[ehnto]

> I have a bit of a thing for "dead" games,

I feel your pain. Unique and interesting games are rarely the most popular.

I have come to realize that you need to grab a multiplayer game by the horns and jump right in when it's popular, because every game has a "golden era", before which it dies. These communities are all moments in time.

[sslayer]

I've come to learn that anything online is impermanent. Websites/communities/gaming/business/programming languages - it will all eventually be deprecated for something newer/faster/better - Honestly, the only thing that is mostly untouched are the underlying protocols - and there are plans to change those as well. The absolute worst part about it is the loss of history, however even the physical world can't escape that - like tears in the rain.

[tomjakubowski]

It sure seems like stuff online obeys the Lindy effect. If some sites have been around for ten years, expect them on average to last another ten.

I would love to see any data or research that's been done on this.

[anthk]

Still, Nethack/Slashem, IRC, Gopher, ZMachine games... get played and launched even 20 years later.

[FredPret]

I hope against hope that 100 years from now, they can still read this message

[cpach]

Indeed. HN has been around for quite a while though. I’ve been a member for over thirteen years.