MOTIVATION AND SUPPORT
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I know I must come off as a total snob for saying some of these things, though I feel obligated to say them.
To be fair, this needs saying: The users that are online are usually mature, respectful, and able to handle criticism. However there are just too few people on the forums.
As far as I see, the main reason for devoting hours of dedication to the creation of a game is for personal expression. This is not a bad thing, but not enough when you're in high school or college and times are tough you begin to forget the dedication or interest you started the project off with. I'm not one to talk about the rpg makers, but I am one to talk for someone who has given up on so many personal projects with other programs.
Popular games get downloaded thousands of times, but only a handful of them will write reviews or post comments. Thus, we should encourage reviews and comments. I know enough to know creators love feedback, though I'm stumped on how to encourage it.
I want to say money. putting up ads around the site will help site maintenance, and allowing+encouraging users to use Google ads in their blogs will enrich the motivation of users all the while drawing in a larger audience creating more games.
To be fair, this needs saying: The users that are online are usually mature, respectful, and able to handle criticism. However there are just too few people on the forums.
As far as I see, the main reason for devoting hours of dedication to the creation of a game is for personal expression. This is not a bad thing, but not enough when you're in high school or college and times are tough you begin to forget the dedication or interest you started the project off with. I'm not one to talk about the rpg makers, but I am one to talk for someone who has given up on so many personal projects with other programs.
Popular games get downloaded thousands of times, but only a handful of them will write reviews or post comments. Thus, we should encourage reviews and comments. I know enough to know creators love feedback, though I'm stumped on how to encourage it.
I want to say money. putting up ads around the site will help site maintenance, and allowing+encouraging users to use Google ads in their blogs will enrich the motivation of users all the while drawing in a larger audience creating more games.
Two things:
I love the forums (and IRC) for the community, and the discussions that it brings, but the way this site is built is that your 'forum rep' and the popularity of whatever project you're working on are two totally separate things, even more so considering that you can't post game ads on the forums. Some people here may know I was totally against the whole 'no game ads on the forums' before RMNv3 was actually implemented, but now that it's been here for a while I sing a different tune; if you know what you're doing and you present yourself and your project well, your game page will really sell itself. It's a rule of life; above average presentation and quality gets noticed. Guaranteed.
The other thing; the site and the forums are pretty much separate entities, as hinted above. The site is the meat of this place and is where the main focus and all of the action takes place; discussion, playing, and all about the games. The forums are where the community lies and discusses everything else (and games too). So if you feel there are too few people on the forums, that doesn't really have anything to do on the site! Otherwise to directly address what you've been saying; yes, from my observation it has been a little slow recently. It flows and ebbs, I suppose. It'll pick up.
I love the forums (and IRC) for the community, and the discussions that it brings, but the way this site is built is that your 'forum rep' and the popularity of whatever project you're working on are two totally separate things, even more so considering that you can't post game ads on the forums. Some people here may know I was totally against the whole 'no game ads on the forums' before RMNv3 was actually implemented, but now that it's been here for a while I sing a different tune; if you know what you're doing and you present yourself and your project well, your game page will really sell itself. It's a rule of life; above average presentation and quality gets noticed. Guaranteed.
The other thing; the site and the forums are pretty much separate entities, as hinted above. The site is the meat of this place and is where the main focus and all of the action takes place; discussion, playing, and all about the games. The forums are where the community lies and discusses everything else (and games too). So if you feel there are too few people on the forums, that doesn't really have anything to do on the site! Otherwise to directly address what you've been saying; yes, from my observation it has been a little slow recently. It flows and ebbs, I suppose. It'll pick up.
The forums could better help talk about other peoples games. Oh wait, that's why game pages can accept blogs and comments! Thing is, these comments are treated like you-tube comments and hold no real weight. You can't really start a "discussion" topic on your game without hijacking some random image or blog that starts a "topic thread".
Is it possible for games to have mini-forums? I mean, it could be an exclusive offer so that not all games abuse it. This will also help development if treated as a development forum, where the creators can chat about planned abilities or places and other people can come in and join in on the discussion giving their thoughts. There could also be a privacy setting to only allow your team+beta testers, or everybody.
Feld says the forums are just a hang-out, which is just fine. But what mario wants is more like the above, and I think it's a great addition. Because not only can it help with development, but it's a great way of communicating your game to the public, and to help keep spirits up and catalog the well deserved criticism and encouragements.
These mini-forums can also be limited to a number of boards, and topics depending on RMN admin's discretion.
Is it possible for games to have mini-forums? I mean, it could be an exclusive offer so that not all games abuse it. This will also help development if treated as a development forum, where the creators can chat about planned abilities or places and other people can come in and join in on the discussion giving their thoughts. There could also be a privacy setting to only allow your team+beta testers, or everybody.
Feld says the forums are just a hang-out, which is just fine. But what mario wants is more like the above, and I think it's a great addition. Because not only can it help with development, but it's a great way of communicating your game to the public, and to help keep spirits up and catalog the well deserved criticism and encouragements.
These mini-forums can also be limited to a number of boards, and topics depending on RMN admin's discretion.
the way this site is built is that your 'forum rep' and the popularity of whatever project you're working on are two totally separate things, even more so considering that you can't post game ads on the forums
i understand this concept and appreciate it with relish
I guess we should first of all wait for the new RSD! that was promised to appear soon. Maybe that new concept will bring a little bit more motivation and support to Mario.
About the site. I don't think it is that bad to have the games separated from the forum. After all you get more comments in the game profiles than in a forum topic cuz people consider it more as ''spamm comments'', so they don't feel forced to give constructive and good comments. Often though these ''spamm comments'' aren't even that bad because they bring the mentioned thing to the point.
However, the only thing I don't really like about the gamepage system is that you don't immediatelly see who posted into the page and where exactly he posted. Did one comment an image or the main page? Which image exactly? You can't see that immediatelly, unfortunately. So often you don't take a look while in topics you do more often cause you e.g. wanna see what a specific person had to say about the game and maybe state your point of view in a response.
Whatever, it still makes RMN different from other sites which are way too fucused on their forums having a dead database or even no database. So this system here is definitely worth a try in my opinion.
About the site. I don't think it is that bad to have the games separated from the forum. After all you get more comments in the game profiles than in a forum topic cuz people consider it more as ''spamm comments'', so they don't feel forced to give constructive and good comments. Often though these ''spamm comments'' aren't even that bad because they bring the mentioned thing to the point.
However, the only thing I don't really like about the gamepage system is that you don't immediatelly see who posted into the page and where exactly he posted. Did one comment an image or the main page? Which image exactly? You can't see that immediatelly, unfortunately. So often you don't take a look while in topics you do more often cause you e.g. wanna see what a specific person had to say about the game and maybe state your point of view in a response.
Whatever, it still makes RMN different from other sites which are way too fucused on their forums having a dead database or even no database. So this system here is definitely worth a try in my opinion.
post=122336
However, the only thing I don't really like about the gamepage system is that you don't immediatelly see who posted into the page and where exactly he posted.
lolwut? That's why you subscribe. It tells you who and where, no?
@Radnen: I can't subscribe every single game though. :-O
@Archeia: Nope.
@Archeia: Nope.
Solitayre
For the record, Release Something isn't completely going away, we're just going to try out a new format for it next year. It will be an experiement for everyone so try to bear with us!
post=122592
@Radnen: I can't subscribe every single game though. :-O
Do you really care about every single game? Or are you talking about why the game hit the top of the main game page.
Yeah, the last point. If there's already a way to see it immediatelly and I just didn't find it, let me know. ^_^'
To be fair, this needs saying: The users that are online are usually mature, respectful, and able to handle criticism. However there are just too few people on the forums.
As far as I see, the main reason for devoting hours of dedication to the creation of a game is for personal expression. This is not a bad thing, but not enough when you're in high school or college and times are tough you begin to forget the dedication or interest you started the project off with. I'm not one to talk about the rpg makers, but I am one to talk for someone who has given up on so many personal projects with other programs.
As someone who has spent literally tens of thousands of hours over the past five years creating and maintaining something with a "user base" of usually around 10 people in size, I must disagree with the "audience size = motivation" paradigm posited here. This project has been at least as promising as my rpg maker projects, some of which have been downloaded a halfway decent number of times (perhaps 10,000 across all sites for one of my more popular games) but none of which received as much in-depth feedback as my project with a much much smaller built-in audience.
Other things said in the OP are pretty interesting, though...I'm not sure this is my comprehensive response yet. I need to think about it for a little bit.
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