The Closure of SurrealFM.co.uk

For regular visitors to this site, you might well have noticed that there hasn’t been any content posted. Well, other than apologies about lack of content. In fact, right now this post may not even be read by anyone. So the following announcement is not going to come as much of a surprise:

As of 28th June 2012 the Surreal FM site will close down and be deleted.

This is the date when my hosting account comes up for renewal, so it’s a fine time to end it there. The whole reason it’s been up so long is that I stupidly took out a two year long deal.

As the person who founded the site, I feel I should give some parting words before that happens.

First up, yes there was no real plan to the site. The words, “Do some reviews, make some jokey articles and something, something, something… a bit like UK:Resistance,” were in my mind at the time. But I wanted to make a website, so I went ahead with it without consulting anyone. Originally it started out as a meeting post for members of the Surreal FM online gaming group. I’d post dull admin stuff to organise games and we’d vote on stuff. However, I soon got into the swing of posting the odd comedy story or repost something from UK:Resistance. Then came the reviews and the opinion pieces and others started doing the same.

Then I ruined it by taking a joke too far on Tetchy’s only opinion piece. Things still kept going ever increasing gaps between content until about 2009. By then I don’t think everyone else liked it that I was not making the same effort that they were. Most people left, del went on to Gamerdork and then it was Steve and I posting the odd thing here and there. Sometime later even Steve moved on to Gamerdork and I was left to look after the dying corpse. I don’t blame them, Gamerdork’s a far better organised and established place to go to.

The fact is since 2009 I’ve been having problems with depression, which has it’s ups and downs along the way but still takes hold today. It’s seriously affected my motivation to post anything though. I have an unfinished review of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow that I just cannot complete now. I may well have been playing other games since, but I really struggle to put anything cohesive together for a review at the moment and have since around 2009. I cannot put any funny comments on the gaming news as I just cannot be bothered to read through it any more. The other problem is that I have never been confident with promoting this place, as I myself never knew how to pitch it to people. To me, I’ve always seen my running of the place as haphazard and half-arsed. If I see it that way, what would others see it as? Who brought new people to the site? Why that would be Paula and Steve again putting in more effort than I ever did.

So yes, the writing’s been on the wall since 2009 (maybe even longer) and yet I’ve kept it going in the hope that I may well change and suddenly start writing again. That hasn’t happened and I now realise it’s time to put the old girl to rest, or as I called it in a previous post, “the forgotten bastard lovechild I had with what’s-her-face, who I only see occasionally to try and reassure myself I have a conscience.”

She’ll still be up as an archive until the closing date.

I'd like to thank Paula, Steve, Nicky, Derrick, Mark, Jon and Craig for their contributions to the site over the years. Your input was, despite what it may appear by some of my comments, much appreciated.

Goodbye, and thank you for your support over the years.

David “Dalvado” Holdsworth.