GameSpot was my gaming home for a good few years or so before the site overhaul happened. Prior to that, it was site with a very active community. Forums were lively, unions were a thing, there were more user reviews and in all the community was very much a part of the site. Those days were over once the changes took place. Many outright left or just slowly stopped visiting the site. I never fully left but my activity here dropped steadily until it officially became my secondary gaming home.
Back sometime in 2012 I stumbled upon a place called Playfire. I had actually made an account there years prior since it tracked my trophies and they had trophy cards and whatnot. Anyway, the site looked much different from what I remember. What I liked right away was the activity feed. It's kind of like Twitter, I think. Users can post under certain games, platforms, and other non-gaming topics. It was active and the game-tracking and trophy-tracking features were pretty cool, even if they didn't work very well.
At any rate, I've been a part of that community for about the last 5 years. It's been slowly dying over the last couple of years due to the poor managing of the site and it was eventually announced that it would be closed and there would be a new community thingy on GMG's main site. GMG (GreenManGaming) owned Playfire, for perspective. It's been known for a while that Playfire would be no more but they never gave an official date even though they said they would. Long story short, today was the day. Playfire is no more.
I've looked at the Community section on GMG and while I've wanted to give it a chance, it's just terrible. They don't even have Forums set up there yet. So anyway, I feel strangely at a loss. I think I have to use GameSpot as my primary gaming site for the moment. I actually still visit it a lot and post in the forums when I can, but it's just so inactive compared to what it used to be. Other places I browse would be PSN Profiles and playstationtrophies.org, but I use those places more to view my trophies or read trophy guides and the forums aren't that great. So I don't really know if I'll find another place again I enjoyed as much as I did the old GameSpot or PlayFire. I'm a little bummed out but I'll probably find some way to fill in my internet downtime, as I like to call it.
So, yeah, that's about it. It's nice to see users I've known for a long time post on here. If you're still out there and reading this, what's up? My mental health has been pretty shitty this year but I think it's finally starting to turn around and I'm enjoying gaming plenty. Finished up Mafia 3 and got the platinum a few days ago. Right now I'm waiting for the PS Store to update so I can play the final episode of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. It's been a bit disappointing compared to the first seasons but I have hope the last episode will be great and give me a more positive outlook on the season.