GameBanshee Forums

This place doesn't seem that active anymore. We need some gimmick to bring people in!

Haven't seen the place buzzing since Ravager et al. got booted lord knows how long ago. Fable has gone walkabout too now

In fairness, it's mainly SYM that has quietened down. The game forums are still fairly active.

That's true, people are discussing games as always, but SYM really isn't the same without fable.

It seems that most of us who were part of the active group back then are busy with real life to keep the SYM active. I, for one, have so much to do with other things that I hardly have time to check with the certain game subforums.

Speaking of which, does anyone know what has happened to fable? From his profile I can see that the last message he posted is from late March. I may have missed something because my own irregular activity, but there is no trace of him since 22th of March. Just curious, that's all...

Yeah, you're probably right. The reason I'm around more often is that I'm working at home on my laptop now

Fable has not visited another forum I used to see him on since last year either, but I have no idea why.

Come on, now. The whole forum can't rest on the participation of a single person...

Are you implying that we are lacking good ol' fashioned spammers?

Of course not.

Wait, are you implying that fable was a spammer?

endboss wrote: Wait, are you implying that fable was a spammer?

Surely not, fable was no spammer. He had long discussion of quality instead, but never spam.

Oh, and disappearance of one person doesn't cause SYM going quiet, but several regular posters going more or less inactive does. I know I'm guilty in this as well. Besides me there are lots of others who have not posted as much as before. And by those I'm not talking about Ravager and his group, but other who stayed here after it. This place was very active quite long since the event, only quieted down about year ago or so.

I guess we all just moved on to other things. Otherwise we could always blame Facebook and Twitter for killing SYM

Loki[D.d.G] wrote:I guess we all just moved on to other things. Otherwise we could always blame Facebook and Twitter for killing SYM

This is the truth. Random chit chatter often moves along to other newer things. 5 years ago - forums where "the thing" chat. Now it isn't.

Also remember, much of GBs community was originally build upon Baldur's Gate 1+2 games and sprung from those discussions.

Xandax wrote:This is the truth. Random chit chatter often moves along to other newer things. 5 years ago - forums where "the thing" chat. Now it isn't.

True. It's quite hard to keep any kind of discussion going in real time without pauses in forums. Seen that, done that, and it was more or less impossible. The discussions were most often very confusing.

So, as the "real time chatting" is far better option for serious and not so serious discussions, forums just are not up to the task. Facebook, twitter and other instances on the other hand are, so the discussions have moved there.

Also, has it only been five years since forums were "the thing"? I thought it has been longer. First there were forums, then messenger/skype, then blogs and finally facebook/twitter. Not sure where IRC and such fall, probably somewhere around forums. So, I would say it's more like eight, perhaps ten years since the "golden time" of forums. GameBanshee, of course, is it's own thing, as the peak lasted quite long, and the activity begun drop only after facebook became popular. That's how I have observed these things, feel free to disagree

I'm not gaming as much as I used to. I have a new life to get the hang of that involves balancing more than just myself, studying more than I used to and working.. well, trying to find work more than before.

The time I spend on the gaming forums helping people hasn't recently been worth my while either, so I sorta lost interest. I still very much care what happens to the site though.

As for SYM.. well, like many here I've begun to move on to other social networks. Out of necessity mostly, the bridge between the net and the physical world is quickly disappearing. I don't think I'm getting anything 'new' out of it though. I think the big changes are yet to happen.

it does seem quieter now. I am on the forums a lot, mostly lurking. i did pop in daily during the week of fable 3's release, but that board was empty. i ended up of gamefaqs, even though (nearly) everyone there is rude. however, i am really into reach right now and so there's almost no point of being on a RPG forum. as a matter of fact, i just popped in to see if anyone commented on dlc for fable3....

maybe gamebanshee is being overrun by the major conglomerate websites like gamefaqs, ugo, etc.

facebook and twitter scare me. why would i ever want the world to know what i am doing every second of every day?

Same as stanolis. Mostly lurking around but I do post at threads I find interesting. Don't have that much time anymore since I am working. Couple that with housework and other activities and you get little time to hang around on the net.

stanolis wrote:i ended up of gamefaqs, even though (nearly) everyone there is rude.

The crowd there is rather fanboyish if you ask me. Never signed up there myself but I did read through their comments in a number of threads and that is the impression I get. Same goes for Kotaku and Destructoid.

Tricky wrote:I'm not gaming as much as I used to. I have a new life to get the hang of that involves balancing more than just myself, studying more than I used to and working.. well, trying to find work more than before.

The time I spend on the gaming forums helping people hasn't recently been worth my while either, so I sorta lost interest. I still very much care what happens to the site though.

As for SYM.. well, like many here I've begun to move on to other social networks. Out of necessity mostly, the bridge between the net and the physical world is quickly disappearing. I don't think I'm getting anything 'new' out of it though. I think the big changes are yet to happen.

yep,make sense:laugh:

Sites like GameBanshee were ones I was expecting to slow down, because the gaming forum niche has been getting more and more crowded since the beginning of forum software. It's not just IGN or GameFAQs GameBanshee has to face off against, but a few hundred specialist sites directed towards particular games or very defined genres. Given there's, what, two or three people who build all the content of the site for several games, keeping up that level of competition and hence, activity, is going to be rough.

I don't think anyone can blame GameBanshee's entire slow down on twitter and Facebook which are not so much direct competitors for the activity but complements for services which might detract from more general sites. I do think Xandax is a bit off base directing the blame there -- site archives and internet history searches shows consistent growth in the site until about the mid to late 800,000s, and then all of a sudden it died. This was not analogous with the growth in strength of any particular communication medium, not has this trend changed as various mediums have come and gone from the net. Other sites have managed to maintain and much higher rate of activity, including those in the RPG gaming niche and in the gaming niche even while it was experiencing a massive demographic shift on the net.

I've actually always kind of wondered about the join dates here. There's a very odd discrepancy where either posters have been here since forever or they are fairly new, without the middle-age group of posters being there.

I have no doubt there is a difference between quality and quantity. But the different between quality and nothing is even more apparent, and what's apparent in Speak Your Mind is that it once had a more burgeoning history which has given way to an odd sense of emptiness. I noticed this when I first posted a long time ago, and since I largely lurk I never really had a reason to keep posting in Speak Your Mind since there isn't really much of a community here to come back to. I sincerely hope that whatever community which was here which kept people coming back and posting in the other forums emerges once more in some form, because I have to admit some concern that otherwise maintaining member interest in this sort of communication medium otherwise is low.

I used to rate forums for a while and write reviews on them, so I'm kind of used to looking for the problems on sites. I have to admit that I have noticed some more unsavory habits on this forum which kind of bug me and I don't think help the site, but I doubt you guys want to hear from the Edmontonian with well less than 100 posts over 3 years to his name.

What has happened to Fable? I noticed he has disappeared from the internet as well, since when I last checked he was not around (and we were in that debate over Tasers) and I took a gander around the net since I recognized his name from other sites and such. Outside of his Facebook I couldn't see anything recently updated and I could not view his wall itself, so I don't know if he was doing any of those updates...

Wait, fable is gone? I shall never again post on GB!

Now jokes aside : I too am concerned with the slow decay of these forums. We're mostly a BG2 / D&D community (these forums are alive each day), but i may have a way to at least temp. fix it..

Excuse me Dragon Wench that it takes me so long to fulfill my promise, but i had stuff to do

OK so Fable is just gone and not dead then. Well, I hope he gets back.

Kaer wrote:...I have noticed some more unsavory habits on this forum which kind of bug me and I don't think help the site...

I'm very interested in hearing what you have to say about this. If it's something I can correct, I'd certainly make an attempt to do so.

There are quite a few reasons why I think our forum traffic has declined, some of which were largely unavoidable and others that could have potentially been avoided if I had been able to dedicate more time, money, and resources to the forum. Back when Baldur's Gate II was popular and GameBanshee was only covering a handful of games, I was able to allocate a significant amount of time to the forums and the community was much closer knit. Now, however, the site's scope is far more encompassing. In addition to having several dozen subsites to maintain, I have a database of 1700+ games I'm constantly administering, a lot more news to search for and cover, and, of course, three kids gobbling up most of the free time that I had during the site's first several years.

Overall, our traffic hasn't declined - it's just shifted. There is less traffic here in the forums, but more traffic within the site's content areas. I'd love to see our forum traffic pick up again, but I honestly don't know what the best course of action would be (considering the time, money, and resources available to me) to spark more discussion. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be happy to listen.