The Internet Is Dying and So Is TabletopGamingNews.com
Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of TabletopGamingNews.com, and we hope we’ll still be around to celebrate it.
As many of you are aware, the landscape for online publishers has been challenging over the past year. The rise of AI-generated content has filled the web with repetitive articles, while Google’s search results have become more insular, favoring its own ecosystem and making it increasingly difficult for smaller websites to compete.
These shifts have led to a decline in traffic for small and mid-sized sites, opening the door for industry giants like IGN to dominate. Sadly, this recently led to the closure of Dicebreaker, leaving just a few niche websites like ours to cover the world of tabletop gaming. But we are also finding it increasingly hard to stay afloat.
TabletopGamingNews.com has undergone many transformations over the years. From its humble beginnings as a small blog in the mid-2000s, it has changed hands several times. It was acquired by CMON, and then sold multiple times throughout the mid and late 2010s, before I took the helm as chief editor and part-owner last year.
At the start of 2023, our daily visitors had dwindled to a few hundred, a stark contrast to the thousands we once enjoyed. Thanks to strategic efforts and a bit of luck, our articles began gaining traction on Google Discover and Google News. This led to a surge in traffic, reaching up to 15,000 daily visitors at our peak, allowing us to maintain a small team of dedicated writers and continue delivering content.
However, the joy was short-lived. By the end of the summer, we experienced a significant drop in traffic. Now, a year later, we rely on a few hundred loyal readers who mean the world to us.
The decline in traffic has created a challenging cycle: fewer visitors result in a tighter budget, making it increasingly difficult to maintain the high-quality content we aspire to deliver. As a result, I’ve had to adapt, relying on AI tools to keep the site running (for clarification. AI is used as little as possible). Currently, I’m the sole individual managing TabletopGamingNews.com.
Running TGN isn’t just about numbers; it’s a labor of love. Behind the scenes, it’s just me—a former gaming journalist and editor living on a farm in Norway, juggling family responsibilities and farming duties by day, and working on TGN by night. Writing about games has been my work and passion for nearly two decades.
I will continue to try to keep TGN afloat. Over the last year, I’ve met a lot of incredible people in the tabletop community, and if it weren’t for all the amazing creators and fans out there, I would just shut the site down now. But I genuinely look forward to hearing from everyone who reaches out, and I try my best to help get your crowdfunding campaigns funded and players playing your games.
I’ll be honest: a fair bit of our current content is AI-generated, but it’s heavily edited and fact-checked to ensure accuracy and relevance. This is a temporary measure to keep the news flowing, but I envision a future where TGN is once again a valuable resource for the community. If you have news, want to guest post, or simply wish to connect, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Your input and involvement are invaluable to us.
I will also promise that if and when we recover our traffic I will phase out AI as much as I can. Any profit the site makes will go back into human-made content.
The only thing you have to do to help is to visit the site and read a few articles. If you find something interesting, share it with your friends. This is a problem that is not just affecting TGN but pretty much any small and mid-sized website. So be sure to keep visiting your favorite sites, or we will all go down the way of Dicebreaker-
More tabletop news can be found at:
Time’s are rough, but please stay warm and with community, we need independent journalism to get information about TT outside corporation bubble
We will definitely try our best!
Thank you! I’ve been a follower of this site for a long time and do appreciate all the work that goes into it.
Thank you as well!
Sorry
Zero Tolerance for ‘AI’ derived content.
I appreciate the (belated) honesty but cannot abide the deception, or the act itself. This technology is a poison well and while I can appreciate the pressure it’s use elsewhere puts on you, that does not excuse a “can’t beat them, join them” adoption of The Problem yourself.
Unsubscribed.
I understand and agree that it is indeed a poison. We will do everything we can to fight the poison and put the power back in the hands of human creators. And if we can’t, I will shut down the site.
Hello there….(sorry, it’s all Obi wans fault)
I would like to wish you the very best in the future. It’s not that easy getting “neutral” news anywhere these days, even in our little niche of the world. As a veteran tabletopper (going on 51) I can recall other times. Still, as long as there are readers, there is hope. Keep at it. Also, i’m a content creator..let me know if I can supply some (free) help.
Thank you! I can also recall other times before Google and social media took over everything. Hopefully, we can bring those times back. There is a new project in beta called Tabletop Sentinel (https://www.tabletopsentinel.com/) which aims to be a niche social media site for tabletop news. I’ve spoken briefly to the owners, and I think it’s going to be a good place for news in the future, along with Tabletop Gaming News of course which will make its return this coming week 🙂
I have been following TGN since wintermute, like 2010? And I think there are two parts to the downfall. The site layout change made it really hard to find stuff and for some reason the comments died just a couple of weeks after. The second death came with the repeated hiatus, where there were no news. I don’t go to a news aggregator if there are no news for me to read. It is enough if there are just reposts of releases but seeing the same site a couple of days in a row makes me reconsider, whether I visit again. Now I am still here since it is just in my routine, but I come much less frequent. Same goes for BOW. If you need help, maybe open up to other writers, just proof check that they don’t write nonsense and make a more community driven site. If there is a community still going around. Wish you all the best, I hope there news will keep on coming, at least once a week.
Not sure if you will still be reading this, but I’ve only JUST found time to weigh in and wanted to throw in my 2 cents.
I used to visit this site multiple times a day. It was my favourite tabletop news site, by a landslide. This was back when it had a different look. I want to say it was greenish? I am not quite sure if I remember it correctly, but I can tell you this; the lay-out and ease of use were a 100 times better than it is now.
That is the reason I became less and less interested in checking. I don’t mind the use of AI to fill these pages with content. It’s not used in an egregious manner, if you ask me. But the thing that turned me away was the loss of its ease of use. It was easier on the eyes, easier to find articles that interested me, and it was also easier to comment.
Maybe this little comment helps you get more traffic. I for one would become a returned frequent visitor if the lay-out was returned to its former state. If anything, I will still wish you all the best, and I hope you still get joy out of the labour of love you put into this site.
Honestly, that drop from 15k to a few hundred readers is wild and honestly makes me nervous for the future of niche sites. Hopefully the Google Discover boost you mentioned was the last leg before the long slide back in.
Wait, does anyone else think the whole industry is collapsing or is it just that nothing’s worth buying anymore?
Google Discover is basically a lottery at this point. Sucks that niche sites can’t survive this ubg76 mess.
This is a tough reality check for everyone running niche sites, but honestly I can’t believe we’re at this point where AI is making it impossible for smaller players like yours to survive. Omni video generator
This is a real wake-up call for everyone who still relies on these old blogs, and the shift to AI is definitely hurting our favorite niche sites. If you’re looking for a fresh angle on this survival story, check out the full analysis here ielts essay check.
It’s rough watching Dicebreaker go, but that Google Discover to zero crash is a nightmare for any small niche site like enduro cross motorsport game.
Honestly it’s scary that we barely have enough traffic to cover the hobby anymore, and honestly free period tracker
Honestly, it’s scary to think a site like ours is fighting for existence against AI spam and algorithm changes that favor giants like IGN. Thanks for the read and hope you find a way to stay afloat convert heic to pdf online.
This article hits hard because the reality of AI and Google’s algorithm changes makes it genuinely scary for sites like ours to stay afloat. Honestly, free gravel calculator doesn’t feel like a threat but rather an inevitability we’re all just waiting to see how we’ll survive.
The shift to Google Discover felt like a lifeline for a while, but that traffic spike is gone now and the cycle is killing us. Honestly, this is just another nail in the coffin for the old-school blog model. weather radar local
It breaks my heart to see classic sites struggle to hit that 20th anniversary mark when the web feels so homogenized now. As a niche hobbyist, I still rely on independent hubs like this for inspiration when building characters or using tools like AI Larp Photo Generator to visualize my builds. I really hope you guys manage to keep the lights on.
It is heartbreaking to think about a site reaching its 20th anniversary while struggling against the modern web’s decay. Independent creator spaces are disappearing so fast, which is why free tools like this Viewmax Alternative — Make Short-Form Clips Free, Without a are essential for keeping small hobbies alive through short clips without added costs. Really hoping TGN hangs in there for the long haul.
Dicebreaker dying really did gut the niche, and honestly the Google Discover spike-then-crash cycle sounds like it was never sustainable to begin with. Sad to see what might be one of the last few sites actually doing the daily tabletop coverage chicken royal game
Google Discover giveth and Google Discover taketh away, that 15k to a few hundred swing is brutal cookie clicker unblocked at school