Nine years is a long time for practically anything. Over this almost decade we’ve lived in 3 different houses, I’ve had roughly 6 different jobs, we’ve been through COVID (that feels like 9 years by itself) and we’ve turned thousands of gamers onto an innumerable number of great games. The Minecraft group has built across FOUR different worlds and has had THREE separate player exoduses (exodii?) and hey if you think about it, technically we even led an exodus ourselves during all of this craziness. Most importantly though, we’ve made an absolute shitload of amazing friends over the years, and we’re grateful for each and every one of you.

As time plods on, with Tonya and I entering a bold new phase of our lives, we’ve been forced to make a lot of sacrifices, some within SomeAwesome and (many more) outside of it. Our day-to-day as of late is extremely stressful and hectic for reasons both promising and disappointing, but that’s a story for another day perhaps. For now, I’d like to ask if you could take a few minutes out of your (probably equally busy) day to find out what’s in store for SomeAwesome and the respective groups and servers. I’d really appreciate that if you have the time to stomach just one more interminable read from me. ?

All Good Players Eventually Get Benched

We’ve played a good one, and I’m extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last 9 years, but this game won’t be seeing any extra innings. Do you like my liberal use of baseball metaphors? I hear they are good for getting through uncomfortable discussions. Man I hope so.

The truth is, SomeAwesome isn’t totally going away, but it is going to receive a rather significant scaling back. The company itself has already been dissolved (did you know there was a company established for this? There was!) after four years of trying to catch a respite from our endlessly personal exhausting bullshit. Suffice to say, we operated at a loss during each of those four years so at least taxes were easy enough on us ?

SomeAwesome.com will stay up, and who knows…I may even tinker with it from time to time, but for the most part it will continue to exist as an artifact of more idealistic era. I still believe in it as a solid business concept, and people still do use it occasionally. It doesn’t cost me much to keep it live on the internet, and honestly I have to find something to do with these remaining 11,348 Steam keys, so hey if you’re looking for a new game to play, don’t hesitate to hit me up! I probably have something you’d enjoy, just point me towards your Steam wishlist or give me an idea of the genres you’re into.

As far this site here is concerned, that’s more complicated. I eventually plan on turning it into a social network of sorts for Minecraft players and server owners. If you’ve been around for the long haul, you might remember I built a proof-of-concept site when we were with GM that is akin to what I envision this site will someday become. A marriage of MySpace (circa 2007) and the MineConnect functionality from the SomeAwesome site is the best way I can explain it. I locked down the domain name MineScene.com many years ago to fulfill this (yes yet another) wild idea of mine.

The Facebook group will be pivoting to a “safe zone” where everyone is free to ask around for new compatriots to join them in-game (any game) and for folks to recommend servers to play on (again, for any game). Think of it as a trustworthy LFG community where you already know and love the folks responding to your gaming requests. There are so many games out there these days that truly deserve attention, and since that was the over-arching goal of SomeAwesome in the first place, it just made sense to us for everything to culminate with this decision. We will move forward with this update at the end of the month.

In the meantime, this doesn’t mean that the game servers are going away, far from it. In fact, there’s a sincere chance that the number (of different game servers) increases. The difference now is, Tonya and I won’t be running any of them. Instead, we’ll be doing what we can to promote your servers, and offer help to any folks in this group who want to become server owners themselves if they’ve ever fancied the idea. Take a walk with me into this brave new world ?

First, Meet Your New Server Owners

Tonya and I have been extremely blessed to be able keep the Minecraft server going for so long (9 YEARS!) but we believe it’s past-due time for us to move aside and hand it fully over to those most capable of giving it the love it needs to breathe new life into it. Those most capable people are obviously BBC & Moo who, in all honesty, have been pretty much solely responsible for keeping the server running for well over a couple years now, and who have more than earned their chance to take a stab at a full go with it. We will be coordinating with them over the next month or two to migrate everyone who is whitelisted over to their new instance and socials, and we will be providing them with everything we can do to get more eyeballs onto it. We look forward to where they take it from here.

The ARK servers are staying up as-is for now, but will eventually be taken over by Team Drakumo (at the moment they are in the middle of a fairly epic move), so if you like incredible open-world survival games with dinosaurs and 200GB install sizes, we know you will love playing ARK: Survival Evolved with them and all the other badasses that have joined up during the last year and a half. Again, we will be supporting them in any way we can to make sure the transition is smooth and they have what they need to succeed.

For the 7 Days to Die server, we’re happy to say that Bunny & Hydran have been running that one autonomously for several months now and they’ve been doing a fantastic job at it, so whatever happens with that one is up to them, and if zombie survival is your jam we highly recommend you check out the FB group or the Discord channel.

Along that same line, the SomeAwesome Discord server will remain up. No real reason to change anything there, it does its job as advertised no matter what it is called, but if you have a game channel you’d like added to the list please let me know and I’ll happily oblige.

? Do You Want to Build a Server? ?

Have you ever considered running a server for a game you love to play? We’d like to help you realize that goal. As you can probably imagine, by now we have A LOT of experience setting them up, and we can offer plenty of advice when it comes to security, troubleshooting, fundraising and community management. We’ll use the mediums we still have at our disposal to get the word out there for you, and we’ll even take out advertising for your server if it seems promising enough.

What we just can’t commit to however, is monitoring the server or becoming an admin. We just don’t have the time, energy or sanity for that level of involvement anymore. We might play on your server occasionally (especially if we’re fans of the game) but we can’t guarantee participation these days. If you have a question about third-party hosting, admin tricks, settings file configurations or anything else that can be done over a quick chat or screenshare in Discord, then that’s probably cool. Either way, we would absolutely love to help our gaming family broaden their horizons in this manner, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us for a brainstorming session if this piques your interest.

Editors Note: We also have an old Starbound group with people in it if you’re interested in running a Starbound server then you’re more than welcome to take over that group too!

Twitch & YouTube Channels

On June 7th, it will be Link’s 13th Birthday and thus time for him to become a man ? and take up his true birthright as a thoroughly entertaining (and more importantly now entirely legal) video tour de force. Therefore, we have decided to bequeath him both the Twitch and YouTube channels to make into his own personal brand. We’ve also handed over the XBOX and Steam accounts to him, since he’s the one who is actively playing on them all the time anyway, so if you see someone new in your friends lists, it’s probably him. The good news is, if you’re already following us on Twitch or YouTube, you’ll be privy to his work as soon as it starts. I only ask that you smash that like or subscribe button when he does begin, or whatever the kids do nowadays ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So Where Do We Go From Here?

Aside from basically acting as a consultant for anyone interested in running a server and managing Link’s inevitable meteoric rise to stardom, we have a few side projects that, should anything come from them, we will let you know about in time. I honestly pine for the days when nobody knew what I was up to, as is probably evidenced from my protracted time away from all things social media. As a completely burnt out introvert, I’m not exactly proud of my sudden retreat but seriously I was going to crack up something fierce if I didn’t. Unfortunately, everything else right now demands attention from us and I had to do what I had to do. With any luck, someday in the future things will smoothen out and I’ll regain the mental bandwidth to take all this back on. Time will tell.

One thing I CAN buzz about is that Tonya has been doing a fantabulous job at school, and her brand Torimili Designs is coming along quite swimmingly, so if you do nothing else after reading all this please follow her on Facebook and Instagram and wherever quality graphic design is sold ?

There are too many people for us to thank individually for their friendship and support over these incomparably AWESOME 9 years. I wouldn’t even know where to start. All I can do is say that Tonya and I are so incredibly grateful to have had you all along for the ride, and a hell of a ride it has been. Is it over? Not really, and it never really could be over as long as you wonderful folks continue to be our friends…our honest-to-goodness gaming family. We may be stepping aside as the head of this endeavor, but the rest of you will always be the heart of it.

Truly Yours 4EVA,
Serverus & Torimili