Status Updates

[Nanor]

BiG D: It's not about guranteeing they see it. It's about maximising the opportunities they have to see it. If they don't have X-Fire, Steam or THN open well there ain't much we can do but when they happen to log on to the forums and see we're playing then top banana.

... the assumption that someone who is interested in playing a game has the primary gaming platform open is a solid one.

DocBot is the perfect example. He hasn't been on steam in 6 days and X-Fire in 93
days yet he's on the forum everyday.

And I can "What if" all I want?

TB: Yes, that's correct, but as mentioned people like DocBot (I.E. people on the forums but no X-Fire or Steam) won't know we're playing and will be left out.

 

[thatbloke]

maybe people without X-Fire or steam could instead use said software?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

 

[Nanor]

Not everyone likes using it. I know loads of people that don't use X-Fire because of issues it presents and Steam doesn't support the greatest pile of games.

I'm not proposing to fix it, I'm proposing we improve it so more people are aware of what's going on in THN.

 

[BiG D]

Steam supports every game if you let it.

How to maximize your chances of seeing other THN members playing games in one easy step:

Click

 

[Nanor]

If you let it. That means finding the .exe for every game you play and putting it on there. How many people do you reckon are gonna do that?

There's no-one in there.

 

[BiG D]

Yeah, but it made sure you have steam running, didn't it?

 

[Nanor]

It did. Now if we just get everyone not on Steam to click that link so they can boot up Steam we'll be sorted.

 

[thatbloke]

It did. Now if we just get everyone not on Steam to click that link so they can boot up Steam we'll be sorted.

Now if we just get everyone not on THN to get on THN we'll be sorted.

EDIT: just want to add, I don't think your idea is a bad idea, but I think that there are tools out there that will achieve the same job and are much more focused on being a tool for gaming. If we take the forums, X-Fire, and Steam as an example, all three require that an external tool to access them be used (for the forums, a web browser). While having an alternative is never a bad thing, I don't think it would be that useful when we already have groups/guilds/whatever set up on Steam and X-Fire.

There is a risk of sharding here. If I want to find someone to play games with, I use X-Fire and sometimes Steam. If someone who only uses the forums comes along, how will they know who's on X-Fire? How will I, who uses mainly X-Fire, know what people are saying on the forums without having to use more than one tool to do the job?

 

[Nanor]

It's much more likely people will be casually browsing the forums and then see who's playing than casually booting up Steam.

 

[BiG D]

I am curious who these people are that are so lazy they can't drag some shortcuts of games they play often into steam, but are more than happy to log into the forums every time they start/stop playing a game to update a status.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Hmm, there's a balance to be had in here.

There's almost three stages of problem:

1. I am playing a game right now and I want THNers to come join in
2. I'm going to be playing a game shortly but it's an ad-hoc thing and an event/thread doesn't seem like the right solution
3. I'm going to be playing a game later this week

For the first, Xfire and Steam solve the problem. You've already chosen a game and it's merely a matter of reporting that you are/aren't still playing, which is best done automatically. I gave up with Xfire at the point it was the clear cause of problems in two different games I'd been playing, but Steam seems pretty safe.

For the last, the THN Games' events system is adequate, though I admit that vBulletin's calendar is quite crap a lot of the time.

It's in the middle ground that I see there's a gap. You know you want to play a game and you want to play with THNers. You might not even know what you want to play, yet, though I'd reckon that usually you have an idea (hmm, either TF2 or CoD4 or maybe another shooter). This would be a tool to fill that gap, to declare an interest in playing and maybe even a direction for that, on an entirely temporary basis.

However... it's not a trivial piece of development and the market niche may be quite small. I wonder if there's a way of prototyping this and giving it a test without going through a full bout of development?

 

[BiG D]

2 could probably be solved with some sort of arbitrary steam 'rules.' Off the top of my head, something like:

If you want to play a game, join the THN Steam chatroom. If you've got something in mind, start the game up so it shows in your profile.

Once you're actually playing just drop out of the chatroom.

This means that anyone who opens the chat can instantly see a list of what people want to play.

 

[Ronin Storm]

It's worth a try.