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Post by HeadHunter on Mar 16, 2017 1:12:50 GMT
What makes a community is a shared locus of identity... Community isn't just a space to commune, it requires that identity and it also changes the identity of all selves involved. Changing a forum doesn't stop people being Warmachine players, you can see the myriad of places to converse were used and created. The sense of self wasn't changed and thus the community isn't changed. You and I have different definitions of "community" Merely being players of the same game doesn't make us part of a "community" in and of itself. If we never come into contact with each other, there's no community. If I always play with just a few friends, the "community" is just us. That "shared locus" you speak of was the faction forums. This forum has fewer than 700 members. The PP forum had many thousands of members. Each of the factional communities there was several times larger than the entire membership of this forum - so when PP eliminated those groups, they literally decimated the community. They fragmented it into isolated groups that no longer share contact with others. Many players may simply not know where to find the others, many players simply stopped looking online, some have actually quit playing entirely because of it. This is not a community building decision - as I said, PP's action was the opposite of "community". As nice as it is here, we can't even begin to compare with what was lost. any given factional forum on PP saw more posts in a day than this entire site does. As an anthropologist, you should know very well what the obliteration of a shared history does to a society and how fragmentation erodes a sense of community. Gunmageintraining has the right of it - PP leveled a metropolis and forced us into exodus. We find some fellow survivors in remote villages. They eradicated a society and reduced us to small tribes. And I also agree that many players identify by their faction more than by the game itself. I am a Khador player, I am Crab Clan, I am a Crimson Fist, I am a Dwarf, I am an Imperial soldier... others might have similar interests that revolve around some part of shared experience but that is not our locus of identity, those others are not my tribe.
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Post by octaviusmaximus on Mar 16, 2017 1:18:19 GMT
Lol, my anthropology degree rattles about me apparently not knowing about what makes a community. Painted models sucks, but most of the tactics threads were out of date. What makes a community is a shared locus of identity, something that can break the ice at a convention when you talk to a complete stranger. Something that you can share with a group of people, even if you don't agree with them. Community isn't just a space to commune, it requires that identity and it also changes the identity of all selves involved. Changing a forum doesn't stop people being Warmachine players, you can see the myriad of places to converse were used and created. The sense of self wasn't changed and thus the community isn't changed. Community is resilient and complicated. It isn't something that the removal of one part of 1 forum can destroy. I'd contest your description of the events after the death of the forums, and your supposition that all Warmachine/Hordes players identify specifically as that. I'd dare say most players of Warmachines/Hordes identify as their faction first and foremost. Taking the anthropology angle, each faction had it's own identity, culture, community within the greater whole but still independent enough to stand alone. City states within a nation as it were or possibly countries within a league of nations, there was a great deal of nationalistic pride for players of a faction and an adversarial relationship with other factions. The forum destruction has destroyed those individual cultures, they may still exist, but the major mechanism for their organization and continued sense of community is gone. They have been forced to seek out additional external sources for the same sense of belonging. Places like Lormahordes and others that are attempting to replicate the end results will always have the stigma of not being PP/Official. But even disregarding that, the simple shock of having their faction identity/culture/microcosm destroyed so precipitously is going to be a blow. From your anthropology, how well do cultures take to such invasions and eventual destruction of their identities? Chaos and conflict would be clear responses. Granted, I don't feel that looking at this situation from an Anthropology point of view is completely accurate, it's not the worst way, but putting it into the proper context probably helps identify the issues and psycho-sociological forces at work.... but... I'm an Economist. Displacement often has cultures excusing the negatives and fetishising the positives of their previous form of life. They hold onto things to establish a sense of place. Cultures adapt and change rapidly to necessary conditions. Mary Douglas makes a very compelling argument that practices that aren't advantageous are dropped or not picked up when moved. I would contend that faction identity is a a sub form of Warmachine player which is a sub form of tabletop, etc. You can get along and will identify similarly with another faction player before a Warmachine player before another gamer. All of these are interrelated and extremely close, but the walls put up between factions are mainly there to create your own identity. The faction forums are an attempt to create an identity rather than one which existed in such a strong form beforehand.
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Post by Gamingdevil on Mar 16, 2017 15:31:02 GMT
Regardless of the fact that the existing community will recover, because I think you're right and it will, I wonder what will happen to the new players. Official forums are the first place you look, this place is much harder to find. Besides that, who will help them out if they don't have an established physical community (yet)? If they don't manage to find this, or other another, fragmented, place, they will try their luck on the main forums, but hardly any veterans are there anymore to help out newbies.
Even if the number of new posts in faction forums had started to dwindle, I visited the forums almost every day, I tried to respond to new people asking for advice, I know others did as well. But now I see little reason to go there again, and I know many feel the same. That's detrimental to community growth, both the official part as well as the rest of it. The way I see it, this will hurt their bottom line in the end, because there will be smaller influx of new players that stick around, especially without Pressgangers. People will leave the game eventually, not necessarily because they don't like it, but sometimes life happens, and when there is no one to guide new players to the game, it will eventually burn out. This is of course the worst case scenario and I hope it doesn't come to that, but it does seem like a possible consequence of closing the forums as they did.
Besides that, I read the announcement that they were going to close certain parts of the forum and that we should back up anything we wanted to keep and I wasn't worried. They were pretty vague about it and I didn't think they would close down the faction forums along with the general ones. There were doomsayers on the facebook group and I thought they were overreacting. I was pretty shocked when I found there wasn't much on the official forums that I cared about anymore. Besides the faction forums, I used to spend time on the Rules forum to stay up-to-date with Infernal rulings and train my rule knowledge in the process, but lately it seems like the Infernals are less active anyway, so I haven't even gone there in recent months.
I understand their reasoning from a rational point of view, but I don't think it was a good idea.
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Post by bakemono on Mar 16, 2017 16:03:11 GMT
I was one of those doomsayers, albeit a very low key one. I stated the second they made the announcement that they would eliminate the Faction areas. It was clear to me that was the entire point of the announcement. I don't take any pleasure in being right, but the writing was clearly on the wall. The critiques ongoing were not rude or crude. They were well thought out and starting to be made by long term, respected members in various factions. Previous cheerleaders were starting to chime in with dissatisfaction. Rather than face that, they just got rid of the outlet. I've seen it before, and I'm sure I will see it again. The only question is just how far along the Games Workshop path will Privateer follow.
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Mar 16, 2017 18:17:13 GMT
I was one of those doomsayers, albeit a very low key one. I stated the second they made the announcement that they would eliminate the Faction areas. It was clear to me that was the entire point of the announcement. I don't take any pleasure in being right, but the writing was clearly on the wall. The critiques ongoing were not rude or crude. They were well thought out and starting to be made by long term, respected members in various factions. Previous cheerleaders were starting to chime in with dissatisfaction. Rather than face that, they just got rid of the outlet. I've seen it before, and I'm sure I will see it again. The only question is just how far along the Games Workshop path will Privateer follow. To present the other side, a lot of the forums were getting pretty toxic and were starting to lack a lot of rationale. The number of times that people started thread talking about removing power up even after it was demonstrated not to be the issue, or the number of threads calling for a removal of FA:U when it was shown that wasn't the issue was overwhelming. It became an echo chamber of bile rather than a place for thoughtful discussion. Not all parts of the forums were like that, but many were, and you can't just go in and remove the Cryx forums specifically without it being really obvious. This move, while unpopular and likely not the most elegant solution, does "fix" a lot of issues without causing too many more. Now we just need to find a way to attract new players to the right spots.
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Post by redfive on Mar 22, 2017 0:02:01 GMT
If PP just wanted to end toxicity, they could have just implemented their new zero tolerance rules. It would have curbed bad behavior over night.
PP wanted to eliminate their forum and shove the aspects of the forum off onto social media and third party sites.
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Mar 22, 2017 13:22:02 GMT
If PP just wanted to end toxicity, they could have just implemented their new zero tolerance rules. It would have curbed bad behavior over night. So...all people everywhere would have gotten super not "internet tough guy" within 24 hours? This is one of those "reality vs ideal situation" examples.
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Post by Permutation Servitor on Mar 22, 2017 13:56:02 GMT
If PP just wanted to end toxicity, they could have just implemented their new zero tolerance rules. It would have curbed bad behavior over night. PP wanted to eliminate their forum and shove the aspects of the forum off onto social media and third party sites. The mods fell under the WotC ruling in that they were compensated with merch for their volunteer time. PP needed to reduce their moderation team as a result. With a smaller team, who would be able to keep an eye on all the content in the forums to enforce a zero-tolerance policy? With CID, the devs are paid to monitor and administer those forums, so they don't have the same problem.
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Haight
Junior Strategist
Posts: 396
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Post by Haight on Mar 22, 2017 16:15:01 GMT
The reality too is the PP boards were not that toxic. Go check out blizzards forums, and then tell me pp's boards were bad.
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Post by Aegis on Mar 22, 2017 17:01:45 GMT
The reality too is the PP boards were not that toxic. Go check out blizzards forums, and then tell me pp's boards were bad.
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Post by redfive on Mar 22, 2017 20:30:39 GMT
If PP just wanted to end toxicity, they could have just implemented their new zero tolerance rules. It would have curbed bad behavior over night. So...all people everywhere would have gotten super not "internet tough guy" within 24 hours? This is one of those "reality vs ideal situation" examples. I was being figurative by saying "overnight". The culture would have changed very quickly over a matter of weeks or months. It would have been very quick relative to the time the bad behavior was allowed to fester If PP just wanted to end toxicity, they could have just implemented their new zero tolerance rules. It would have curbed bad behavior over night. PP wanted to eliminate their forum and shove the aspects of the forum off onto social media and third party sites. The mods fell under the WotC ruling in that they were compensated with merch for their volunteer time. PP needed to reduce their moderation team as a result. With a smaller team, who would be able to keep an eye on all the content in the forums to enforce a zero-tolerance policy? With CID, the devs are paid to monitor and administer those forums, so they don't have the same problem. You hire people. Lots of people would love a part time job enforcing rules on an Internet forum for a game they enjoy playing. I would have loved that kind of job when I was in college.
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