Trading forums and stuff

[doodledude]

I know I used to be a lot more active about 12 years ago when I first joined, I was quite new to import gaming so being around a lot of other similar people who were more knowledgeable (like Saurian) was informative and exciting for me. But I guess with less importing needed due to better global release schedules nowadays this forum lost its 'uniqueness'.
I know a lot of other people I used to converse with on here post less and less or not at all these days and that has probably stopped me from posting as a result.
I know I've gotten pissed off with posts and responses from a handful of users over the last 3-4 years and also one of the mods and that has turned me off contributing more. It seems to be a place to just display their ego for some users and mods and I guess it has less of the community feel it used to have.

[nakamura]

Still plenty of interest in imports. Mainly retro imports but I've seen more people than ever buying them.

[Atticus]

It's like coming to Cheers.

Where everybody knows your (made up) name

[Pavey]

I know I've gotten pissed off with posts and responses from a handful of users over the last 3-4 years and also one of the mods and that has turned me off contributing more. It seems to be a place to just display their ego for some users and mods and I guess it has less of the community feel it used to have.

My thoughts exactly, and one of the reasons i have drifted over more to rllmuk, which originally i didn't like at all. A few members turned up who weren't here when i joined originally and it just became a game of one upmanship in every thread.

[Neon Ignition]

I can't remember how far back it was but I seem to recall Charles (I think) saying that the website gets much more traffic than the forum. Not sure if that's still the case but assuming it is and taking that part of the site first I can see how it's taken on the form it now has. The NTSC era lent itself to editorial content easier and was what first drew me in, the guides on various machines and how to set things up etc where useful but by having that focus on import it was always going to fade away as the import scene itself did so. It's hard to think what could create more of a face to the site. The obvious seems to be a more traditional style with News, Features etc which are daily and current but I can imagine how work intensive that would be, as well as the issue of how competitive it is for attention online.

Forum wise, it definitely is a lower member count than the old days but I still don't feel too much of an issue with that. Gaming chat is good fun and real life offers little scope for it, so many gaming forums have fallen by the wayside over the years too and I'm thankful that not only is this one still around but the standard of discussion hasn't suffered. I know regular talk grenades are thrown about how that isn't the case but it takes only a moment to nip to other gaming forums to see just how low the standard is elsewhere. Attracting new members is an important thing to keep the blood of the forum pumping but Gaf is a perfect example of the clear dangers of it too.

That kind of ties in with the Trade forum. If the rules were relaxed I don't think you'd see more items appear without more members and even if that was solved I think there'd be more issues and the trust that exists there would fall. Even if business in there tripled or more I reckon it would still be nearly all current gen stuff rather than the sought after stuff of the old days.

I know Bordersdowns users range in age quite a bit but I could see the value in a more grown up games site compared to the other popular options so that could be an avenue worth considering. If the main website is the most popular part still then it's likely the area that needs the focused push as an increase there should naturally lead to an increase in users in the forum.

I never come through the main site but having just had a glance I can see the point that Toys is making, a greater distinction between the contributors content and the First Play thread would help to distinguish them even if it's just a change in the review word to something else. The forum is pretty simple and easy to navigate under the numbers it operates to. Colin effectively challenged the Referendum thread to reach 10 pages without imploding and having reached at least 9 it's been heated at times but impressive that it's held, to a standard I'd struggle to imagine elsewhere given the toxicity of IGN, Gaf, Gamespot etc forums.

I don't know, maybe identify the most popular aspect of the overall site first and build from there.

[DeathAdder]

Can you elaborate / make suggestions please?

I hope this comes across constructively. We ought to make more of the unique content that this site has. Reviews of games released in the west can be found all over the internet. But content that isn't so widely available but is excellent includes:

reviews of games that never left Japan, like Jonathan Dornan's excellent review of Gachitora on PSP
Yakumo's Battle of the Ports series
Importaku's guides to unique Japanese DS games
briareos_kerensky's detailed write-ups of recent games he has imported


These aren't going to appeal to huge numbers of gamers, but anyone with an interest in Japanese games or older games will find plenty of good content on here. But if, as a new visitor, you opened the discussion folder, which is the first one under the announcements, then you wouldn't think that there was anything like that on here - the threads there are much the same as any other forum and with a smaller membership, visitors will go elsewhere for that kind of discussion.

I do think the tone here is welcoming, though. I rarely see any handbags at ten paces.

[endo]

I don't really have anything useful to contribute right now, but this is turning into one of the most interesting threads posted recently and all from a newcomer posting a query in the wrong section.

[smouty]

Having a trustworthy trading community is a thumbs up from me. I have no fears sending something off to any of the regular names I see here.

Same here. I'm not even that concerned if I get paid as I know it will happen eventually.

[MENTION=2436]Joe Musashi[/MENTION] - about that USB stick.....

[Darwock]

I think what this forum is now, is a group of people who are familiar with each other just not able to break the habit of reading/posting.

I still read to keep in touch with what's going on in the UK - I need a link to the real world. God knows it's not for the games discussion - I almost didn't go to the current gen, but when I do get something new the level of discussion on a given title here is superficial at best. If you want to get into the nitty gritty, gamefaqs knocks this place for six. The immaturity is annoying but it's worth it for the detail.

This forum also has a surprisingly narrow focus (maybe due to the small membership) but there was a while there in the PS3 era that new games I liked weren't even being reported. I found out about titles being released months afterwards by accident. Hugely popular community driven titles like Littlebigplanet got no attention here, it can be very frustrating as someone who plays games (and not a collector).

[fishbowlhead]

Unfortunately one of, or possible the main reason a lot of us got started on here has now all but disappeared, that was importing. From the release of main titles having been sorted out, or brought down to a time scale of mere weeks difference, to the prevalence of more niche titles actually getting a translated release on psn/xblive/steam, there's no longer a need for us to test an import out and describe every menu for others to follow.

That's not to say it can't be something else though. Marius raised to good points, as have others.

[speedlolita]

Wait, BD has a website component?

[charlesr]

Thanks for all the input. Keep it coming. I'm busy entertaining the kids (boiler at school broke down, so they've been off school for a couple of days, so I've been working in the evenings), so haven't had a chance to mull it over properly.

However, a few quick points.

Yes, the "review" thing in First Play was an experiment I forgot about. It didn't work. As far as I can tell, google places far higher priority on "content" pages (the articles / website bit) than it does on forum pages. The First Play threads never appear in the first few pages of google, but the content does where niche enough. The hits on the reviews aren't massive - normally 2000+ each over the first couple of months, but some of them get a lot more (50k+) - normally things run of the mill stuff like BF4 and Wolfenstein, but also Doubutsu Kisoutengai, Initial D, Hotline Miami. I'll stop First Play being labelled.

The unavoidable move away from NTSC-uk was a massive blow. I didn't have the old URL at that time so incoming links were screwed, pagerank tumbled and people didn't realise we'd moved (some found us years later and said they thought we'd stopped, not moved). The reviews on the old site, got vast numbers of hits (dwarfing the hits on the forum) and were the reason people arrived at the site. Some of them realised there was a forum and stayed. I didn't have the skills to replace the review website bit, so had to put them in vbulletin articles - not ideal, but easy to curate. Old reviews gradually went up (some done by brave writers, some done by me over time), but lots of them are still not up. So in summary, people aren't arriving for reviews (not many people are doing new ones), so not many new people are staying for the forum.

I can hide the article comments section - new comments will still appear in "new posts". Actually on the forum structure - I never really noticed, because I only use "latest posts". Maybe this means that for me, the forum would work fine as one giant forum folder for everything (apart from trading area).....

However, if we don't go that drastic... We considered merging import gaming with normal discussion previously but everyone worried they'd miss import discussions because they don't appear so often. How could we get around this? Maybe put "[IMPORT]" at the start of the thread title? Or turn on tags and let people tag them with "import"?? (I tried turning on tags before, but jokers tagged every thread as "sean bean" - funny maybe, but I turned them off again).

[spencerjb22]

thanks for the feedback, and totally appreciate why you'd want to impose such a rule. One thing that might be an idea is to use a new users ebay feedback as some form of approval, Just something to consider ?

[spencerjb22]

I've got a sales thread with 350+ US Cube games currently that says otherwise

[MENTION=16680]spencerjb22[/MENTION] - if you're interested in Cube, sling me a PM heh...

Yes, I collect for GC so will send over a pm.

[Asura]

thanks for the feedback, and totally appreciate why you'd want to impose such a rule. One thing that might be an idea is to use a new users ebay feedback as some form of approval, Just something to consider ?

Obviously I'm not a mod or anything, but I really would oppose this. eBay feedback is meaningless these days.