[Forge]

Sangman, on Aug 3 2009, 10:20 AM, said:

Give it another 6 years. True many people like playing the game, but the actual modding community is what keeps it alive and say what you want but the amount of active modders is pretty small. I think if it weren't for EDuke32, the show would have been over years ago.

Given current trends of 2009 with the marked decline in active users I would say a lot less than six years. As it is Duke is pretty much just a hobby for those hangers on from when they played and created in their youth. People will move on to other things in their life; they'll lose the time to do anything with it, or just completely lose interest when they get hooked on the next game that reminds them of their twenties instead of their teens.

I'm pretty much set in my ways, being of the older stock, so I'll still be playing Duke long after the community disappears. There's literally thousands of user maps and mods that'll last me to the grave.

[SBG]

Which means that we have to figure out a way to increase general popularity. If it weren't for my older brother who showed the game to me when I was 6 or 7 (isn't that when most people start playing? )

If we can deal with the problem of lack of popularity now, rather then when it declines even more, we may keep the community going. There are two major things that draw people to DN: The modding and multiplayer.

If we were able to make these areas grow, such as advertising the mods like Duke Plus, HRP, etc, or something like a Duke4 Tournament, that may bring back people as well as advertise that we're out there and that Duke is a great game.

[OpenMaw]

SBG, on Nov 4 2009, 03:28 PM, said:

If we were able to make these areas grow, such as advertising the mods like Duke Plus, HRP, etc, or something like a Duke4 Tournament, that may bring back people as well as advertise that we're out there and that Duke is a great game.

Tournaments have been tried in the past.

The biggest thing that needs to change is a centralised community. Right now the community is blown all to the sticks. Some here, some on the 3D Realms forums, some on the AMC forums, some on other forums. We probably have a few hundred solid members between all of them, but only a dozen or so per each.

Another thing is making Duke's multiplayer more user friendly. As it stands its a real pain in the ass, and very hit and miss, to get it running properly through Yang/DukesterX/etc.

[Sangman]

Commando Nukem, on Nov 5 2009, 07:27 PM, said:

The biggest thing that needs to change is a centralised community. Right now the community is blown all to the sticks. Some here, some on the 3D Realms forums, some on the AMC forums, some on other forums.

People are going to post wherever they like to post. Just because you declare one forum to be a "center" for all Duke-related activity doesn't mean people are gonna want to post there.

[OpenMaw]

Sangman, on Nov 5 2009, 05:43 PM, said:

People are going to post wherever they like to post. Just because you declare one forum to be a "center" for all Duke-related activity doesn't mean people are gonna want to post there.

I merely stated this community needs to come together into something more substantial than a few on lookers and a couple mod makers.

[SBG]

Me personally, can't mod. I know the theory on how it works, but I don't know the code for CON editing, I can make images, but can't make them art files, etc.

If people were to find it easier to mod, then I think they may find the game fun. Obviously, most wouldn't be like HRP or Duke Plus, but I think people would enjoy the game more if they knew how to mod.

@Commando Nukem: What happened with tournaments?

[OpenMaw]

SBG, on Nov 6 2009, 04:27 AM, said:

@Commando Nukem: What happened with tournaments?

As I recall, at best, we had a momentary boost in people hanging around, and that was it.

What you really need to stimulate a community is to have things going on weekly.

We have mods in production. (DukePlus, AvP2-TC, WGRealms, p0wnzers, DTA, Nefarias Reign... others). We have some very talented folks running several good websites. What we dont have is much interconnectivity between them, and we lack weekly features that would keep the activity level high. This is partially in part because we dont have any Duke news coming down the pipe. Im talking about things like articles/reviews/fan art... etc. Most of that stuff went the way of the phantom years and years ago with the fall of Dukeworld and the utter barrenness of PlanetDuke.

Those are the things that need to make a come back for the community to really re-energize. Obviously its not that nothing new is happening, because Eduke32 is only getting better and better, and great mods are always being worked on, plus YANG has really come into its own as a way to play Duke on the PC. We just dont have much of a community in terms of "stuff" that is continually being done.

[SBG]

Maybe that's what we need, then: a group of people in charge of coming up with ideas to bring the community together. Not just coming up with them; organizing, running, coordinating them. I'd be happy to start that.