EdgeGamers is dying
- Thread starter Don
- Start date
I think a big reason for a decline in any gaming community is life. A lot of people grew up and moved on, so you get stuck with two camps. The old guard that sticks around to remember the temporary good times, and the new generation just starting their gaming community journey. However, its unrealistic to even think you can keep everything together as it use to be. Their are simply too many 'life factors' at play that cause people to come and go within any community. All you can do is stem the bleeding, and hope that things will get better. Chasing the past will only quicken your downfall.
For me (and others I know of), disagreements with leadership decisions and being an admin/leadership role became too much of a job. The fun will eventually get sucked out of you, or you simply will end up just vanishing into the void.
Setting that aside, I would look more into how streamers on twitch or youtube handle these things. Reason being, they build community's that are similar to this one and they run into the same issues. You will always get fall off. People will usually gravitate to a core person or group, so if you treat each cell within eGO as such, it might help. Well, you could also pay admins, much like how some streamers do it with mods. That is unrealistic to me for this scenario.
The double edge sword however, is running a 'gaming community' as a business. You risk becoming too corpo and create a wedge. And of course, if you lose the 'core', your foundation will crumble.
I hear investing in the community (Events, etc) also helps >.>
Alright, back to void I go.
For me (and others I know of), disagreements with leadership decisions and being an admin/leadership role became too much of a job. The fun will eventually get sucked out of you, or you simply will end up just vanishing into the void.
Setting that aside, I would look more into how streamers on twitch or youtube handle these things. Reason being, they build community's that are similar to this one and they run into the same issues. You will always get fall off. People will usually gravitate to a core person or group, so if you treat each cell within eGO as such, it might help. Well, you could also pay admins, much like how some streamers do it with mods. That is unrealistic to me for this scenario.
The double edge sword however, is running a 'gaming community' as a business. You risk becoming too corpo and create a wedge. And of course, if you lose the 'core', your foundation will crumble.
I hear investing in the community (Events, etc) also helps >.>
Alright, back to void I go.
I’m not aware of the current politics or leadership and their hand in the upkeep or downfall of eGO. I come from the perspective of a past member and member of leadership. I’ve had no involvement in eGO in the past decade, but I’m still friends with a lot of members and regularly think about the Golden Age of eGO.
From my perspective, the website is very news-oriented as opposed to being friendly for new members or guests. In my mind, I still think of the simpler front page with an active chat panel and easy-to-find information for voice chat. I think it’s clear to see that the website is or has been run by the same person or small team with no thought about who will actually care about or see the front page, where in the past the main site was more welcoming to guests and potential members.
I think the biggest reason why eGO might be failing is because forums have largely been replaced or supplemented by Discord. I know eGO has a Discord server, but it’s lacking a lot of open and active voice and streaming channels. Looking at the current Discord, I was disappointed to not see a reflection of eGO’s Ventrilo or TeamSpeak servers. Basically, a lot of open channels for different division and games. Like forums, voice servers are very much like rooms you can join. You can see who is playing what, join that channel, shoot-the-poop, and make it a regular hangout. That’s missing from the eGO Discord, and if you look at any active, successful Discord; they have a lot of easily accessible channels for different games and activities. Ones that I frequent are the official Darktide and Space Marine 2 servers. It’s easy to find a squad, a game, a specific activity, to watch a stream, or just to make new friends. Take a look around at successful or official game Discords, and you wont find many similarities to the current model eGO is using.
You have members and can easily find more by using Discord as your primary or only voice server. As it stands now, it’s more of an extension of the website. There are a ton of people online but less than a handful in voice channels that one can make, but it seems very few do. Communication (voice in particular) is and always has been a major aspect of eGO’s success and you’re taking full advantage of what Discord has to offer.
EdgeGamers needs to adapt to survive, like that one British dude who liked turtles used to say. Aside from altering Discord to make it easier to chat and find a group to hang out with, adopting and supporting new games is more important than wasting resources on dead or dying half-filled servers (if that’s still happening). I think keeping active servers in old games, up and alive is worth it, but wasting time and resources to prolong the inevitable is not. In Discord it can be as easy as making a few open voice and text channels for a new game. Encouraging streaming in some channels can help members grow their Twitch channels and give members who aren’t gaming something to do.
Adopting new games doesn’t necessarily require having a dedicated server. Most gamers really just want to find a group of people to game with, to find friends, and an environment that makes their time online more enjoyable. Simply having a lot of open, active voice channels and welcoming guests can keep people in eGO and engaged in the community and the games they enjoy.
In short:
From my perspective, the website is very news-oriented as opposed to being friendly for new members or guests. In my mind, I still think of the simpler front page with an active chat panel and easy-to-find information for voice chat. I think it’s clear to see that the website is or has been run by the same person or small team with no thought about who will actually care about or see the front page, where in the past the main site was more welcoming to guests and potential members.
I think the biggest reason why eGO might be failing is because forums have largely been replaced or supplemented by Discord. I know eGO has a Discord server, but it’s lacking a lot of open and active voice and streaming channels. Looking at the current Discord, I was disappointed to not see a reflection of eGO’s Ventrilo or TeamSpeak servers. Basically, a lot of open channels for different division and games. Like forums, voice servers are very much like rooms you can join. You can see who is playing what, join that channel, shoot-the-poop, and make it a regular hangout. That’s missing from the eGO Discord, and if you look at any active, successful Discord; they have a lot of easily accessible channels for different games and activities. Ones that I frequent are the official Darktide and Space Marine 2 servers. It’s easy to find a squad, a game, a specific activity, to watch a stream, or just to make new friends. Take a look around at successful or official game Discords, and you wont find many similarities to the current model eGO is using.
You have members and can easily find more by using Discord as your primary or only voice server. As it stands now, it’s more of an extension of the website. There are a ton of people online but less than a handful in voice channels that one can make, but it seems very few do. Communication (voice in particular) is and always has been a major aspect of eGO’s success and you’re taking full advantage of what Discord has to offer.
EdgeGamers needs to adapt to survive, like that one British dude who liked turtles used to say. Aside from altering Discord to make it easier to chat and find a group to hang out with, adopting and supporting new games is more important than wasting resources on dead or dying half-filled servers (if that’s still happening). I think keeping active servers in old games, up and alive is worth it, but wasting time and resources to prolong the inevitable is not. In Discord it can be as easy as making a few open voice and text channels for a new game. Encouraging streaming in some channels can help members grow their Twitch channels and give members who aren’t gaming something to do.
Adopting new games doesn’t necessarily require having a dedicated server. Most gamers really just want to find a group of people to game with, to find friends, and an environment that makes their time online more enjoyable. Simply having a lot of open, active voice channels and welcoming guests can keep people in eGO and engaged in the community and the games they enjoy.
In short:
- Make a lot of voice channels in Discord
- Support new games (on day one, adjust as needed)
- Make the front page more friendly to outsiders
Although I haven't been active in quite a while I will say that what brought me into the community initially was CS JB but what kept me around was a community of people who genuinely cared and were always down to play something.
Have popular/current/fun games to bring people in initially. Have a place where people can form lasting connections and play together.
We never had an EFT division, but out of EGO I was able to find a good group of friends that played Tarkov.
Have popular/current/fun games to bring people in initially. Have a place where people can form lasting connections and play together.
We never had an EFT division, but out of EGO I was able to find a good group of friends that played Tarkov.
Not to keep reiterating what has already been said, but I just remembered a very good point to bring up on teamspeak. In the old antique days of eGO, we would have players (on the server) and even people on their break at work on their phones join the teamspeak just to communicate. We would open the app or program and see "hey so and so is idling in their own channel, lets see what they're up to." And I myself used to rush home to play. We have to revert back to our values of being a community and increase communication. I get we have voice chat already, but its rarely used. I get we have text chat but you cant relay emotions through text. Bringing back teamspeak means you have to join a voice & text chat channel. It allows us to easily communicate better than discord. I can't say why or how, but I have noticed a decline since we quit using it. This is a system that we all know worked, and I've noticed a decline in communication and community interactions ever since then. I saw bring it back, in full force. Half-ass setup, and half-ass pushing it to be used isn't going to work and things are going to continually to decline.
You mentioned it to an extent, getting streamers on here would definitely help. Could do something to encourage people to stream our servers through incentivizing if needed (ex: posting in discord to up their viewer counts, DS perks if stream X amount of hours per month, etc.) This will bring more eyes and show people a basic understanding of how to play.
For like 99% of our community is PC users and it is super easy to stream. If this is something eGO takes seriously, someone could create a tutorial as well.
I do not believe TeamSpeak 3 will benefit the community in ways people suspect.
Ten years ago and before, people primarily relied on hosted servers to talk with one another. Unless you either had money to pay, or had some basic knowledge, hosting your own TeamSpeak 3 was difficult. A natural result of this is that people naturally gravitated towards communities with larger servers to talk with their friends. This was also at the height of clans and groups; Dedicated ways for people to make friends and connections.
Nowadays, most games are built around quick matchmaking with randoms and less around playing with your own dedicated group of friends. On top of that, Discord is extremely easy to set up. It takes me three seconds to make a server for my close friends. TeamSpeak 3's business model is a relic of the past and it'll never be as strong as it once was.
The landscape of communication for games has changed. Centralized communities are much harder to maintain without an already extraordinary userbase (see: Reddit Discords, etc.)
RE: Tech, since I saw people mention it earlier. It's difficult. It's a lot of work. I would get anywhere from five PMs on a good day to ten-plus on bad days with personal requests, reports, etc. on top of the already existing standard workload. It's very difficult for people to manage their personal responsibilities alongside that. Lord know I wouldn't be able to do it anymore with my 9 to 5.
This has been my annual post.
Ten years ago and before, people primarily relied on hosted servers to talk with one another. Unless you either had money to pay, or had some basic knowledge, hosting your own TeamSpeak 3 was difficult. A natural result of this is that people naturally gravitated towards communities with larger servers to talk with their friends. This was also at the height of clans and groups; Dedicated ways for people to make friends and connections.
Nowadays, most games are built around quick matchmaking with randoms and less around playing with your own dedicated group of friends. On top of that, Discord is extremely easy to set up. It takes me three seconds to make a server for my close friends. TeamSpeak 3's business model is a relic of the past and it'll never be as strong as it once was.
The landscape of communication for games has changed. Centralized communities are much harder to maintain without an already extraordinary userbase (see: Reddit Discords, etc.)
RE: Tech, since I saw people mention it earlier. It's difficult. It's a lot of work. I would get anywhere from five PMs on a good day to ten-plus on bad days with personal requests, reports, etc. on top of the already existing standard workload. It's very difficult for people to manage their personal responsibilities alongside that. Lord know I wouldn't be able to do it anymore with my 9 to 5.
This has been my annual post.
Discord is better in nearly every way.
I hear people say that TeamSpeak kept people more closely connected to each other but I think people don't realise that they can form the same groups in discord whether it is in the eGO discord or even outside of it.
I also miss TeamSpeak because of the nostalgia and how long I spent there, but in reality its really old.
