So is this forum dying?

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Schwee

Member
Haven't been active in gamedev for a good minute...but I do like to check in on these forums, especially in the collaboration area. It seems like there are less and less posts in general. Anyone know why this may be?
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
Maybe there are enough contractors offering services there that people starting projects just contact them directly? Maybe people are already busy with the work they got from there earlier on? Maybe people are now more sensible and less apt to start new team projects willy-nilly?

Look, you're taking a section of the forum that is supposed to be relatively static, and using it to infer that the forum as a whole is dying down. That's absurd. My primary area of activity is the Q&A and Tech Support sections, and there are new topics there virtually every day.
 

curato

Member
Forum seems active enough to me. I would say the collaboration forum is a bit more skittish on the rev share stuff. I would say if you wanting to do rev share with strangers you will definitely have to show them you got the real deal almost like you marketing for kickstarter or something. They will need to see there will be revenue to share on the back end. As far as paid stuff, I put a post up with a detailed list for paid work for my project and had like 10 people jump in my inbox the same day.
 

YellowAfterlife

ᴏɴʟɪɴᴇ ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴘʟᴀʏᴇʀ
Forum Staff
Moderator
Specifically the collaborators section...I used to see lots of posts with people looking to start new teams, get their ideas going,etc. Now it just looks like its filled with 'for hires', same threads that have been around for a while with occasional new comments.
The possible cause of this very specifically is that at one point Collaborations section was made to require moderator approval for topics, so duplicate topics or ones with little to no details ("y'all I need 15 artists and 7 programmers for my new MMO, rev share") no longer pop up
 
Haven't been active in gamedev for a good minute...but I do like to check in on these forums, especially in the collaboration area. It seems like there are less and less posts in general. Anyone know why this may be?
We're all dying, Schwee. It's a cold-hard fact of life. :(
 

Jabbers

Member
I just think the landscape of hobbyist game development has changed. Ten years ago GameMaker was quite unique in its simplicity and accessibility, and if you wanted to learn how to code in GML and develop nice games, being part of the GMC was crucial. Today, multi-platform game development is more accessible than ever; there are many free resources, game engines, YouTube tutorials, books, and game development communities out there. If you're a kid looking at getting into game development today, you are spoiled for choice. The sense of centraility that the old GMC had peaked in the late 2000s and is unlikely to be repeated again.
 
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Lonewolff

Guest
I wouldn't say 'dying'. Probably more 'changing'.

It's certainly got a different feel from years ago. People have come and gone. Awesome relationships have been made and then unfortunately dissipate as people move on to other interests.

Greenlight and Kickstarter were a major factor too. Those were the days of excitement, intrigue, and gave something to strive for. A few years back it seemed anything was possible. Things have since changed on that front, which has had a carry on effect to the forums.

Still a great community. But different to what some of us had grown used to.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I wouldn't say 'dying'. Probably more 'changing'.

It's certainly got a different feel from years ago. People have come and gone. Awesome relationships have been made and then unfortunately dissipate as people move on to other interests.

Greenlight and Kickstarter were a major factor too. Those were the days of excitement, intrigue, and gave something to strive for. A few years back it seemed anything was possible. Things have since changed on that front, which has had a carry on effect to the forums.

Still a great community. But different to what some of us had grown used to.
Interestingly, Greenlight was changed to a model which literally let you release anything (for a fee)... and not everybody agrees that it was a good idea once the floodgates of quickly thrown together garbage opened. (Also, greenlight pages used to be a good place to collect all your hype in one place; there's no natural hub that's got the same mix of good discussion climate and public exposure at the moment)

But yeah, Mighty No.9 basically was the modern indie scene's counterpart to the Atari E.T. game.
 
D

Deleted member 16767

Guest
From YoYo Moderator on Collabs forum:
If your topic is rejected, then you will receive an alert to notify you of the fact and the reasons behind the decision.
No more alerts for me. I guess the silence means that my pixel art is really really ugly. :)
 

TsukaYuriko

☄️
Forum Staff
Moderator
Being the moderator who rejected it, I can't confirm that's what happened... I sent an alert that the topic was rejected because it's a duplicate of your already existing portfolio.
 
D

Deleted member 16767

Guest
Being the moderator who rejected it, I can't confirm that's what happened... I sent an alert that the topic was rejected because it's a duplicate of your already existing portfolio.
Great, changed password now because I think someone is playing with my account and deleting PMs.
 

TsukaYuriko

☄️
Forum Staff
Moderator
Alert, not PM. Should be under the "Alerts" tab unless you opted out of receiving alerts from the Collaboration forum, staff, your own topics or in general.
 

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
The old GMC of 2012 was much more active then this one, but this forum is still florishing.
I see how GMC jams nowadays have much less participants than the ones in the old GMC, but it's still pretty popular.
 

OnLashoc

Member
I dont post as much as when I first starting learning programming with GMS 2 because Im becoming more self reliant to figure things out. Usually by the time I'm midway posting something, I've already found the answer just by starting to type my question out here.

Not only that, after starting several projects and each one dying for various reasons, I've learned to wait till I get something a bit more solid before trying to collaborate. Each project progressing more and more beyond what the previous attempts got to.

Onnie
 
Feeling dead or not, I'd be curious about the overall numbers of (average) current active members, and activity. Something the forum staff might know.

You can check the old archived forums: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/ : 286,886 Users, with the most online at one time being 1946.

As of now, there's about 150 members online (but actually only 20 registered users). It's obviously not a fair comparison, but it does give you an idea of how much the landscape's changed.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
It would be interesting to have the "most members online" statistic for the New GMC as well for a fairer comparison (since you might've sampled during a peak of low activity... I checked right now, and there were 181 members online at the time I'm writing this)... looked around a bit, but I couldn't find it. Not sure if it's tracked anywhere and just hidden for us mere mortals, or if this forum software doesn't support it.
 

True Valhalla

Full-Time Developer
GMC Elder
Feeling dead or not, I'd be curious about the overall numbers of (average) current active members, and activity. Something the forum staff might know.

You can check the old archived forums: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/ : 286,886 Users, with the most online at one time being 1946.

As of now, there's about 150 members online (but actually only 20 registered users). It's obviously not a fair comparison, but it does give you an idea of how much the landscape's changed.
Don't attribute too much to the old 'most online' counter, I artificially created that record by advertising a thread and sending a ton of external traffic to it (for unrelated purposes). It's not an accurate representation of how many actual GMC members have been online at once because it includes guests.
 
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Jabbers

Member
Don't attribute too much to the old 'most online' counter, I artificially created that record by advertising a thread and sending a ton of external traffic to it (for unrelated purposes).
That is an interesting claim, and public records do show that the counter has peaked and fallen in a similar pattern for years. It claimed the record was 653 in 2010, but we also know that in 2007 this record was 1000 (a suspiciously neat number). This suggests that forum software updates have broken it too, so the counter is truly redundant. Between the period of 2011 and early 2014, the counter was 1325 and 1362 respectively. I wonder what caused those numbers, too?

You make a good point that the counter itself doesn't tell us what the average case is. It could be that all of these records are caused by artificial traffic sources. Perhaps, then, we can figure this out by comparing records of the website as and when the WayBackMachine indexed it. I've attempted to do this with the data below, trying to pick balanced data where possible (e.g. avoiding Saturday nights or 4:00 AM crawls). I don't think distinguishing between guests and members is necessary (although ruling out bots would be helpful) so I have included this data. A high volume of guests is still an indicator that a website is healthy.



30th September 2007 - 01:08 PM
88 members 96 guests

27th October 2008 - 10:09 PM
115 members 313 guests

1st September 2009 - 06:57 PM
72 members 287 guests

11th May 2010 - 09:54 PM
93 members 348 guests

Oct 19 2011 05:57 PM
54 members, 333 guests

Oct 11 2012 10:55 PM
66 members, 268 guests

Oct 21 2013, 06:22 PM
63 members, 355 guests

May 30 2014, 12:37PM
50 members, 351 guests

October 7 2015, 4:05PM
55 members, 262 guests

Feb 01 2016, 2:30PM
46 members, 276 guests

This data is not complete and should be taken as approximate only. Ideally, we would want the same hour, weekday, and month to collect the sample data, but that is not possible using WayBackMachine archives. Furthermore, it doesn't account for the difference in timezones, GameMaker updates, disasters, or any events that might increase or decrease traffic. Still, it is representative of a portion of regular forum traffic, so it should work as an indicator to test if the community is being sustained.

Looking at the rough chart, I would argue the amount of active members seems to have decreased slightly but given the aforementioned issues with the data, it doesn't seem significant when you consider the period of time that has passed. I cannot access data after the forum change, because the "members online" widget is hidden to guests, so the WayBackMachine cannot see it AFAIK. However, if the about claims are true about there being just 20 members on at any one time, then that would be a notable drop since we migrated to a new forum.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
However, if the about claims are true about there being just 20 members on at any one time, then that would be a notable drop since we migrated to a new forum.
The transition from GMS1 --> GMS2 also happened at roughly the same time, so that could also be a potential cause. Either because GMS2 is so much easier to use that most people won't need to ask for help on the GMC anymore, or because of losing popularity... though I've seen a pretty significant drop in the number of people using cracked copies since the GMS1 days ended, there were times where people posted screenshots or error messages hinting at illicit copies multiple times in one week before and it's happening maybe once a month now (and the latest occurence I've seen was someone using a super-outdated version of GMS1). So maybe we get less influx of pirates these days, while the number of normal members is roughly the same... in which case I'd say "good riddance" instead of lamenting the loss of new members.

That's just extrapolating on anecdotal evidence, though, so take it with a grain of salt.
 
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lemonhead

Guest
159 active users as I type this. Not bad granted most are guests but that seems typical.
 

rIKmAN

Member
100 readers for a thread in 1 day, the forum is low
Yet you still joined and then despite all the possible threads you could have replied to or posted in, you used your first post to tell everyone “the forum is low” in this one.
Brilliant.

I guess we should be happy you didn’t necro a random thread from 2017 replying to a Guest account like most new users do.

Most people use multiple communities nowadays - forums, Reddit, Discord, Twitter etc so of course the amount of users here is going to be diluted compared to previous times when the forums were the main focus of the community. Doesn’t mean it’s dying.
 
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Misu

Guest
Haven't been active in gamedev for a good minute...but I do like to check in on these forums, especially in the collaboration area. It seems like there are less and less posts in general. Anyone know why this may be?
Its call procrastination. Its a deadly disease that is spread across the globe. It makes everyone turn into a potato. I think I was the one who caught it first and was quarantined after.
 
Honestly I think the forums have slowed down, but going full doom-and-gloom with "the forum is dying" is the wrong way of framing it. Mostly because of this:
Most people use multiple communities nowadays - forums, Reddit, Discord, Twitter etc
If Discord and Twitter suddenly shut down, I've no doubt the forums would become significantly more active. People would flock to either here or the /r/gamemaker subreddit, but that place is even quieter.
 
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Misty

Guest
Forum is dying because fun posts not allowed, also because most of the games being posted in WIP and creations are subpar

this is the Game Maker forum, so the forum kind of has to be carried by the games themselves
 

Toque

Member
Forum is dying because fun posts not allowed, also because most of the games being posted in WIP and creations are subpar

this is the Game Maker forum, so the forum kind of has to be carried by the games themselves
I do find it interesting that some great games made with gamemaker are never mentioned in the forums. Each their own I guess.

Every game made with gamemaker is awesome!! I can always find something interesting in every game posted. It should be encouraged.
 
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r_Svan

Guest
Forum is dying because fun posts not allowed, also because most of the games being posted in WIP and creations are subpar

this is the Game Maker forum, so the forum kind of has to be carried by the games themselves
Subpar!? This post is no fun, I say!
 
M

Misty

Guest
I do find it interesting that some great games made with gamemaker are never mentioned in the forums. Each their own I guess.

Every game made with gamemaker is awesome!! I can always find something interesting in every game posted. It should be encouraged.
Truth aint allowed here I guess.

Going to requote for emphasis:
Every game made with gamemaker is awesome!! I can always find something interesting in every game posted. It should be encouraged.



Fun posts are allowed, but some people just don't know don't know how to make one.
And some people don't know how to make fun games either
 
The forums are probably dying because I don't post game updates anymore. ):

Edit: Seriously though, it feels like the WIP section's front page has had the same games on it all year, so it feels really boring and stale in there. Are the same projects always on the front page because no new games show in WIP, or because the people on the front page bump too much? I wonder if we could do anything to make the WIP section more lively? It feels like the heart of the forum to me; without new interesting games, how are we going to attract new members or inspire current ones?
 
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