Prime Hunter:
registered on 2004-08-09 06:04:32 pm.
Gender: male
Location: USA
I think both of you (Boris and TheGreenManalishi) hit on two of the main reasons I was drawn to this forum, one of the only forums I've joined, back in 04. Echoes was coming out in a few months, and the future of the series had never looked brighter. I heard about everything that could be done with Prime and the rest of the series and became interested in learning more about both the games and the people behind making these breaks a reality. I tried for years to "pay back" the community by finding something on my own to contribute to the wave of sequence breaking and speed running, and by the time I did with Corruption the future of the series had fallen into question. That was only a span of about three years, but the fact that the series is turning in a direction not everyone is willing to accept definitely contributed to the current status of the forums.
I seem to remember things were still being discovered in most of the series a year or two after I joined. But as time went on and the series took a new direction, there were less things to discover overall either because of the mechanics of the games themselves, or else the community had searched high and low to the point where it didn't look hopeful that anything major would be found again. So as far as the community is concerned, it seems to me that there was less of a reason for new members to join up since the fire that had fueled us for so long had finally begun to burn out.
Realize it's been nearly six years now since the site started. Six years is a long time in both the game industry and the real world. Things have changed and evolved since then for both the series and the older members of the forum. Real life has a way of getting involved and can push out the things we used to enjoy, or else delay them long enough so that we lose the feeling we used to have for something. I know personally my last year of college certainly didn't help my love of the series, as I haven't really played it that often in a long time. (And as far as the hacks are concerned, I have absolutely no interest in them since I don't use emulators or the necessary programs to play them) I still love the series, but I must admit that I don't share the same enthusiasm and excitement that I used to have during the high point of the forum a few years back.
From my perspective at least, the forum lost something along the way either because of the direction of the series itself or outside influences taking a good portion of the community with them. Like I said, I don't play any of the hacks at all, and while I know that section of the forum is still going strong from the looks of things, the core games themselves have been picked clean it would seem. Nobody is really searching through the core games these days because it is unlikely that something groundbreaking would be discovered at this point, although with the way things have been in the past I wouldn't be surprised if something came up one day.
I have a lot of good memories of those days when it seemed things were turning up on a daily basis. Anyone who was here during those times could probably back me up on this, and while I'm not trying to say that new members should be turned away or shunned because of the fact that they didn't go through this same experience, there is definitely a divide that is growing between the two groups of members. Newer members don't have the same memories as those of us from back in the early days, and sometimes it would seem that some of the older members don't remember what it was like for us back when we first joined. I seem to remember making some mistakes back then (Like not knowing when to give up a fight against a member who was dead set on his opinion being right, no matter what evidence was presented) and I'm not even sure what others think of me even though I am an older forum member. To be honest there are still days where it feels to me like I don't entirely belong with the "big dogs" so to speak, but that may have something to do with my own choices on the forum and not the members themselves.
But the biggest thing that is missing from the forum is the enthusiasm that used to be present in nearly every corner of the forums. We need to have something new to sink our teeth into, AND it needs to give us enough room to maneuver. Other M will bring in new members, just like Hunters and Corruption did when they were released. Hopefully it will be open ended enough to give us back a little of that spark we used to have.
And yes, while I'm certainly open to intelligent discussion on things outside of the game industry and the series, it's not why I came here in the first place. But it IS one reason I stick around here rather than jumping ship and going to a different forum, because to be perfectly honest, I doubt I'd stick around much longer if the forum disintegrated into something resembling GameFAQs. (To be fair, I'm not a member of that forum, so I may have missed the more intelligent discussions. Most of what I see is pretty stupid or pointless in my opinion.)
I seem to remember things were still being discovered in most of the series a year or two after I joined. But as time went on and the series took a new direction, there were less things to discover overall either because of the mechanics of the games themselves, or else the community had searched high and low to the point where it didn't look hopeful that anything major would be found again. So as far as the community is concerned, it seems to me that there was less of a reason for new members to join up since the fire that had fueled us for so long had finally begun to burn out.
Realize it's been nearly six years now since the site started. Six years is a long time in both the game industry and the real world. Things have changed and evolved since then for both the series and the older members of the forum. Real life has a way of getting involved and can push out the things we used to enjoy, or else delay them long enough so that we lose the feeling we used to have for something. I know personally my last year of college certainly didn't help my love of the series, as I haven't really played it that often in a long time. (And as far as the hacks are concerned, I have absolutely no interest in them since I don't use emulators or the necessary programs to play them) I still love the series, but I must admit that I don't share the same enthusiasm and excitement that I used to have during the high point of the forum a few years back.
From my perspective at least, the forum lost something along the way either because of the direction of the series itself or outside influences taking a good portion of the community with them. Like I said, I don't play any of the hacks at all, and while I know that section of the forum is still going strong from the looks of things, the core games themselves have been picked clean it would seem. Nobody is really searching through the core games these days because it is unlikely that something groundbreaking would be discovered at this point, although with the way things have been in the past I wouldn't be surprised if something came up one day.
I have a lot of good memories of those days when it seemed things were turning up on a daily basis. Anyone who was here during those times could probably back me up on this, and while I'm not trying to say that new members should be turned away or shunned because of the fact that they didn't go through this same experience, there is definitely a divide that is growing between the two groups of members. Newer members don't have the same memories as those of us from back in the early days, and sometimes it would seem that some of the older members don't remember what it was like for us back when we first joined. I seem to remember making some mistakes back then (Like not knowing when to give up a fight against a member who was dead set on his opinion being right, no matter what evidence was presented) and I'm not even sure what others think of me even though I am an older forum member. To be honest there are still days where it feels to me like I don't entirely belong with the "big dogs" so to speak, but that may have something to do with my own choices on the forum and not the members themselves.
But the biggest thing that is missing from the forum is the enthusiasm that used to be present in nearly every corner of the forums. We need to have something new to sink our teeth into, AND it needs to give us enough room to maneuver. Other M will bring in new members, just like Hunters and Corruption did when they were released. Hopefully it will be open ended enough to give us back a little of that spark we used to have.
And yes, while I'm certainly open to intelligent discussion on things outside of the game industry and the series, it's not why I came here in the first place. But it IS one reason I stick around here rather than jumping ship and going to a different forum, because to be perfectly honest, I doubt I'd stick around much longer if the forum disintegrated into something resembling GameFAQs. (To be fair, I'm not a member of that forum, so I may have missed the more intelligent discussions. Most of what I see is pretty stupid or pointless in my opinion.)
