
current preview of the cohost bunp x-x
i feel like i should include a few words for any passerby about growth/longevity and those sortsa things - because i imagine its fresh on the mind for a lot of folks. i should probably say first that the site originated technically back in 2019 which is when i did most the work developing the theme and such, where i ran it behind closed doors just with folks i reached out to or vice versa. but in it’s current state its a bit over a year old, and i brought it online again more around twitter starting to get worse.
its small now and it’s been small and i’m pretty sure it’ll still be after the next couple of days worth of external clicks lol. i host the site for extremely cheap, and if anything it’ll just act as my blog should things quiet down indefinitely. i’ve seen some attempts before to use forums as a sort of hierarchical personal journal
why
i entered indie games just barely in time to watch most the forums that encouraged me to start doing this stuff all die off. so in a personal way it’s just kind of the thing i understand best as being ‘integral’ to the kinda games i grew up with
i’d still encourage checking out https://aregames.art/info and https://aregames.art/faq if you haven’t - i wouldn’t call anything i’ve written a ‘manifesto’ per se but i think they both help capture what i think forums (or this one) should be for today. obviously forums have largely been ousted by social media but what’s odd to me is they aren’t really analogous to each other. i can probably get a lot more eyes on an idea or question i have if i went to my own twitter following - but that doesn’t really seem to have an impact on the actual discussion. feeds i think are just posed more towards having an ‘audience’ and getting quick types of engagement, likes and so on.
‘userbase’
forums however can feel pretty weird because if there’s not much going on, or no topics you really feel like there’s much to add to, it ends up being super limiting. its definitely gone in and out of more stagnant moments but for the most part i think people who stick around do so mostly for their own internal purposes. i keep my own devlog largely because it’s the only place i have online where i can point anyone asking ‘what ive been up to’ towards.
i’m not 100% sure how much traction this’ll bring over the next couple days but i’ve come to expect that lurking is just the standard behavior for a forum, until the point where something relevent enough (or Simple enough) to quickly chime in comes up. i will say historically, the most posting happens when there’s a new thread to post in. folks tend to come back out of the woodworks when there’s more new discussion to join.
in terms of actual metrics, any day that reaches into double digits (really only Good days) hits on par with more normal days on tigs so i don’t have much to complain about
what to do
obviously post about your stuff. but if anything the site honestly needs more basic threads that you can Just Post in without getting too involved. like for some reason this far in there’s not even a communal Screenshot (Saturday???) thread. so if anyone has things of that degree, or just any even-a-baby-could-post-here level topics i will happily engage lol. i want to click on spinny jumpy fruit
um in any case i’d be happy to QnA for anyone just finding this place over the next couple days about intentions/goals long term, etc