Together Retro 2022?

[alienjesus]

Hi everyone

Just gathering some thoughts on Together Retro for next year. Normally by now we'd have put together a list of people to choose for each month and started a poll for January too - but interest seems to be dwindling across the board.]

- We couldn't find enough volunteers to fill the months in 2021 without people going twice.
- The number of people joining in is lower than before
- Several times no-one has made a poll on time and no-one really noticed.


I'm thinking it seems like Together Retro participation may have just run it's course - but what do you make of it? Should we keep it going?

[prfsnl_gmr]

I think we should scale it back, certainly. We seem to get a lot of participation in the voting threads, but not that many people actually play the games (or, if they do, they don’t discuss them much).

I have some ideas for 2022 “gaming challenge” threads, and if I have some time over the holidays, I’ll get those up and running. Hopefully, they’ll get people talking about games a bit.

[Nemoide]

I think at its core TR is a good idea, but I feel like it may have run its course or will need some modifications.

For one thing, while the broad categories make it easier for people to participate, it also feels a lot less "together" than when we all just played a single game each month, especially when there were articles for it on the main page.
But for folks like me, picking a single game each month definitely means reduced participation. I'm not really into emulation, so if someone picks a game I don't own and can't get easily/cheaply, I'll probably just let that month slide (although I'm now at a point in my life where I have more money to spend on games). In years past, the community has been big enough for reduced participation to not be such a huge issue but now we're small enough so that it's pretty obvious when we have fewer folks playing games.

IDK, I have no obvious solutions.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Maybe we switch to bi-monthly and pick a single classic game? Perhaps we could vote at the beginning of the year for a slate of six classic games from different systems?

[Note]

I was also thinking we could have each theme (or console, or game) voted on run for two months, instead of one. It would cut down on the number of people that need to volunteer to host, as well as give people more time to participate.

I'm open to either still using themes, specific games, or specific consoles as AJ suggested in the chat.

[SpaceBooger]

I love TR, but maybe it can be updated like the suggestions above.
I listen to a podcast called Retro Game Guys, they pick a game and the podcast format goes as follows:
1. History
2. Interesting Facts
3. Memories
4. Review/Opinions

Currently, we pick something and we do steps 1 a& 4 from above - history and review.
Maybe we could structure it where we pick a game (I like the more narrowed down idea like we used to do) bi-monthly for short games, monthly for longer games. The persons running that month do the history and then we just discuss, post updates and help each other only for a certain time. Then on the last day or two of the month, we post our reviews. Saving the reviews until the end will keep people checking in and discussing instead of moving on to the next game.

This could then be reformatted and put on the main site as an article. Now, this is a blatant rip-off of the show I mentioned, we could/should tweak it.

I like having a dedicated game, this month it seems that many are focusing on one Camelot game and there has been more discussion, and then staying on topic for that game.

Lastly, HUGE IDEA, lets do games where we are kinda competing and posting scores, progress etc. This leaderboard may keep people engaged as well.

[Nemoide]

I really like the idea of posting/competing for scores! I'm pretty sure we used to do that kind of thing around herein the shmup forum and obviously only works if we're playing the same game.
A bi-monthly schedule of specific games for different consoles seems like the best course of action.

[o.pwuaioc]

One thing that happened over the past few years is that the TR theme has become broader and broader. I remember it being much narrower before, at least sometimes. It would be good to play the same game, not just i.e. the same developer, console, or time period. But in order for that to work well, there would need to be more than 1 a month, as not everyone will have the same games/same interests.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I like the idea of bi-monthly playing from a different specific console! I think that's a compromise that works pretty well ^w^

[SpaceBooger]

The broad idea was to get more people to play since there would be more options. If we narrow it to one game (even different versions - nes/master system/arcade/etc) we may have less people show interest, but we should have more posts and discussions.
Leaderboards are great, even if it's only two people duking it out - even if it wasn't me I would love to be a spectator to the scores and trash talk.