A Zero Compromise Community: Unexploited Potential

This is our first time participating in the RPG Blog Carnival, and this month’s subject is The Community. Coincidentally, we have some thoughts.

The gaming community, both online and in the meat world, has been in a period of flux, and it hasn’t quite figured out how it’s going to work. It has a lot of usefulness, but there is a direction we’d like to see it go. We see a community where fans have all the tools they need to create quality products, and are only limited by their creativity. We see the best content and news brought forward and readily found. We see a community where people continue to gather face to face to play their games, but can easily get together online for a session across national boundaries. And we see a world where the online community is tied in with your Friendly Neighborhood Game Store, once again making them the center of our hobby.

Much of this exists in a limited form. Here’s how the community looks today:

Game Stores – Face to Face and Local

Game stores are the oldest form of community, from the dark days before the internet. To this day, there are one of the best places to meet gamers face to face, and to have in depth discussions about games. Most store owners are happy to talk with you, and love to have gaming groups show up to play in the store.

But game stores have been struggling. It’s difficult for them to compete with places like Amazon.com, which can sell the books at 33% off. They take a far greater risk carrying new products, and while they can order things in for a customer, why would that customer want to wait for a game store to order something when they could have it delivered to their own door for less money? Keeping them alive is part of the challenge facing the community.

Forums – Depth of Knowledge and Passion

Forum communities are where the serious fans hang out, talking about the finer points of their beloved games. They ask probing questions and have a depth of knowledge that can often exceed the source books themselves. Some game designers even haunt their company forums.

Forums are also centralized locations for community projects. This is where most of the fan made ideas, both good and bad, exist. If you have an idea, and want help or advice, a forum is the place to go.

Wikis – Organized Game Information

The wiki is less of a community location, and more of a community tool designed to bring order to the chaos that is a forum. They create a centralized place for information about a game, both canonical and fan made, and really let a community work collectively. The lack of editorial control, of course, means that quality will vary, and most wikis die due to lack of interest, awareness, or a sense of invitation.

Blogs – The Face of the Community

Blogs are the front page newspapers of the gaming community. They have high visibility and editorial control. They are very useful for presenting ideas in a structured manner, and most allow for content. They also usually have feeds, so that users can have community news brought to them, as opposed to having to seek it out. The challenge with blogs is that they take a good deal of effort to maintain, and an unmaintained blog loses it’s audience.

Putting it Together

The gaming community does a lot. It creates content, helps out new players, keeps an eye on what the industry is doing in way that never could have been done in the 80′s. It’s easier to find players in your local area, and you can even hold games online with people you’ve never met. But it’s sad how much of it gets lost in the noise, and how many good efforts falter to to lack of awareness. It’s also worrisome that our games, which are social by nature, are being consumed by MMORPGs, which don’t provide face to face interaction. Tomorrow we will discuss what we believe the community can do to achieve our dream.