Meat for Meta: Our Collapsing Internet Community.

Warning

Meat for Meta is rated editorial nonsense. These articles are meant to complain about some group, somewhere, that is playing the game for all the wrong reasons or simply to just make fun of 40k nerd rage.

 

I want to start by saying, this is just an opinion not based on analytical fact, but a feeling I have more than anything about our current 40k Internet community, so take it as you will.

 

Nostalgia, the goofy feeling you get when you think back to a simpler time, when everything felt right. The truth is  nostalgia can be completely misguided, just rematch  Voltron or He-Man and honestly ask yourself if they past the test of time. What this has to do with with Warhammer 40k? I often think back to a not so distant past, around 7 years ago when I became reinvigorated in the 40k universe through the miracle of the Internet. Even before, I had lurked around places like Yahoo! groups to the Games Workshop’s own forums.

So, when I think back to those olden days, I try to compare it to the 40k online community we have now. I have come to the conclusion it is collapsing, or at the very least highly fractured; even with such a dire proclamation this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It was back at the start of 5th edition when Blood of Kittens got into the 40k game, at a time when anyone with a connection and a Blogger account had a blog. The forums across the world were filled with joy and discussion. GW had only just started to decouple itself community engagement. It was also the rise of the new kind of blog, dedicated to the competitive side of the game, not just an excuse for posting your pretty models. There was also another type of blog that appeared, the rumor blog. As people become more invested into blogs, more and more people thought they could do the same. Often, the frequent commentator once his ego was satiated would start a blog of his own.

It doesn’t hurt that Google’s blogger was a free and easy platform for people to get into, not to mention it had tools to link people through blogrolls to increase community engagement. It didn’t hurt with the rise of podcasts. as the cult of personality grew enough for people to be heard over the drive to work. It felt like a vibrant time, where the game was growing and everyone was engaged in discussing it.

So, what has happened since this time? Many things, and I am sure I am going to miss some, but let us start with the big one.

60%-80% of all blogs across all topics are abandoned after just one month. The longer you do it the chances for abandonment only increase, these are not money making enterprises, so they are totally sustained on passion, and if you lose the passion then the blog dies. Tied into a niche hobby you only have a finite number people to go through who will make a blog.

GW lackluster to downright hostile engagement. The retreat from global and even regional events, Gamesdays to Grand Tournaments left a big hole in community building. GW left a hole for other games and distractions to fill, at first it was filled with passionate folks who loved the game, but just like blogs, as time goes on passion wanes, especially when the company who makes your game doesn’t love you back. Let us not forget all the cease & desists, pointless lawsuits, and other behavior that gives the GW a bad name.

Constant negativity, everywhere you go these days a 40k hate troll is out constantly attacking. Their jealously bitterness wear on an online community, people stop engaging when all they hear how bad things are. In many cases the content of the blog or forum topic doesn’t matter anymore, just the comments below. The egos grown by the community often become the same ones to devouring it. The clearest example of this is podcasts who turn negative. Once they go negative for against the game and company, you can expect said podcast to have at most a year before going away.

Death of the blogroll, it use to be the biggest websites in our community would support smaller blogs, by providing blogrolls. Back in the heyday you could easily find a blog network to join whatever niche your blogged filled, the numbers have dwindled down to just a few networks providing ways to find content you want. The lack of exposure  means more bloggers lose interest in their blogs because no one is finding them.

Facebook, while the general online community seems to be waning, Facebook has exploded with community groups and pages. What it has done oddly is broken the global community into walled off sections, funny when you consider social media and the Internet is supposed to connect everyone together. In reality it connected people who are liked minded or close in proximity.

6th edition, the rise of the competitive blogger was instantly decapitated by the release of 6th edition. As the internet competitive tough guy couldn’t cut it, so did their blogs fall apart. Players who only got into 40k for competition left the game in droves. 6th edition purged the WAAC player currently making the term antiquated. Speaking from personal experience, I still travel the country for events, I just don’t see this player anymore, worth the cost even if event attendance seems down.

The rumor blog, as the community grew so did the rumor blog. There was a time when it seemed like every blog competed with each other to be the first to a scoop. At a time when GW was a leaky rumor ship we had many voices with accurate knowledge of what was coming next. Once though GW switched the release schedule and closed those holes the rumor blog quickly evaporated leaving very few. The dirty truth though is the rumor blog wasn’t a rumor blog to begin with, it just became one easier to just cut and paste the latest rumor and generate some traffic. This created blogs with no identity making it easy to for them to fade away.

All these events have conspired to diminish the community’s foot print. Finding good blogs and content is just getting  harder. If you look you can still find it, for instance Tumblr has some real gems. Youtube is still a hot bed for content.

I cannot harp on it enough though, most people can only sustain enthusiasm for so long. There is also only so much you can talk about with 40k. Battle reports, army lists, painting, rumors, and fluff, most people are only interested in bits and pieces. How much can you write about the hobby before you burn out? Well I guess if you go to Dakkadakka you can find 10 running threads about why GW is the devil, but that is neither here or there. Even Kevin Roundtree the GW CEO has noticed something isn’t right, and they have a plan to focus customer growth, I just wonder if he knows he needs to grow the community along with it.