Food for thought.

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Food for thought.

PostPosted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 4:07 pm

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M.Steiner
Posts: 6114
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2004 5:57 pm
Location: UK
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I seem to recall having a mini-rant on this ages & ages ago but it did improve for a while. Sadly it seems to have taken another dive this year and is probably worse than before I would say.
I'm starting to feel like my efforts are a waste of time, basically.


I manage our Twitter account on a daily basis even though I've never been one for social media. All but 2-3 news posts on Facebook for this year have come over from Twitter. All but 2 news posts on our main site news have been posted by me in the last 8 months. I've been recording, editing and uploading videos to our YouTube page since October. We have 39 videos in total so far with 21 of those added just this month when I stepped things up a notch. Every single one of those has been uploaded by me, some of which have literally taken me all night to upload. My net ain't exactly great so I have to juggle things like other family members using the connection and I can forget about watching Netflix or anything like that when I'm uploading too. I'm not complaining though, that is my choice. - Of those 39 videos since Oct we've received 21 likes. Some of which were done by myself as it affects search rankings. It's just a press of a button.
I even went to the trouble of making an SSX branded intro & outro for said videos using After Effects. I had to follow tutorials for them both as I've never used the software before and had no idea what I was doing but if it improved the vids and gave an extra pointer here, I wanted to make the effort. So I did.

I do all of this (and thanks to Sl33py for pushing us in this direction!) because I love this place and to try and get us some exposure, get our name out there and hopefully attract some new people in the process. If just one person looks us up after following us on Twitter or watching some of our vids on YouTube then I'll be happy. I have however asked (on a couple of occassions) if anyone else would like to help provide content for our YouTube channel so we can increase and vary our output on there but nobody has. Anny is the only one (forgive me if I'm mistaken) to have offered to do so but when he upgrades in a few months time. Sl33py is also the only one here to have streamed anything from twitch. Surely we have more people in this "gaming communtiy" who still game (even casually) who could do one or the other (depending on ones connection) every now and then?

So what are we linking people back?. Sure they come back to a great looking site which myself & Anny spent a long time on but what about the content and activity on show? Is it enough to attract people?.
I try to stir up forum activity on a regular basis to try and create discussions and get people posting. I try to think of things which more of us can get involved in but even then I often feel like I'm talking to myself. - I posted last year asking what peoples favourite game releases of 2014 were/GOTY/2014 top 10 were whilst listing my own. How many people chimed in? A subject which should be fair game for everyone here. I've started posting monthly run downs covering new & upcoming releases and asking people which they're planning to buy/looking forward to playing. How many people joined in?. Asked people in the SC forum (since we have a fair few people interested in that already, would you believe) what other ships they have their eye on for acquiring either ingame or buying via the shop. How many SC backers replied?. Just a few examples off the top of my head.
I even tried a group wide project in the form of the Shattered Star timeline. Something which each and every one of us here could join in with and contribute to as much or as little as possible. I even posted it a year before I planned for us to launch it (on our 10th anniversary) so as to give us enough time. Also asked a few times for help with write-ups for some of the groups/years so they were not all just written by myself, but by members of the group who were part of them. A group effort as I say. What happened there?.

I tried to gather interest for new groups for games like WildStar and Guild Wars 2 to no avail. In both cases I played with other groups of people, GW2 with old friends from WoW (Andy joined me too), and WildStar with fellow Gaffers. I would always choose this place first, always have and always will. Also tried to get people to jump into the Battlefield Hardline beta with me whilst it was available to play for free this month, nobody did (Oz played but he was over on the PS4). Battlefield 4 was the same, and the lastest CoD too. They're not MMOs but they're games which don't require a lot of time or dedication if you don't want to give them it and they don't have a steep learning curve either. Ideal for casual & hardcore players alike.

BD & myself (and sometimes Kahn) have been playing Star Citizen together on a regular basis which is great. It's good practice, good fun and it's good for the group too. I've tried encouraging others to join us in there for some co-op (tried to get peeps to tag along for the Devs vs Community too), even asking if people want to start some kind of weekly (or otherwise) schedule to get some regular group gaming going like we used to do in FFXI for fishing and TOR with our flashpoint groups. Nobody has joined us in there yet, offered any kind of suggestions as to schedules or even shown an interest in playing together really. - Maybe it's not that people don't want to play (Anny aside who says he will, is just busy arranging to do other stuff and has yet to actually do so), maybe they just can't run it? - I don't know. Nobody has replied to say "I'd love to but I can't run it even when turning settings all the way down like Kahn & BD have had to do" and nobody has popped up to say "I'm busy this week but how about Xday at X o'clock?", so what am I supposed to think?

My logic is that we have a game sitting here which lots of us are interested in, have backed and have flyable ships in (some long before I did) and it also doesn't require a subscription fee to play. To not take advantage of that as a group would be both silly and a wasted opportunity I think. How many games come along which have so many of us invested in like this?. Sure it'll be a while before the game is "complete" but Arena Commander is perfectly playable right now, is a lot of fun (it's basically a game within the game) and the FPS module is just around the corner too. Why don't we make use of it?. Even just every now and then.

The irony with Star Citizen being that anyone who knows me well knows how I am with games like that and with the genre as a whole. The fact that I'm even playing the game to begin with is a small miracle tbh. Things are different now, but the only reason I ever entertained SC was because I knew we already had a lot of interest for it here, it would be a good opportunity to play with peeps again and there's great potential for a new group in there. I wasn't interested in the game and I don't generally like this kinda stuff at all. It was just to play with you guys and start a new group.
The tables have kinda turned though and I'm now greatly interested in the game itself (mostly due to the planetside & PU aspects of it selling it to me first) and yet I'm one of only a few people playing it atm and trying to get our other backers in there with us. It's kinda crazy when I think about it.
It's also kinda funny yet annoying that those of us who are actively playing SC together don't care for the Exiles name we're bringing people back to either but I won't get into that one since I was the last person to bring that discussion up... All my SC vids are entitled SSX Burning Stars - A Squadron of the Shattered Star Exiles though. Best I can do until people see the light to Shattered Star Society (S3) or Community :p

So back to the question. What are we linking people back to?. What kind of impression are we leaving?. What do people see when they come here?
I will continue doing what I do - trying to start and encourage forum usage and discussion, keeping our Twitter page active and gaining new followers, recording and uploading videos to YouTube and trying to encourage people to play stuff together but if we're to attract anyone through places like Twitter and YouTube, or ultimately in SC itself it can't be done unless met half way. If I suddenly stopped doing all of that, what would happen?. We have to make the place we're linking people back to a place they'd want to join and stay. Seeing me struggle to get our existing peeps to play games where there's already an interest in and even reply to stuff some of the time is not going to help, is it?.. I'll be honest, this post won't help with that either but it's better said now than let things get worse. We're a gaming community yet sometimes I have to keep reminded myself of it. We play and talk about games, right?. Sometimes other stuff but mostly games?.
We've got a wonderful place here with some great people and a long history together. Our history alone is a great selling point but when the present doesn't have much to show?... Let's show it and not have this place go to waste or become a museum, eh? :)


- I'm going to lock this post btw. I'm not posting to cause a stir and certainly don't want to upset anyone but don't wish for this to be turned into a discussion on the subject. Just speaking aloud because I care and don't want to see this place go to the dogs. Apologies for the wall of text but food for thought, do with it what you will <3 :thumb:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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