Ghost Town

[pcm92]

What happened?

Three years ago, this site was jumping. Now it's just Tad, Spock, Barry, Crackdude, Berto, and JRcade that I normally see responses from.

[Tad]

I was wondering that myself. I know things like Facebook and Twitter gave forums quite a hit in general, but this change seems more recent.

We really need to get more people on here though.

[crackdude]

It's a phase.
A mix of a very scarce output of Sega games with summer at full swing. We've been there before, but the forum won't die.

[Tad]

If it doesn't, who do we sacrifice?

I'm sure a sacrifice will bring new people.

[crackdude]

We used to sacrifice Kogen for the greater good.

[Barry the Nomad]

It's just a combination of SEGA being incredibly quiet throughout 2015 and most of 2016 and the summer lull. It is much more active here this year than it was last year. Once the new Sonic game is revealed and we have more games to discuss things will pick up. I am actually looking forward to discussing 7th Dragon III with you all.

Given SEGA itself is pretty niche compared to stuff like the modern console makers and SEGAbits is a relatively young site when it comes to online communities, we're doing well. When you compare the SEGAbits forums to other SEGA fan sites, we're very active. SEGA Addicts killed off their forum, and SEGASHIRO killed their forums and ended up just linking to us. SEGA Nerds forums are very dead,  going weeks or even years without replies to topics, and when somebody does venture in to say something (usually to promote a YT channel or something) it is just the writers jumping on the topic to generate discussion... which never leads to any. I do find it funny that one of the Mega Visions Kickstarter perks is access to a private Mega Visions forum.

I much prefer the discussion here to the official SEGA forums which are largely garbage. 

[Tad]

All true. I do prefer smaller forums in general as I find the opinions are usually more explored and the atmosphere is better. I was on another forum like this, but it became very toxic unfortunately with the site owner publicly being abusive. The final straw for me was when he openly argued with a dev who took issue with a review.

It was nothing too bad, the dev just wanted something corrected on the review as it was wrong. The site owner basically said tough and he wouldn't change it. I left after that. Can't be arsed with people being abusive with their power like that.

[crackdude]

The admins here are waaay too abusive.

Just look at those inflated bling counters, goddamn

[Barry the Nomad]

The admins here are waaay too abusive.

Just look at those inflated bling counters, goddamn

Keep that up and I will max out your bling!

[Tad]

Just a thought, but maybe during these lulls a look at indie games or something could help?

I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm sure you'll agree little snippets of SEGA news that don't really do much isn't going to keep the site thriving.

[Barry the Nomad]

The thing is, are we talking the site thriving or the forums thriving? I've found it is very hard to force discussion (as evidenced by how SEGA Nerds forums made such attempts) so really forum activity is all up to who frequents and what they want to discuss. As Crackdude said, it's a phase and something that has happened here in the past due to a lull in SEGA games and the summer season.

People are free to discuss indie games, and they have, but they have proven to not be an incredibly popular topic of discussion here. The Xenocider and Shadow Gangs topics were pretty quiet outside of posts from the devs. I have never personally been one to like to feign interest so as to attempt to generate discussion, as it usually is apparent (again, see how Nerds forums tried this).

On the front page and on YouTube things are going very well. We've actually been highlighting quite a few indie games and have interviews planned for developers. Traffic is up from last year, and things have been very steady. I guess the one thing that we could do is draw people from the front page and YouTube to the forums. We actually have some forum enhancements to come which would help that. Moving forward, I'll try and add forum links to articles to get people to click through for additional discussion.

[Tad]

That's a good idea!

I can see what you mean though. I guess the key is in keeping things going till the news picks up.

[crackdude]

Keep in mind that with the advent of social media, people also just prefer to comment on facebook posts and whatnot

[Tad]

So, no sacrifice?

[Barry the Nomad]

Keep in mind that with the advent of social media, people also just prefer to comment on facebook posts and whatnot

Oh for sure, thankfully George was forward thinking and had bits go all in on Twitter and Facebook so we have a good network going. Maybe with the new forum software, we will have some sort of ability to login via facebook. I'm not too sure, but trust me when I say George and I are committed to the forums.