – let us forget the original Team Fortress and Action Quake 2 for now!) as we experienced the first full-on bloom of the modification. For those ends, HalfLife.net was, for a fleeting moment, the premier source of GoldSource-based news.

It was also hastily bought out by the 3D Portal Network in 1999, though as early as May 2001, 3DPN’s Brad Wernicke announced that GameSpy Industries had bought out 3D Portal Network. Three of 3D Portal Network’s websites, HalfLife.net, DukeWorld and UTWorld were merged into their respective “Planet” websites, while others – Gunman Central, Wangsdojo and FAKK2.net for example – were altogether abandoned.

In late 2003, IGN acquires GameSpy (along with 3D Gamers and TeamXbox in early 2004). Finally, in 2005, IGN is bought out by none other than News Corporation.

Back to today. With their storied history, Planet Half-Life, Planet Unreal and Planet Quake are each beyond historical archives of the modding community: Not only do they contain a dazzling array of present projects, they also – in a sense – contain the entire lineage of communities that once were. In my mind, the PHL of today can be traced right back into the HalfLife.net of 1998.

Let’s get back to the original statement, then, of which the effects are potentially staggering: The amounts of websites currently residing in the hosting directories, of the more prominent “Planet”s, are the following:

Planet Half-Life: 139
Planet Quake: 413
Planet Unreal: 148

This adds neatly up to the number 700. Seven hundred projects. Of course, not each and every hosted website will perish in this event – some are still up and running, with active webmasters able to move and migrate – and there are bound to be individuals willing to mirror some (if not all) of the content available, but one single incontestable fact remains: The Planet sites are, though now far less prominent than they were five years ago, still the archive.org of the modification community.

The one facet that does worry me in all this is how we gravitated towards such portals; for the last ten years, it seemed as though there was a build-up, a functional shift, a process towards better availability, cohesion and structure (case in point: ModDB) of community-driven content. After the Planet site directories are gone, whether the content is mirrored and websites move elsewhere, we are nevertheless reverted back to a far more splintered state of being.

For a discussion on archiving the existing content, you could check a discussion thread on celephais.net.