03-06-2020, 09:10 PM
MFGG isn't a ghost town, but it certainly hasn't been hopping lately.
On a personal level, MFGG has a lot of members who have been part of the community for a long time. Most of us joined when we were teenagers and had a massive amount of free time. However, we got older and got degrees and jobs and (maybe) true love, and nowadays most of the longtime members have less time for hanging out online. I still check the MFGG forums most days, but posting and working on games is now a "sometimes thing" instead of something I do every day.
I think the takedown of a handful of high-profile fangames a few years ago hurt a lot. These games weren't hosted on MFGG, and most or all of them were either monetized or 1:1 remakes of official Nintendo games. However, this discouraged a lot of people from making fangames, and it seemed to cause a rise in anti-fangame sentiment on social media.
Independent forums in general have been hurting in recent years. It certainly could be worse - a lot of similar forums have disappeared outright. The Internet world has changed drastically in recent years - and not necessarily for the better - and small, nonprofit communities have had a hard time competing with bigger, commercial social networks with deep pockets. Most forums, including MFGG, were built in a time when online communication was decentralized, text-based, and desktop-first. Today's Internet is centralized (dominated by a handful of "walled gardens" like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit), visual (people don't have the attention spans to read anything and prefer a medium where it's easy to consume and post images and videos), and mobile-first (people do most of their browsing on smart phones, and MFGG is still made with Windows desktops and laptops in mind).
I still think forums serve an important niche - I find this sort of asynchronous communication to be more convenient than a fast-paced chat group, and I like spending time on places with a unique vibe and a nonprofit mindset (MFGG isn't selling my data to make Silicon Valley rich). However, it's a lot more difficult to attract and retain members than it was 15 years ago.
On a personal level, MFGG has a lot of members who have been part of the community for a long time. Most of us joined when we were teenagers and had a massive amount of free time. However, we got older and got degrees and jobs and (maybe) true love, and nowadays most of the longtime members have less time for hanging out online. I still check the MFGG forums most days, but posting and working on games is now a "sometimes thing" instead of something I do every day.
I think the takedown of a handful of high-profile fangames a few years ago hurt a lot. These games weren't hosted on MFGG, and most or all of them were either monetized or 1:1 remakes of official Nintendo games. However, this discouraged a lot of people from making fangames, and it seemed to cause a rise in anti-fangame sentiment on social media.
Independent forums in general have been hurting in recent years. It certainly could be worse - a lot of similar forums have disappeared outright. The Internet world has changed drastically in recent years - and not necessarily for the better - and small, nonprofit communities have had a hard time competing with bigger, commercial social networks with deep pockets. Most forums, including MFGG, were built in a time when online communication was decentralized, text-based, and desktop-first. Today's Internet is centralized (dominated by a handful of "walled gardens" like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit), visual (people don't have the attention spans to read anything and prefer a medium where it's easy to consume and post images and videos), and mobile-first (people do most of their browsing on smart phones, and MFGG is still made with Windows desktops and laptops in mind).
I still think forums serve an important niche - I find this sort of asynchronous communication to be more convenient than a fast-paced chat group, and I like spending time on places with a unique vibe and a nonprofit mindset (MFGG isn't selling my data to make Silicon Valley rich). However, it's a lot more difficult to attract and retain members than it was 15 years ago.
Course clear! You got a card.
![[Image: CourseClear.gif]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/d5mcpm4nmt0gd14/CourseClear.gif)
![[-]](https://forums.mfgg.net/images/emerald/collapse.png)