APRILSCHILD'S PROFILE

I dunno, I think your maps look purty. (I like liteing FX, so sue me.) I may in fact play this - I like the genre.

author=WIP link=topic=2801.msg53434#msg53434 date=1230847423
Not only that, here is a scenario: if you have a completed game and it has been completed for two months, how are people supposed to find it in a forum? You have to dig through pages and pages of old forum threads.

Because it isn't adding content to a thread that bumps it, it's continued discussion about it that does.

You're removing that mechanic - therefore, old games will be more easily lost.

I think the main difference between your opinion of valid bumping and mine is pretty substantial - you think bumping should happen only when the CREATOR has something new to say. The forums make bumping happen whenever ANYONE has something to say about the subject.

When people see a creator add content, it doesn't tell them how good the content is. But when people see a forum with lots and lots of replies, aka a thread that keeps being bumped by OTHER users, they have more faith in the project.

Also, the difference between people seeing a list of game pages and a list of forum threads? It's all very mental/psychological. Your readers are used to looking at a forum when they want to discuss (bringing us back to the original purpose of a "forum," like in ancient times), and looking at a game page when they want to play.

Since a forum is engraved into all our minds as a "place of discussion," people are more likely to click on a thread and read about it, read the discussion about it, even if they don't initially intend to play the game. However, I fear that less people will click on a game page because of the mentality, "why would I play this? It doesn't sound interesting to me." No one equates a game page with discussion as much as one equates a forum is discussion - and for good reason!

Trying to ram a new paradigm down your consumers' throats is never a good idea, no matter how well intentioned. I know this from recent experience - you'll get more stubbornness in return than you ever thought possible. More than likely, people will continue in the way they've always continued, because humans are like that. When they like something, they don't easily change. So most likely your forumgoers will continue going on the forum and ignoring the game pages - as they have done. And if they see a game page they know nothing about, they will be more inclined to ignore it than a forum thread, which seems less threatening and more noncommittal.

I won't be getting a kiss/laid for New Year because I'm currently in another state than the ol' boyf. You guys who have your s.o.'s near should feel very blessed!

However, one of my closest and oldest friends has returned from Japan (where she's teaching) for the holiday! I am making many many drinks and we will be playing drunken Wii together.

(On a side note, that girl has access to the most awesome games and gaming equipment. Too bad she can hardly read them :P)

author=Tyranos link=topic=2798.msg53226#msg53226 date=1230768395
Being depressed does not give you any special treatment. If you are at the age of 13 you should know DAMN WELL that anything that happens online is pretty much moot and stupid. Why would a 13 year old even look for a relationship online? That's stupid and depression would not lead to such behavior.

If she honestly thought this person who she met only online was in a relationship with her only at the age of 13 then she wasn't just depressed. She was stupid.

Wow, this is incredibly offensive. I was a 14-year-old once, and yeah, I did have an online relationship. I really liked the guy. I like him as a friend even now. He was a real human being and our conversations were real.

Non-romantically, one of my very best friends, I met online. We didn't meet for eight years... I only just met him IRL this past year. Our friendship was just as real as any friendships I have in life, especially now that many of my friends have moved away and I can only talk to them online.

If someone feels ugly, sad, unpopular, and unloved, yeah, they're going to be thrilled when someone on myspace says "you're really beautiful," "i love your eyes" (actual quotes). Especially in a world that's getting smaller and smaller because of the internet. Maybe it's different for boys (I doubt it), but when you're an insecure teenaged girl, you can get won over pretty easily when someone says that they think you're great.

It wasn't like she did the stupid 13-year-old thing and went to have sex/got abducted. Instead, she was just told by someone she trusted that they suddenly and inexplicably hated her. IRL or OL, hearing that kind of thing sucks. Like Max said, she was definitely already not in a healthy state of mind to have killed herself over that...

But the fact remains that an ADULT feigned a romantic relationship WITH A CHILD... just to fuck with them.

author=Tyranos link=topic=2798.msg53219#msg53219 date=1230767970

author=Feldschlacht IV link=topic=2798.msg53216#msg53216 date=1230767839

No one forces you to read something. It's not like the people sending her mean messages were physically holding her eyes open and forcing her face at the computer screen.

Tell that to little kids being bullied on the playground.

Sure. As soon as they tell me how someone sitting at a computer miles away PHYSICALLY forced a little girl to look at her computer screen as being anything similar to their own disposition.

I don't know dude, it would be like if you were dating a girl IRL for a really long time (which no one forced you to do), and then one day she kicked you in the nuts and told you she was sleeping with your best friend and hated everything you stood for and told you to kill yourself. Maybe this wouldn't phase you, yeah, but what if you'd told her all your deepest secrets/fears and she used all those against you to hurt you.

And let's pretend for a second you're 13 and clinically depressed.

That is what happened to this girl. That is all she knows happened to her. She died before she found out that "lol someone was faking it the whole time."