Hi Everybody,

I have some surprising news.

Over the last few years I have felt increasing pressure running the site. Remember, in various forms, I have been running the site for almost exactly 13 years. That’s a long time. During that time I have spent thousands of hours working on it. I feel that I’ve done a pretty good job at promoting SP maps and mods.

Recently, it has felt more like a burden than a hobby. Every weekend is planned around streams and work that needs to be done on the site. Every week day, most my free time is spent doing something related to the site.

I need a rest. A proper rest. Not just a few weeks. Even during my “holiday” I felt obligated to check in and see what’s happening. That’s wrong.

I heard something on The Goldberg’s last night. Somebody said “I just wanna ride my bike and play video games”. And that’s exactly how I feel. It’s time for me to be a consumer not a creator.

I feel that I have been trying to promote SP Half-Life stuff alone, of course I haven’t, but that’s just how it feels. I have tried so many different projects, initiatives, ideas and events. Some have been mildly succesful, others failures, but at least I tried.

One of the reasons I renamed the site from Planetphillip to RunThinkShootLive was because I wanted more community involvement. Something more like LambdaGeneration, but that takes a lot of work and it never really had the effect I had hoped for.

I have been thinking about closing the site for a few years now and over the past few months that feeling has become stronger.

Unlike last time, which was a reaction to a big problem with ModDB, I will be giving people and myself time to transition.

What Next?

Firstly, I will, with immediate effect, stop updating the site, except for newly released maps and mods. No more blog posts, poll questions, streams, or videos, including What The Headcrab.

I said “no videos” but I *may* make videos of any maps or mods I add.

I will leave the comments open and continue, with Don, to retroactively moderate them.

Don has kindly agreed to deputize in my absence . He will take over the organization of the weekend streams, as well as possibly posting new maps and mods.

The Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook pages will remain online but not updated, except for Twitter.

Longer Term

On 31st December 2016, I will announce my longer term plans. There are plenty of options:

Close the site completely (Unlikely, but definitely possible)

Archive the site. Keep the site up and running but add no new content. As long as the donations cover the cost of the servers, then that’s fine.

Revert back to PlanetPhillip and ONLY post maps and mods. Remove ALL other content.

Sell the complete site to somebody who wants to keep running it.

Those are the obvious ones, but there are others too.

With regard to the last one, I would sell it, not to get any money because I never ran the site to make money, it’s too niche for that, but to ensure that whoever wanted to take it over was serious about it. A little bit like like the Green Light system on Steam. I have no idea what amount I would ask for.

However, if an interested party approaches me, I will discuss formally passing the site onto them. They MUST be known to be or be recommended to me by somebody I know.

If that happens, they can take over the complete site except for the Twitter and YouTube channel. The reason is that they are under the PlanetPhillip name and whoever takes over, should start afresh with those.

New owners will need to negotiate with Nodecraft for the hosting as well as discuss whether to continue to host the files on the dedicated server or another option.

As I mentioned, one possibility is that on 31st December, I could decide to revert back to PlanetPhillip.com, remove everything except the maps and mods, i.e. interviews, poll questions, etc, and just post and review maps and mods.

What About the Level Design Academy?

At this point, I don’t know what I would do about the Level Design Academy.

I haven’t decided what to do about that and I won’t rush it. I’ll talk with Don and see what happens.

What About Gauge/MapTap?

I don’t know. I will discuss it with Alex, the coder and we can decide together.

What About The Ville mods and other exclusives?

Again, don’t know. If I close the site, then I will give the community my permission to upload them wherever they want to. If I continue with the site in some form, I may or may not continue with those. If I do, then the format would definitely change.

The Black Mesa Mapping Challenge

I’ll talk to the Crowbar Collective and Don, and see what we can work out. Expect news very soon.

Thank You

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who has participated in the modest success of the site, especially, Aaron, Simon, Don, Alex, Jan and Mazur.

There are many others who have helped and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Finally

As you can see, I am still very confused about what to do, but something HAS to change. A hobby should never become a burden.

No doubt, I have forgotten something, so feel free to remind me and I will respond to all the questions and comments that this generates.

TL;DR

I’m tired of running the site.

I’m taking a break.

I’ll announce something on 31st December 2016

Thanks for your support.