Suggestions

[DioShiba]

- There are still plenty of websites that have active forums
- There is still an interest in pixel art when you look outside of TVGR
- Many of the people who were part of the older user base felt isolated when the overall goals that Dazz had shifted and communication became lost between the staff on the site and them happened.
- Clearer goals and priorities for the site need to be better established and followed for everyone.
- A rule against politics and hot take topics should be made since it wouldn't align with those goals.
- Last but not least, more promotion of the forums to the masses and trying to bring in a user base who feels disillusioned by the current state of the internet and online communities on social media.

Okay, so let me start by saying that I read the entire post but I'm just going to quote the end to keep the page from getting too cluttered. I'm also going to direct my responses at those specific bullet points for simplicity's sake.

I'm writing a lot of my points by reading the post backwards. But hopefully reading this from bottom to top helped me break this down better because there is a lot to unpack here.

Yes, but far less than there were back in the day, so to speak. I'm not saying forums are literally completely dead and we're the only ones hanging around by any means. I'm saying that the internet as a whole has moved on from them for the most part and those that remain (obviously not all - some survive on their own merit) were either the entire purpose of the site originally (think something like PokéCommunity which is just a forum, not a component to a larger whole) or was otherwise integrated more tightly into the core offering from the get-go.

 

True....

That latter point is actually one that's especially relevant here since originally (I'm sure you remember this - I'm just including it for anyone else reading who might not), submissions happened via threads on the forum and then uploaded to the site by staff. This obviously encouraged posting on the forum but also gave submissions more of a sense of community since others could provide feedback on them before they reached the site. This method of submission management was unsustainable and I don't regret the switch to a queue-based direct upload system but I do think it likely contributed to the decline of the forum's usefulness. The forum did have a real direction and purpose back then which was lost as the sites evolved.

I suppose the question here is how can the forums become useful again in that case. I do think I have an answer for this on a latter point but one of the things that I think that could hypothetically help is where a sense of community can be made if posting submissions on the forums is not a thing that could be helpful given that the switch to a queue based direct system ended up taking that over.

I think where part of this stems where people feel that discord is replacing the forums. I know you said that discord is meant to be a supplement as a means for communication, however looking at some of the things from here and what got moved from the forums to the discord... I think there's reason for people to say that it does feel like a replacement.

Part of the answer may actually end up having more to do with Discord and how that can be better integrated as more of a supplemental thing as opposed to making it feel like a replacement as other users pointed out. More on that in a later point.

As with the above, I'm not saying pixel art is dead. There are plenty of indie games using pixel art still and I'm sure lots of artists still making it elsewhere. We still get plenty of custom submissions here as well. I'm just saying it's not in the spotlight like it once was. There aren't nearly as many people making and sharing sprite comics or animations and things like Flash games are also no longer as simple to produce. Maybe waning interest was the wrong way to phrase that. It's more that there's not as wide an audience now.

Flash has become obsolete HOWEVER... I would make the argument that people would much rather make sprite videos with a combination of any pixel art program and After Effects, I've actually done this once for one of my pieces. Maybe even blender if someone knows how to composite animated videos in 2D (which, is a thing that I have seen.)

I don't see why people would need to use Adobe Animate unless they are ballsy enough to pull something elaborate with a team of people to do the roughs in that and then make their clean ups in aseprite. That's just me saying.

Far as sprite comics go that is another beast where I think that those may be gone. Unless someone opts to make pixel art comics entirely from scratch and not rely on any sort of pre-made sprites that's another story but I don't often see that. (If anything my recent little thing for Ed Edd n' Eddy's 25th anniversary probably comes close to it)

I don't know if DYKG really had anything to do with it. Activity was declining long before he started making videos. I don't have a solid argument for or against this though so this one could go either way.

Maybe, maybe not. Even if activity was declining before that I do think it may have contributed to it since the priorities did shift and TVGR felt like less of a focus, primarily those who do make custom work.

As in the first point, I think they existed once and don't with the site's evolution. As for defining new ones, I'm really not sure what those would be. The sites have clear goals and priorities - archival of assets from games - but the forum isn't needed for that and I'm not sure what we could offer here that isn't already offered elsewhere. Drawing people back to a technology that most view as obsolete requires doing something unique that can't be found anywhere else.

Perhaps saying for the site overall didn't help, but I do think where the forums more so in specific need clearer priorities and how that can be gone about where it supplements the goals of the overall site is where the real challenge is.

Because even if the goals for the site regarding the archival of sprites, models, sfx and textures are met, that kind of doesn't help with those who wish to make custom work for their indie projects.Which in that case the forums themselves would need a new priority to help supplement what the main purpose of TVGR has going for it.

Far as doing something unique goes, I do agree with that it would be a challenge. What I am wondering is if there is a way to integrate the forums with the discord server so that when there is a post on the forums it could be monitored by some kind of bot that the server would have.Ultimately you did say that the discord was meant to supplement communication so, if there is a way it can be done so in a way where there is to tie activity between the server and the forums as to play off one another simultaneously. (like say if there is a dedicated discord channel for threads that are posted on the forum to be recognized by a bot and then it's sent to the discord server in a respective channel.

Because I'm going to be honest my biggest gripe there was that whenever something was posted it could easily get lost due to the amount of messages from users certain channels would get.

I'm not sure about this one. I think when handled civilly and moderated well, "real life" discussions can be fine. We started the Discord with a rule against political, religious, etc. discussion but eventually created a space for them and it has worked out surprisingly well. They're not strictly needed here or there and I'll be the first to admit that these topics have frequently gotten out of hand here in the past but an outright ban on any topic when trying to revive a discussion-based system may be a bit short-sighted.

Even if it is civil, who is to say that the problem might happen again in the long run should the forums pick up activity? It's a hypothetical obviously but even then I would be concerned if those topics do get out of hand when we are trying to revive a forum because prospective users who may be interested as they're browsing the forums as guests may feel discouraged to join if that is the case.

TVGR is apolitical is it not?

I just don't see where it would beneficial to allow for it when it can in turn create more headaches. This is where I disagree that it would be a bad idea to allow for some certain topics such as that may have the potential to offend or cause some drama. That said this is how I see it, either have a containment board, or don't allow it.

Again, what are we offering that's going to justify former users returning and new users joining specifically for the forum? This is a rhetorical question - I know you don't magically have the answers and neither do I. And I agree with you - many are sick of the current state of social media but the real question is how many of those people are willing to return to this kind of system? How many are even familiar with them at all? I'd wager a non-insignificant part chunk of our visitors are young enough that they've never really engaged in a forum setting before.

Perhaps, but I'm willing to wager if that some of those younger audiences are able to figure out a website like Newgrounds, even if it's just at the bear minimum of typing a post, then that is a start for some people to learn how a BBS or online forum system works. While the real question still stands on how many people are willing to come back to this kind of system, it's likely most of those who feel that social media is either too fast paced or poorly moderated may end up being a pretty significant margin.

Maybe I'm wrong, but honestly with some of the social media groups involving pixel art I have been a part of, some of them either let their groups die off, or it's not as efficiently moderated and there's more cause for the wrong kind of discourse to occur without cause.

As for your very first point in your post, I'm still having trouble following. What mixed message is being sent or what exactly is confusing? I'm happy to reword things if it would help.

Alright I re-read the post where I was having confusion on and I get what you were actually saying now. (This is where I have been getting myself confused so there is that)

In any case that can be disregarded, you'll have to forgive me if I pushed on that a bit and didn't comprehend what was fully said since I was on break from work and my mind was a bit more focused on that aspect.