Re: Is forum traffic down?
Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 12:26 am
I wish I could disagree with what Dave has written above but I simply can't. Most of what he wrote I think does not help increasing forum traffic imo.
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Dave the dragon wrote:Killer Cyborg wrote:Rallan wrote:Okay just ignoring the stuff about the culture and moderation of these boards for a moment, I think the single biggest thing driving the decline of traffic here is that Palladium has been around for a long time, its game lines are pretty old and its last big breakout hit was Rifts, and almost all of its new products are books for old lines that get bought by old fans.
So of course traffic's going down. They just straight up don't have enough new fans to make up for the gradual decline of old fans.
I agree completely.
I would disagree, obviously. Sembeida does business like this is still the '80s. There is no online presence from him, and he is essentially the company. He rewrites almost all work given to him, according to both him and most of the freelancers. The staff all agree with him that he does most editing, etc etc etc. You essentially have a one man company, in spite of there being (4 last time I checked) other full time employees.
A one man company who's old enough to have grand-children playing. Many of us dont like to admit it, but you kinda [lose] touch with the crowd thats 20 years younger than you. And you really loose touch when the crowd is 40 years younger than you.
If you want to ignore how poorly the company has treated its customers for the last 25 years (which would seem ridiculous, but why not)....
And you want to ignore the open hostility of the only employee to visit (AlexM), the Mods, and the fans...
And you want to ignore 25 years of everyone involved with the company, including Sembeida himself, saying he basically does it all, and all by himself......
The next obvious problem is you've got an artistic endeavor where the artist has aged 2 generational shifts beyond his target audience. (and I wont even begin to start with the "da schoolsh deez daiz" rants)
Killer Cyborg wrote:So... you think that if Palladium had more of an online presence, that they WOULD have had a breakout hit since Rifts?
Or that the Rifts product line would be a lot more popular?
And that the lack of new fans is simply because of bad customer service and poor online presence, instead of a lack of new products that appeals to newer gamers...?