What has happened to Abandonia?

[Chryseus]

Well this is the first time I've really revisited Abandonia in years since being very active in the early days, from what I've seen so far Abandonia has really gone down the drain.

The most noticeable and in my opinion worst thing that has occurred is the terrible state of the website, the advertising is so bad it literally breaks the layout, thank god anyone with sense uses adblock, seriously get rid of them they make the website frankly look like trash.

There also appears to be a distinct lack of games being added, I don't know if this is due to lack of reviewers or just general laziness.

I remember the days when abandonia was a fun place to be with a great community and a lot of active members contributing to the site (myself included), sadly all that seems to have largely died away and been replaced by greed.
You ask for donations yet you give us a website that is cluttered up with adverts and no real push towards getting more games added.

All I can say is thanks for the good memories because this Abandonia is not the one I remembered and enjoyed.

[Tracker]

The problem is, that the world has changed since the old days. Abandonia is currently being owned by a company which intends to run the site in very "specific" ways, limiting the room for improvements. There are very few volunteers because what we do is not only not rewarding, but very demanding - we need to spend a lot of time of our own for the benefit of people we don't even know. We, the community, do not own the site, which means we don't have any kind of control over the advertisement's, or their quantity.
And there are no games because all the old games have been put up with a few exceptions, and even most of those are sold. That means they are protected by the law, the current distributor solely owns the rights to make them available to the masses (for money). They can't be on this site anymore.
But I'm sure you knew all of the above.

[Scatty]

Well this is the first time I've really revisited Abandonia in years since being very active in the early days, from what I've seen so far Abandonia has really gone down the drain.

The most noticeable and in my opinion worst thing that has occurred is the terrible state of the website, the advertising is so bad it literally breaks the layout, thank god anyone with sense uses adblock, seriously get rid of them they make the website frankly look like trash.

There also appears to be a distinct lack of games being added, I don't know if this is due to lack of reviewers or just general laziness.

I remember the days when abandonia was a fun place to be with a great community and a lot of active members contributing to the site (myself included), sadly all that seems to have largely died away and been replaced by greed.
You ask for donations yet you give us a website that is cluttered up with adverts and no real push towards getting more games added.

All I can say is thanks for the good memories because this Abandonia is not the one I remembered and enjoyed.
Now now, hold on a bit there, will ya. I'm also one who can claim to have been here since quite early days of Abandonia (never mind the join date on this account), and yes, it has changed a lot.
However there are some points you're wrong at, or aren't aware of the current circumstances. First of all, the ads are not added by the crew which is working day and night at Abandonia, but by the host of the site server(s) whose (as much as I'm aware of) alone will it is to keep Abandonia alive and going. The crew of Abandonia is doing good work at keeping as little of them here as possible.

Second, there might be not as many games available alongside of their reviews as one would wish, however that is strictly checked and double-checked on their status of being sold somewhere under any copyright holding, or not. If it is completely abandoned and nowhere to buy, it is available for download here. Any other option could, and probably would, result in quick shutdown threat for this site if a request by a copyright holder to remove a game from download is not followed.
Also there are full CD ISO versions of many games downloadable through links, which are posted in the ISO Cellar subforum here on the forum. Not all of those are available for download on the main page.

Third, the community here is still great, alive and fun, which you can notice soon enough if you give it a try and look a bit more around. Same goes for members contributing to the site.

[florianix]

The point that I also agree to is that the advertisements seem to be more than necessary to host a site like this.
For me the combination of the fact that there is a company behind it (usually with the aim to earn money for someone), so many advertisements and then asking for donations - that left me with a bad feeling.
There a a lot of people spending a lot of time and doing a great job contributing to the site. And that should not happen to generate profit for a company without beeing clear to all those.
For me this is not clear enough as the imprint or statement that its a company seems to be hidden quite well.

[TheChosen]

I'd like to point out that there are 11 pages of approved games on the Request section. There's no lack of games, but the lack of reviews. No one just bothers to write any.

[The Fifth Horseman]

What happened was that Kosta decided to sell Abandonia to a company named Studentis Group.
He then worked with them on a new version of the site - which is more or less what we have here (except replace the ads with bugs), an old (then reasonably new) version of Drupal, hacked to hell and back with no effective documentation.
Shortly after getting that operational, he ceased any contact with us.
Took us a while (and several major dramas) to sort out the mess.
Then it turned out that everyone responsible for producing this train wreck no longer works at Studentis, and they left NO project documentation whatsoever.
Then Studentis went bankrupt and was bought out by Abovo Media Group.

Without the ads Abandonia would be operating at a loss, and they'd shut it down sooner or later (probably sooner). Unfortunately, we don't get to choose which ads are displayed - much less where are they located.

There is a lack of game updates, yes. We've been running out of reviews for quite some time, and now we're out, period.

It's a train wreck, some parts ought to be nuked from the orbit... but we're still going, and that means things can get better.

[TotalAnarchy]

Running out of reviews, that would be a big lie. For one, my review is still not up on the site.

[Lulu_Jane]

Cool, I'm going to upload your review word by word so we have content for a few months then.

[Tracker]

Probably someone who's familiar with them, should make a list of the approved games that need a review like red_avatar used to do it. Or maybe there's such list, it's only hidden somewhere under a pile of topics or somewhere else.

[TotalAnarchy]

Cool, I'm going to upload your review word by word so we have content for a few months then.

I thought I told you guys before as well - I'm not reviewing another game until I see the current one on site. Plus I am aware that there are at least 4 reviews ready on the FTP.

[Eagle of Fire]

In the last few years I've become more and more convinced that this site first goal have been kind of hijacked by other, "more modern" goals.

It is really hard right now to seriously discuss old games on this board without someone stepping in and trashing the place up with new games speech. God forbid this is actually an old game site which is supposed to focus on DOS games.

Not that long ago I supported Abandonia.com with all I had. I know a few places on the net where people don't talk kindly about this site at all. Right now I simply dropped any support and I'm probably about to join those few places up instead.

[arete]

Um, "more modern" goals? All gaming is "modern" by default. You don't see stone age computers, do you? Why do we always have to nitpick about crap? Why do people get so upset and outraged when other people disagree with them about things? Surely those other people have just as much right to hold their opinion as you do?

Abandonia does desperately need a simplified review-submission process. But I honestly don't know how to make it simplified in a way that doesn't discourage the casual site visitor. The registration bug is really damaging our ability to gain new members. People get fed up and stop trying. And these deep site problems are not the fault of the crew. The crew doesn't own the site, they just try to run it in a sort of vacuum, and blaming the very people who put so much effort into what actually does get on site (the active admins and updaters, for instance) is actually a bit rich. At least, that's my view of things.

[Dave]

The point that I also agree to is that the advertisements seem to be more than necessary to host a site like this.
For me the combination of the fact that there is a company behind it (usually with the aim to earn money for someone), so many advertisements and then asking for donations - that left me with a bad feeling.
There a a lot of people spending a lot of time and doing a great job contributing to the site. And that should not happen to generate profit for a company without beeing clear to all those.
For me this is not clear enough as the imprint or statement that its a company seems to be hidden quite well.
I'm in contact with the company and it's clear that the site costs can't be easily covered with those ads and donations, especially if you consider the help we are receiving from their Web Programmer, he must be paid after all like all the other employees they have.

I'm not defending them, their choices and policies can't be defined as great or particularly smart, but I can say I received their support in the last years, if you want to know more about them it's all here:
http://www.abovomedia.com/index2.html

Regarding bugs we have just released the quiz again giving a look at the possible problems, now we are working on the browser caching issue, after that we will also give a look at registrations.

Little steps forward, but we are still moving.

[Eagle of Fire]

And these deep site problems are not the fault of the crew. The crew doesn't own the site, they just try to run it in a sort of vacuum,

Yup, I agree with the first part of this quote. And frankly I think the second part of the quote is a very big part of the problem right now. I'm not actually blaming anybody for leaving the site to a company or whatever but it is clear that the site is not really directed by the true owners, who should be the admins in charge here.

This lead to the impression that everything is simply kept alive artificially and destroy the "community" which was one of the prime positive point of this site in the past. Without that then this site simply become a download site and there is nothing much to be expected from users from that perspective.

[Japo]

As much as I dislike Abovo and what they're doing with the website, the reason Kosta sold it is because he couldn't continue working on it. So the choice was between what we have and the website disappearing, like so many hobby websites after the owner gets tired, like HOTU for example.

As much as the crew does together, we don't do everything necessary to keep the website up, starting of course with paying for it or making it self-sustainable. Running a website is easier said than done.

[Eagle of Fire]

You guys keep rehearsing that all the time since a few years. That might be true but it doesn't help at all in this situation. Worse, it give me the impression that nobody really care in the end even though I'm pretty sure it is not the case.

I don't really have anything else to add than what I said above so I guess I'll simply keep my presence in this thread short. No point to whine about it on my end either, I simply wanted to point it out.

[florianix]

I'm in contact with the company and it's clear that the site costs can't be easily covered with those ads and donations, especially if you consider the help we are receiving from their Web Programmer, he must be paid after all like all the other employees they have.

I'm not defending them, their choices and policies can't be defined as great or particularly smart, but I can say I received their support in the last years, if you want to know more about them it's all here:
http://www.abovomedia.com/index2.html


For sure if there is a professional working for the site, this will cost more money than can be covered by the donations.

Nevertheless, the combination of a community spending lots of effort into that site on the one side and a company that will earn money with it on the other side leaves a somehow bad taste (at least for me).
If people contributing to the site know about that it is a commercial project, it is ok, however.
But I am not sure how many know it - as there is no clear indication that this is a commercial project of that company. The statement that the "coding" is by Abovomedia could even be called misleading in that context.

I would consider a clear comment on the homepage fair.

[Tracker]

As a member who recently got closer to the staff (somewhere halfway between regulars and admins), I can tell you that I actually was aware of this situation a long time ago. We earn money for others by working for free, voluntarily - but we also work for the community, otherwise this site would be cancelled, because the company I guess does not have interest in spending money on this site if it is not mandatory. It would be much easier for them to shut it down, mostly because there's always a risk of being sued for hosting illegal software, and, the funny thing is, the copyright holders would more likely sue the company behind the site rather than users alone I think.
All I'm trying to say is, we're pretty much aware of the current status of the site, and even if we don't necessarily agree with it, there's no much we could do other than keeping it alive for those who enjoy it. Just my two cents.

[Smiling Spectre]

Speaking about reviews... I could make some of them, but there are several problems. Two main ones are - my lacking abilities to tell my thoughts clear, short and in interesting way, and second - bad English. Being Russian have it's upsides, but it also fogs my words even more than it was initially.

As I suspecting that there is no editors who can correct my faults, I am not even trying to write reviews.

[Japo]

As I suspecting that there is no editors who can correct my faults, I am not even trying to write reviews.

We do have the http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/images/ranks/Staff_Site_Grammar.png squad, they edit every review before we add it to the website.

[Lulu_Jane]

I think a Smiling Spectre review would be awesome, and there's definitely grammar squad members who would happily help iron out any little language bugs for you :)

[Smiling Spectre]

You are too kind for me, Lulu_Jane. But thank you. :)

Where can I try to write something? I think, there is place for seeking games and for posting reviews?

[Lulu_Jane]

The best place to start would be here (http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=22779) :) Let me know if you've got any questions etc.!

[Wolf Thug]

If anyone needs someone to write a review for a game , I could do it , I have a strong command of the English language and have written a few articles and reviews for websites.

[Smiling Spectre]

The best place to start would be here (http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=22779) :) Let me know if you've got any questions etc.!
Err... Explain it slightly more, please. I see two first posts. First looks like it, but there is only half-dozen or so of "free" games, and I don't know any of it. Second is "FTP archives". Is it means that any game from second post available for review?

[Wolf Thug]

Okay I managed to get tasked with writing a review for a game , should be FUN

[TotalAnarchy]

Err... Explain it slightly more, please. I see two first posts. First looks like it, but there is only half-dozen or so of "free" games, and I don't know any of it. Second is "FTP archives". Is it means that any game from second post available for review?

Yes. First post shows what games are taken by other users for review. Second post are recommendations, but you can ignore that since it's not updated (for example Privateer is sold on GOG). Third post are a list of games on FTP that are not sold or protected, which anyone can review for Abandonia. You can ask the updaters for a game copy you wish to review from that list.

[Smiling Spectre]

Ah. Yes, I thought about 2nd and 3rd posts actually (I mistakingly merged 1st and 2nd posts in one). So... yes, I'll check it, thank you.

[Dave]

We are planning to reorganize things, but I'll try to keep those lists updated in the meantime.

[Capo]

What about adding game that we have ONLY in the ISo cellar ? The download link should just redirect to the iso page or the hosted file.