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Topics - gantry

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1
Other Games / So I did a thing ... need advice ...
« on: January 05, 2023, 09:30:58 PM »
The Background

Friends, I started a game company! Been in the works for about a year now. I consider myself a businessman first, so much of my research has been on the games industry. Right now, I'm in the very early stages. As most game companies fail, I'm not expecting too much to come of this, but I think my ideas are unique and have a good potential market. I'm trying to do it right, as it's going to be my side gig to keep me busy during my retirement.

I have a close group of friends who will be my main playtesters. I also need a larger number for a focus group, that's where you all come in. Hopefully, it's okay with the admins if I post this in here.

The Scenario

There are a few game companies out there that have their own official communities. The rest of them do not; one unofficial community is boardgamegeek. As you'll all recall, I created Carc Central out of frustration with BGG, and CC has done relatively well. There was even talk of it becoming the "official" Carcassonne community.

I'd like your opinions on whether I should build my own official community around my games.

Pros:

  • It is a place where I can offer official answers to player questions
  • It provides players with a place to share ideas and build excitement for the games
  • I will be able to offer gamification to encourage players to return to the community, and perhaps get bonus material for the games

Cons:

  • It takes a lot of work to run and maintain, whereas putting stuff out on social media is easier
  • It will add to the cost of running the business
  • If the games do not become popular enough, the community will likely migrate to BGG or somewhere else and my time and effort will be wasted

If you believe that I should build my own community, what should that look like? A structured forum like Carc Central, or a less structured free-for-all place for discussions like a Facebook group or something like Hivebrite/Circle.so (assuming you know what those are)? I should add that I am very much mobile-first, anything that I build will work on your mobile phone or tablet as well as on any computer.

Feel free to provide any other comments or suggestions!

2
News and Events / Uploads fixed
« on: May 29, 2019, 01:22:29 PM »
Hello everyone! Just dropped in to say hello as I have repaired the disk space issue, some people were having trouble uploading. Turns out a malevolent self-aware evil backup process decided to back up its own backups, causing a recurring loop of ever-growing backups. Or maybe I just screwed up  ::)

- Gantry

3
News and Events / Oopsy!
« on: January 17, 2018, 12:27:01 PM »
Hi all,
Sorry about the web site being down, the domain name expired and I had intended to simply pay it on the same date that it was scheduled to expire, however I didn't realize that it meant it would go offline first thing in the morning of the expiry day instead of having until the end of the day. I renewed, and here we are back online, I will make sure not to do that again next time  :o

Hope you all had great new years!

4
General / Embedded videos now available
« on: December 06, 2015, 10:15:48 PM »



You can now embed videos into your posts! In order to make it work, you just need to put the link to the video on a line by itself, no [tag] necessary.

Right now I've only enabled embedded Facebook, Google Maps, Instagram, Vimeo, and Youtube (both long and short links). If anyone has any further video sites to add, please feel free to ask me, though I'd rather to keep it to as few video sites as possible.

Example: to put the video above in my post, I just pasted this on a line:

Code: [Select]
https://youtu.be/tNhtgJGhm24
Feel free to test your own in this thread!

5
News and Events / Forum Upgrade Notice
« on: December 06, 2015, 04:16:49 PM »
In 1 hour, 5pm Pacific (NA) / 1am UTC (London UK) I will be doing a security upgrade to the forum. The forum will be offline for approximately 30 minutes, perhaps up to an hour. If you are composing a long post, I recommend you save it before then!

See you on the other side

6
News and Events / Planned forum work today!
« on: August 10, 2013, 09:26:28 AM »
Today at 2pm PDT / 9pm GMT I am going to put the forum in maintenance mode to see if I can fix a few issues. The forums should be down for no more than an hour. Please prepare to log off during this time.

Sorry for the interruption!

7
News and Events / Possible forum interruptions
« on: July 03, 2013, 04:45:34 PM »
The switchover to the new servers is in progress today. Although it should go smoothly, be aware that this could cause some very brief disruptions over the next day or two. We have eyes on the switchover so no need to contact anyone, thanks everyone!



8
General / Outage today
« on: April 05, 2013, 05:34:50 PM »
Looks like an issue at the data center, no details yet on why this and all other sites there were down today for about 3 hours. Will try to get an answer, in the meantime whatever it was is fixed now I suppose  :-\

9
I think it's easier for me to just ask all of you who had an account on the old forums to post here if you want your post count and merit points transferred here. The member list is too big to keep track! Especially if I've missed staff, authors etc, please post here. Make sure you use your same username, or at the very least, register with the same email address.

10
General / Feb 18 forum errors - no worries just maintenance
« on: February 18, 2013, 03:00:03 PM »
I'm doing a little maintenance today. You may get a number of errors accessing the forum, but those should only last in the tens of seconds. Just refresh a couple of times and all should be well.
Thanks!

11
General / Any last things need doing before opening doors to all members?
« on: February 08, 2013, 07:47:13 PM »
Title says it all. It's almost 8pm my time, I was thinking about opening the new forums up to everyone tomorrow morning sometime. Let me know if there's anything else critical that needs to be done first.

No new posts allowed by regular members on old forums, if someone needs a new post, any moderator or staff can create one for them. We'll leave the old ones open to posting for another week or so.

Now am going to go have dinner and a beer or three

12
General / Topics: old board to new board
« on: February 08, 2013, 07:12:03 PM »
I've disabled creating new posts for regular members on the old forum. At some point I will also disable replies on existing posts entirely, but this will probably be a week or more to let existing threads finish.

My recommendation to everyone is, if your topic is still actively being discussed, continue it on the new boards if you think discussion will continue for some time.

If you want to continue it, I suggest putting a link on the old thread to the new thread, and conversely from beginning first post of the new thread to the old forum thread. You can even direct people to an exact post in a thread by clicking on the message icon, which changes the address in your browser's address bar to that particular post. See the attached image for where to click.

thanks!
- Gantry


13
Anything Else / Archived Anything Else Board
« on: February 08, 2013, 11:55:56 AM »
Click here for the old read-only Anything Else board

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Other Games / Archived Other Games Board
« on: February 08, 2013, 11:54:54 AM »
Click here for the old read-only Other Games board

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General / Accents and board languages
« on: February 08, 2013, 11:52:10 AM »
kettlefish, I recall a thread someplace about the old board not being able to display the proper German accent marks. Is this something that is desired for these boards? I can make that happen if we need to.

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