So I run a small gaming clan @ www.clanrad.com, and well the biggest problem our main way of communicating is through Ventrilo(a voice powered server, similar to skype in a sense), so many ppl are content using strictly Ventrilo. Any advice as to how to entice users into the website, I've tried little posting competitions for free steam games but it didn't turn out so well. Anyone else run into this at all? Or do I just live with it and hope over time as we recruit we get active folks on the forum?
I'm not really a gamer, so it's gonna be hard coming up with some suggestions but.... At first glance at your forum, you've not really got any specific areas for the actual games. What games does your clan play? Have a specific forum for each game so people can have a place to share the easter eggs they've found in games, favourite game maps, favourite weapons to use, characters. What about having a section for those who like to make videos of their gaming sessions (I have a friend who loves doing that).
It's really a multi-gaming clan, we try not to focus on one particuliar game so I haven't made specific categories. Maybe that would encourage folks to engage in discussion for the game of their preference.
I think so. You have two general discussion forums on there. One in your gaming section and one in your Off Topic - as silly as it sounds that can be confusing all on its own. So I would suggest changing it slightly - have forums for the top three games your clan plays, and a fourth for "All other Games!". You can add more forums for games that are proving to be popular discussions by monitoring your "other games" forum. What about a News section for the games - update patches information, glitches found, etc?
Hi Russ I run a gaming forum as well, we opted not to use any live services because we were afraid it would diminish use of our forum. I know a lot of games "need" Ventrillo, but so far we've been lucky and the game we support we've gotten away with using it all the way till now. Is there any way you can support games without using Ventrilo, or is live voice speaking integral to the game? We don't even have a chatbox on our forum for fear that peeps would gravitate towards that instead of taking their time to post. gogo
I have wondered this as well. I own and operate some gaming forums. My primary ones are currently MVC3Forum, and CODForums. CODForums is growing with MW3 around the corner, but MVC3Forum already has a game out, and is impending an update release. What doesn't make sense to me is that MVC3Forum has reached 20 thousand visitors already and it's only at 100 members. That alone doesn't make sense to me.
Well, we're all about the latest shooters, call of duty, battlefield 3, bad company 2, dead island, we love these sorts of games and would sort of defeat the purpose of our clan idea if we swayed away from it.
And it's a pretty big niche.... 8 million people have played the BF3 beta. 25 million people own Black Ops, and MW3 is set to outsell it.
I think that was a good move not focusing on one game. I'm quite a fan of 1st person shooters myself (not that i'm that great with them) the cods, battlefield and other complex army games I'm not into i'm more of a fan of the easy just jump right in shooters "left 4 dead 2" purchased on steam for £2.50 and waiting for serious sam 3 (impatiently) Me and my brothers used to network this in our younger years. Just out of curiosity (and i remember your site russ it's very nice btw) are you looking into those two games i mentioned? Anyway, you said you run competitions and they didn't work out. Did you offer up a game that was already released? chances are people will have that game why not run a competition for a game (example serious sam 3 that's not released) so people will be more enticed to partake in competitions your running so when the competion ends the game is just been release and your able to give them their prizes. That said, your buggered if they hold the game off and set back the release date (this happened with serious sam3) but why not offer up games that have a release date that haven't been released.
It's a big game but my forum is for my passion, which is our gaming group, I don't want to go to a game where I don't enjoy as much simply because there's larger demand for forum usage ;p. The problem isn't recruiting members into our clan, it's getting the members passionate as I am about the website. I threw all the offer for all the Black Ops expansion packs which I thought was cool, and majority of folks don't have. I do like the idea of throwing up a game that hasn't been released, a little more anticipation and more discussion can be done about the upcoming game. thanks for the feedback all
I own or run a number of gaming based forums so I can fully appreciate the problem. Encouraging existing members to use the forums is an uphill struggle because in general the forums are not their primary focus and also your membership is usually quite low in forum terms. The first hurdle is to get members to simply open up a browser. I always have a widget/side block that links directly to our chosen coms package. I also maintain an AFK thread and insist that members use it if they are not going to be around. I ensure that I write up any multi-play activity that requires a clan/guild effort and keep up-to-date rankings on the forum. I have a portal/cms that pulls clan/guild collective achievements from the forum and do the same for important industry news. Once you have members at least looking in, hopefully on a daily basis, the next hurdle is to encourage them to post. XenForo is ideal for this because as soon as they post once, ensure you like the post assuming it has some modicum of virtue Also reply to their posts even if you don't have much to say about it. As soon as members start getting notifications, likes, trophies etc, it encourages them to start looking in on a daily basis and hopefully, they will start posting
