Eternity RPC Board
12-12-2016, 07:15 AM
So I'm going to pop this here, some thoughts I've been having for a while and haven't put into words, but I don't really want it public because of the contents. You'll see why.
I'll just preface by saying I'm not pointing fingers (because most of them would be at myself), just voicing a concern I've had for a few months, at least.
Activity on the board is slowing down. Noticably. One glance around sees that maybe 50% of RP activity currently takes place in the news section...which isn't odd, since it's easy to do a quick status update there. The problem is that maybe the other 50% is done in extra fluff stuff that really can't be called so much "RP" as minimal-input simulations for the sake of curious numberphiles: sports sims, Voice of Siora, Nyland's legislature/elections (the last two of which at least need input, but actual "rp" has been sparse since the first renditions of either), etc. Every now and again, someone will make an actual vignette or post, but it's the exception rather than the rule.
Surely a large reason for this is just that our community, as a whole, is somewhat older than average (both in age of members and age of board)...2 years here as "Eternity," 4-5 years old including time as "Oracia," and a whopping...god, pretty much just about 10 years or so if you reach back to Caprecia (and some of us come from older places than that, even). Lots of people have moved on, as demonstrated with so many people busy with school and other things. Some have left, no longer interested for whatever reason. Others, like myself, simply have lost interest in the idea of "national roleplay," at least in the current NationStates-influenced format for individual nations. (I know some of you are in this last category; for my part, I'm still much happier with a different sort of rp, as embodied in Andlosheim, and some other fantasia/ old space stuff.)
But I grow concerned for the sake of the community. I want us to continue to exist as something other than a shallow husk of people doing silly simulations and competitions while once in a while posting something random about games or politics.
- - - So my question for us is: "What is our vision for the community?" - - -
We're not going to go back to the "good old days" of NS rp, not without a push for new blood...but NS itself is fading and has been for years and maybe even the forum rp/writing scene as a whole, across the entire internet (it really is a product of a bygone age, the forum age, when we weren't always connected before social media et al). So lets ask an honest question, and figure out where we're going from here If we're going to continue as an NS forum, we need to go hard into it, get back into writing dispatches, making "ambassadors" and generating new traffic and interest...and maybe even finding avenues for advertisement outside NS, to generate new blood and new interest.
For my part, I've wanted to build more upon the "community" aspect than the "rp" aspect of our forum name. Honestly, it's time for a rebrand, to use our steam group to get everyone back to spending time together, to host our own gaming things to both stay doing things together while also perhaps bringing in new blood (self-hosted servers for stuff like, say, Minecraft et al? Use of youtube and the like to record our exploits and redirect "veiwers" here? Creating community posts elsewhere and clans/guilds/whatever in games we play to bring people here in one community?) and then re-jig the forum for talking about that, coming together around that.
I don't know if I'm really putting well into words my thoughts. Probably not; things seem jumbled.
The short of it is, we need to figure out what we're doing with this community (not "forum," it's more than a "forum") and really making an actual effort to go hard for that vision, even if that means making exquisite dwarven beards in video games putting less/more emphasis on MTRP and such. Yeah, I'm really not explaining myself very well.
I don't know. Input needed.
I'll just preface by saying I'm not pointing fingers (because most of them would be at myself), just voicing a concern I've had for a few months, at least.
Activity on the board is slowing down. Noticably. One glance around sees that maybe 50% of RP activity currently takes place in the news section...which isn't odd, since it's easy to do a quick status update there. The problem is that maybe the other 50% is done in extra fluff stuff that really can't be called so much "RP" as minimal-input simulations for the sake of curious numberphiles: sports sims, Voice of Siora, Nyland's legislature/elections (the last two of which at least need input, but actual "rp" has been sparse since the first renditions of either), etc. Every now and again, someone will make an actual vignette or post, but it's the exception rather than the rule.
Surely a large reason for this is just that our community, as a whole, is somewhat older than average (both in age of members and age of board)...2 years here as "Eternity," 4-5 years old including time as "Oracia," and a whopping...god, pretty much just about 10 years or so if you reach back to Caprecia (and some of us come from older places than that, even). Lots of people have moved on, as demonstrated with so many people busy with school and other things. Some have left, no longer interested for whatever reason. Others, like myself, simply have lost interest in the idea of "national roleplay," at least in the current NationStates-influenced format for individual nations. (I know some of you are in this last category; for my part, I'm still much happier with a different sort of rp, as embodied in Andlosheim, and some other fantasia/ old space stuff.)
But I grow concerned for the sake of the community. I want us to continue to exist as something other than a shallow husk of people doing silly simulations and competitions while once in a while posting something random about games or politics.
- - - So my question for us is: "What is our vision for the community?" - - -
We're not going to go back to the "good old days" of NS rp, not without a push for new blood...but NS itself is fading and has been for years and maybe even the forum rp/writing scene as a whole, across the entire internet (it really is a product of a bygone age, the forum age, when we weren't always connected before social media et al). So lets ask an honest question, and figure out where we're going from here If we're going to continue as an NS forum, we need to go hard into it, get back into writing dispatches, making "ambassadors" and generating new traffic and interest...and maybe even finding avenues for advertisement outside NS, to generate new blood and new interest.
For my part, I've wanted to build more upon the "community" aspect than the "rp" aspect of our forum name. Honestly, it's time for a rebrand, to use our steam group to get everyone back to spending time together, to host our own gaming things to both stay doing things together while also perhaps bringing in new blood (self-hosted servers for stuff like, say, Minecraft et al? Use of youtube and the like to record our exploits and redirect "veiwers" here? Creating community posts elsewhere and clans/guilds/whatever in games we play to bring people here in one community?) and then re-jig the forum for talking about that, coming together around that.
I don't know if I'm really putting well into words my thoughts. Probably not; things seem jumbled.
The short of it is, we need to figure out what we're doing with this community (not "forum," it's more than a "forum") and really making an actual effort to go hard for that vision, even if that means making exquisite dwarven beards in video games putting less/more emphasis on MTRP and such. Yeah, I'm really not explaining myself very well.
I don't know. Input needed.