# What do you look for...?



## Wozzer (Jul 29, 2008)

Hello all,

As stated in a couple of other threads, I will be building a gaming community in the early days of next month. But, for the site to be sucessful, I need your ideas. 

So, I have a few questions. If you have some spare time, could you possible copy and paste it into a quick reply and send it off 

-What do you look for in a gaming community

-Should I have a site or Just a forum

-What type of sections would you find intresting on the forum

-Should we write game reviews

-What forum software do you prefer

All your suggestions will be read and put on board. 

I already have a domain & web hosting. And I can get free advertising.

If you wish to help out, please contact me either on this thread, or via PM.

Thanks in advance,

Wasley


----------



## Wozzer (Jul 30, 2008)

Come on guys. Someone must have some ideas...?


----------



## bigtye (Jul 30, 2008)

Hopefully this is useful to you, may repeat what you already know.

The culture or tone of your community will be set very early on but can change over time. It can be hijacked by certain personality types who would have it serve their own needs, eg notoriety, attention, etc.

You will need to be diligent in monitoring what gets posted so that you can keep a certain tone. Many gaming forums/communities have become spamfests for childish attention seekers.

You will need a core of good people to help you manage this, you can never control it, only manage it.

Also be clear about what you want your community to offer it members, what values do you want this community to hold/share. What sort of member are you targeting? It's a bit like setting a business mission statement, the clearer you are in this, the better the reference point you have when things get challenging.

Things like what software to use etc are details, important, but only as technicalities, they are unlikely to kill your community. 

If your community meets the basic needs of people, they will stay. Eg, people need to feel like they belong to something worthwhile (relationships), that they have some control (power) and that the community provides knowledge (understanding).

How you want meet these needs is what you need to decide.

Tye

Not really programming or webmastering I know but many of your questions suggest you haven't addressed these issues first.


----------



## Zehnsucht (Jul 30, 2008)

-What do you look for in a gaming community

"Playmates" - as in "serious" gamers that like to team up and play because it's fun. Not random teenagers who scream into the headset as soon as a teamplay goes bad. 
EDIT: The above poster summed it up pretty good. 

-Should I have a site or Just a forum

Forum is nice, since it is more interactive, and makes player match up easier. 

-What type of sections would you find intresting on the forum

"Clan members needed", "Hints and tactics for game XXX", "IU, config settings etc for maximum perfomance for game XXX". 

-Should we write game reviews

IMO, no. There are lot of game review sites already, if you can put time into the homepage and forum the much better. 

-What forum software do you prefer

No preference.

BTW, I'm a UT3 player.

EDIT



> The culture or tone of your community will be set very early on but can change over time. It can be hijacked by certain personality types who would have it serve their own needs, eg notoriety, attention, etc.
> 
> You will need to be diligent in monitoring what gets posted so that you can keep a certain tone. Many gaming forums/communities have become spamfests for childish attention seekers.



I completly agree with this one.


----------



## Wozzer (Jul 30, 2008)

Thank you both for your replies. 

Instead of creating a homepage for the site, i'll go straight onto the forum. Its some thing that the site could develop on if it becomes sucessful.

As for the child spam fest - I agree. If I put an age limit of perhaps 16 +.


----------



## Jansku07 (Jul 30, 2008)

How are you going to control the age limit? Anyone can cheat their age over internet, so there isn't any point in it. If you control the forum discussions well there won't be any "child spam fests". "Playmate" system is a good idea; you should start a group in Steam/Xfire/etc. to support it, so it would be easy to use.


----------



## Wozzer (Jul 30, 2008)

Your right - Anyone can skip the rule, but thats not the point. 

If the spam fest starts, then I can ban for them being under age. 

What do you class as spam. Spam means diffrent things to diffrent people.

[1] - Spam = L33t Speak
[2] - Spam = General Rubbish not realted to the topic
[3] - Spam = Daft posts....


----------



## bigtye (Jul 30, 2008)

Spam can be all 3 of the above. Normally though it is just people posting rubbish eg 

"_lol fail_"

at anything anyone says. This discourages valuable posters from posting and rewards the spammers with attention as people get frustrated and engage the spammers in conversation. It is often better to not just ban spammers but delete their posts too so that they aren't rewarded for their trash.

GA forums from Australia and NGR went through a phase lately where several members where just trolling and posting rubbish like this. The only way they solved the problem was banned users from the forums and banned them from the GA competition ladder (2142 league.)

Tye


----------

