Forum Discusiion & Which Game to Buy

[Yogi the Great]

Hey this post may get me another star on the forum and I deserve as many stars as anyone.

I was wondering if anyone feels that there is a connection between the quality or interest of a game and the amount of "forum traffic"

People often ask for opnions on what game to buy or which is better. One example might be between the Civil war games FOF and AGEOD's. I notice that the FOF discussion still is regular and strong while the other hasn't had a posting since over a month ago. I'm sure other similar examples can be found.

Is continued discussion an indication of a good game?
Or could it even mean a bad game?
Should we wonder when considering an older game and no one has had anything to post about it for months?
Does it mean anything at all?

I was just curious if anyone had an opinion on this. And remember, if you think this post is stupid, it just may get me that star. [;)] Then again maybe not.

[sapper_astro]

I generally get that feeling as well. If something is not being discussed, I often think it must either be a) unpopular or b) neglected. There are some games that I believe are just plain neglected by their developer, this leads to a lack of interest in said game as people think nothing is new or planned for the future and so they check out any alternatives.

If the alternatives have a lively discussion board, with plenty of people answering questions, asking them and devs are seen to be taking an interest, it certainly, though not necessarily decisively, affects my purchase.

[JudgeDredd]

ORIGINAL: Yogi the Great
Is continued discussion an indication of a good game?
Or could it even mean a bad game?
Should we wonder when considering an older game and no one has had anything to post about it for months?
Does it mean anything at all?

No - simply because good is objective to the individual - if the forums are busy over a long period (defo several months after release) then it could be an indication...
No - and you cannot base a game to be good or bad on the amount of forum traffic (long term or short term) - thread content might tell you though
No - alot of people have either had their fill and moved on, or are simply enjoying the game and have no questions. Few people praise...it's just human nature to complain and voice opinions when something is bad - it's not really our nature to praise. I go out of my way (sometimes) to write letters of praise to companies that have performed well for me...mainly because I know it doesn't happen - but I certainly don't do it all the time and never more than once normally!!

In short I don't think it's the amount of posts are an indication of a good or bad game. Sometimes the content of those posts can help, but you have to bear in mind that most people post complaints rather than praise.

Only my opinion, obviously - and this post gets me to my 4944th post! [:D]

[Erik Rutins]

I think a very active forum is somewhat indicative of a good game, but the reverse is not true. For example, you mentioned AGEOD's games. Well, that's a situation where our forums are "auxiliary" forums and the "primary" forums are on their site and quite active, including involvement from the devs. We have links to those forums from ours, in the case where there's a separate developer-run forum.

In addition to that, every game has a life cycle. We have some outstanding games that are simply far enough into their life cycle that there's not much discussion any longer. Most of our customers own them, have played and enjoyed them. That doesn't mean they are bad games, just not the newest ones.

Finally, we've released some great games that simply never got much forum discussion, even though sales were strong and what comments we got were good. Don't know why, it just happens sometimes. So overall I'd say you can't entirely judge by forum traffic.

Similarly, I know some folks have a hobby of looking at the "Buy Now" counts in the forum to determine game sales. In some cases, there's a correlation to the actual sales levels, in other cases not. Some games simply seem to have a stronger forum presence than others and that leads to more sales going through the "Buy Now" links.

Regards,

- Erik

[JudgeDredd]

Two examples.....
Empire in Arms the Napoleonic Wars of 1805 to 1815 - 20509 posts - if you read those posts - there is an awful lot of negativity about the game. There are also alot of posts asking how the hell you play the game. Also, the game has plenty of recent and regular traffic
 
Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War 1861-1865 - 21376 posts - if you read the posts in this there are an awful lot of informational posts. There's also recent traffic, although it isn't regular.
 
FoF was released in Nov 2006 (roughly 23 posts per day - though most of these will have probably been in the first year)
EiA was released in Dec 2007 (rouhgly 36 posts per day - and I wouldn't like to bet that most of them were made in the first year)
 
If you want to make a purchase based on post count it's my opinion you'd be making a grave error

[JudgeDredd]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
...
Similarly, I know some folks have a hobby of looking at the "Buy Now" counts in the forum to determine game sales. In some cases, there's a correlation to the actual sales levels, in other cases not. Some games simply seem to have a stronger forum presence than others and that leads to more sales going through the "Buy Now" links.
...

I can honestly say I've never used the Buy Now link!

[Yogi the Great]

Thanks for the responses so far.  I certainly do agree that number of posts could mean just about anything.   More important would be the type of post (positive, negative, informational, bugs/crashes, etc.)

I do think that a good game, can create a lot of discussion over a long period.  Why some don't? Who knows.  I wonder also if the topic of a game has an effect.

AHA! It was 251 posts for the star and not 250.

[Arsan]

I certainly feel worried when i plan to buy a game and find its forums are mostly dead.
Of course post numbers are not equivalent to game quality, but at least give a good idea about how alive a game is.
And having a lively and nice game community can be important for the proper enjoyment of a gema (solving doubts, finding PBEM rivals, reading AAR...

As Erik has explained, your FoF vs AGEOD's ACW example is not a good one at all.
Some developers, (like AGEOD, Slitherine...) have their own forums and the Matrixgames subforums are only secondary boards.

Checking post numbers aroudn i see that AGEOD'S ACW official subforum
http://www.ageod.com/forums/index.php

has nearly 52000 posts, not counting AAR, beta team or PBEM subforums

On Matrix games forums only two games have more activity than that:

Steel Panthers (120k)
War in the Pacific (331k) [X(]

Cheers!

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: Yogi the Great

I was wondering if anyone feels that there is a connection between the quality or interest of a game and the amount of "forum traffic"

People often ask for opnions on what game to buy or which is better. One example might be between the Civil war games FOF and AGEOD's. I notice that the FOF discussion still is regular and strong while the other hasn't had a posting since over a month ago. I'm sure other similar examples can be found.

Is continued discussion an indication of a good game?
Or could it even mean a bad game?
Should we wonder when considering an older game and no one has had anything to post about it for months?
Does it mean anything at all?

I was just curious if anyone had an opinion on this. And remember, if you think this post is stupid, it just may get me that star. [;)] Then again maybe not.

There's certainly a connection, in that it's extremely unlikely a game (particularly a wargame) will gather many thousands of posts if it isn't any good. It's not an automatic connection, though. There are some excellent games here that never sold that well. Some, as has been said, have the vast majority of their forum traffic elsewhere, like the AGEOD and Harpoon games.

Another thing is longevity. Some games score a lot higher on that than others, but that doesn't necessarily make the others a bad game.. if I play a game pretty much to the exclusion of anything else for a month or so I've more than had my money's worth even if I never install it again. Examples of the first type would be WitP and FoF, and of the second Tin Soldiers and Flashpoint Germany. All are well worth your money.

And a final thing is psychology. Some people just don't like playing 'dead' games, reagrdless of how good they may be. That makes perfect sense in you want regular multiplayer, of course, but with some it extends to single-player as well, for some reason.

[killroyishere]

Personally for me I look at the Tech Support numbers. If I see high traffic numbers in Tech support I normally stay clear of that game and most of the time until after several patches this was the proper thing to do. When you have thousands of posts/replies in tech support something is wrong with the game. People don't goto tech support to common chat for the most part in my experiences.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: killroyishere
Personally for me I look at the Tech Support numbers. If I see high traffic numbers in Tech support I normally stay clear of that game and most of the time until after several patches this was the proper thing to do. When you have thousands of posts/replies in tech support something is wrong with the game. People don't goto tech support to common chat for the most part in my experiences.

Of course, the hole in that metric is that games that are more popular and sell more copies may end up with more tech support posts, even if the incidence of tech support problems is lower per copy than for games that sell less... I think forums can be useful in determining whether a game is right for you. That's part of why we have them, but I think it's difficult to really use them in that way without just getting involved and reading and posting. Counting posts or activity is IMHO not a great indicator of anything.

Regards,

- Erik

[SS Hauptsturmfuhrer]

The two most unappreciated, high quality game designs on the market with very low post counts on their websites have got to be these.... 

Tin Soldiers Alexander the Great and Tin Soldiers Julius Caesar
Kharkov: Disaster on the Donets and it's predecessor Decisive Battles mini-series

These games are perfectly designed, have awesome artwork and are very challenging with the best AIs of any game made and for PBEM they are short in turn numbers but long in turn action which is optimal.  Their put-off factor is that they require a lot of thinking to win a battle in and most people play games to put their brains on a sofa with a beer in front of a TV rather to get a mental work-out.  So these games are much more healthy to play than IQ decimators like Civilization IV and World of Warcraft.

[killroyishere]

World of Warcraft and IQ decimator? <someone pull me up off the floor>

[SS Hauptsturmfuhrer]

ORIGINAL: killroyishere

World of Warcraft and IQ decimator? <someone pull me up off the floor>

Um, what? You sound like you just came off another 24 hour marathon Warcraft session. Literacy levels are known to drop sharply after playing World of Warcraft.

[Arsan]

But with Civilization you learn a lot of history and culture!! [;)]
Okay, maybe not, but its a great strategy game [:)]

[SS Hauptsturmfuhrer]

ORIGINAL: Arsan


But with Civilization you learn a lot of history and culture!! [;)]
Okay, maybe not, but its a great strategy game [:)]

I have to argue against that claim. Strategy is the process of thinking deeply about your plans and how you will adapt to your opponent's moves. I doubt anyone who plays Civ has ever stopped and spent some quality time thinking about his moves before doing anything. You just build buildings, build units, move stuff and repeat for endless hours. I've tried Civ... briefly. I felt groggy and depressed after it so I got rid of it. After playing Kharkov or Tin Soldiers which are real strategy, I feel alert and ready to go out and have a good day.

[Arsan]

Heh! Obviously you tried Civ4 too briefly [;)]
You should take a look at the sophisticated and mindbogglingly analysis and strategies hardcore Civ4 players (not me) can think and make. [X(]
Check forums like civfanatics and you will be suprised to the depth and posibilties of the game. [&o]
In comparison, Tin Soldiers is nothing more than an interesting beer&pretzels game.

[SS Hauptsturmfuhrer]

A long time ago I went to civfanatics forums and what I saw scared me.&nbsp; As for TS being a beer and pretzel game I totally agree.&nbsp; Real strategy games especially board games are termed beer & pretzel games though I usually bring some carrot juice and an organic muffin instead.

[JudgeDredd]

ORIGINAL: SS Hauptsturmfuhrer

ORIGINAL: Arsan


But with Civilization you learn a lot of history and culture!! [;)]
Okay, maybe not, but its a great strategy game [:)]

I have to argue against that claim. Strategy is the process of thinking deeply about your plans and how you will adapt to your opponent's moves. I doubt anyone who plays Civ has ever stopped and spent some quality time thinking about his moves before doing anything. You just build buildings, build units, move stuff and repeat for endless hours. I've tried Civ... briefly. I felt groggy and depressed after it so I got rid of it. After playing Kharkov or Tin Soldiers which are real strategy, I feel alert and ready to go out and have a good day.

That isn't exactly true, is it ss? Strategy is simply a process whereby you use your knowkledge and skill to outwit your opponent...and in Civilisation games, you can do that. Indeed you do have to make the correct choices. Just because the level of strategy isn't as deep (according to you) as in some other games, doesn't make it any less strategic in play?

As for this

I've tried Civ... briefly

That tells a story in itself. [8|]

[SS Hauptsturmfuhrer]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

ORIGINAL: SS Hauptsturmfuhrer

ORIGINAL: Arsan


But with Civilization you learn a lot of history and culture!! [;)]
Okay, maybe not, but its a great strategy game [:)]

I have to argue against that claim. Strategy is the process of thinking deeply about your plans and how you will adapt to your opponent's moves. I doubt anyone who plays Civ has ever stopped and spent some quality time thinking about his moves before doing anything. You just build buildings, build units, move stuff and repeat for endless hours. I've tried Civ... briefly. I felt groggy and depressed after it so I got rid of it. After playing Kharkov or Tin Soldiers which are real strategy, I feel alert and ready to go out and have a good day.

That isn't exactly true, is it ss? Strategy is simply a process whereby you use your knowkledge and skill to outwit your opponent...and in Civilisation games, you can do that. Indeed you do have to make the correct choices. Just because the level of strategy isn't as deep (according to you) as in some other games, doesn't make it any less strategic in play?

As for this

I've tried Civ... briefly

That tells a story in itself. [8|]

My deepest apologies Judge. If I had known the Judge would be posting right after me, I would have already known my thoughts and opinions were already wrong. [&o]