I have some updates for you.

Dexterity Software closed

Today I officially shut down my online computer games business, Dexterity Software. I would have shut the site down last year, but I had a long-term advertising commitment to fulfill, and it finally expired this month. Dexterity Software was the business I started in 1994 right after college, and I really enjoyed running it. It was the fulfillment of a dream I had in my early 20s, but it wasn’t something I wanted to continue doing through my 30s.

I let the games site go dormant in 2004 when I launched StevePavlina.com. It still generated some side income over the past two years, although only a fraction of what it did at its peak. I didn’t want to keep it running indefinitely though, especially since the games are getting pretty old — some were developed in the mid-90s. I also didn’t want to split my focus between two businesses any longer, even if it was only a 95-5 split. Erin discontinued her web consulting business earlier this year for the same reason. Now that Dexterity Software is gone, all my energy is with Pavlina LLC.

I spent a little time looking for a buyer for the games site, but I wasn’t successful because I didn’t put much effort into it. I didn’t need the money, and building StevePavlina.com was keeping me plenty busy anyway. Most people who’d be interested in such a site simply couldn’t afford to pay what it was worth to me. Even though the traffic is totally unqualified, simply redirecting the game site’s traffic to StevePavlina.com will likely gain me enough new readers to make the domain worth keeping. If I were to sell the site, it would have to be for something in the upper five-figure range, simply based on my ability to monetize the traffic here.

As I went through the process of taking the site offline, I felt a little nostalgic as I remembered all those years designing, programming, and publishing games. Quite a lot of memories… I’m not sad about it, since shutting it down was a very conscious decision. I’m too excited about what’s going on here to spend much time thinking about the past.

Discussion forums progress

The forums are installed and configured, but Erin and I are still tweaking the options. We hope to have them launched in the next few days. We’re using the latest version of VBulletin, which is a monster when it comes to features, so it’s been taking a while to get everything sorted out.

I should be contacting the moderators tomorrow to set up their accounts, and shortly thereafter I’ll post an announcement here to open the doors for everyone else. Erin and I will be able to help out with the moderation while the volunteer moderators get up to speed, so we don’t need everything to be perfect when we launch. My best guess is that you’ll be able to start posting by end of the week.

I’m off to take the kids trick-or-treating… it’s pretty funny watching people’s reactions when my daughter picks out a piece of candy and asks really loudly, “Is this vegan?” Usually about 40% of the candy they collect is vegan. Emily (6) is going as Supergirl, and Kyle (3) is Batman, so I’ll be escorting a couple of superheroes.