At some point in the last two and a half years, TSA got popular. I don’t know when it was, exactly, but at one day we were getting 2 or 3 comments a post and almost zero feedback and the next we were averaging 30 or so comments (and often much more) and our forums exploded with activity. Sure, most of the activity was crude language, references to Hodgi’s thumb and Microsoft Paint penis competitions, but you can’t blame our readers for adopting the same sort of attitude that TSA had.
Had. Although it was never a concious decision to turn into a ‘proper’ website it was a general feeling here at TSA Towers that we’d better try and do things properly so that the thousands of people that were visiting had some proper writing to read rather than just daft blogs about huskies. The thing is, and it’s only just pinged in the last few weeks, is that we’ve gone too far in that direction and in some desperate attempt to ‘fit in’ we’d managed to lose our verve, our spirit and our sense of fun, and that Michael’s rants about ‘dogs’ were actually rather popular.
We’d also managed to scare off our hardcore regulars (and even some staff) – those that have been with us since the beginning through the days of us talking to ourselves. Sure, we’ve done some things right because our traffic is now server-busting and all the developers and publishers we speak to on a regular basis seem to think we’re rather groovy, and whilst we don’t really want to lose our grip on the independent website mountain I am aware that a few groups of our readers are starting to feel a little bit left out.
This is just a little blog, then, to let you know that we know. I don’t really have any answers, mind, but you’ll see I’ve done a bit of work in the comments and that’ll continue over the next couple of days. I have some ideas, as does our community team, and we’ll try and sort those out soon. I’m happy to see our forums ignited again with some classic threads like Cock Pictionary and Blind Game Characters which is nice and a bit of a return to form, so let’s hope this is the re-emergence of TSA’s hardcore: we love you, you know.
