I remember Post 9/11 World was a major activity point, because you could kind of post anything you want, but it was kept funny by Chef and co.'s light moderation. Blah here comes a wall of text though it's nothing new you can skip it I just gotta type it:

I've actually been thinking about stuff a lot, like I spent all weekend reading through archives and stuff. Anyway without getting too into it I don't think we should really even associate ourselves with GamingW anymore, because it's not really what we are. People even to this day will show up and make a horrible topic about their DBZ RpgMaker game, because in some undocumented corner of the collective RPGMaker psyche GamingW is just "the place you go" if you need help with RPGMaker, or to advertise your game. It's too ingrained. Way back when it was ok, because we all had RPGMaker in our past, and GW was this sort of dual-life collection of people, almost entirely separate from one another. On occasion someone would drift outside the RPG Maker sub-group and end up migrating to the "other side" of GW.

Well truthfully that served a purpose when we had a huge membership, because even though most of us distanced ourselves from the RPGMaker community, and we all sort of laughed to ourselves and behind their backs, we still depended on that sub-community to eventually mature and drift out the main GW areas. Well obviously that's not so important anymore. And at this point. we're all old enough that nobody will be able to just migrate through the RPG Maker stuff up to our heavy-meta discussions and advanced criticisms (seriously some of you guys put some amazing thought into the dissections of things; "warranted criticism" is one of the main things I picked up from this community over the course of my life).

So essentially we do need a rebranding. But we also need a new site, even if it's just a forum and maybe a basic blog (at first), we need something not at all connected to GamingW. We don't want people to type in GamingW.net and show up at our site.

That's pretty much the end of my "useful" contributions. I don't have any ideas about what to name it, what to focus on, who will be in charge/pay for/develop it, I just don't know. I think we have enough people left here that care enough that something could be pulled off if we get a charismatic leader or whatever.

semi relevant and possibly helpful:

I will say though that meta-discussions and indie gaming in general could obviously be a focal point. That's too general to be useful, but I think a simplistic "project showcase" type of thing could be the most useful and interesting way to go. Users would just be "creators", who can create music, art, games, or whatever, and everyone gets a little profile page where you can show your stuff and type a bit about it. People could "team up" to create collaborations and it would just kind of be tracked through the system. Specific projects could be highlighted on the main page.

It's actually not too difficult for something like that to be coded up. File hosting/serving is still an issue, because these things take a lot of bandwidth, and having this system dependent on third-party hosting would (IMO) defeat the purpose. Maybe it could just use outside hosting while that portion was worked out logistically.


Anyways I don't know what's up with Drule and all that. I know Dada is like "in charge" but I don't think he actually has control of anything server-wise. I know drule has come to me on chat several times to ask if I'd be interested in helping, and I've always said no because I was busy and stuff. I guess I almost feel like I'm maybe partially responsible for the site being the way it is, considering I had the chance to help and I didn't, and no other coders have ever offered either. Argh, I don't know. I think I partially didn't want the entire thing to rest on my shoulders, at the same time I wouldn't feel comfortable working on something I wasn't 100% in agreement with (and anything related to GW I would be against, and anything similar to how the old GW sites used to operate i also would be against), and I don't want to say "YES ILL DO IT" then later "NEVERMIND I DONT WANT TO" because that's a major dick move.


My main point here is: is anyone still interested in having a discussion about what we can possibly do? Assume at this point that we will all drop this place and move on to a new domain with a new purpose. I still have saltworld.net but I know people's opinions on that name vary from ambivalence to irritation. OK I've typed way too much crap here. But all of our discussions on this matter never go anywhere. I figure if we do this discussion without any admins or people in charge we might be able to get somewhere. Nobody to point fingers at and nobody to pass the blame. Just some Real Talk 1999.

I typed a bunch of stuff but nevermind. Maybe I'll just contact Dada directly.

Great info, maybe I just missed a lot of that (I did pick up on the current state of things after writing that post, poked around all the forums and things started making more sense), granted for the last year or so I've very infrequently visited, basically only checking 2 or 3 topics.

So uh I feel like the back-end of things is being take care of, reliably at least (Dada seems like the least dismissive/incapable person whose ever been "working on it" in a very long time).

So anybody want to talk about what we are going to be doing "as a community" that's required to draw cool people in? I mean aside from the obvious. I guess we all know that we will be trying to post interesting topics, try to foster discussion and lively debate, whatever etc. Are we just kind of chilling in hibernation right now? It makes sense I guess I'm not like against that, why use up a bunch of great topic ideas right now when 9 people will comment and they'll be over because we all already agree with other?

I guess what I'm asking is, is there any interesting or productive conversations we can have right now about things we can do once we switch forums and start seriously getting ready for turning ourselves back on? That's what is going to happen right? I just imagine that we'll be like "ok everyone, start being a thriving community again in 3... 2... 1... GO!"

So like for instance, we're going to be very non-specific in our focus, both to give a nice range of things to post about (more content possibilities), and to be low barrier to entry (anybody can feel like they have something to contribute). So does anybody have ideas for maybe series' or anything like that? Something we can start keeping track of potential topics or whatever?

Maybe once we get moved over and have a secret/hidden/pw forum, we can start actually doing this correctly... maybe we should just hold off on serious discussions till we move to IPB, then we can get a passworded forum for this kind of planning or something? Maybe that's what we should do.

I know I've come out of nowhere all jazzed up for no reason but... I guess I was struck with nostalgia and sadness until I realized that there's a still a lot of great members here posting often enough that I think a lot might come back to contribute once we all get going again. We've never successfully be able to get like EVERYONE to go anywhere else, just a small group here and there and then they fizzle out because there's not enough people to stay active. There's like a critical mass required, and we're still staying just above it here.

(Dada seems like the least dismissive/incapable person whose ever been "working on it" in a very long time).

Agreed and that's why I actually have a little bit of hope.

Agreed and that's why I actually have a little bit of hope.

As much hope as this gives us all, it doesn't really mean anything if we don't participate and all that jazz. It doesn't matter what Dada or anyone does with the mainsite if none of the community actually participates. Not pointing fingers or saying anything really, just don't wanna get complacent because someone else is taking care of business.

i have IDEAS AND OPINIONS and also when it's up i'd be happy to contribute whatever content i can

I think Dada is most likely going to create a platform/system that gets out of our way and lets us do whatever we want, so ideally we won't be limited at all in what we want to bring to the forefront, we'll just be limited to the medium but we're all used to that.

basically our main focus needs to be highlighting the cool content and content creators we've got and not specifically games or music or w/e.  our ONLY real asset compared to other sites is the specific group of cool people we've got (i mean you can go anywhere to just find or read about indie games or w/e) and i think if the new site has a really good vibe it'll get us a long way

This is definitely our biggest asset, but it kinda just comes naturally to a lot of people here and it's not really something specific anyway. Not nitpicking just I think the natural GW spin that a lot of people here have will come about naturally in whatever they (hopefully) produce. So yes essentially our main drive at least at first will be pushing the creativity of our members (and hopefully inspire some dormant members like jamie and more... jamie I miss your youtubes).


But yeah I'm going to start being quiet again, I think we need to get a passworded forum once we switch to IPB, that we can use for brainstorming/collecting ideas and whatnot. I think that's obvious but hopefully this got at least one person brainstorming that wouldn't have otherwise.


[edit]also I kind of made it sound like Dada is not in the "us" group anymore but obviously he's a huge member and always has a lot to contribute. I'm just using "him"/Dada as the "guy doing the work" and "us" as the "people making content", but Dada is of course in both of these groups.

i thought the idea was basically so guests or new members don't see us planning out the site right in front of them because it looks messy and like we don't have our shit together at all?  i didn't think that the passworded forum was going to be like SUPER EXCLUSIVE or anything

Exactly. I don't even care if everyone has the password, but there needs to be some minor barrier to entry so that random GOOGLE BOTS don't come index all our topic ideas before we ever get around to posting them.