If Firaxis starts their own forums then are all the independents toast?

[Dinner]

It seems to me the tide is for game companies to create their own official forums to support their games, like Paradox Forums etc, and inevitably the well financed corporate sites tend to suck up all the members and moders. So far Firaxis has not done this but I would be really surprised if they did not by the time Civ 5 is released in 1-2 years. If that happens then I'm honestly worried that the independent civ forums will end up being a bump on the log compared to the larger official forums backed up with corporate money.

Do you agree or disagree?

[Lorizael]

Wizards of the Coast has their own rather extensive set of forums for D&D, but forums on rpg.net and ENWorld still do just fine. *shrug* I could definitely see it hurting places like Poly and CFC, though.

[Guynemer]

Bollocks. I'm sticking here until I'm the only one left, if needs be.

Poly and CFC have been around forever; I don't think Official Firaxis Forums would have an effect on that.

[Asher]

I disagree. Firaxis would probably have crappy forums full of censorship.

Plus they'd probably have a Sid Meier's Dinosaurs forum.

[Dinner]

I do agree with that. The official forums do tend to censor more stuff then the independents.

[Asher]

The most important part of my post was the Dinosaurs part.

[Robert]

Firaxis had a forum during (prior to) the civ3 release.
It was not much of a success.

[curtsibling]

Poly will go on till doomsday...!

[duke o' york]

Could Firaxis even afford to? I'm sure their staff have better things to do (coding, design?) then moderate a forum, so they'd be forced to rely on volunteers, who might not share the Firaxis vision, even if they were given a sinecure to do it. It's a pretty big investment for something that might not be a success, and I think that the Firaxians who post here and CFC do so because they know there's already a fanbase who are receptive to their ideas and they don't need their own forum to access these fans.

[curtsibling]

The company forums would flare and fade along with the game popularity, and as the fans move to fresh pastures...

Modding support serves to keep a game around longer too.

[Ming]

As usual, the Duke makes a strong case. Why "invest" in something that is already there and serves their need. It is in their best interest to support multiple game sites with established fan bases.

Plus, Asher is right as well. A good forum includes both the good and the bad about the game. Censorship is something that happens at many "company" sites. It's tough to have an honest discussion when the product is flawed. Even BTS, after the final patch, has problems.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Has someone forgotten the old alpha.owo forums?

[SlowwHand]

Firaxis would have to come up with a 250 MB patch for any site.

[Ben Kenobi]

Don't see why, the situation is different then with Paradox. Firaxis would be better served to simply work with Poly and CFC.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

The old Firaxis forums were great. Due to some sort of coding issue, any negative comments about SMAC would simply vanish without trace. And sometimes the posters making the negative comments vanished too. Happy days!