MR. Y'S PROFILE

I'm thinking about this shitty topic and how much I hate it!!! >:(

author=antifarea link=topic=3385.msg67523#msg67523 date=1237775715
Well, how about if it's your game thread? or an article or something that can be considered contribution?

Well then that sucks. It's nicer for moderators spotting problem threads to just lock them, then start handing out punishments if the bad conversation doesn't end there but leaks into a new topic... I remembered as a mod I'd only delete topics if they were unfairly offensive, pornographic, or completely completely useless. But then again, all in the mind of the beholder. Of course, I can't define 'completely completely useless', but I know it if I see it ;D.

author=Holbert link=topic=3375.msg67314#msg67314 date=1237697342
You are asking for unsustainable growth.

That's what I said to your mother last night!! Oh ho ho ho ho, high fives to me 8).

But seriously, I agree with the general gist of the argument that, even if we lure a bunch of spriters and other artists to RM.net temporarily with promises of candy and toy ponies, they may get tired and leave when they realize that we're not really a community for artists. Building 'naturally' a community with some artists seems more preferable, since these people will come and stick around because they like the site/gamemaking with RM* engines.

Like I said before, I don't really have new ideas for the site to actively seek growth, except a concentrated effort to develop unique content not on (or better than the stuff on) other websites, followed by posts in Ye Olde Advertising Forums mentioning this unique content and cool, mature crowd. This kind of plan takes a lot of work to prevent from becoming a juggernaut of mediocrity, however :P (like if you 'hire' staffers or push out ad threads in 12 different forums.)

(However, I'd still like for there to be some kind of plan for growth! Only that we keep the emphasis on quality, not quantity.)

One time my older brother filled a small bucket half-full (half-empty!?) with gasoline and then tossed a lit match into it. It wasn't the best plan he's had.

Also, whenever I leave the house, I'm always worried I left the oven or the space heaters on :o.

I agree with you, and yet I'm not sure about what specifically I can do- I think others may feel the same. As an older member (although I think a lot of members can consider themselves older members), I'm kind of in a situation where everyone I really know well has either disappeared from gamemaking, has gone awesome-cool-postmodern/idiot-on-the-Internet, or doesn't really remember/like me :o.

At least for others who know others, I agree that informal networking is the best stuff. I think it would also help for RPGMaker.net to identify the websites now growing (which, I feel, are different from just 2-4 years ago), then develop complementary services to lure those people over there. If we're not directly competing with those websites, but only providing *more* services, then that can be appreciated. For instance, right now I feel that there's a severe lack of a *central* gamemaking website, only disparate websites that specialize heavily in specific gamemaking programs or in graphics/tutorials (a website for RMVX, a website for RM2K/3 sprites, etc.)

From the limited amount I understand, I think RMN is doing good with the heavy emphasis on game reviews and featured games, and I think this could improve even more with a strong push for well-written articles like MayorAnime has written recently. It's hard to come up with incentives for writers on a free website (run at cost by the owners), but even if we're just identifying good articles and games on the web now and then getting permission to put it up on RMN, that'd be good. It'd be nice to organize enough to seek out good content published on other websites by non-staffers and ask those people for permission to put their stuff on our "central" location website- the difference for us could be having the largest, consistently best database of games, reviews, and articles, while other websites are less organized and have more scattershot samplings of good and bad content.

Anyways, just my two cents- I don't feel I know many people to recommend to RMN, and I probably don't understand the gamemaking community as a whole as well as I used to, but I've always approached challenges like this from a unique-content angle.