<--CONCERNING ARMOR GAMES AND THE FUTURE OF FORUMS-->
Hello everyone, it's MattEmAngel. You may remember me.
Since I joined in 2011, people have been constantly saying "Armor Games is dying, we have to save Armor Games" but no one really had a solution. Well, we have a solution now.
PART I: THE BACKSTORY WITH DISCORD
October 2019: Armor Games linked an official Discord in News and Feedback, as, quote, "an alternative option to those who are being displaced by this decision [to remove Arrow chat] and maintain a free and open connection to the other players you've been working with for so long now." There was apparently a wider variety of channels to participate in, but activity was less than stellar, especially since a lot of people either preferred Arrow Chat or were already in a different AG discord.
March 2020: AG reorganizes the discord by deleting "the channels where most folks weren’t participating" and consolidating all of the content into either "general" (anything relating to AG) and "random" (anything else), the idea being to condense all of the small, organized conversations into one big collective (and disorganized) one.
They also rolled out linking achievements and ranks to the server. Post your Discord username in the forums using your account. Unfortunately, due to some unforeseen 2020-happenings, this was never implemented.
PART II: THE PRESENT FORUMS
Currently only myself and sciller45 talk semi-regularly on the Discord. The Discord itself is moderated by no one. Two people, CathArmor and Tasselfoot, are Admins. They're also admins on multiple other Discords. We'll come back to that.
The Discord itself has only two channels to talk in (general and random). There are no voice chat channels, there are no threads, and users cannot post images or emojis from other Discords.
Meanwhile, the forums receive double the traffic, with three or four other members posting regularly. They are moderated by four Mods (one has been offline for long time) and zero admins (MrDayCee and Gantic are gone, and Ferret has been outright removed entirely from the roster). Besides the low traffic, the forums are suffering from bugs. Empty pages, usernames not updating in the "Featured Topics" section, and the occasional post being eaten. User pages are worse; they still use Disqus. In the words of Moegreche, "If you're looking to get in touch with me via this comment section, please be aware that Disqus is very tricky for me. I tend to not be able to see new comments for a while (sometimes up to a month). At any rate it's very hit-and-miss."
Besides the glitches, we appear to be severely out of date. The "General Settings" section has an area for us to put in our Yahoo! Username, XBOX Live Gamertag, and Wii name. The Wii was discontinued a decade ago. Nothing for Twitch, Epic Games, Google, or Twitter? We've fallen a little behind.
PART III: AGS
For some time now, AG has been investing into Armor Games Studios, self-described as "a full-service indie publisher focused on building a supportive, creative environment for amazing developers." The website has fully embraced integrating games with Steam, Epic, mobile apps, and consoles, including the Switch (why are we still asking for Wii IDs when we publish games on the Switch?...).
Several of these games, interestingly enough, have their own Discord, overseen at times by Armor Games admins (remember Tass and Cath? It's Tass and Cath). Some, such as "The Last Stand: Aftermath," boast over three thousand members. AG's stance on this is "[W]e like letting the games we publish have their own spaces. Different games have different needs...Some pubs have one larger server for all of their games but we prefer to do things like this."
All fine and good. It makes sense for developers to want a personal discord, especially if they have more than one game. But when it comes to gamers talking outside of games, as is evident by AGS's involvement here, they talk on Discord, not on a browser forum.
PART IV: THE FEEDBACK
When bringing this up initially on the AG Discord back in December, I was given a twofold reason why this was not going to happen:
"The biggest downsides are:
- it's not hosted on Armor
- it's 1 more place we have to moderate"
But here's the thing:
- None of the other Discords are hosted on Armor, and
- It only had one moderator, who was recently demodded for presumably not doing anything, and no one noticed.
Consider the fact that Discord has most of the things a forum has: (bold/italic text, image and video uploading, links, pings, tags, roles, and now specifically forums and threads), plus features that browser-based forums don't have (voice chat, screen sharing, and Activities), all in one package that appeals to every medium (Youtubers, video gamers, board gamers, chat rooms, etc.). There's no contest. The era of classic forum layouts, with HTML tags and page-by-page navigation, is done. Discord text and voice communication is synonymous with the modern video game player on EVERY platform.
PART V: THE ULTIMATUM
Armor Games need to embrace a full transition from browser-based forums to Discord.
Add categories like the ones here (Feedback, Gaming, Courtyard, Forge). Put channels it them for the forums (The Tavern, Games, Forum Games, WEPR, Popular Media, AMW, Programming). Forums go in there (New? Introduce Yourself, Count to 100, How to Create an RP/RPG). Users can add threads to them, or add forums to them, I don't know the exact hierarchy but the AG forums can be adapted. The AG forums need to be adapted. Loosen up the restrictions and let users post pictures and emojis. Add some voice chat channels for people to just talk in. I would be completely on board with being able to actually voice chat.
(There's a chance that it was organized like this when it first launched, but AG decided that the solution to widespread, organized low activity was to put all of the kids at one library table and tell them to talk about whatever they wanted all at the same time. The unsurprising result was that people stopped talking completely).
Simultaneously, Armor Games needs to advertise its own Discord more publicly. The only link is in the Forums, which are still crammed up in the top bar of the front page next to the games categories where it is easily missed. AG Studios would do well to link back to the official Discord as well. There's no reason why a game publishing studio would not want people who play the games they publish to communicate outside of the games. That's literally what the Armor Games forums are right now.
It is an extreme step. But it is a necessary step. For years and years, we have gone on and on and on and on about Armor Games dying but no one ever knew what to do about it. Discord is what we do about it. The Armor Games forums need to adapt, because they finally can adapt, on a thriving, easily-accessible, easily-moderated platform that we already have a presence in several times over.
And, if you still have doubts, I encourage you to check in on Kongregate. They transferred to a read-only forum in January 2022 and moved all community activity to Discord. A year later it boasts 6,000 members, with 1k online as of right now. What further proof do you need that it works?
I can't make it much clearer than this. Many members have been saying AG is dying, but no ones says it has to.
