I was checking out the BestofV and The Tuesday Show last night where they each talked a little bit about the SuperCombo launch, and I think it would be nice to get some general opinions and collective experiences based on this little segment:
( [ Link ] In case twitch embeds aren't a thing here like with YT vids)
Not to single anything out of context; the entire VoD is [ here ] if you would like to see the entire segment, I just think this max-possible-clippable-amount sums up a good bit of some of the misconceptions/issues regarding where to get your FGC (and 'in general') info online nowadays. Essentially, here's the breakdown:
David: I wish them [SC] the best- I don't really see forums making a comeback, but I hope they can make something nice out of it.
JChen: On the topic of preserving information, Discord and Twitter have nothing over forums. Things get very easily lost and disorganized on both platforms.
David: Correct- "Twitter is stronger in other ways, Discord is stronger in other ways( . . . )I'm just talking about people being jerks to each other; probably saying misogynistic stuff- I don't know, I haven't been on there in forever"
On the topic of forums being "archaic"- well, maybe, but I think this largely just depends on community acceptance. For instance, I'm really big into arcade repair and restoration things, and all of the good information and support is on forums like ArcadeProjects and Klov. The general average demographic is a tad older, sure, but you would be shocked at how many users there are in the same age range as myself and (I'm assuming) others that would use a forum like SC (early 20's to early 30's). Having been using sites like these for a number of years now just out of hobby necessity and meeting some good people/having good experiences through them, I'm constantly hit by onlookers with the misconception that:
It's all dinosaurs that never outgrew how they talked on the internet 20/25 years ago.
They only get new users because said users WANT to talk how people used to 20/25 years ago.
In my experience, this just isn't the case; at least not universally. Are there some bad apples on forums? Sure, though frankly in my experiences, they don't last very long 👢, and this is more a question of proper moderation as opposed to a "nature of the beast" of forums, exclusively. While this 110% is not a callout on David by any means since I see this sentiment expressed from plenty of folks regarding other forums, to say that one of the main issues with forums is that they're amoral wastelands... compared to [X or Y modern social media/instant messenger]...kinda can't help but wonder who's actually holding the "stuck in the past" mentality lol. SC has a very nicely laid out Code of Conduct that, if properly upheld, would prove to make SC a much more inclusive place for actually discussing FGC things, rather than hopping into some mysterious character Discord that may have god-knows-what rules, if any, or subjugating yourself to the wild-west shark-tank of social media where even good, semi-viral reception will still be miserably hard to find within a week worth of active posting following it.
Not that either of these are without purpose either; access to Instant information is invaluable nowadays. Discords also just a whole freakin' cell phone in a piece of software lol. I don't see my friends and I screen sharing our games with the rest of our friend group through SuperCombo anytime soon. They have their (very necessary) place within the FGC, of course, but I think it kind of just comes down to accountability and effort. It's just generally harder to have the patience to not only write, but read through someone's best-seller-novel-worth of text (example uh...here lol) compared to a quick'n'dirty Tweet. As far as accountability, sure you can delete forum posts (sometimes) as simply as tweets, but more often in my experiences, if someone has a shit take on a forum, you can actually read through the thread and see if there's been an actual discussion and growth, whereas with a tweet, reply-chains just don't have the same longevity/effectiveness, or they just convert into someones youtube drama video I guess before being lost to time lol. You could probably also talk about Tweets actually being a necessary business/monetization tool for some users as opposed to making a forum post, but that's just a small percentage of FGC Twitter users that I'm not sure fits into the discussion.
So, what are your experiences with forums in [ current year ]? What do you hope to get out of SC that you aren't getting from Discord/Socials? If you watched them, what did you think of each show's segments on SC, and what do you think an FGC forum "needs" to "make a comeback"?