A lot of people may or may not have been wondering what happened to me. I always chocked it up to school and stuff though I wanted to be honest in saying that is not the case. There are a lot of reasons that have kept me away.

One being the state of it, I remember back in 2013, while it wasn't exactly the crazy nice looking site you see today from the front page it still was bustling with life. I remember making so many friends with people I still talk to time to time, with one being infamous here but that doesn't exactly matter.

To get to the reason, I just feel this site is in a half dead state, only being put on life support by David's job and however much money he makes off patreon which last time I checked is $80, and while I have to respect David a ton for keeping his creation alive all this time, it really hurts to see this place in this state.

With the removal of Nintendo games it really didn't help either, severely destroying ad revenue and pretty much forcing him to work a second job just to keep it afloat. Not much is being done in terms of improvement due to it as improvement takes money, and if all of it's going into keeping this site on life support, then there is little David can do that is substantial.

So due to that I kinda fell out of it, felt this place that was most of my childhood was and looks like it still is breaking apart slowly. Like seriously I had to use the Old Post Editor to write this because the new one seems to be broken. It hurts me to see it like this, so I left so I didn't have to witness it die slowly. I know it won't die due to David's amazing determination to keep it going. But I feel powerless in helping the sight, only being able to provide $10 a month due to my low paying job which due to the magnitude of this site is cents compared to everything else.

It got so bad that I even lost my Site Staff role due to inactivity, which is understandable as I failed to do my job as a Site Staff which is only fair. But it makes me sad knowing I could have provided for the site, but couldn't because I felt this place was a shell of what it used to be. I love this site a lot, and still do, it's just hard seeing it in such a stale state with the only one I really see still posting here that are my friends are User and RDay13.

I'm sorry if my words are incoherent and hard to follow, I just don't know how to convey my feelings without seeming like a whiny idiot or a person who doesn't understand what David has to go through. It's just sad to see that this site is on life support in my eyes, and unless something changes, it will slowly degrade to the point where I don't think it will be more a burden on David than a necessity for him.

Thank you for reading, sorry if my words make no sense, I really don't know how to praise any of this.

Well...2010-2013 vizzed was incredibly active and buzzing with life and entertainment and while it was fun its like anything else in life it doesn't last forever, and vizzed always goes thru cycles of high and low points and there was a lot of different reasons for the decline in membership but we all knew it wouldn' have last long and heres Why. The games on vizzed Are all roms, which Are only legal if you have physical copies of the games, now I'm quite sure David has physical copies of some of the games here but not all of them, and recently there has been a high demand for "retro " games so alot of these older games Are seeing re releases so alot of companies Are pulling there roms from the web and ordering sites like coolroms and romhustler etc to take there games down so they can profit off of there property, an example would be What  Nintendo did... but the best thing to do is look towards the future and try to appeal and gain visitors thru other means than just the rgr because in order to survive and thrive you have to evolve instead of remain stagnant but believe me I get exactly where your coming from I miss the old days of vizzed when I could spend all day on here and never be bored but sadly I know it'll never peak in activity like that again, the best thing to do is reach out to newer members on the board or other social media platforms and attract them here for new experiences and friendships. But What I think wouldn' hurt at this point would be to cut down some of the older rgr games since they Are being re mastered and resold comercially since your gonna get more notices to remove them and maybe add DS and Gamecube games since Many more people will come for those and besides What do you have to lose at this point if the games will be taken down regardless 

Vizzed has been on its death bed for a while now however that does not mean it will go away anytime soon

1. Nintendo came and killed all the pokemons. As soon as that happened many of the Vizzed users retreated from the site including Davideo7 himself who now works a full time job.

2. With Davideo7 gone it's not only depressing but discouraging to users and site staff who may feel like it is a lost cause to continue working, posting or assisting in the site when it is clearly on the decline. I think users enjoyed interacting with Davideo7 but now and days it's as if he only appears to post updates in competition or staff threads.

3. Vizzed has gotten too big for itself. By that I mean it's gotten too complex and too time consuming to upgrade for one single person. The site is riddled with bugs that need fixing and chances are they will never ever be fixed.

4. Davideo7 himself posted a thread about low activity before last summer. It is now 6+ months later and nothing has changed. Even with the recent modifications to the TDV activity is still at an all time low.

5. The servers were downgraded, people rarely donate anymore and those very active users that use to exist and make this site active have apparently moved on with life.

Divine Aurora : I agree, as with any other product or service in this world they all have their peaking points. Vizzed had its time in the spotlight like so many other brands did but I don't think it has got the resources, manpower or userbase to recover.

Sure if he uploaded DS and Gamecube traffic would skyrocket but it would also come with great risk. Roms can make you rich but at the same time it is a falsehood to believe that it is a legit and reliable source of income. At any moment someone with copyrights can come in and steal everything away from you like you did to them.

Agreed 100% , but vizzed has to evolve to survive, I don' know maybe the focus of the site should be switched to maybe game guides review and walkthroughs and allow sort of a path to play DS or Gamecube games but force individuals to make a review of the game and disclose where it can be found legally to make usage of the game fair use so it wouldn' get pulled for copy right 

Yeah I know what you mean when I first came on this site it was very active and full of life. Then people got jobs or changed jobs which mean they had less time to spend on this site. Also things in life happen like illnesses. I know two years ago I was concerned I was going to get demoted because I wasn't active on this site a lot. It was hard for me too dealing with my illness at that time. 

Also as others have mentioned this site got a lot of traffic due to Mario, Pokemon and Donkey Kong as well as other games. When Nintendo pulled the plug on sites like this. It seemed within months activity dropped. People who came on here to talk about those games and play them no longer had a reason to go on here. 

I don't think vizzed will go away anytime soon. I think we are hanging on at this point. I'm hoping activity will increase again. I also hope this site can make a comeback. 

This site will never return to what it was. I've been around too long to think otherwise.

I'm sad that this is the case but it's no longer a unique thing.... at least not in a good way. Internet forums are a dying breed and playing retro games online isn't a new idea anymore either. What brought in traffic no longer does.

I also don't think there is anything that could be done to draw traffic in that wouldn't change the site fundamentally. I want the site to be successful but I also don't want it to change so much that I don't recognize it anymore.

And that I feel is one of the big problems. Vizzed is what it is and I can't see David making any changes big enough to make a difference.

Vizzed was slowing down before Nintendo pulled their games but that pushed activity into a nose dive compared to the previous years.

I wish things could be different but I don't see a way to change things up. Old members coming back doesn't do it and I can't imagine anything new being enough to fix it either.

geeogree : Is right, forums are dying. Even when activity appeared high in the past we are forgetting that it was still only a small portion of active users (around 30 of them) that gave the illusion that it was more active then it really was. When you look at the userbase now only about 10 users of the 500,000 members actually post. It's actually always been that way even before the RGR. The forum itself was never a big draw and I'm sure Davideo7 knows this or he would not have created the RGR to increase site activity.

At least 95% of the people who joined this site did so to play games NOT to post in the forums. No point in wasting time trying to think of how to improve activity when we know for fact that the only reason the boards were ever active was thanks to a special group of dedicated and loyal people who have all grown up now and are off living life.

If traffic and usage is up, then the ads are generating revenue.  The forum doesn't really have any impact on the tens of thousands of people coming in.

Yes, having a social group attached to an activity makes it last longer but that doesn't mean the site won't survive with the dozen of us actively posting and no one else.

I have another website I play games on.  I'm there every day playing and competing.  I completely ignore the forums.  It doesn't mean I'm a bad member at that website because I don't post or participate in the conversation.  It simply means I'm busy doing other things.  And they still get their ad revenue so they don't care either.

This forum area isn't the pulse and health of the website.  The traffic is.

I can try to join here, try to be more active, and others. Main problem is school. And for many others, it's their IRL life. Just like David, they have other things to do then look at a forum and post.

This is a bit of a bump, but the site is dead, and I post like once a month, so I can't be expected to see every post. So I'm sure it will be forgiven.

geeogree :

and

JigSaw :

are 1000% correct in this regard. I've been around long enough to know that the very feeling of Vizzed has changed at its core level.

What sucks is that there's really no way to change it at this stage. Maybe there was a couple years back while there was still some activity, but too many balls were dropped. You can blame staff, David, Nintendo, or whatever you want, but the fact of the matter is that the incentive to be active dropped, and in some respects, this was indeed true before Nintendo-geddon.

Once David got a real job to pay the bills that donations were no longer cutting, I think it became clear that this place was only going to get more inactive, and that there was zero chance of a legitimate rebound, and an even lower chance (yes, lower than 0%) of it ever getting back to the heyday of 2009-2013.

You can ask yourself what existed in those "golden" years that made Vizzed so active, but I don't think there really was anything super special that made Vizzed better than it is now. Back then you had an active moderation team, David checking in at least every other day, members who genuinely wanted to get to know each other (now a days, nobody ever posts in newbie threads it seems. This month, there have been three newbie threads. The OP, Boured has posted in two of them. Beyond that, there's been exactly one other post and it was by the original poster of that thread.

Newbie retention is the key to continuing the life cycle of any community. At one point, geeogree was a newbie. At one point JigSaw was. At one point, I was. We were all newbies, and became members of the community who paid back the kindness shown to us at least 100-fold. And it's not like any of us are all that "special". We're just members of the community like anyone else. A single post in a newbie thread can be enough incentive to want to post seven more times, which may inspire another newbie to post seven times, which will inspire other newbies to begin a mini fellowship of posting, where everybody shares information, and gets to know each other in a friendly environment where everyone feels safe.

You don't get to 1000 posts of activity, without getting to 10 posts of activity. If a single newbie out of 100 makes 1000 posts, you consider it a victory. That's the biggest thing Vizzed is "really" missing. A newbie infusion. David doesn't make Vizzed what it is. Staff doesn't make Vizzed what it is. The community is what makes Vizzed what it is. When Vizzed starts to fail, you can only point the finger at the community itself.

There's a lack of activity from veterans, which gives newbies less incentive to post. With no new blood, the list of things to talk about diminishes. When there's no topic of discussion, a forum dies. That's just how it goes.

You can't really change it at this stage, because it's a wide-spread culture issue that this entire community shares (myself included - I have no incentive to really post, why bother?), and shows no sign of changing. All it takes is one look at the active memberlist over the past month to prove my point. Only three members who have signed up in the past two years (ok, two and plasticinsanity, who actually signed up 2 years and a day ago) have made five posts. Myself, somebody who literally signed on for the first time in two weeks, has posted about as much as most of the current staff.

Nobody is posting. Nobody is trying to keep newbies around. Nobody on either side has incentive to post or be active. If you want that to change, you have to start by figuring out how to incentivizing these things that shouldn't need much incentive.

In closing, Vizzed (as a forum) is dying, that's 100% fine, and expected, and there's nothing anyone can really do about it. I'm not sure even David could come up with much of anything, and I suspect even he knows that, which is why he's been basically absent from the community himself.

Vizzed as a site will continue to live for a little, because there is still traffic of people playing in the RGR. So it's awful for those of us who care about forums. But as far as the site itself goes... it's a little less bleak.

I don't like the direction Vizzed is heading in either. When I first signed onto the site about 5 years ago I just played games. It wasn't until 2 or 3 years later that I started posting reviews. Since then, there have been many things that have kept me from being that active. About all of those things were related to personal issues I have been having with money. I'm still having the same type of problems with having the money to keep my computer running properly. What's even more discouraging is whenever I come to Vizzed I don't see any posts made from other people about anything relating to what I am going through.

What I'm trying to say is that at first it was just about the games, but later I found a few other people making threads about real life issues that I was dealing with too. My life basically sucks right now, I don't have time for anything because my computer is always broke, I spend all my time trying to work to get the money to keep things going in my life (running errands), and Vizzed was starting to look like an outlet for me when I first started becoming active, but now it is basically dead. The little bit of free time that I do get to come here feels like it is not even worth it.

I still like to come here for the games, but about all the reviews I post are for games that Nintendo removed which feel useless for me to even post. Although, these are the only games I'm really all that familiar with because those are the ones I played when I first came here. I wish I had been more active back then, but I can't change that now. Part of the problem is me and how I just can't seem to control anything in my life. What's worse there seems to be nobody that listens in real life. My family is a joke! I don't even bother asking them for help no more than I have to.

It kind of felt like Vizzed was becoming more than just a place to play games, but now it feels basically dead. People like myself are a dying breed, and there doesn't seem to be any other place on the internet to go. I don't know if I would have ever been able to become part of this community because of all my issues with trust, finances, crappy computer, etc., but it looks pretty doubtful now. There feels like there is nothing or nobody here to give me hope. I guess I'm worried more about myself, but I hate to see Vizzed die out also because it was just starting to feel like an escape from all my problems and a place where there were a few (only a few) who had the same problems I was having.

I hope that something changes soon, and there only feels like there is so much I can do to contribute given my situation. I don't have time to be all that active, my computer is always broke, there are no threads that even relate to me, but I hope it gets better. I hope my life gets better, and maybe it will. Maybe by then, David or someone has done something to really bring things back to life. I guess I can just keep going until my computer dies and make the most of the site while it is still around also.

Sometimes, guys, a community grows, thrives, and then goes away.  That's the nature of humanity.  We get excited about something and it works well for a while.  Then people change, times changes, interests change, money comes into question, our priorities change and we need to do other things.

Think back and enjoy what was around back in the day.  This place was hopping seven years ago.  Six and five years ago were the Golden Age of Vizzed and we had all sorts of interaction, conversations, and so on.

But there are only so many times you can post about your favorite ice cream or your favorite color or what you're listening to right now.  And people simply moved on or went to do something else.

Big picture: You can't hold on to things forever and maybe Vizzed didn't evolve with the group as we went.  It's too bad but it's a good memory and now we adjust to what we have here.