Hey Maverick, sure is quiet around here...

D

-danr-

Vice Admiral
I suspect that like me, other regular posters are still silently lurking around these community boards - I'm not active in the IRC chat, so can't speak for that, but I've noticed that things are distinctly quiet discussion-wise lately.

The News Discussion area isn't doing too badly - and we should be thankful the CIC for consisently seeking new material and news for fans. I'm hoping somebody could give us a peek at the current web traffic for the site to see how much online interest Wing Commander is still generating. Of course, you don't have to share this info, and I hope it doesn't seem rude - just out of curiosity really, but hey it's your site.

I've never known the key to reinvigorating a once-busy web forum, perhaps the WC1 re-release will bring back some interest - the trick is making it last.
 
There are typically posting lulls around major holidays. Sometimes this carries over afterward for a while after too. Incidently I think this does get worse year over year as we progressively get further from whatever the last official release was (Arena for example). A lot of us just can't dedicate the same amount of time and I personally have to remember to make a point of posting and not just browse whatever threads I'm not specifically interested in. Hopefully there will be some new game announced in the near future. That would give us ample fodder to debate, pick apart, and to bicker about :).
 
I'm less concerned about our overall point in time. Arena is just one game, and we somehow still have thousands of regular CIC visitors a dozen years since new WC releases were a regular thing. We haven't had quite as many completely green newbies lately, and they drum up a lot of conversation because they haven't discussed all the hot topics a bunch of times already.

As AD pointed out, the specific reason right now are the holidays. Message boards are an exponential kind of thing. Ten people don't disagree enough, or at least raise enough different viewpoints and ideas, to generate very long discussions. Twenty people more than double the conversation though, and a hundred people talk so much that every single person that drops by finds something to comment on.

And that run from Thanksgiving to New Years always slams the brakes on everything. People are so busy by late December, that conversations dry up and it takes until February for things to get popping again. The good news is that, on average right now, about ten different Crius.net posters log into the forums for every single post we get. There's plenty of eyeballs, we're just a bit shy of the critical mass that jump starts the engine for the new year. We just need everyone to start talking, which will in turn cause everyone to talk more. :)
 
Someone said my name? Uh, no ;)

Danr, you can play around with the webstats counter on the front page (left column, green icon below links), it shows some amazing things - among them a bump in the usual bleed cycle for game sites: While usually a game community loses around 10% activity for each year after the last release, CIC has consolidated in 2010. Interest definitely is still there.

Whereas posting in a forum is concerned, the important points have been made already - new year slump. On a long-term basis, forum use is slowly changing generally - "casual" users are attracted to microblog-type formats; exchanging comments facebook-style. But forums will remain, it just needs a nucleus to get he ball rolling again.

(On a related note: The eXtreme tracker seems to ask for an update...)
 
#wingnut is still fairly active. We've been doing quite a bit of WCPedia related stuff lately but we also have long WC discussions on everything you'd find at the CZ.

I guess the thing we should start doing is just coming up with more discussion threads. :D
 
criticalmass said:
Someone said my name? Uh, no ;)

Danr, you can play around with the webstats counter on the front page (left column, green icon below links), it shows some amazing things - among them a bump in the usual bleed cycle for game sites: While usually a game community loses around 10% activity for each year after the last release, CIC has consolidated in 2010. Interest definitely is still there.
Click to expand...

Wow, I never noticed that - that's awesome, and as you say quite positive in perspective to the weaker fan base and web-existance of other popular old franchises. It makes you consider how much directly-related web traffic is generated by new material appearing - such as the recent boom over at the Monkey Island boards, that franchises' popularity was largely stimulated by guess what - a rerelease of the original two games - remodeled in pseudo-3D. The same could happen here, if the highly anticipated DOSBox WC1 package gains some attention.

Otherwise, thanks for all the other post - silly me to forget that it's only still January, christmas seems like ages ago.

I guess the thing we should start doing is just coming up with more discussion threads.
Click to expand...

Ummm...Thunderbolt or Sabre, which would win in a duel?
 
criticalmass said:
Danr, you can play around with the webstats counter on the front page (left column, green icon below links), it shows some amazing things - among them a bump in the usual bleed cycle for game sites: While usually a game community loses around 10% activity for each year after the last release, CIC has consolidated in 2010. Interest definitely is still there.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a good trend line. We're down a little from a few years ago, but compare today to ten years ago. In 2010 we had two and a half times as many visitors than 2000, when Origin was still working on WC games, the Movie was only a year old and the entire series was still on store shelves.
 
I wouldn't discount the possibility of getting some good, Wing Commander world-shattering news sooner or later. :)

That said, I'm probably just as happy to play for five rabid fans as I am for a packed house. I used to check the hits every day and then one day it just hit me that the number just didn't matter as long as I could say we were doing a good job with the site... and I think we are!

I'm having the time of my life with this WCPedia stuff, I wish I could do it full time. It's finally coming together to be something I've wanted to help create for fifteen years now and I'm doing it with some absolutely brilliant folks. Just chatting with Dundradal and whoever else shows up on #WingNut about incredibly detailed Wing Commander continuity is a thrill (even though that almost always means we aren't doing real work because we're plotting out something cool that's fifty steps away).

I get bogged down in cynical stuff a lot, but there's nothing I want to do more than chat about Wing Commander. I honestly don't understand why other people don't feel the same way. You should all come to #WingNut or Twitter or Facebook or AIM or whatever people do these days and we'll talk and argue and fight and make stuff.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I'm having the time of my life with this WCPedia stuff, I wish I could do it full time. It's finally coming together to be something I've wanted to help create for fifteen years now and I'm doing it with some absolutely brilliant folks. Just chatting with Dundradal and whoever else shows up on #WingNut about incredibly detailed Wing Commander continuity is a thrill (even though that almost always means we aren't doing real work because we're plotting out something cool that's fifty steps away).
Click to expand...

Hahaha I have too 100% agree here. One of us will ask a question about an article we are writing and then next thing we know we've spent an hour talking about it instead of continuing the work. Absolutely great discussions, but like LOAF said, it usually means that we aren't doing "real" work.

WCPedia is some of the most rewarding work I've been a part of related to WC. Just knowing that we are creating such a great resource for fans and future developers is great.
 
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