(July 17th, 2017, 12:48)Sareln Wrote: I think some of the dominance of video over text is the discover-ability of video. If I want a video of even an obscure game, I can just punch that into YouTube and it'll happily drop plenty of video on me, though the SNR of that video is going to be terrible. On the other hand, trying to find a good write-up on google is pretty hopeless, since the front page will consist of, in order: low quality threads from the steam forum, some reddit discussions that don't really dig into anything, and then gobs of review articles, typically copy-pastes of each other and posted across 10 - 20 different websites that are just ad-platforms.
That depends on the game, doesn't it? If I try to search for non-trivial information on Civ 3-5, there is a good chance Google will come up with a writeup by someone from Realms Beyond.
It's on the fans to develop a community, more than anyone else. And if we want to keep text alive, what better way is there than keeping Realms Beyond active? It's not like Civ 4 or even older games stop becoming unplayable, and I don't think they ever will.
And really, Civilization had a lot of communities -- too many for it to support. We are running ever more into the issue of too many games, not enough time to play them, even setting aside concerns about modern games being shallow (... which is something people have been saying since about when the original NES game out). It doesn't really help to have more than about 3 major forums in a given language. And Civilization dominated the TBS world thoroughly for quite some time -- that was not sustainable even aside from modern social developments. You would see a decline in number of communities from those factors alone.
Sareln Wrote:I think some of the dominance of video over text is the discover-ability of video. If I want a video of even an obscure game, I can just punch that into YouTube and it'll happily drop plenty of video on me, though the SNR of that video is going to be terrible. On the other hand, trying to find a good write-up on google is pretty hopeless, since the front page will consist of, in order: low quality threads from the steam forum, some reddit discussions that don't really dig into anything, and then gobs of review articles, typically copy-pastes of each other and posted across 10 - 20 different websites that are just ad-platforms.
Sounds like the same kind of SNR problem to me, in video and text. If you Google for the game, you also get a lot of content and horrible SNR. I would still argue text is more discoverable - at least with text, search engines are amazing these days and will find words anywhere in the article text. Just typing any game's name into Google is worthless for anything more than basic info, but with a few keywords I can find information on any aspects. Video is not discoverable like that - searching is essentially limited to just titles.
Dark Savant Wrote:And really, Civilization had a lot of communities -- too many for it to support. We are running ever more into the issue of too many games, not enough time to play them, even setting aside concerns about modern games being shallow (... which is something people have been saying since about when the original NES game out). It doesn't really help to have more than about 3 major forums in a given language. And Civilization dominated the TBS world thoroughly for quite some time -- that was not sustainable even aside from modern social developments. You would see a decline in number of communities from those factors alone.
I don't think the decreasing amount of communities is a problem per se. Yes, there are communities that I'm sad to see die due to my personal relationship with them, but what saddens me even more is the general death of such types of communities. I don't mean complete, 100% death of course. Activity decreases on a curve and it takes a very long time to go from "much lower activity" to "zero activity", but the fact is already that such communities have become a niche and not the mainstay. Looking at Civ, Civfanatics is of course the ultimate survivor and the only forum that still retains a lot of activity, but even now CFC is a shadow of its self 7-8 years ago. That's what I am mainly lamenting here - the way this type of community in general has lost traffic and influence to other online content.
I'm reading this but don't have anything new to say: Sirian's trolling line and various nips over what happened to Apolyton are what actually happened to push it to very low activity--WPC was an extension of what happened too. And CivPlayer's lifeblood of duels and teamers being cut off has nothing to do with the other sites.
(July 17th, 2017, 15:08)Solver Wrote: Just typing any game's name into Google is worthless for anything more than basic info, but with a few keywords I can find information on any aspects. Video is not discoverable like that - searching is essentially limited to just titles.
I think this should be solved within five years; it would have been solved already - search for keywords and get video results where the keywords are spoken or appear as text on the screen, and even get the points in the video timeline where they appear highlighted - if Google hadn't become monolithic enough to start resting on their search engine laurels (partly due to their near-100% market share, partly due to success at hiring or buying nearly any person or small company with the interest and ability to improve on Google search).
That won't really solve the core problem with video, because there's still no way to browse video at your own pace or in your own way as there is with text, but sound-byte style information buried in videos will be available to search.
Quote:That's what I am mainly lamenting here - the way this type of community in general has lost traffic and influence to other online content.
I'm with you there.
(I don't think the image of an old guy clinging to his newspaper in lieu of television news is accurate, but I'm going to put that in spoilers because it strays wayyyy off topic.)
Television news is its own twisted, toxic thing, not really related to a newspaper in any meaningful way. Television itself contributed a lot to the paper's demise by moving the biggest advertising paydays to its more lucrative medium, and by contributing to the culture in which it's rare for anyone to have either time for or interest in a newspaper, but I doubt if many people canceled newspaper subscriptions (or stopped visiting newsstands) because they thought they were getting the same thing out of television news. "I never read the paper anymore; I watch [some morning show] with my breakfast instead" isn't at all the same thing as, "Papers? That's the old way to get news!"
The rise of the web provided the actual replacement for newspapers, as readers who used to be stuck with their particular local fishwrap can now choose a (combination of) news source(s) online that focus on exactly the kind of news they want to see - whether that means news from a particular narrow perspective or with maximum depth from multiple sources, that's opinionated or dry, about or from a particular foreign country or local area or world-wide, on particular subjects, in a particular style, in a particular language, etc. The only thing a physical newspaper really has left is its very physicality.
And one thing I find interesting is that - for now at least - that's enough to keep newspapers going.
(July 17th, 2017, 19:26)RefSteel Wrote: I'm with you there.
(I don't think the image of an old guy clinging to his newspaper in lieu of television news is accurate, but I'm going to put that in spoilers because it strays wayyyy off topic.)
Television news is its own twisted, toxic thing, not really related to a newspaper in any meaningful way. Television itself contributed a lot to the paper's demise by moving the biggest advertising paydays to its more lucrative medium, and by contributing to the culture in which it's rare for anyone to have either time for or interest in a newspaper, but I doubt if many people canceled newspaper subscriptions (or stopped visiting newsstands) because they thought they were getting the same thing out of television news. "I never read the paper anymore; I watch [some morning show] with my breakfast instead" isn't at all the same thing as, "Papers? That's the old way to get news!"
The rise of the web provided the actual replacement for newspapers, as readers who used to be stuck with their particular local fishwrap can now choose a (combination of) news source(s) online that focus on exactly the kind of news they want to see - whether that means news from a particular narrow perspective or with maximum depth from multiple sources, that's opinionated or dry, about or from a particular foreign country or local area or world-wide, on particular subjects, in a particular style, in a particular language, etc. The only thing a physical newspaper really has left is its very physicality.
And one thing I find interesting is that - for now at least - that's enough to keep newspapers going.
I'd say that your newspaper analogy fails, at least in my neck of the woods as the failure of newspapers was less to do with alternatives and more to do with a dumbing down of quality and hemorrhaging of resources for in-depth and long term reporting, in the expectation that even though the papers were of lower quality and lesser newsworthiness, people would still buy them for lack of alternatives. This trend is directly attributable to a small number of people most prominent of whom are Rupert Murdoch, Paul D'Acre and Robert Maxwell.
But I'm digressing in a big way from the thread.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
RefSteel is right: the true costumer for newspapers isn't you, it's advertisers: the subscription doesn't even cover the cost of delivering the newspaper to you. So television causing them to bleed out their costumers was really bad news for them. And top of that, newspapers never had competition in their areas in the first place. Before the Internet some new newspaper tried to break into an area that already had one. It didn't work because the incumbent newspaper worked together with advertisers to suffocate the new one.
Erg, my fault on the newspaper digression; I find the subject fascinating, but I should have put it in the off-topic forum.
Back on something like the topic, I do think the "newspaper : TV news :: game forums: video let's plays" analogy doesn't fit, because I suspect the latter is driven in part by the people producing the content (because as Sullla notes above, it's easier to just turn on recording software than to compose a report) and in part by the advent of services like twitch that allow content providers and "consumers" to get feedback from each other in real time - a totally different situation from a report-and-read arrangement (although turn-based games allow a similar but slower version, between dedlurkers and turn players).
(July 19th, 2017, 18:23)RefSteel Wrote: (because as Sullla notes above, it's easier to just turn on recording software than to compose a report)...
It's harder to edit video than text. Thus, we now get a ton of rambling reports, which is part of my disinterest in them. They are time wasters. I have to watch ten minutes, or thirty, for two minutes of useful information? I find scheduled Podcasts to be particularly evil in this regard, as they have to come up with content on a schedule and fill air time, rather than posting a show only when they have something really good to say.
Even if the thirty minute report may have twenty minutes of useful information in it (or twenty-five), that occurs in a minority of cases, which can be hard to locate.
Thus, channel loyalty. Providers who provide consistently good content gain followers. ... There *are* YouTube channels that I subscribe to. Among them are the SciShow channels, PBS SpaceTime, L2 Inc, TED Talks, some Star Trek channels, and several worthwhile kids/toddlers channels. ... Even Sulla, whose commentary interests me, doesn't get my viewership much because, for the most part, he does what he described: turns on the video. It's livestream to an interactive audience, so if you are there live, you are interacting. But there's also a lot of dead or low-action air time. Whereas his written reports don't have that. I don't want to commit that much time to watching along while he plays something, even though his commentary along the way is insightful.
Video is surely easier if one just turns on the camera. And there is skill involved in minimizing the need for editing, keeping followers tuned in, etc. But editing? I tend to respect the ones who do some of it, especially to either correct or follow up on mistakes, but actually getting me to follow somebody is a tough sell. And I have seen plenty of videos that I checked out where it's clear there's neither editing nor even awareness of its value.
There are similar relationships between books and movies/TV, and between written news and video news. Sure there are differences, too. No analogy can ever be perfectly synchronous. (That ought to go without saying?)
Offerings are driven by content creators, but consumption is driven by consumers. And this is true for stories, news or games.
Completely agree with you, Sirian. Watching video on play throughs etc is really painful, as the one important info is usually hidden by lots of useless time wasting stuff.
