[Notice] KickMyGeek will close the magazine and the website. - KickMyGeek, it's over yet ... But Why? What future for the site? https://kickmygeek.com/news/2018/09/26/arf--kickmygeek-le-mag-c-est-deja-termine-pourquoi--quel-avenir-pour-le-site Because I translated French into English through Google Translate, it can be a bit awkward. But I thought it was an important announcement, so I'd like to share it here. Definitely, this year 2018 is rich in rebounding. While in January we released the new version of the website, that in March we offered to help us fund the first paper magazine on iOS and Android games, and that in July the first issue was out of the press with possibility of ordering and subscribing to KickMyGeek the Mag, this is a sad news. But OK. I already hear from the detractors of the project tell us "we told you so". So what ? We believed it, we still believe in it, and it is with great pride that Armelle, Mickaël and I realized this project which seemed unlikely: to create the very first paper magazine on mobile games and tablets, with a very high quality, putting all our passion possible in this sweet dream. We succeeded, and even if the first issue of KickMyGeek Mag was not perfect, it is granted to you, it nevertheless enjoyed a lot of readers. It had been three months since we were working on the second issue, and we had fine-tuned our copy to make it even more beautiful. Frankly, it is beautiful this number 2. Only this magazine, we did not do it to please us. We created it because we thought it was something that was missing in the press world, and some players (like the three of us) were looking for that kind of magazine. With our diverse experiences, KickMyGeek the Mag was born. It has been written, drawn and designed with passion, we have spent many hours to get there, and we have something to be proud of. We are. But the sales volume was well below what we hoped for, below our break-even point. Subscriptions were shy. A hard economic reality. To be honest, we have the cash to press the second issue. But ... what's the point? We could do it, and besides we do not agree on this point in our trio, we could make a baroude of honor ... We could ask the publishers to advertise in the magazine to finance it ? Yes, but it does not interest them more than that, and what good to finance if it is not to sell anything? In short, we turned our brains, but we had to make a decision on the future of KickMyGeek Mag and the company we had created all three to support this project. Know, and it's important, that all three of us are volunteers. We do not win, we did not win, and we will not make money with KickMyGeek the Mag, which was, we must admit, our goal for the future, with the prospect of making it a monthly, in improving the concept, with the desire to offer you something innovative over time. We had a lot of ideas and perspectives. But we created all this on our free time, outside of our respective professional activities and our time devoted to our family. Just for that, we deserve to go out of our heads, we managed to do something very high quality, spending several hours a day, a big part of our weekends and holidays to make this project a success. All the will of the world is unfortunately not enough. If we made the decision to launch the print, we would not have the means to refund the subscriptions in case of new snub. It was therefore wiser to make the decision to stop, to pay back the subscribers for what they will not have, to thank our families, friends and all the people from diverse backgrounds, even abroad, who have believed in us ... It's the death in the soul that we took, or at least that I decided, in favor of the closure of KickMyGeek the Mag. Some have even proposed not to be reimbursed, and that affects us enormously. Moreover, our bakers will receive their goodies, keep them, it's collector ... like unfortunately the first and last number. And here I am sure that after so much blah, I lost the world ... some will say: "we do not care about your magazine, we come here for good deals, news and tests ". Is. It is true that KickMyGeek was created in 2003 with my dear friend Nicolas as a site that wants to be innovative and totally dedicated to mobile games and iOS / Android tablets, and it has evolved since. Our goal was to offer quality content, without distorting this content by various pollution. When Mickaël arrived in the project in 2017, this precept was amplified. Premium and quality content is thought to be the best. When we wrote all these news, selected the tips daily, wrote our tests to make you discover beautiful pearls, sometimes be disappointed, it was always with passion and pleasure. My friends do not like me to say that, but we are not professionals of the press, we are not the best gamers in the world, but we wanted to share our pleasure to play in the palm of our iPhone or iPad. Over the 5 years, KickMyGeek has even managed to gain some recognition from certain readers, publishers, independent developers, press relations, etc. We always made sure to be honest, straight and honest, we never accepted sponsored articles, we always chose the games we wanted to put forward, we were always totally independent, noting on our own feeling. So it's time to thank all those people we've worked with, especially lately with Playdigious, Playdius, Asmodee Digital, Nomad Games, We Are Chroniric, Midnight Twelve. They helped us to offer interesting content, exclusives and interviews in the magazine, whether it is the first or second issue. We even had a wonderful interview with Ian Livingstone in person, and for us it was a godsend, a living god in his field, we were so excited to be able to show it to you! We reassure everyone, as the content of the number two will not be published in the magazine, we will make available on the KickMyGeek website, it is a moral commitment with those who have helped us and supported. In the days or weeks that arrive, you will be able to discover some tests that we reserved for the magazine. Some were even exclusives, like Chroniric XIX, Stay or Spitkiss, which we had the chance and the pleasure to test during the summer. We are really disappointed not to propose it to you in the format we imagined. But we also do not want to publish all this, our credibility and our professional decency forbid us compared to studios that have trusted us in this process. But the cow, what does it depress us to do like this! Let's go back to the KickMyGeek site. Do you know that for the past 5 years, the site does not pay much for money. Surely you noticed that there was no advertising? If so, look good. The only way to make money is when iOS users go through a site link to download a game on the AppStore. And again, 7% of the price ... How much does a website cost? Hosting on a private server, the associated domain names, it costs more than 50 Euros per month ... we do not return, or just at times, in our fees. It's been 5 years since the site is financed by our personal funds. But hey, it was a passion! And there, in the tariff, I do not speak about the one to create the whole architecture of the site, the system of administration so that your testers you write tests of quality, the design of the robot which scans the AppStore and the Google Play Store continuously to develop the good plans that we select then. All this costs several thousand euros if you go through a web agency. Believe me, I am a project manager and developer in such an agency. This project would have cost several tens of thousands of euros, counting also the site of the magazine and all the back office to manage subscribers, sales, stocks, etc. Everything was done on my free time, evenings, nights, early mornings. But I love doing all that. All this, you sure do not care. Internet is free. Why pay for what you could find elsewhere? Maybe, but elsewhere, you have ads everywhere, right? It's painful eh when we browse a website? What? Do you have an advertising blocker? You are right, as this will kill the site you visit. I do not want to lecture you, but just understand that free content is not free for everyone. We invested in KickMyGeek and thought that one day we would make money ... we started a project to boost this possibility. But mobile gamers prefer what's free, do not they? And I'm not talking about the hundreds, or thousands of hours now, we've spent writing the content you can read daily. I am not bitter, just puzzled. What I like most of all, it is being able to play a game without being braked by these p ***** of advertisements and integrated purchases. The project was created with this in mind. More than 1300 visitors per day, more than 140 000 page views per month, is not that bad? But if the people who take care of it sometimes spend more than 4 to 6 hours a day on it, and the pleasure of discovering it is not enough to motivate, why continue? At times, a comment on the site, on Facebook, on Twitter, warms our heart by saying that we do not do it for nothing ... but where is this community? Do you really exist? She is so volatile. Nobody wants to pay for quality content, which is what some studios say, and for that reason most people are moving towards this dirt of freemium, this pollution of free-to-play disposable ... do not want any of this. We have always tried to make you discover little pearls unknown to independent developers. And quite frankly, we are happy with these meetings, be they digital, sound with our friends from Games in the Pocket with whom we had a good time, or actually in some studios or lounges. But what's the point? Our economic model is not supported. We planted. We are proud of this course, everything we did, everything we wrote, but here we say STOP! You will be able to notice in the weeks that arrive that the content goes as and to be reduced seriously. We will write the tests in progress, complete our commitments, and stop. We will play for us. We will have fun for us. We will discover selfishly. Never mind. Little by little, there will be no new content, and we will move on to something else. It's life. This is not an end. But who will lose more in the end? You or us? The future will tell us. The site KickMyGeek will fall into oblivion of the internet ... certainly. This site, however, is like my fourth child. I made him grow, I saw him evolve, but now I can not do anything for him. I have a part of responsibility in this failure, like my companions, but yet, it seems to me that we gave everything we could. But I assume, as I have always done, what I did, without regretting. So I have a thought for Nicolas and Wendy my friends at the beginning, Mickaël and Armelle my friends of recent times, our readers, our faithful, those who do not love us, rabat-joies, enthusiasts, but also our families , our friends, the hundreds of contacts at the publishers / podcasters / press relations that I have had over the years. A page turns. I am bruised by this decision, but it is like that. Farewell KickMyGeek !!! In any case, it will now give me more time to enjoy my family, my three children and my wife, who has not always understood the interest of this project but who supported me, and who shares my life for more than 20 years, in good times and bad, and for me, it has always been the most important: my family. I love you my dear. Farewell dear readers, we may find ourselves somewhere else, otherwise, but there, the ring of end. Sincerely. Olivier
After five years of existence, the site KickMyGeek.com will soon close. Being volunteers throughout these years, and having suffered a little snub in our project of progress, we think it is time for us to move on. All explanations are available on Olivier's open letter to all readers. Thank you again for following us, maybe see you soon in future projects. https://twitter.com/KickMyGeek/status/1044820483680669697
