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Forums Blog
23rd April 2014
Forums are a bit of a dying artform, lately.
Between Facebook and Twitter, the idea of having to signup to a specific site for a conversation, when you could equally have that conversation over Twitter is all a bit daft and unnecessary.

What can I say, I'm a grumpy old geezer, who prefers things oldskool!!

That's not to say I don't "get" Twitter. I use it a lot.. .. A LOT!! And it's great for quick responses, too. Ask a question, anything you want, and generally get an answer within about a minute.
Twitter and Facebook are both great in that respect. But where they're both very much realtime, Forums have their own purpose. They retain things in much neater packages. Facebook tries to organise things, but you try to find a conversation you had as long as 2 days ago, and you'll be struggling. Twitter's even worse, usually failing to display anything you're searching for, and god help you if you're trying to re-read a conversation, as "double-posts" get lost along the way. You end up getting back half a conversation, if you're lucky.

Forums were created for the purpose of having, and retaining conversations for future reading. They also tend to be more focussed on specific topic, and for the most-part, you can usually find something you once posted fairly easily.

Asking, and answering, questions on forums usually means the information can be found, at a later date, by someone else who happens to be having a similar problem. By putting these questions and answers onto a stable long-term database, other folk can gain from the experience in the posts. It's a much more useful platform than simply bundling a bunch of questions and answers through Twitter.

I understand the concept of "#IndieDevHour", but I think that Twitter is the wrong place to do it.
Not only are 1,000 Indie Devs all cramming Twitter with content, all at the same time, but they're all expecting to get their games noticed, hoping to get their questions answered, and everything else.. My own timeline is complete and utter chaos, and all I can see is a giant stream of #IndieDevHour flying past my screen.

I don't get the idea of cramming it into a single hour. I don't get the need to do it on Twitter.. And I definitely don't know why it isn't being done on a forum...

I guess I'm a grumpy old fart, living in my world of Forums, BBSs, and Freeware that doesn't keep begging you for money. I'm too old for these new-age game-dev styles.

Use the forums, kids.. That's what us old farts built them for..

Socoder : Topic #1000, March 2008. Using Types in Blitz2D/3D.
Views 134, Upvotes 2  
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