You can't usually go wrong with a Maiden survivor of some description
GAMES DISCUSSION - submissions welcome!
- Thread starter Night Prowler
- Start date
For reference, that's the reason I'd want to bring the "never-ending games" into the games forum. To bring eyes to the survivors and other games.
Yeah, we can.
I am strongly against bringing endless games to this subforum. I see them as spam threads and it would get in the way of games with an actual purpose. The best thing about survivors and other similar games, for me, is the opportunity for discussion and (re)discovery. You don’t get that with Guess the Maiden Song.
That being said, I am also having survivor fatigue. The biggest problem is lack of participants. Running a survivor that only attracts a small handful can be draining. It is also frustrating when there aren’t enough votes to progress forward or a song gets eliminated because of one or two people. Even just as a participant, it’s hard to get excited about these games. Steven Wilson and Tom Waits survivors both suffer this problem. It gets to the point where I don’t even care about the results anymore. But I do like the discussions, so a discography discussion type thread is a good replacement.
It’s worth mentioning that SMX took the idea for survivors from the Dream Theater forum: a much larger community with a wide variety of tastes and musical niches. There are enough users there to run survivors for a wider variety of band. Here on Maidenfans, I can’t think of many bands that would attract a significant number of participants.
There are some solutions. Broadening games to be more genre based than artist based would be a start. Not everyone here has heard every single Black Sabbath album, but I’d guess most people are familiar with the essentials and might be interested in a roots of heavy metal game. I’m also a fan of the head to head format. There’s more excitement there and the games tend to be faster paced. It has also been awhile since we did a tournament of champions. That’s something we could bring back but with a fresh take.
It has been awhile since we did an Iron Maiden survivor. I’d like to see one happen in 2019, but it should be a new format that we can use as a template for games going forward.
That being said, I am also having survivor fatigue. The biggest problem is lack of participants. Running a survivor that only attracts a small handful can be draining. It is also frustrating when there aren’t enough votes to progress forward or a song gets eliminated because of one or two people. Even just as a participant, it’s hard to get excited about these games. Steven Wilson and Tom Waits survivors both suffer this problem. It gets to the point where I don’t even care about the results anymore. But I do like the discussions, so a discography discussion type thread is a good replacement.
It’s worth mentioning that SMX took the idea for survivors from the Dream Theater forum: a much larger community with a wide variety of tastes and musical niches. There are enough users there to run survivors for a wider variety of band. Here on Maidenfans, I can’t think of many bands that would attract a significant number of participants.
There are some solutions. Broadening games to be more genre based than artist based would be a start. Not everyone here has heard every single Black Sabbath album, but I’d guess most people are familiar with the essentials and might be interested in a roots of heavy metal game. I’m also a fan of the head to head format. There’s more excitement there and the games tend to be faster paced. It has also been awhile since we did a tournament of champions. That’s something we could bring back but with a fresh take.
It has been awhile since we did an Iron Maiden survivor. I’d like to see one happen in 2019, but it should be a new format that we can use as a template for games going forward.
Sounds to me like there are two ways to fix this:
1. To come up with a new format. This can work and it can not work. Not everyone may be cool with the new format, or it may not work out.
2. Draw more people in to the survivors. This would work best if there would be a popular survivor (say, Iron Maiden) during an activity surge such as the beginning of a new tour or a new album announcement. Or we find a way to advertise our board, and maybe use the survivors as an advertisement gimmick. The downside of the latter is that we would need an active and thriving survivor scene to attract the attention, and that's our catch-22.
1. To come up with a new format. This can work and it can not work. Not everyone may be cool with the new format, or it may not work out.
2. Draw more people in to the survivors. This would work best if there would be a popular survivor (say, Iron Maiden) during an activity surge such as the beginning of a new tour or a new album announcement. Or we find a way to advertise our board, and maybe use the survivors as an advertisement gimmick. The downside of the latter is that we would need an active and thriving survivor scene to attract the attention, and that's our catch-22.
Ariana
Black-and-white leopard
I might be in the minority here, but I see absolutely no point in Rankings threads because they rarely go beyond bickering over numbers.
"I think song X is ranked way too high"
"What are you talking about? It's a top 5 song!"
"Not in my book, buddy, not in my book. It's number 87 for me."
"Bullshit. It's a solid top 18 2/3."
And so on. You know what I mean. How is that of any actual value to anyone?
I guess a new format would really be the best, although discography discussions are also very interesting if more people are involved.
"I think song X is ranked way too high"
"What are you talking about? It's a top 5 song!"
"Not in my book, buddy, not in my book. It's number 87 for me."
"Bullshit. It's a solid top 18 2/3."
And so on. You know what I mean. How is that of any actual value to anyone?
I guess a new format would really be the best, although discography discussions are also very interesting if more people are involved.
Black Wizard
Pleb Hunter
I agree that we should start with Iron Maiden, and then focus on having more Iron Maiden-based games to keep the number of participants up. We can do another Iron Maiden survivor, sure, but I don't think the results will be too different from the previous ten we've had before and we'll be treading old ground with some of the discussion/arguments that come out of it. The albums head-to-head game was good fun and had an interesting format, but it won't work when a new album is eventually released and there are only so many combinations of albums we can start with. Unless we have a big influx of new members then the results of the games will just converge if we keep using the same format. I know that with the current Iced Earth survivor Night Prowler reversed the order in which he ran the albums, which will actually be a really good idea for when Iron Maiden have a new album as we'll all be listening to it on repeat for the first few weeks and there will be a lot of activity on the forum.
If we go to rankings threads (which I haven't looked at) then we risk going down the same route as the survivors - every band we can think of gets ranked and we'll eventually lose interest in the format. At the end of the day, survivors and rankings are just elaborate, drawn-out methods of creating lists. Something we're trying to move away from.
Some of the bands I've seen suggested for future survivors did interest me (e.g. Gojira, Kreator, Epica) but as I'm a bit jaded by the number of survivors I'm not enthusiastic about more survivors for the sake of having a survivor. These bands wouldn't get enough participants to make it interesting so would take far too long and I think that the forum members who are currently running survivors don't have enough time on their hands to update a fast moving game anyway. A few years ago we used to get through an Iron Maiden survivor much quicker as each round would last no more than three days, but now a round can last a month or something and it's tough to keep people interested when that happens.
Maybe we could do discography discussion threads for more bands, but we already have threads for these bands in Music Discussion. Pretty much all of these threads are rarely active and when someone does post in them there's no substance. Instead the Music Discussion threads have turned into social media posts where members embed a Youtube video or link to a Blabbermouth article without making any comment on what the song is like, what's in the video or what their opinion is on the latest bit of news from the band. It's becoming increasingly difficult to generate any discussion in Music Discussion now because its treated like Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. I've seen some of you giving album reviews in the survivor threads which leads to a bit of discussion, but wouldn't we be better off having this discussion in the band's dedicated thread in Music Discussion? If we have discography discussion threads for each of these bands then the band threads become obsolete and the forum gets more cluttered. If it's a choice between a survivor which could take more than six months, a discography discussion thread or using the band threads properly or bands like Gojira, Kreator or Epica, then I'd much rather keep the pre-existing threads alive and frequently appearing in the New Posts section on the main page.
I don't have any specific ideas for new games or formats, but I would like to see them focus predominantly on Iron Maiden or look at Metal/Rock/whatever on a broader scale. We don't need to constantly have games running - I'd rather we had some good discussion elsewhere - so maybe we should take a break from starting new games until someone has thought of something that might work well and get a good number of participants. Perhaps take some time to think about it or have a look on other forums to get some ideas?
Lampwick 43
Barstool Warrior
On the topic of games, this isn't music related at all, but I saw that in the past this forum played some sort of mafia game. Is there any chance of something like that coming back? It looked fun!
Diesel 11
As you scream into the web of silence...
That’s an easy way to boil the stuff down to, but the Rankings threads have also had some good discussion about the actual music here and there. I liked NP’s discussion-vivor format with the Devin Townsend work, so maybe if in future we go down something of that route - each week we discuss a new album and vote on how we’d rate the songs.
SixesAlltheway
Ancient Mariner
We can just have the discography discussions in the individual band threads. If people see new posts in a thread of a band they like they'll check it out.....Or the thread title can perhapos be changed to make people more aware while the discussion is taking place?
Discography discussions really need their own threads. Using an already established band thread for that would run the risk of the thread getting derailed if the band is currently active. The idea of hosting those here is based on possibly having a poll/survivor component. I would also like to bring back my Yearly Metal Project with some sort of forum game attached.
I also agree that many of the music discussion threads have gotten a bit spammy. I think we just need to do a better job at encouraging discussion. The forum rules do discourage posts that just contain a link and nothing more, maybe we need to enforce that more.
That being said, I think it’s okay for those threads to be moved here because they received input from multiple members and have results similar to a survivor. And there is occasionally some interesting discussion. But I hope that after the Blaze one ends that’s it for awhile. I don’t think we need to see rankings for every Maiden side project or even non-Maiden related bands.
I also agree that many of the music discussion threads have gotten a bit spammy. I think we just need to do a better job at encouraging discussion. The forum rules do discourage posts that just contain a link and nothing more, maybe we need to enforce that more.
I agree with this. To add to that, the sample size of these threads is not large enough for the results to have any meaning to me. The Maiden ranking thread being a notable exception.
That being said, I think it’s okay for those threads to be moved here because they received input from multiple members and have results similar to a survivor. And there is occasionally some interesting discussion. But I hope that after the Blaze one ends that’s it for awhile. I don’t think we need to see rankings for every Maiden side project or even non-Maiden related bands.
Diesel 11
As you scream into the web of silence...
I do have a few ideas for future ranking threads, but they’re Maiden-related and should be more interesting to the general members. That said, once the Blaze thread ends I’m gonna need a break from this kinda thing because too much at one time will drain. So yeah, unless someone else starts something I won’t do anything new for a while.
Black Wizard
Pleb Hunter
The forum rules state that offending forum members will be subject to the "moderation process". I can think of a small number of forum members who repeatedly post links or videos without any accompanying words, perhaps a gentle rebuke or two when this happens might put an end to it? If one of said members was a moderator it might be a bit awkward though...
Most of the band threads don't get used though. The only significantly active band thread in Music Discussion is the Judas Priest thread, and since the discography discussion is a separate thread the only reason that the Judas Priest thread is currently used is to report on what KK Downing has been complaining about. Other threads get used for tour announcements occasionally but most are rarely active. For example, the Blind Guardian thread (a band with an extensive discography) has progressed two pages in the last two years but I know that plenty people here listen to them. Savatage have a very extensive discography and have plenty of fans here but the four year old thread hasn't completed its second page yet. There's plenty scope for us to use pre-existing threads properly.
SixesAlltheway
Ancient Mariner
Yeah, I don't see why current band news and a discography discussion can't co-exist. If something actually really important happens worth talking about when it comes to a band, the discography discussion can be put on hold and resume after a week or two?
My biggest concern with this is elitism. Maybe we don't get a lot of discussion, but if it brings people into the forum to participate in what you might consider more meaningful games, then that is an absolute win after all:
I think we all agree that this is the problem with current survivors. The survivors get a lot more interesting with more people, but 6-7 is a "popular" survivor these days, and that's a problem for the viability of the format. I get why you see the endless games as "spam", but if the goal is gonna be to bring people into the other game formats you need something to get them interested. Survivors are a heavy lift for a new forum member to participate with. They feel like a commitment.
This is something that can happen. Forum Games do not *need* to be specifically music related. Looking to the community for more input on this point.
I agree, let's get back to basics. Run less survivors at once as well. Some of us do not have the time to do 3-4 at once.
Agreed, let's try to limit them in the same way we would survivors.
We can fix this by doing less survivors and having the forum members interested in them working as a team rather than individually. IE, if we decide a survivor updates every 4 days, we have people set up a shared document to do the work and have 3-4 people able to do the updates.
Black Wizard
Pleb Hunter
Yes, exactly, and I believe the whole point in having a thread about a band is to discuss the band's music, yes?
SixesAlltheway
Ancient Mariner
Might as well use the band threads since we seem as a forum to take much pride in starting and having a lot of them 
Confeos
Game time started.
So, I got a Rainbow-biography for Christmas, and I'm pretty sure I'll be going through their entire discography in the near future (and make sure to post any reviews or thoughts in the relevant "Music Discussion"-thread, if they have one).
I think I might have asked this before, but would anyone be interested in a Rainbow survivor spanning all their eras, whenever a spot opens up? I know there's been a few Dio survivors already, and I seem to recall someone suggesting a new one covering both Elf, Rainbow, Sabbath etc., so maybe they'll kinda overlap, or?
I think I might have asked this before, but would anyone be interested in a Rainbow survivor spanning all their eras, whenever a spot opens up? I know there's been a few Dio survivors already, and I seem to recall someone suggesting a new one covering both Elf, Rainbow, Sabbath etc., so maybe they'll kinda overlap, or?