Worried about the future of the Watch.

Also, when I go to say Gamasutra or Kotaku or even games.industry.biz I try to find news which is thoughtprovoking or something out of the ordinary. Or which my experience tells me will generate a good debate here. I also sometimes find time to post about adventure games since I know many of us really really likes them - I also sometimes post news about older games....

Let's turn it the other way. I don't even have the time to read all posts posted each day. Which says something about the activity here... Right ?

Digger Nick said:

Yup this place always was pretty ded.

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Not at all.

Just had fewer people than other forums. It's always been a pretty active forum though.

Pladio said:

Not at all.

Just had fewer people than other forums. It's always been a pretty active forum though.

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And, with the exception of Codex Trolls, the signal to noise is pretty high

Wisdom said:

4 tenths of a decade eh? These damn kids keep getting younger and younger.
PS. 4 tenths of a decade is 4 years old.

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LOL.

Corrected that.

aries100 said:

I post news from time to time whenever I have the time. As for why don't post much anymore, I'm a teacher. And from this school year we have a agreement (or kaw actually) which states that we must be at school for 40 hours a week in 42 weeks. And while this might not sound too bad - believe me it it. Also, as as teacher I get new classes every half a year or so. I hope you understand….as an explanation, not an excuse.

I'll try to post during the weekends since the new law or agreement makes it so that I don't have to work at home during the weekends.

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It's cool. I didn't want to sound like a douche when I started thread.
I understand that time changes things.

Glad you can still find the time to visit and talk to us.

ilm said:

Let's turn it the other way. I don't even have the time to read all posts posted each day. Which says something about the activity here… Right ?

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You're god damn right!!!

txa1265 said:

And, with the exception of Codex Trolls, the signal to noise is pretty high

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I had depicted them as the ones climbing the palisade…


PS : Not sorry for the quadruple posts…

I'm not that often here anymore because of RL - but what I definitively found, is, that the game indistry changed a LOT since RPGWatch saw the light of the day.

Just as an example : Steam wasn't existing back then, or at least not as the DRM-distributor it is today. Well, I don't even remember anymore when Steam came to be …

At that early Watch time, the industry still wasn't on the trail of "the customer is the enemy !" and "buying/selling used games is THE evil !".

It was a much more friendly time, then, I think.

Also, on the Pc plattform, war games and shooters weren's *that* dominating, still, I guess. Well I don't even remember much anymore …

The PC platform has severely been degenerating since then. It's only hope are the Indies nowadays - and it is interesting to see that a game which was an full commercial in the early 90s is now an Indie game, I mean that it was sold at retail in the 90s, and now can't, well some still do, because of … so many things have changed …

At retail here in Germany we still see quite a lot of Indie games. Like Giana Sisters, foir example. In boxed form.
However, [on] the other side of the salkes via DROM/DSistributor "Steam" have been incerased so much. EVERYTHING's now digital - even music.

I too often feel too old nowadays for all of these stuff. Whereas there was a much, much, much greater variety in the department of shooters when The Watch came to be, I only see at retail the 10.00th revelation of Honour Of Duty or how these war-shooters are called nowadays.

Things have changed so much - so have the people.

GhanBuriGhan said:

From my POV, I would fully support if you would submit these impressions as official site content - they are always very good and (unlike almost everything else the Watch can do, (including my own few attempts at reviews)) timely. If you are worried about not speaking for everyone - just make them an Op Ed - e.g. "Maylanders first impressions".

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HiddenX said:

Maylander is one of the fastest gamers I know and his reviews/impressions usually make a lot of sense.

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Thanks, always nice to get positive feedback! I normally don't call them reviews because I feel a proper review requires more structure, which in turn requires taking quite a few notes while playing. As I'm rather pumped when a new RPG is out, I don't have that kind of patience, hehe. Besides, it already takes me quite some time to write the current, rather chaotic versions.

As for whether or not it's official content is up to the moderators as far as I'm concerned. I certainly wouldn't mind in any way.

Corwin said:

As to reviews and such, unlike Maylander, who simply amazes me, I'm a very slow player and a completionist. Currently I'm playing D:OS am level 15 and nearly finished with the Immaculates. I'm also playing a co-op game to give that a try. I'm scheduled to write the Watch review. Maylander has probably finished it 3 times by now!! While I could write a decent review based on what I've played, I prefer to finish a game before writing about it. Silly of me I know, but at my age I'm not about to change!!

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I actually haven't even started it yet! I was waiting for my physical copy, which has now arrived, and then I managed to get hooked on Neverwinter Nights again. I'll probably get around to playing Divinity at some point this fall.

I once started a game at the same time as Maylander. I had finished rolling my party of characters and equipped them with the default stuff and then saved the game so that I would have a fresh starting point. Then I popped in here to see if Maylander had said anything about it yet, and he had already finished

crpgnut said:

I once started a game at the same time as Maylander. I had finished rolling my party of characters and equipped them with the default stuff and then saved the game so that I would have a fresh starting point. Then I popped in here to see if Maylander had said anything about it yet, and he had already finished

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Haha, oh come now, it's not that bad!

I use several sites these days to keep my fingers on the pulse of the industry from a fan's perspective, but I've found this is the only site whose members tend to post articulate, insightful comments regarding their likes and dislikes of contemporary RPGs. There is little if any forum drama, and differing opinions tend to be valued rather than condemned. Other sites I belong to are just developer sites, mostly on the art side of things, and they're so active I rarely post; and though professional and courteous, everything there has already been stated a thousand times over.
Though my involvement in the industry is now minimal, many friends and former coworkers are still in the thick of it at big and small studios alike.
Of all the games I helped to develop, the RPGs were my favorite. The excitement on the team was palpable, and the exchange of ideas across disciplines just isn't found on that level anymore. However, as the indie movement grows, there is truly hope for the transcendence of "indie" into a new generation of passionate, small, quality-first studios that turn out consistent, professional, fun games that will appeal to niche markets like this yet still manage to keep a roof over their heads (without relying on crowd funding for every new release).
This site is proof that not everyone appreciates the broad-brushed "accessibility" movement, which is a well-known euphemism for massive dumbing-down. The type of game that people here enjoy is exactly the type of game which can only suffer from chasing such mass appeal.
It's good to read the news and posts here; I believe that a lot of people share many of the sentiments of the members here, though they might not be inclined to be part of such a community.
Though it's not flashy, this is a good site.

Personally, my main focus in on ArmA/ BIS fora.
The biggest and almost exclusive problem I have with rpgwatch forum (maybe I'm not the only one?) -> discussions on specific games are extremely cluttered due to the ever appearing news bits.

yllaettaevaet said:

The biggest and almost exclusive problem I have with rpgwatch forum (maybe I'm not the only one?) -> discussions on specific games are extremely cluttered due to the ever appearing news bits.

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Well we are a news Site/Forum so I'm not gonna stop posting news.

I can recommended the codex where they barely have three news-bit a day.

(Don't take this part seriously as I hate the Codex due to personal reasons.)

We also have a new member on the RPGWatch team, and it's Aubrielle. So look forward to more articles on the website in the future.

If I understand yllaettaevaet right, he's not against the news-bits.
But after a while it gets complicated to find every discussion about a specific game, because most of our discussions start from news and not in the regular forums.
Or two similar discussions starting a) from the news and b) in a subforum.

PS:
Nice to have a new Columnist

Welcome Aubrielle!

Thanks, everyone!

HiddenX said:

If I understand yllaettaevaet right

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Yes. Postings on specific topics are cluttered all over the forum. Maybe news bits should not have an own discussion thread, but somewhat transparently link to some kind of "central" game specific thread.

yllaettaevaet said:

Yes. Postings on specific topics are cluttered all over the forum. Maybe news bits should not have an own discussion thread, but somewhat transparently link to some kind of "central" game specific thread.

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Sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement.

I do see a few negative points from this.

While several newsbits may relate to one specific game, they may in fact be about different topics within that game. Pushing the two together might create for somewhat complex threads where many people are having multiple different discussions at the same time.

So in my point of view, unless there is an easy way to do this, I would prefer the forum to stay the way it is.