Direct me to the drama please

[jp1]

Are you willing to write? Then do so. Write what you want to read. Just make sure your grammar is sound.

I'm an idea man Chuck, I get ideas all day long. I can't control them. I can't even fight 'em if I want to. You know, 'AAAA!' So I say 'em in here and that way I never forget 'em. You see what I'm sayin'?

[Xeogred]

MAKE RACKETBOY GREAT AGAIN
WE'RE GONNA BUILD A FRONT PAGE
IT'S GONNA BE YUUUGE

THE FRONT PAGE JUST GOT 10 ARTICLES DEEPER

[miked]

MAKE RACKETBOY GREAT AGAIN
WE'RE GONNA BUILD A FRONT PAGE
IT'S GONNA BE YUUUGE

Seriously folks, this frontpage is going to redefine what you think luxury is on the internet. With gold borders and a beautiful marble background, its will be like nothing you have ever seen before! Best of all were going to make the PC master race pay for it! Believe me!

OK, I'm back.

Seriously though, I do understand that the internet has changed and so has the hobby, but when you look at some numbers, it can be worked with.

The RB Facebook account and twitter both have about 2500 followers and the youtube has over a thousand subs. Fastbillys last video has over 4000 views. These are not numbers to dismiss! Many people would kill for such a great platform to start with. Not to mention that a cheap web statistics counter say the site had 180,000 unique visitors in the month of October. I have no idea if that is the front page or the whole site in general, but it says to me there is possibly 150,000 potential new members that are not on this forum. At least from the registered members count.

Has anyone considered stepping outside the box a little and focusing some articles on newer indie games that have retro inspiration, maybe talk a little about the games they pull their influence from, and ways they have made new innovation while keeping old style?

Focusing on retro or retro based games that are making their way onto mobile platforms would be another way to take the discussion into a more popular direction. Remakes, ripoffs, spin offs, etc...

All the old topics that were so popular could be applied to this as well. I'm sure there are games that really excel on the mobile platform and given their easy accessibility drawing some of them to light could be a cool direction.

I would speculate that plenty of people with smart phones are looking for good games and nice reviews or articles to help.

Not to mention all the last gen stuff that is now considered "retro" by tons of people. I'm always interested to see what the end of a console generation produced once the developers know how to squeeze every little bit out of the hardware.

It might be fun to explore the progression of popular series throughout the different console generations and how they evolved. Why and how hardware advancements changed the games for better or for worse.

This.

-The cheapest (And free) android/IOS games worth your time
-The Android/ IOS RPG library, platform library, etc
-Defining PC games
-Defining mobile games
-Mobile Emulation/ accessories

You get the picture.

This site for sure started as a catalogue, but that logic doesn't seem like a bad thing. It should change with the times.

The word "retro" never felt like a sense of time or a sense of nostalgia for myself. If it looks retro, sounds retro and plays retro, well then it must be retro. It always felt like much more of a style than a time period. A style that has far from disappeared, but grown stronger.

Thanks for popping in to say 'hi' miked. Some valid criticisms. I have a article in the works. Hopefully others do to. I've never made a main page contribution before though.

Are you willing to write? Then do so. Write what you want to read. Just make sure your grammar is sound.

These responses make me feel a bit guilty. While I sit here and bitch about what the site could be, I have done nothing to help it, and you guys are completely right.

Racket, ack, fast and others simply don't have the time to invest in this site anymore, at least like they used to. Its nobodys fault. Life happens.

I have a lot more time on my hands than I ever have and I plan on trying to write at least one article for the front page. I suggest others with free time do as well. Isn't that what a community is? it only feels right that we should pitch in and give a last hurrah if you will.

Im tired, but I would love to talk about this tomorrow. Good night y'all.

[Anapan]

I know what attracts hits! It's Cats and Memes!
I have a Cat!


Now we just gotts add unicorn sprakle (don klick it's bad)!

But seriously guys, I do need to fix up the wall so it only shows the Plasma - you guys could help fix it.
Can my cats gets hits?
What if she was a Pikachu?

[chupon]

Please clean that mess up.

[alienjesus]

I sometimes wonder if all the super broad threads with hundreds of posts are intimidating to newcomers, and also stifle more niche discussion.

For example, our Playstation Vita thread is 297 pages long, our Gameucbe one is at 44, our Wii U one is at 684 pages and literally styarts from before the Wii U was announced. It is a thread that is longer than the life-cycle of the subject it discusses.

I feel like when I joined, you'd see more specific discussion. Are you playing Mario Golf on the Gamecube and want to talk about it? You'd make a topic. And people would discuss Mario Golf. Now, you go and post it as the last post in the 'Gamecube' thread. It gets discussed for maybe 3 or 4 posts tops and then someone posts about how great Super Monkey Ball is and the discussion moves on.

Had that been 2 separate threads to discuss 2 separate games, perhaps both would still be active and running. As it is now, that first topic gets buried and is lost.

I think the fact we have a couple dozen broad threads that cover everything might be contributing to the feeling that there isn't as much discussion here as there used to be.

And, as a newcomer, if I want to come and talk about something, and I search it - I find a post on page 316 of a 684 page topic - do I want to dredge that back up? Do I risk posting anew about it? It would certainly be easier to bump the old discussion thread and have it carry on.

Maybe that's just me?

(P.S. I know I'm just as guilty as everyone else, if not more-so, of posting in those threads most of the time).

[ElkinFencer10]

"Games That Briefly Make You Forget the Ouya is a Massive Disappointment"
"Games That Define the Titty Anime Genre"


Exhuminator and I should tag team that second article.

[Exhuminator]

Of all the posts written past miked's initial one, I agree with Gunstar Green's the most. So I'll respond to it.

The entire "front page & forums" model of content creation is largely gone by the wayside and is unattractive to many web users today.

This is 100% on point accurate. People don't seek information like that anymore. I'm not even into social media, and I don't seek information like that anymore.

It's one of those things where we've gotten to the point where there's not much left to say.

Exactly. For all the mainstream retro gaming stuff, there's so much information out there concerning it, what's the point of rehashing over and over just to make redundant information available? (Trying to keep up the price indexes is a fool's errand too.) And even for your more esoteric retro gaming needs, sites like HG101, Lost Levels, Tokugawa Corp., and many others have that covered.

There are still of course many esoteric games and consoles out there that there isn't much information about but it's largely because most people wouldn't care to discuss them anyway.

I can attest to this truth after attempting to stimulate interest in discussion on such things myself in the forum. So again, making front page articles about retro esoteric gaming is going to be a waste of time (unfortunately).

Eventually that community runs out of things to say and conversation goes off in other directions because people still like conversing with their community even though they've got nothing left to say that's technically "on topic."

And that's about where Racketboy is now. The life blood of the site is the forum. And the forum has watered down to a key say 50 or so members that remain active. However, there is an advantage to that. With so few truly active members, we have more of a community going on. A lot of us know a lot about the other members, and you feel like you're talking to an actual person and not just a random anonymous retro game enthusiast. At the same time, familiarity does breed contempt... and I think we've seen some of that in the political thread lately.

So it's easy to say, "Let's go back to the old days when all we did was talk about games," but I understand it's a harder thing to actually do especially without a steady stream of new users with fresh perspectives.

So I'm going to speak selfishly here for a minute.

I know my registration says I joined in 2013, but in reality I've been keeping track of Racketboy for far longer than that. Around 2006 or so is when I started checking up on the place. The thing is, I have never cared about the articles, but rather the forum. None of the articles have ever enlightened me personally, as I already knew everything I saw there. But rather, I found the forum discussions about gaming to be a lot more interesting. Because even if I already knew what the people were talking about, I at least got to understand their reasoning for the opinions they held.

So the forum is the important part of this site for me. It's why I come here. I enjoy talking to actual adults about gaming in a mature, informed, and respectful sense. I can't get that in real life, none of the other adults I know IRL (sans one) are into gaming at all. Thus if I want to reminisce about classic vintage gaming with a fellow 30-something year old, Racketboy's forum is ideal. Or if I want an educated opinion on a 1995 JRPG before I take the plunge into it, I can get that here. So it is the body of knowledge and informed community that the retro gaming forum here represents, that I find the biggest and best thing about Racketboy. Honestly I don't care about articles, despite the fact that yes they are well written, and yes they help pay for the site to stay online. Everytime I see people bemoaning the lack of updated articles, I just shake my head because I personally couldn't care less about that. We can pay for the forum directly via contributions, I'm good with that model.

I understand a lot of people think the articles bring new people to the forum, to maintain its fresh influx of new members. However I think that well written forum threads, with deep discussion on their core topics, do just as well via search engines. That's how I found Racketboy way back in the day, due to Google directing me to an archived forum discussion here. So let's keep that forum going! Let's focus on new and old gaming discussion, more heavily than political poop slinging at least. If every active member here would create a new gaming discussion thread even just once a month, I think that would go a long way to maintaining momentum. ALSO lurkers stop just leeching entertainment out of other people's posts and actually do some posting yourself. Who knows, you might shake things up in a way that's good for everybody.

[dsheinem]

excellent post

I largely feel the same way about this place, and I think your ideas/suggestions are good ones!

Let's put aside our political differences and be friends again <3 <3

[Exhuminator]

let's put aside our political differences and be friends againl

Yes indeed. We retro video game loving hipsters must stick together.