You may have noticed, but I was away from the forums for awhile. I didn’t have dedicated access to a computer there for a minute and I’ve been thinking; are the forums the best way for player’s to communicate with one another?
First, let’s talk about the different platforms gamers enjoy in today’s age;
There’s, of course, the forums. Rigid and static. Pretty great for holding information, but I’m not convinced a platform where people are communicating, but don’t know who’s speaking until their word is in, is actually best by today’s standard. A real exchange is pretty hard to have without some confusion. Albeit, it is probably the best platform to have formal debates or to state opinions, because of the ease of display for larger forms.
As a community, we’ve largely shifted off to LINE as a preferred medium, because it allows us to communicate anywhere and everywhere easily - and honestly, LINE is fun, stickers are fun, sharing photos and videos instantly is fun, etc - and besides the faux anxiety of learning a new piece of software it’s pretty much flawless.
That being said, I noticed something being away from the forums so much and being shoe horned into using LINE so much - it’s missing something - moreso, I think we’re missing something. The more I hung out on LINE, the more and more I realized all we all ever did was talk about a game we don’t even play together really. I’ve been slowly clawing out to other rooms with other interests, and it’s really kinda nice. Instead of the same complaints about sniping or boasting about some guy you made rage, we’re talking about Doom and Overwatch and trying to figure what games we all wanna get and play together.
That kinda brings me to where I’m about to go; Discord.
Some of you might be familiar with Discord already, it’s been gaining a lot of traction in online gaming communities because of it’s flexibility, availability, and ease of use. It’s a really nice piece of software honestly, but I can admit I was hesitant at first. What the heck do I need yet another chat software (coming from the guy with Teamspeak, Line, Messenger, Skype, and LoL Messenger on my phone prior to this - I was REALLY hesitant).
Personally, the big game changer for me was servers for specialized games. I was trying to get into Killer Instincts, so finding a Discord server specifically for it was huge, but that’s not the point. The point was why it was huge; we could actually talk to one another. Being able to sit down, play the game, and have people talk to me while we’re playing was a real boon to picking up the game efficiently.
From there, I ended up as a quasi part of that community and we grew some, and from that expanded a lot of the ideas of what we thought our server meant. Was it really just about Killer Instincts? Or was it about bringing people together who have similar interests and expanding on that? It’s really both. To me, that’s what community is. We’re all more than Marvel Puzzle Quest players.
So, down to the nitty gritty; how many people would be willing to check out Discord and try and bring our community to the next level? Wanna organize a party to pubstomp on CoD? Done. Wanna try and find people to climb the ladder in League with? Done. Trying to find out about the latest hotness? Done. All easy and organized with no work from the users.
I haven’t setup a server yet, I’m just kind of polling for interest, and this of course, would not be an official endeavor, similar to LINE. Feel free to ask any questions, concerns, etc.
