What went wrong with the succession game thread?

[Safe-Keeper]

Okay, so the title was partly to draw in people. But in all seriousness, I'd like to hear peoples' thoughts on the Bergbau thread.

On the one hand, there was only one other miner besides myself, but on the other hand, it's got 435 page views so far, so obviously people were paying attention. I'd like to try something like this again, and CaptainHalo has said in the thread he'd like to put something similar together himself (see his note on "Minecraft novellas").

So, what's your thoughts? Anyone want to tell me what you thought of the thread? The style of narration (screenshots+captions)? Why you decided not to sign up? Your experience following us as lurkers? What you'd like to see in future threads?

I have a hypothesis the lack of interest might be because everyone are running mods, while I ran an unmodded game? As in, would you be willing to give it a shot if I used the same mods as on the subsim Tekkit server?


I personally had lots of fun with this project -- it gave the game some additional excitement to be able to read another person's thoughts and then download a save and roam around to see what had changed since last time. So I definitely think this has potential, but I want guidance as to how we're gonna pull it off.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Anyone else not got a clue?

[Safe-Keeper]

Anyone got a constructive reply?

[Krauter]

For me personally I still feel burnt out with Minecraft. I was playing since Alpha and have since stayed consistent with Industrial/Buildcraft. But even mods to me at this point don't change it enough.

I suspect that that may have something to do with lack of interest in actually playing.

[Dowly]

For me, the reasons for not partaking were:
- Lack of interest in writing about my doings
- If I want a community thing, I can always just go to Arclight's server
- I'm picky, everyone else would just mess up my builds

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

On the one hand, there was only one other miner besides myself, but on the other hand, it's got 435 page views so far, so obviously people were paying attention. I'd like to try something like this again, and CaptainHalo has said in the thread he'd like to put something similar together himself (see his note on "Minecraft novellas").

So, what's your thoughts? Anyone want to tell me what you thought of the thread? The style of narration (screenshots+captions)? Why you decided not to sign up? Your experience following us as lurkers? What you'd like to see in future threads?

I know it's not strictly speaking the same thing, but I ask these same questions every time I see one of my AAR threads has hundreds of views and only about 3 people have commented it, even after it's ready. After the Fallout AAR I was sure I had done something completely wrong. Just no idea what, because I didn't make a thread like this.

I have learned to shrug and deal with it. If the threads are gathering regular views, then I simply assume people are reading and enjoying. That's what I'm aiming for, and hoping they will say if they don't like something. Still, I can't help considering the running Oblivion AAR one of my most succesful ones, not because I myself would consider it somehow the best or funniest, but because it has gathered most comments and from many different people. It encourages me into certain direction with my future projects.

As for the Minecraft thread, my answer is simple, if not very helpful: I don't play the game, haven't actually ever tested it, and so I wasn't going to sign up in the first place. Still, I have some minor interest towards it through Subsim, and therefore clicked the thread to see what it was all about. My curious click still counts as one view as much as that of the hypothetical person who wanted something and didn't find it in the thread. It's the problem of such statistic that it makes no difference.

[Safe-Keeper]

Ya, I maintain an active blog and most of the time you're just "flying blind", with no way to know what your audience thinks, given that 99% of the readers don't leave behind comments. This is the first time I've made a "survey thread" like this, though.

Yeah, sometimes you're successful and other times you aren't. I ran a multiplayer Let's Play (of a board game, no less!) on another forum that was immensely popular, but you can't win 'em all.

[Arclight]

Think for me it's mainly Dowly's last point: not really interested in picking up someone else's game. The main attraction is creating something that is your own, unique.


And I have to admit the mere mention of SA nearly made me turn away in disgust.