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Another freebie bites the dust: The Station.comJan 14 '03 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line The internet just got a little colder.
Well, it's happened again, folks. Yet another online institution has closed its doors to the cyber surfer in the name of money: The Station.com. It threw me and others for a loop. For years Sony's The Station was a haven for people of all ages and types to play games and take a break from the grind of day to day existence. In fact, the very motto of the site was "Pause life. Play games." College students, high schoolers, moms, dads, even grandparents would come to the site to play many of its fun, family-oriented, puzzle and strategy games. There were the popular scramble series, which were as fun as they were soothing with their wonderful sound effects; challenging fast-paced word games testing your mettle; and classic games like solitaire and mahjonng. And, of course, last but not least, there were the cool online multi-player versions of popular TV game shows like Jeopardy and the Wheel of Fortune, where you could choose a cartoon character (avatar) to play you and make it do all kinds of funny and silly facial expressions at your will. Now why was this site so popular? It wasn't just the cool games. What made The Station so popular was its heavy emphasis on community. Nearly all games were multi-player or single player games combined with chat rooms where you could talk with others as you played. This made The Station akin to some kind of old-fashioned social where people of all types would come and gossip, whine, complain, laugh, or comment about anything from A to Z. But it was also a place where people sometimes felt the safety of pouring their hearts out to others in times of crisis. Throughout the 2 years being on the site, it was amazing to me the heartfelt stuff that people discussed online. But it was also amazing the feeling of openness that developed on the site. It wasn't unusual for mothers to announce to everyone that they had to leave for a second to tuck in their kids at night, or a person to come into a chatroom griping about his bad day at the office while getting a sympathetic ear from his fellow gamers. It had truly become a solid, bona-fide community. So there was no reason to think that, like so many other sites after the Dot Com Crashes, The Station would suddenly yank its games, almost without warning. True-- a year and a half ago, it suddenly got rid of its hugely popular online version of Trivial Pursuit. But for the most part, The Station chugged right along after the crashes, even adding more games to its already growing collection of freebies. What's more, in the last half of 2002, it had promoted its free games heavily by offering daily and weekly cash prizes to those who played them! It was precisely stuff like this that would lead no one to suspect what it was up to. Which is why recently, all the loyal visitors who had frequented the site since its inception felt they were given the physical equivalent of being slapped across the face when they got a message that announced that on January 6, 2003, The Station would drop all of its free games in favor of a "new direction." The message was written in typical corporate hogwash ("the Internet is an ever-changing world," it smarmily said), making it sound as if the changes were really creative. But read between the lines and you knew that the changes were financial: it would end all free games in favor of its premium (read: monthly fee based) games. Oh, there would be free games alright, but you'd have to sign up to be a member of Sony in the event that in the future, if the company released any more free "offers" for your enjoyment, you could be alerted via email. (Oh, great-- more spam to flood our inboxes with, and by filling out intrusive personal info to boot.) The horror! Y'mean no more winding down at The Station after a bad day and relaxing by playing Yuetan? No more Solitaire? No more Mine Scramble? Was it all really true? Were we reading this right? Had this change happened, say, a year ago, I would have been slightly disgruntled but understanding. After all, the internet had suffered some huge financial blows back then, so I would have assumed that Sony would have been doing the cuts because of the economy. But the fact that these changes happened just this year makes them feel gratuitous, as if Sony just decided to do them because it felt that it could afford to. Perhaps it was thinking, well, we don't need these leeches suckling at our teats anymore. What a foolish mistake, if that were the case! As a free gamer, The Station had introduced me to Star Wars Galaxies-- a soon to be released online game-- that whetted my appetite. I had never played an online multi-player game before and wasn't that type of gamer, but I became intrigued precisely because, in being a free gamer, I had seen the enticing ads on the site while visiting it. Well, now that there aren't any more free games, what are the odds of Sony continuing to attract new customers and casual gamers like me to its premium games, in addition to the typical customer base of hardcore gamers who would have found its premium games, anyway? Slim to none. Oh, well-- doesn't make a bit of difference what I say; in cases like these, it's always a done deal. What's done is done. All I and others like myself can do is pretty much suck it up and try to find our thrills elsewhere. Till then, all I have are memories of an institution gone by and the remainder of a formerly warm internet that grows colder with each passing day.  |
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