We're now 10Crow

[Macawmoses]

Your argument seems to centre on the success of NSFCD.

Yet you haven't looked elsewhere where we've made it clear NSFCD is not a core part of this. It's there. And it's being dragged along for the ride. We like NSFCD enough that we'll keep funding it. We'll keep offering things to the users.

But the fact we've not commercialized it now, nor do we have intents on doing so in the future. If your evaluation is based on NSFCD -- a successful community but not enterprise -- then you are extremely off.

Never have we claimed otherwise.

Let me reiterate: NSFCD is just along for the ride.

As for other sites being built, last I checked we have media connections and more -- some of which some websites have yet to foster. We're getting world firsts and exclusives. Yes, they're on an indie level, but they're unique.

We've built a base of contacts. Actually, no, we haven't. I have. If SHH (et al.) were just like every other site, we'd be using the Arras Wordpress theme. Let me know the next time your websites are on the same mailing list as Rock Paper Shotgun, Destructoid, or what have you.

[Friendly Hostile]

But Genius, do you honestly think they're going to drop everything because you poo poo the idea?  You've done this on every little spinoff you show up on.  You're a cynical bastard.  You only ever to show up to proclaim doom and gloom.

Let them try and do something, and if it fails, it fails.  Are you hoping that you get to say I told you so when it does?

[Kayo]

No, no.  I'm not cynical.  I'm cynical and right.  There's a difference.

There's also a difference between that and being cynical and wrong, and I'm sure you're familiar with this.

What exactly are they doing to change that at all?

I simply refer you to the above. Rather, the entire discussion of this thread (as it was originally).  Go back and read what's going on, then we'll talk.

Sure, in the same way you could say that nobody can say for sure that you'll die from jumping off a plane without a parachute.

Please tell me the origin of Facebook. Successful now, isn't it? Very. Did it start successful? It was started by college students. Hey wait, aren't Silver and Mack both college students? I'm not saying NSFCD will be as successful as Facebook, but neither of them started in high areas. Your argument doesn't mean poop since several websites disproved it. And some such websites have failed, as well. I said we don't know. And we don't, but you'll never know until you try. At least we're trying.

You seem to have missed the part where small gaming sites aren't gonna start a thing, since there are fifty thousand others out there that people already don't care about. 

How do you think they all got there?

Wrong.  As I stated, Nsider2 was "successful" (I use the term loosely) because it was run by someone who treats websites as a business venture.

But I'm not wrong.. it was created as an exact copy of NSider, and thus attracted the majority of NSiders, and continues to do so today.

Because that's certainly gone so well up until now.  Brought in all kinds of new people, right?  Just tell them how unique you guys are.  That's sure to bring them flooding in.

You don't seem to understand.  Everyone in the world could know about this site.  Doesn't mean that they give a crap about it.  Do you honestly believe that just being known is good enough?  You missed my entire point.  Someone might visit the site, but what's really there to make them come back again?  Let's use that Shh Mom site as an example.  I wouldn't mind seeing a count of the number of unique visitors for the past few months.  It's likely low, but I'd imagine that even the people that did stumble upon it somehow probably just saw some subpar gaming blog and never gave it another look.  As for this site....well, I think it goes without saying that nobody's gonna see the place and sign up just because they thought it looked cool. 

You missed my entire point. We don't care if we have millions of people visiting our sites or not. We care that the people that DO all share common interests, which is the goal of a community. That's what NSFCD is, a community. I'm saying, the same people that visit NSFCD visit all its affiliated sites. I was practically agreeing with you, and you didn't even notice. Priceless.

So insignificant things suddenly become significant once somebody notices them?  Sorry, your insignificant little corner of the internet doesn't mean a thing to anyone, whether they see it or not.  There's absolutely nothing that's gonna pull people in.  Contrary to what you may believe, people won't magically believe that your site is better than the thousands of other sites for the same thing.  If you can't offer something that the competition can't, don't even.  All those "small gaming sites" you see as a start to this glorious network are worthless if they can't offer users something they can't get elsewhere.  And sorry, your "unique" community doesn't cut it.  If you want a site like that to be successful, you'd better at least have media connections, or else all you're doing is just parroting back what you heard on bigger, more important gaming sites.

Oh okay, just use the same exact argument over and over again and people will believe in it, right? Wrong. But if you insist playing at that level, I'm happy to settle. Just look back at Facebook again. How on earth could a social networking site get to be so successful when there already existed Myspace, which was essentially "the same thing"? You have absolutely no point in your argument whatsoever. And who said we didn't have media connections?

So you think that if you try a failed strategy for long enough, it'll eventually be successful?  Well, feel free to waste away your life trying the same thing until it eventually works.  That sure sounds like waiting for success to be handed to you to me. 

Waiting for success to be handed to you is what you'll be doing: not even trying. Look what we're doing here. We're making an effort. We're not trying a failed strategy over and over again, we're doing something we have never done before. Who's to say it won't work? If you try, you could fail, but you could succeed. If you don't try, you will always fail. Isn't a chance of success better than no chance at all?

[Genius]

Your argument seems to centre on the success of NSFCD.

Not at all.  And if it were gonna be that, it would be the lack of NSFCD's success.  As a community or enterprise.  Though part of my point does show right there.  If you think this is even a successful community, you clearly don't know what really constitutes success.  A community that completely relies on a small handful of members to stay alive can never be called successful.

If anything, the mention of you saying that Shh Mom is taking off holds more weight in my argument.  In the same way, though.  You'd have to have incredibly low standards for success.  I'm aware that NSFCD is just along for the ride in this situation, but it's also been a clear indication of how you run a site, and I really don't see that changing because you're running different sites.  I don't care if NSFCD wasn't part of the picture at all.  It'll still go the same way.  You can make a hundred different sites.  Every one will still end up with the same userbase of this one, and nobody else will care about them.

As for other sites being built, last I checked we have media connections and more -- some of which some websites have yet to foster. We're getting world firsts and exclusives. Yes, they're on an indie level, but they're unique.

We've built a base of contacts. Actually, no, we haven't. I have. If SHH (et al.) were just like every other site, we'd be using the Arras Wordpress theme. Let me know the next time your websites are on the same mailing list as Rock Paper Shotgun, Destructoid, or what have you.

I'd love to know what you have in mind.  World first and exclusives on an indie level don't mean much of anything to a general gaming site.  That might get you far in the indie niche, but that's about it.  And I don't know what world first or exclusives you could really even get.  If you really do have a good base of contacts, then good for you.  I'd be genuinely surprised at it.  And I'm not sure that saying that your site is set apart by not using the Arras Wordpress theme is really helping your cause that much.  Not using a generic theme is good and all, but it doesn't mean that much.

But Genius, do you honestly think they're going to drop everything because you poo poo the idea?  You've done this on every little spinoff you show up on.  You're a cynical bastard.  You only ever to show up to proclaim doom and gloom.

Let them try and do something, and if it fails, it fails.  Are you hoping that you get to say I told you so when it does?

By my count, I've been right every time.  I think it's only fair that I point out a failure of an idea after seeing it five hundred times before.  It's not my fault that the people behind every single one of these spinoffs has the same mindset.  Least I can do is try and break them of a bad habit.  Believe it or not, I'm not even terribly cynical.  ...Okay, well, mostly, but not on this subject.  I'm perfectly happy to encourage someone trying to start a website when it's not this same exact thing I've seen five hundred times.  However, given that I have, and knowing that it's a miserable failure every time, kind of makes me a little hesitant to support it.  So yes, of course I'm going to proclaim doom and gloom when I've basically been in a time loop of the same thing for the past four years.

[Zovistograt]

I think Genius is doing a good job of explaining what's going on, so I'll just add that I can't see Genius being proved wrong until 10Crow does something truly unique.  Doing stuff other people already do is silly at this point.  If you're going to grow, grow into innovation.  Some people make games here.  Why not center around those and build a more successful community around that?

Also, yes, I concede that arguing about whether it's silly to even attempt it or not is kind of weak as an ultimatum, but I think what Genius is trying to do is to make you realize that you need a small bit of cynicism pecking at you in order for you to understand the whole picture better and think of things on a macro scale instead of just a local scale.  The Internet is run by cynicism now, and if you try to blindly hop ahead, you'll hop into a large gaping hole of it.

[…]

Is there a website out there anymore that doesn't have "500" others that do the same thing or provide the same service?

[Macawmoses]

I should clarify my position before anyone misconstrues it: I have a great deal of respect for Genius and his views. So if anyone wants to take this as a personal affront, don't bother.

Genius: How I run a site is dynamic. My role on sites varies with what's required. I've been a hardass. I've been kind and forgiving. I've been active. I've been an advisor. Using that you've seen how I work doesn't quite work. Much like others, who will go unnamed, I can re-imagine myself. And shouldn't a dynamic administrator fit many moulds?

And seeing as you brought up SHH's forum (and I just realized this), I should point out its existence is primarily for the staff to communicate on. Hence why it'll be rolled into another forum. So yeah, we're not really going for "community" building there. It is true we have some people from NSFCD on there to help -- it'd be silly if we didn't. But we have numerous others contributing.

The Arras thing was simply a jab at the countless others who are uninspired. As for you speaking on the niche, I think you hit the nail on the head. While we cover a bit of everything, we tend to prefer the indie niche. And last I checked, finding success in a niche is still success.

But I do take offense to your evaluation of NSFCD. It very much so is a successful community. The fact it relies on a small base is what makes it a community. This is a group of people that gets together more or less because they like one another's company (even if it's to do nothing but ninny). That, to me, constitutes a success. You won't be the judge of that, either. The community will be.

[Genius]

There's also a difference between that and being cynical and wrong, and I'm sure you're familiar with this.

Not particularly, no!

I simply refer you to the above. Rather, the entire discussion of this thread (as it was originally).  Go back and read what's going on, then we'll talk.

Funny, I don't see any change in any of that.  It sounds to me like NSFCD will remain the same but on a new server, and they'll just give it a bunch of sister sites on a network.

Please tell me the origin of Facebook. Successful now, isn't it? Very. Did it start successful? It was started by college students. Hey wait, aren't Silver and Mack both college students? I'm not saying NSFCD will be as successful as Facebook, but neither of them started in high areas. Your argument doesn't mean poop since several websites disproved it. And some such websites have failed, as well. I said we don't know. And we don't, but you'll never know until you try. At least we're trying.

I'm not saying anything about Silver and Mack being college students.  That's fine.  I'm not one of those people who thinks you can only make a successful site if you're older.  If anything, college students are the ones with the best chance of getting successful with that stuff.  It's the group with the most technical skill in the area, for the most part.  However, that doesn't mean that Facebook relates to this situation at all.  It was started by a college student, but it's an entirely different thing.  Aside from it already being a one in a million kind of situation, there's also that MySpace was the only other known site to offer that kind of social networking at the time, and it was heavily populated by a younger crowd.  There was a clear opening for someone to pull the college crowd with a similar concept.  That's exactly what happened.  It was just filling demand.  There is no demand for more gaming sites.  There's no unserved crowd there.

How do you think they all got there?

By offering something the competition doesn't.  That's the only way to get ahead.  You can't name one thing this site or Shh Mom offers that you can't get anywhere else.

But I'm not wrong.. it was created as an exact copy of NSider, and thus attracted the majority of NSiders, and continues to do so today.

By that logic, this place should have been just as successful.  They started out about the same time.  In fact, I think this one came first.  They both aimed to try and fill that void left by Nsider closing.  Yet, Nsider2 completely eclipsed NSF.  NS2 was no more exact copy than this place at the time.  So why was NS2 so much more successful, again?

You missed my entire point. We don't care if we have millions of people visiting our sites or not. We care that the people that DO all share common interests, which is the goal of a community. That's what NSFCD is, a community. I'm saying, the same people that visit NSFCD visit all its affiliated sites. I was practically agreeing with you, and you didn't even notice. Priceless.

You're missing the point, obviously.  You don't care if you have millions of people visiting your sites or not.  Don't throw a we out there like you're part of the project.  Having a small group of friends for a community might be fine with you, and that's fine if it's all you expect, but that's not success, and it's not good enough for someone who wants to turn communities into an enterprise.  When you make that turn, it's about numbers.  You can't just be satisfied because you have a small core memberbase.  You need to focus on growth.

Oh okay, just use the same exact argument over and over again and people will believe in it, right? Wrong. But if you insist playing at that level, I'm happy to settle. Just look back at Facebook again. How on earth could a social networking site get to be so successful when there already existed Myspace, which was essentially "the same thing"? You have absolutely no point in your argument whatsoever. And who said we didn't have media connections?

Explained above.  Before reading this, too, so don't think I had to struggle to explain it.  There was a market to appeal to.  Simple as that.  And it's generally pretty safe to assume that the people behind a project like this don't have media connections.  For one, that is something where age means more, since it usually involves some kind of connection to the industry.  As you can see, even the connections Mack has are just indie things.  But then again, you probably follow that Nsider mindset that "media connections" means "access to Nintendo's press site", so maybe it is fair to assume everyone has it.

Waiting for success to be handed to you is what you'll be doing: not even trying. Look what we're doing here. We're making an effort. We're not trying a failed strategy over and over again, we're doing something we have never done before. Who's to say it won't work? If you try, you could fail, but you could succeed. If you don't try, you will always fail. Isn't a chance of success better than no chance at all?

Something you've never done before?  It's hardly different from this site with a different name.  Or Shh Mom.  Or probably this Area 6 I keep seeing mentions of.  Sorry, I don't subscribe to the belief that everything's fine just because you tried.  You shouldn't even bother trying if it's hopeless from the beginning.  You would be better off saving the effort you could put into a failure and start planning out something that could actually work.  Just falling back on something as uninspired as this is the easy way out.

[Macawmoses]

As you can see, even the connections Mack has are just indie things. 

Nintendo (of Canada), Appular, Sega, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, EA (Mobile), Sony, Zenimax, Valve, Future US (publication), Microsoft.

Those aren't that indie to me. And on the indie front, my contacts include Zero Point Software, Gaijin Games, Renegade Kid, etc.

Being a freelance writer tends to help that.

[Genius]

I should clarify my position before anyone misconstrues it: I have a great deal of respect for Genius and his views. So if anyone wants to take this as a personal affront, don't bother.

Genius: How I run a site is dynamic. My role on sites varies with what's required. I've been a hardass. I've been kind and forgiving. I've been active. I've been an advisor. Using that you've seen how I work doesn't quite work. Much like others, who will go unnamed, I can re-imagine myself. And shouldn't a dynamic administrator fit many moulds?

And seeing as you brought up SHH's forum (and I just realized this), I should point out its existence is primarily for the staff to communicate on. Hence why it'll be rolled into another forum. So yeah, we're not really going for "community" building there. It is true we have some people from NSFCD on there to help -- it'd be silly if we didn't. But we have numerous others contributing.

The Arras thing was simply a jab at the countless others who are uninspired. As for you speaking on the niche, I think you hit the nail on the head. While we cover a bit of everything, we tend to prefer the indie niche. And last I checked, finding success in a niche is still success.

But I do take offense to your evaluation of NSFCD. It very much so is a successful community. The fact it relies on a small base is what makes it a community. This is a group of people that gets together more or less because they like one another's company (even if it's to do nothing but ninny). That, to me, constitutes a success. You won't be the judge of that, either. The community will be.

You've worked on a lot of different sites in a lot of different roles, but it all comes back to the kind of mindset I mentioned in the beginning.  I've never really seen you manage to break away from that.  Which is probably related to the fact that you mostly seem to work on these same spinoff kind of sites.  It's all the same.  You might have to act accordingly for the role, but all that changes is your position in the forum.  The forum is the same.  Have you ever been involved closely in a site that doesn't just boil down to a group of friends?  People just seem to see nothing but that and get the idea that there's nothing more to communities than that. 

I'd assumed that SHH's forum wasn't something intended to be a proper community.  But that still does make me want to ask for a unique visitor count for a better idea of how it's doing.  I'm trying not to judge on comments because that's not a particularly good way to gauge activity either.  And it's really not silly to not have NSFCD members there.  Then it just becomes the same site on a new domain.  Carrying over an established community to a site is not worth the trouble it'll cause.  That just walls the place off and keeps out potential new members who don't want to jump into an established community.

I do know what you mean by that.  I really never thought about how common it is, but...yeah, that's about right.  And yes, even catering to a niche is success if it brings people interested in that niche subject in.  However, looking at the site, I'd never think that it's targeted towards the indie niche.  I just see people writing articles because they know they need to, and writing on whatever happens to come to mind that they can pull off an article about.  Either that, or news that's posted everywhere.  If that niche is the way you want to go, put everything towards that.  Don't stretch yourself thin and make it a site without a clear focus.

Like I said, if that's what you want in a community, it's perfectly fine.  I wouldn't claim that this site isn't good enough, or there something wrong with it as it is.  As long as it's accepted for the small group of friends it is.  That's what every Nsider spinoff boils down to in the end.  It only becomes a problem when you expect more from it than that.  I don't think you expect more from it than that, but I do get the feeling you expect more from the same formula minus the Nsider name.

Is there a website out there anymore that doesn't have "500" others that do the same thing or provide the same service?

Not many, but that's why you need to stop and think about that doesn't offer the same service.  The internet is too saturated now.  You won't get somewhere without innovation.  Or money, but yeah, cheating.

Nintendo (of Canada), Appular, Sega, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, EA (Mobile), Sony, Zenimax, Valve, Future US (publication), Microsoft.

Those aren't that indie to me. And on the indie front, my contacts include Zero Point Software, Gaijin Games, Renegade Kid, etc.

Being a freelance writer tends to help that.

That's...not particularly indie.  Impressive, even.  Just how did you manage that?  I didn't expect freelance writing to pay off so well.  And how close are these connections?  Would you ever get word of something before the general public?

[Macawmoses]

Well I've got a ton of indie connections, mostly Canadian. I tend to focus on them for stories. Indies are the ones that tend to provide me exclusive stories or reviews.

For instance, http://beefjack.com/features/into-the-vortex-the-story-of-vortex-conference/

Hence why I chose to mention them. The other contacts I have are people that know of my name, and I know them. It's the stupid thing where you get games for review and so on and so forth. I get press releases that I don't read.

Ahead of the general public? Sometimes not by that much. Keep in mind places like IGN, or, seeing as we're an NSider rip, GoNintendo, just post the releases as soon as they get them. It does allow me to see things before others: I had hands on with the 3DS (after last E3, mind you, but in a private showing).

Being realistic, it's nothing amazing. But in terms of all those other sites and the like, it's infinitely more. Those I'm closest with would be the mobile ones (EA, Sega, Appular) because that's what I was writing.

However, to throw a point your way...having one writer with contacts doesn't realy mean much.

[Genius]

Well I've got a ton of indie connections, mostly Canadian. I tend to focus on them for stories. Indies are the ones that tend to provide me exclusive stories or reviews.

For instance, http://beefjack.com/features/into-the-vortex-the-story-of-vortex-conference/

Hence why I chose to mention them. The other contacts I have are people that know of my name, and I know them. It's the stupid thing where you get games for review and so on and so forth. I get press releases that I don't read.

Ahead of the general public? Sometimes not by that much. Keep in mind places like IGN, or, seeing as we're an NSider rip, GoNintendo, just post the releases as soon as they get them. It does allow me to see things before others: I had hands on with the 3DS (after last E3, mind you, but in a private showing).

Being realistic, it's nothing amazing. But in terms of all those other sites and the like, it's infinitely more. Those I'm closest with would be the mobile ones (EA, Sega, Appular) because that's what I was writing.

However, to throw a point your way...having one writer with contacts doesn't realy mean much.

It doesn't really mean that much on a small scale like this, no, but it's still impressive that you've picked up all those contacts.  Like you said, it's infinitely more than most of those sites have.  You're not gonna be getting big exclusives, but it's nice to know you have that under your belt.  I still say that a gaming site that isn't for a niche audience is doomed to failure, though.  Also, any connections are meaningless when they're Canadian.  You know nobody cares about Canada.

[Kayo]

Not particularly, no!

Funny, I don't see any change in any of that.  It sounds to me like NSFCD will remain the same but on a new server, and they'll just give it a bunch of sister sites on a network.

And that isn't a change? NSF is going from one site to a conglomerate of similar sites... that's change enough to me, and everyone else. I'm not talking about these forums we are currently posting on, I'm talking about the network.

I'm not saying anything about Silver and Mack being college students.  That's fine.  I'm not one of those people who thinks you can only make a successful site if you're older.  If anything, college students are the ones with the best chance of getting successful with that stuff.  It's the group with the most technical skill in the area, for the most part.  However, that doesn't mean that Facebook relates to this situation at all.  It was started by a college student, but it's an entirely different thing.  Aside from it already being a one in a million kind of situation, there's also that MySpace was the only other known site to offer that kind of social networking at the time, and it was heavily populated by a younger crowd.  There was a clear opening for someone to pull the college crowd with a similar concept.  That's exactly what happened.  It was just filling demand.  There is no demand for more gaming sites.  There's no unserved crowd there.

Clearly you're not familiar with certain projects I don't think I'm at liberty to reveal just yet. So I won't attack this at the moment.

By offering something the competition doesn't.  That's the only way to get ahead.  You can't name one thing this site or Shh Mom offers that you can't get anywhere else.

Our goal isn't to have just NSF and Shh Mom; while these are two of the first sites here, there will be more.

By that logic, this place should have been just as successful.  They started out about the same time.  In fact, I think this one came first.  They both aimed to try and fill that void left by Nsider closing.  Yet, Nsider2 completely eclipsed NSF.  NS2 was no more exact copy than this place at the time.  So why was NS2 so much more successful, again?

NSF and NSider2 took completely different approaches at this. I personally like this better, since it's a small community where everyone knows each other. And considering I've been friends with the head admin here for some time without being staff, that's pretty cool. That doesn't just happen on any site... and Silver is pretty much friends with everyone here, and we all love him.

You're missing the point, obviously.  You don't care if you have millions of people visiting your sites or not.  Don't throw a we out there like you're part of the project.  Having a small group of friends for a community might be fine with you, and that's fine if it's all you expect, but that's not success, and it's not good enough for someone who wants to turn communities into an enterprise.  When you make that turn, it's about numbers.  You can't just be satisfied because you have a small core memberbase.  You need to focus on growth.

I'm not part of the project? Actually, while I am not up there on Mack's level, I am actually contributing to the expansion of this network in some way. It's a relatively small way, but it's not like I'm just watching this entirely from the sidelines. Also, ever heard that saying about quality and quantity? So what if we don't have a million members.. having a smaller userbase can be considered successful too. Maybe not if you're after an extreme communist society full of people who hate each other, but we like it.

Explained above.  Before reading this, too, so don't think I had to struggle to explain it.  There was a market to appeal to.  Simple as that.  And it's generally pretty safe to assume that the people behind a project like this don't have media connections.  For one, that is something where age means more, since it usually involves some kind of connection to the industry.  As you can see, even the connections Mack has are just indie things.  But then again, you probably follow that Nsider mindset that "media connections" means "access to Nintendo's press site", so maybe it is fair to assume everyone has it.

Don't say things without having full information; there's much more to this than you know.

Something you've never done before?  It's hardly different from this site with a different name.  Or Shh Mom.  Or probably this Area 6 I keep seeing mentions of.  Sorry, I don't subscribe to the belief that everything's fine just because you tried.  You shouldn't even bother trying if it's hopeless from the beginning.  You would be better off saving the effort you could put into a failure and start planning out something that could actually work.  Just falling back on something as uninspired as this is the easy way out.

Just wait, we've got more.

[Silverhawk79]

By the way, here's our stats from Shh Mom.



And I've verified that they're not bots, surprisingly enough.
Additionally, we haven't posted much on Shh Mom recently because me and Mack have both been balls deep (heehee) in other activities. Finals, moving out of school, etc. We'll be resuming a nice regular flow of content in a day or two.

[Doodle]

Is that saying the average time a single visitor spends on the site is 2:39? :U