Death of a Mailing List

Michelle just sent around a note to the "Atl@s Updates" mailing list, announcing that we're closing it down. For some years it was a mailing list that you could sign up for here on the web site. In theory, it was going to be a somewhat irregular e-mail update with information of things going on at Atlas Games, such as new releases and the like. In reality, even when we had more staff, it wound up being used very rarely. I think there are a bunch of reasons, but they boil down to the making of a newsletter always slipping to the bottom of the to-do list, behind things like making games and shipping them to customers.

Meanwhile, the use of Blogger has recently transformed the front page of our website. It used to be that content here had pass through whoever was webmeister, and that person had to redesign the front page in order to feature anything new. Now Michelle, I, or even Ars Magica Line Developer David Chart -- who lives in Japan currently -- can post a new message to this page from any internet-connected computer in the world, whenever we have some tidbit to share. Moreover, the XML/syndication aspect of this page allows readers to subscribe to the blog, using something like FeedReader -- or, heck, you could even channel it to your personal web page, just like news headlines. And this format supports reader comments, as an added bonus.

We think that the new website set-up is better than the old "Atl@s Updates" was in theory, and way better than it worked out to be in practice. We hope you agree.