People keep saying "TWP is dead", it pisses me off and...
And here's why.
When Portal 1 came out, we had a pretty fucking spectacular explosion of popularity right after release. Portal was popular, Hammer is pretty relatively easy to get in to, so we had lots of people vising and making and uploading and playing maps.
Then after maybe, pfft, 6 months or so, traffic started waning pretty rapidly. But what did anyone expect? Portal 1 was a single player only puzzle game with maybe a couple hours of gameplay. It had zero official support added, a broken map importer, and puzzle elements which were difficult for non-experienced mappers to get a grasp of.
People shifted away from the site because people were shifting away from Portal in general. If I had to guess, less than 10% of a game's total players will seek out custom maps and most of the people who do tend not to stick around for any extended period of time. They play 1 or 2 maps and they had their fill. We created things like the Community Spotlight to give these short term visitors a place to go so they find the top-tier content. Because nothing is going to turn a casual gamer off to the notion of playing custom maps faster than if the first map they play is garbage.
So, 6 months or maybe a year after Portal 1 came out, site traffic was low and people said shit like "TWP is dead" as if I or anyone else wasn't doing more to keep the site active. Of course the site wasn't active then, barely anyone gave a shit about a single player only puzzle game. That's like expecting people to play the same 30 crossword puzzles every day for a year straight and still enjoy them. The site losing traffic was to be expected.
Well fast forward a couple of years and Portal 2 gets announced. I spruce up the site and prepare for another huge influx of visitors, traffic, uploads and players, and that's exactly what we got. In the beginning when Portal 2 first came out, shit was crazy. We were running something like 3,000 downloads an hour. I had to open up a cloud hosting service for maps just to keep the site online. Do any of you remember the site being unbearably slow the first few days after release? That's why.
We have our summer content and it was fantastic. But, just like with Portal 1, lack of official support and the fact that Portal is a puzzle game meant that players were dropping off pretty quickly again. Valve managed to maintain some semblance of support for the game, we got additional content from the DLCs which was nice, and we always got a pop of new visitors and map downloads when that happens.
But it is only temporary. People move on. Gamers don't stick to a single game for YEARS without something keeping them there, and like it or not, puzzle games do not have the sort of draw that something like TF2 or Dota or anything like that ever will. There is no appeal for people to play the same puzzles on a daily basis.
A few months ago we were talking with the staff here, how people like Nacimota have shuffled on to other things. The new kids thought this was weird, that a trusted staff member would just not be present anymore and that's okay by me. But again I ask the question: what else did you really expect?
It bothers me when people say this site is "dead", and make these outlandish claims that there will be some sort of resurgence for some magical reason. There won't. Nobody is going to blame anyone for wanting to move on to newer things. It's totally fine; it's part of the cycle. The only thing that is going to resurge traffic is a new major DLC, or Portal 3. Both of those are unlikely to happen.
But you know what? When Portal 3 gets announced, TWP will still be here. We'll still be hosting maps. We'll still be providing a community - the only community - for Portal mappers. The site isn't "dead", this is just the natural ebb and flow of how gaming sites work.
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I would call the time period between Portal 1 and Portal 2, the site was pretty sluggish, and on a slow heartbeat.
It will be 2 years since Portal 2 launched (Holy crap), and the site is in better shape then it was when Portal 1 was 2 years old. Portal 2 has more going for it then Portal 1 ever did as Portal 2 maps can be simply made (The clean/beta style) or heavily detailed (the A2 maps, Old Aperture, etc). This makes the maps more diverse unlike most Portal 1 maps which were mostly all the same looking. I guess you could connect it to the different styles of TF2 maps there are over at sites like TF2maps.
Personally, I thought that Co-op was going to be lifeline that keeps P2 alive and well, but it seems that it is the PTI update that keeps the blood flowing. Sure, we get a lot of people here with PTI maps, but there is room to grow and learn in everyone.
I would mention MyApertureInnovations, but sadly most of the folks there agree that Source is just a bucket of garbage and they don't want anything to do with it anymore. Not many of them do any source mapping at all. Bring something up on the Source engine they will pretty much reply: "Yuck, why are you using that crappy engine? Why don't you give Unreal or Unity a try or wait for this 'Source 2'."
Yeah, TWP is doing well. The last post date is not a year and 6 months ago. So why would anyone think it is dead?
The more you give, the less appreciated it will be received.
I said "dead" but I didn't remark at it being weird or mean that it's forever six feet under. I understand "ebb and flows" just as much as anyone, heck, I stuck around here a fair amount in the dry spell between the games.
If I tripped ya off somehow...sorry, I guess.
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It wasn't just you, it has been other things other people have said. Seeing your thread just catalyzed me into posting something about it is all.
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It wasn't just you, it has been other things other people have said. Seeing your thread just catalyzed me into posting something about it is all.
Alrighty.
Also, on the subject of DLC and how it spurs on stuff, I just realized that I haven't yet played any of the Portal 2 DLC. Not a single level yet.
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Yes, traffic to this site has decreased over the months but this site is still far from dead.
* If you want to play some good maps you've got much higher chance here than on the workshop.
* If you have any questions about portal 2 mapping this is still probably the best place to go.
I think the workshop sparked new interest in portal 2 and it is still pushing some people to hammer mapping, which is awesome. But here's a decline visible as well. Hopefully some big mod releases might spark a bit more attention too 
Does anyone think of the idea that Valve might request PTI maps to be made for a new DLC?
I'm not going anywhere.
No
PortalStories.com
"Oh, in case you got covered in that repulsion gel, here's some advice the lab boys gave me: DO NOT get covered in the repulsion gel."
Hmmmmm I mostly disagree about that. And overall, Sleeper, I don't like the smell of defeat in those words, boss!
This is my point: I think the site IS highly popular worldwide; it keeps being a reference site for Portal maps and as a mapping help discussion forums. I don't know data about visits stats or anything and how much time visits or downloads have decreased over the past months, but the main reasons of that decrease might be the puzzle creator launch as Lp mentioned above, altogether with a lack of dynamism and incentive in the site that was PRESENT BEFORE.
1. The puzzle creator has made possible not only a huge nnumber of easy and fast created maps, but also a whole new communnity. We need to be aware of that. Let's forget about quality of those maps for a moment, the huge majority of them are real shot, but there are really good ones too.... although that doesn't change the fact that a new community has raised out there, in the workshop. Also ppl is LAAAAZY by nature, I HATE that! It's not that they're untalented... I'd say that only a 2%(?) of puzzle makers that has tried the puzzle creator feel that they need more than that and try hammer looking for creating bigger things...
2. Dynamism. I would focus more in what could be done here to increase visits and downloads rather than if the site is dead or alive! This site is 2 main things: a compendium of maps (the quality of these maps is really important), and a mapping discussion forum. Taking into account above point no.1, accepting that the numbber of mappers (and I mean MAPPERS not puzzle creators!) has heavily decreased since the PTI puzzle creator, it could be argued that only the remaining of us are here to keep learning about mapping, to solve our issues, help others and share our stuff. But that's too few ppl! 
I think it could be done more to bring the rest here! I remember the communnity roundup with a certain nostalgia, and I think that it really provided the site with a great dynamism and spectation. I remember myself running to log in to check out the roundup at the beginning of each month and read the comments on the latest maps and news! I guess it's needed someone with spare time enough to commit this task (I wish I had... cause I'd offer myself!), but I really think this must be brought back again. This and whatever other periodic article that bring continuous freshness and dynamism to the site.
3. Incentive. It's hard to be a mapper and spend this huge time we spend to release our stuff. Overall having a real life too 
So, many of us just do this because we really like it, although it's true that we need some incentive, at least some good comments and feedback, or a good rating; this is what keeps us there, not necessarily a contest. I believe that a roundup or something similar could be stimulating and interesting enough to keep mappers mapping and posting new maps... and ppl to come here to check out continually.
Honestly, periodic/continuous news, articles, maps reviews (a good map and also a bad map analyze each week/month) and such could provide the site of that what's somehow lacking of lately: a certain dynamism, mostly.
I would even change the "face" of the site, divide the main page in different sections (like the columns of a newspaper) that can be updated separately (to avoid that you enter the site and see the same news for 2 months or even more!)... even adding more pictures for each column instead of too much text...
I don't know what else, but there are many things that could be done and that we ALL could think of.
Same as iWork, I'm not going anywhere but I'd like to be sure that TWP will be here so that I can come back, so boss, thanks for this:
And finally, about puzzle games, ha, my passion blinds me, sorry, but I don't think this kind is less popular than the rest (did anyone check the number of PTI puzzles created so far? 
), and I do think Portal puzzles have not been yet discovered entirely... this is not playing over and over again to the same stuff, there are even new mechanics being discovered still... and good maps to be done.
useful tools and stuff here on TWP 
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]What really disturbs me about some PTI users is that they think that the only way to make hammer like maps is by using mods and when they see a real hammer map, they ask what mod was used to make it. When they hear about hammer, they start asking how to get this PTI mod. It seems like some people didn't know that it was possible to make maps before PTI came out. Now that it's out, the concentration of good maps that effort has been put into them is low.