Ghost Town?
 

Do people even use these forums anymore? It feels like a ghost town and its really creeping me out.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

You've got to be kidding, right? I mean, look on your screen, look at the General Yib-Yab (Off Topic), the pub, Spamming Forum...

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Hahaha. It's not nearly as active as it was in the old days, that's for sure. I remember back in the early 2000's when I was here a lot... Yeah, those were the busy days, haha. It's still active though, and it has a great community. I just got back into it about 2 months ago and this is the first time in years that I actually stuck, haha.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

With the exception of the Jedi Academy section, all other sections dedicated to specific games are either as good as dead (occasional or minimal activity) or completely dead (no activity whatsoever). The only reason they still exist is because they're linked to the corresponding network sites which (apparently) still have some life in them, so they're kept on life support until someone finally flips the switch and lets them rest in peace.

Ghost Town?
 

Re: Ghost Town?
 

They've certainly slowed but I think with the whole GameFront revamp, it will pick up.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

This.

The most active and interesting forums however, remain to be within the General Chit-Chat category. Although, having quite a high activity in the game section would be nice too. Well, games that I like at least; being (choosing the ones that are available) KotOR, Fallout, and World of Warcraft.

It would be nice to see more game forums added as new games are released, so I'm sure that activity will pick up in due time. Not only that, but also with the revamp as Red Menace stated.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Ahhh, Gaming Forums. I love you!! It's funny, I'm not even a gamer anymore, haha.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

I find the forums to be active enough. It may be quiet at times, but it does pick up. All in all, I am quite satisfied with the amount of activity.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

The forums are nowhere near as busy as they once were. Even the most active day of this summer couldn't hold a candle to how this place use to be. Just look at all the game forums, some go weeks with nothing... I suppose every place has it's own crescendo and decline...

Re: Ghost Town?
 

I think the problem is the forums try to encompass too many games. Many people, myself included, join game-specific forums. Over 9,000 times the activity, help, and resources.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

The actual problem is that games are becoming more and more unfriendly to user created content, what was the last major game that offered a decent SDK? Other then Fallout there really arent any in recent history, one of my favorite titles, total war games went from a very open and easily modded to becoming hardcoded where nothing could really be changed except textures and various game play variables.

As more and more games are becoming console oriented don't expect any of that to change except for the few hardcore PC developers that are left out there, and with that said don't get your hopes too high for what a gaming file hosting site can really bring to the table.

Noe did the right thing by bringing in partners, that opens new doors to what this site can offer to the community and bring up activity in the forums, I'd personally like to see this forums more integrated into the main gamefront gateway site, a good example of the two blended together can be see on "the escapist" website.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

I'm definitely in agreement with the last two comments. I think the forums need to be better integrated into the Gamefront main site as well as the forums themselves being streamlined.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Neh, the problem is that FilesNetwork was relevant in terms of the games it covered back in 2004, and now it isn't relevant anymore.

Most of the traffic this forum got found it's way here from the FilesNetwork sites. Those sites covered games which where more popular at the time. Now most of the FilesNetwork sites are about old games that few people now mod for, there's less traffic hence less forum traffic, hence a dead forum.

Honestly, scroll down the "Games" list on the front page of the forum. X3: Terran Conflict? Trackmania? The Movies? Sure, most of the games on there are actually cool games, and people still like them but, they just don't have the popularity they used to have. Mostly looking at the Star Wars and Star Trek games which did bring a lot of traffic in back in the day.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

That's why we have been concentrating our limited resources on the general chit chat section. A lot of the former game forums we had were merged into the general gaming forum a while ago.

In my opinion a large part of the problem of decreasing activity is that many people who join forums nowadays are more interested in consuming than in creating content. Most of the people who complain (and luckily there are only few of them) rarely post any threads of their own.

Then there is the missing influx of people due to the hard time that Filefront/Gamefront has been going through, but lately things have been improving.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

The entire FH community also left for the new independent forums.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

I find the forums to be active enough. It may be quiet at times, but it does pick up. All in all, I am quite satisfied with the amount of activity.










...



Just playing. ;)




I remember when GF was known for having the largest member count of any gaming forum online or something... What happened to that? Was there a profile wipe to get rid of old, dead profiles?

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Yeah but who needs them, right?
It's slowed down quite a bit. With people disappearing, or just outgrowing the place. Or getting fed up with some of the regulars. Different reasons.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Ghost Town...I think that would be over in the SFC: III section of FF, It's practically a cemetery. Although, I do hang around to answer questions for any of the living that happen to pass through...*sigh*.:(

Re: Ghost Town?
 

SFCIII, I used to frequent that forum years ago. I think I was actually a mod for it once. I know I was for the EF/EFII forum. Days looooong gone by. Now both of them are more or less completely dead. Occasionally the EF forums have a burst of life, but it's rare.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Ever do any ship modding? I could really, really, really...really use a Vesta Class conversion for SFC III.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

I actually did. I had my own designs and such and I think they may still be up on Filefront. I was under either the name DarknessKnight15 or Darkness Knight 15 (with spaces) there too. I haven't been a gamer for years though and any ability I had to create or mod ships has long been lost. :( Sometimes I miss those days. What's the Vesta class from?

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Not really. There was just a long period of time where the PC was really friendly to user created content. That is not the reason GF has dropped off the map.

I agree with this statement. The Files Network Sites are no longer relavant. They are not relavant because they do not offer user generated content for popular titles.

Its not that people don't want to create, just look at the popularity of Youtube, Minecraft, and Halo's "Forge". Also look at the mods and maps for Valve games. People still want to create content, and they want to enjoy user generated content.

GF lost a lot of its user base, which means that it lost whatever content creators it did have. Given these points, it is not clear whether or not GF will ever return to its glory days.

If GF is ever to return to the glory days, then it needs to let go of the past. Deactivate all of the old forums (or require a certain number of posts), and redirect all old Files Network sites to the "General Gaming" forum.

GameFront needs to be on the lookout for new potential user content games, even indie titles, in order to attract content creators who are willing to host files on the GameFront servers.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

I cannot agree more to this. Excellently said.

Most of the games listed here are either way outdated and simply died as there's no longer interest in created custom user's content, or these games were picked as wrong choices.

I still wonder as to why Fable 1/Fable:The Lost Chapters never got added to the list. It has had a great amount of user-created content. Even these days, looking at just how old the game is, Fable still has newly created content by various users. Of course not as much, but quite a deal.

Not just for the Fable series, but also a list of other games of which I've wondered why they never were added to our site.

So in short, I agree with Monster_user. We have a huge list of games here, but the very majority of it is dead. A good way to let the forums seem less dead would be to remove the dead forums and merge them into General Yib-Yab (Off Topic).

The tighter it is, the more alive it would look.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

That's a good point. The plethora of un-used forums and sites gives the impression of an almost abandoned franchise, at least from top tier administrators. More importantly, is the relevance of the games. Many of which are no longer.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Most games just don't support modding. I don't know why, because modding increases the survivability of a game.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Survivability isn't really in the interests of a company. Especially when they can get rid of mods and create crappy DLC instead.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

It's not so much the overall activity, it's the type of activity that's changed. Tech Discussion used to get used a lot, not so much anymore. Even Gen Gaming Discussion goes through slow dry spells between major releases, at which times the "What are you currently playing?" thread is one of the few active ones.

The clientele has clearly changed. There used to be a fair amount of tech head mods participating, now they're more in the background with I assume higher up duties. A lot of younger mods have been hired whom are active with chat, but the chat has somewhat shifted to other boards and RPG type games when on the usual boards.

What I've noticed most is the chat is getting more and more driven by RPG social circles who's participants don't generally engage much at all in chat of other varieties. This is OK for those into these types of games, but for those not, it can lead them to chat elsewhere. No one wants to make numerous posts and get no response as if no one cares what they'e into.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

I sort of agree, for some reason some publishers and developers see user created content as an a enemy, why? I don't know, while their game could sell for years based off of user created content, they think DLC is the better way to do it atleast for the short gain of money, which leaves me with a confused face, especially when DLC is atmost an hour or two worth of content at worst it's nothing at all but OOOOO a new item.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

So they can charge you full price for the same thing done slightly different a year later.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

If only. sadly i fear its much worst then that.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Vesta class is from the ST: Destiny and ST: Typhon Pact novels. Also the same ship profiled in my signature.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Ah, I dig it. Not read either of those, but I looked up the ship and it looks sexy. Haha. Sorry I can't really help though. :( I also couldn't find my old files on FF anymore. :(

Re: Ghost Town?
 

That is a symptom, which does make the situation worse, creating a snowball effect.

If you get enough old users talking about a new game, and get enough new users rolling in at that same time, it will eliminate that issue fairly quickly.

You just need to find some common ground to keep those new users around long enough so that they can develop their own community. Like the Forgotten Hope forum.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

well, im new and i find this forum still interesting..

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Glad to hear it.

It isn't just this place that has lost activity, I know alot of forums that have completely died altogether. It is a shame.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

I see that as the problem in itself. What you're calling the "new users" are a new set of members, or just of a different social and entertainment preference set, that are literally forming their own community that is unlike what FF used to be. This is the main reason I think many have slowly dropped off in chatting here and a new crowd has taken over.

I don't think it's just age based either, more type of interests based, though age seems to have something to do with it certainly.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Well, change is life, and life is change. All good things must come to an end.

It is no different than kids going off to college, or just leaving town to start a new life. It was great to get to meet these individuals, but the time has come to say goodbye.

As you have pointed out, that does not mean that GF is dying. Sure its slow right now, but consider this the summer period. Soon a new school year may begin and kids will once again fill these pages with the whatever games or internet chatter interests them.

You, and a few others, are like seniors on campus. You remember the times gone by, the creativity, maturity and cool interests of those seniors before you. You miss the "good ole days", but these are the good ole days for the new members.

That's life.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Unfortunately there doesn't really seem to be enough new members to match up to the number of members disappearing. :(

Re: Ghost Town?
 

It doesn't matter if members are disappearing, I'm still here.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

:agreed


Activity has gone noticeably up in the past year, new and returned people like Mihail, Lindale, Silberio and so on have made it a little more active.

I like a close-ish community though, where you have identity and people recognise you and get your personality.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

All that matters.


I'd agree with those saying the Network needs to change with current games. I mean, I, like I think most people, got here through the network. I was looking for maps and skins for Call of Duty (the Call of Duty) and noticed a link to an ongoing discussion in the forums. I originally just stayed in the CoD community but I eventually branched out.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Personally I don't post much because I don't feel like I have a lot to say that hasn't been said before. I also find being in my mid-20's disturbing, I'm out of touch with all these new "memes" and things kids today seem to be into. >_>

Re: Ghost Town?
 

LOL, yeah weird that today's trends can make even those in their 20s feel old and out of the loop. Wait till you get in your fifties. At that point it seems redundant to even try to stay in tune.

At some point we have to face the fact that to a large degree, we only relate to those whom grew up with the same or similar experiences we had ourselves. I still miss 70s, 80s and 90s rock, but what ya gonna do, things aren't the same anymore.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

You know, Omen, I really envy you for having been around back then, hahaha. Damn it. The music of my growing up years, even now, is sooooo bad. Haha.

I've already noticed such stuff though. It's hard to imagine even wanting to associate with the significantly younger generations. The people going through their early-middle teen years now are on a totally different plane than I was at that time. Hahaha.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Simple answer: It sells. You can thank the console crowd that laps it up since they make the most money for gaming companies now. Console gamers can't get mods legally, so they buy DLC to lengthen their titles. Companies then figure that they should close off modding to keep PC modders from creating the content for free and instead sell them the console DLC for extra cash. Modding is a casualty of greed, and innovation is a casualty of greed, and file sites like us become a casualty of greed.

You'd think companies would keep modding around to lengthen the life of a game and maybe draw some new ideas in, but that's not the case. Maybe this is a sign of how short-sighted the industry has become.

I remember when Epic Games was a PC developer that openly supported modding and even held a modding contest for UT2K4. Now they've develop almost solely for the 360 and only sells DLC for everything.

Sucks that greed is killing our site. Seems we create a network site for a new game in anticipation for mods just to have a publisher or developer close the game to modding and decide to sell DLC, making the hard work we did worth nothing.

Now, adbots and advertisers make up the majority of new members instead of people looking for mods, maps, etc. I remember when spambots were rare. Now there's a half-dozen adbots per week. When I see a new intro thread pop up, I half expect it to be made by someone with a generic message and a link in their signature.

Gamfront's future will be as a gaming review site as it is now. The only mod files we'll be distributing are for smaller titles and large titles that still allow modding. Expect this site to shrink as AAA game modding dies off.

Don't let age get to you.

EDIT: Maybe I shouldn't be hard on the gaming companies. Some may just can't afford modding anymore.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

God, I remember the days of modding and such. Maybe when the economy improves and things balance out (if this ever happens), gaming will return at least partially to that type. Maybe then I will pick up gaming again, haha.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

We can hope. I agree that the bad economy has negative influenced the gaming industry, so it's improvement will definitely have a positive impact on the industry. Our site should grow as a result if widespread modding returns.

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Now the unfortunate and scary question is... Will the economy ever return to a healthy state?

Re: Ghost Town?
 

Dunno. Economic futures aren't fully predictable I believe.