Future of VizionEck Forum

[Legend]

I know I make way more threads talking about action than taking action, but this feels necessary to put in writing.

Recently a lot of things have made me revalue this website. Microsoft shuttered three studios, I couldn't work for weeks due to health, I spent some time on vgchartz seeing their community, and I'm fast approaching some internal deadlines with my game.

So I'm pausing all web development indefinitely as of this post. We've had a good run and tried our best, but we couldn't break into the market like we hoped.

Time for me to move on and focus on my game with far more potential.

That would be the logical thing, but screw logic. I love this place and it's great even as an expensive hobby. All the things I listed above have only strengthened my commitment to make this place continue to be awesome.

Forum development will continue and most importantly it'll continue smartly with a clear goal.

I've talked about this before, but lately I've started to think of the forum more and more like a club. We're a group that comes together to hang out. We're not here for the news, but to talk about the news with friends. Everyone knows everyone and more or less everyone likes everyone. That's a polar opposite from most standard forums, so I need to stop trying to lead this place like a standard forum.

VizionEck Forum's mission statement is to "foster a centralized community around fun interactions between its members." Potentially dorky wording aside, that's our goal as management and the direction we'll continue to go.

You'll notice that VizionEck isn't mentioned. I'll continue to use the forum to support my game, but I don't want to hold back the forum from reaching its potential. Plus it'd be really easy to just make a new VizionEck game only forum if the game becomes super successful.


This boils down to two halfs of the same coin. One half is strengthening our interactions. This would be most of the features I've added to the site, such as the shop, rpg, live view, profile walls, bbcode, etc. I'll continue to add these things, but I'll try to gear them more towards user interaction. IE a weekly ranking of poster activity or bringing back the forum raffle.

Second half is bringing in new members to the community, AKA marketing. Even if we are content with only ~20 active users, interests wane and people will always stop showing up. So it's super important to have new members join every once and awhile. For this it's time to stop trying referrals and instead focus on google/word of mouth. One idea could be to set up an article system. Members (you guys) would write articles and have them displayed prominently on the front page. Articles would get replies and be interesting on their own, but they'd also help a lot with increasing google rank and getting people to stumble onto the site. To help persuade people to write articles, we could set up a system where you get 100% of the profit from ads shown on your article.


All this talk is mostly for the sake of talk. I'd like to do a better job of having you guys involved with management, and I'd like to know exactly which direction the forum is heading. Realistically nobody's going to notice anything different compared to usual.

[the-pi-guy]

Maybe Pi could start taking his responsibility.  

[kitler53]

but seriously,.. you should stop web development and focus on your game.

functionally this site is fine.  more feature rich than most forums.  you can try to grow this site but web development will have no affect on growth,.. in a lot of ways it will hinder it because a lot of people get scared by feature sets that are too big and complicated.

all you need to do to support this site is keep the power on for the server and keep posting.

[Raven]

I'd rather see you focus on your game. As Kitler said, this site is fine as is. I'm sure if we come up with ideas down the road, we can talk about implementing them. However, there is no need for you to actively try to make this forum better when it is already quite solid. If you'd like to increase potential google hits by having articles written, I can sure help in that regard. I'm positive there are a few people on this forum who would like to do so. We'd just need to make sure we have a quality standard for any articles so it doesn't look like a bunch of amateurs blogging in the moment.

It may also help for us to establish links with other smaller sites. Such as Zhuge, for example. He has his own site for sales and gaming statistics. Might be a good idea for us to try to network with him. Increasing the flow for both sites.

[the-pi-guy]

functionally this site is fine.  more feature rich than most forums.  you can try to grow this site but web development will have no affect on growth,.. in a lot of ways it will hinder it because a lot of people get scared by feature sets that are too big and complicated.

There is that possibility, but usually that's because ease of use drops (which tends to be a problem with larger feature sets and poor planning.)  If ease of use is the same, added features shouldn't scare away people.  

But yeah work on your game!  

[ethomaz]

Focus on your game man

I love how you give us one of the best forum in the internet but I want to play your game <3

[Aura7541]

Focus on your game. This site is already very solid and has more/better features than Chertz and GAF.

[DerNebel]

I'd rather see you focus on your game. As Kitler said, this site is fine as is. I'm sure if we come up with ideas down the road, we can talk about implementing them. However, there is no need for you to actively try to make this forum better when it is already quite solid. If you'd like to increase potential google hits by having articles written, I can sure help in that regard. I'm positive there are a few people on this forum who would like to do so. We'd just need to make sure we have a quality standard for any articles so it doesn't look like a bunch of amateurs blogging in the moment.

It may also help for us to establish links with other smaller sites. Such as Zhuge, for example. He has his own site for sales and gaming statistics. Might be a good idea for us to try to network with him. Increasing the flow for both sites.

What the fudge did you just say? Let me tell you my amateurish blogging would attract thousands of clicks man.

Oh and, yeah I also think the forum is more than fine the way it is, it's leagues above vgchartz in terms functionality already for instance.

[the-pi-guy]

but seriously,.. you should stop web development and focus on your game.

I'd rather see you focus on your game.

work on your game!  

Focus on your game man

Focus on your game.

The people are speaking.  <3

This site is already very solid and has more/better features than Chertz and GAF.

[ethomaz]

Said that you can do some web developer time to free up the gear from the game.

Whynotboth.gif

[Legend]

@everyone

Haha thanks for all the replies telling me to work on my game but I that's kinda the point of this thread. I don't have much time to spare so this is my way of prioritising what to spend my web dev time on. Need to focus on things that will be quick to make yet have a relatively large impact. IE setting up anonymous threads only took ~15 minutes of work.

[BasilZero]

Focus on your game ;o!

Website is fine as it is.

Edit: Of course everyone else said the same thing above and I'm lttp as always....XD.

[Xevross]

I think the idea of people doing articles is cool. You mentioned that this forum is like a club, so maybe you should get the club involved with the development so that you can focus 100% on your game.

[Legend]

I think the idea of people doing articles is cool. You mentioned that this forum is like a club, so maybe you should get the club involved with the development so that you can focus 100% on your game.

Yeah I'd like to set up more and more ways for people to help out with the site since it really shouldn't just be limited to me working in my spare time.

[Raven]

What the fudge did you just say? Let me tell you my amateurish blogging would attract thousands of clicks man.

Oh and, yeah I also think the forum is more than fine the way it is, it's leagues above vgchartz in terms functionality already for instance.

This isn't an RPG. Stop trying to put points into your delusion stat.