News & Events Edition #7

[moondoggie]

Happy fourth month anniversary, everyone~!

Thankfully this news post isn't as big as the last one, so let's get right into it!


Iksay Harvest Festival
We were going to do this at the end of the month, but I decided it's better to push it out fast since we don't got much else going on and we already have something planned for after the festival, which hopefully will create more buzz. The event post will be made around 15-16th May, so make sure you don't miss out and let's gun for another 1000 comments!


Longevity
As a follow-up to my comment about lack of things happening, I'm wondering what we can do as mods to make it more active? Right now we don't have anyone on active hiatus, so I start to worry that maybe we're not making it as good as you guys would like it to be! Remember, the survival of this game depends heavily on your participation, not just ours as mods, or it will fold just like the last one. We're doing everything we can to maintain a mod presence as well as generate activity/material to make posts about, but there's only so many we can do. So please keep up the effort - we need youuuuu! :)


Starry Nights Banner
How would you guys like to submit some fanart specifically about this rp? Julie and I are going to revamp the starry_nights layout and we would like to use everyone's fanart submissions on a monthly rotation for the banner/header. It can be anything relating to the game, whether it's your favourite moments (like setting a library on fire) or just a group of the current characters doing stuff! Unfortunately, I make a terrible artist, but I had a go at it anyway. I actually used a base originally made by Piku-Seru (check out their work), but here we go!

Comments

[charming_chiketsu]

First off, the banner actually is really cute! It captures the personalities too with the poses/expressions. I will try very hard to make something since it's the least I can do.

Also, don't blame anything on yourselves since you guys bend over backwards for this place already. I know a few people are away at the moment, but I know I could try to do more community posts. There's always follow-up ideas I can do from quests or logs, but I don't do it when I should.

I think a big hurdle is getting more members. With a dead franchise/fandom it's difficult to generate interest. >:

[moondoggie]

lmfao, they look like some Harvest Moon/dating sim archetypes, you got the shy girl, cheeky girl, outgoing girl, etc. But I'm interested to see what you make, your art is beautiful!

It's really hard getting new membersss! We messaged just about anyone who's got a Suikoden muse, but the responses have been generally flaky like "Looks cool, we're thinking about it!" and then nothing. ;___; I'm hoping the possibility of Suikoden 2 coming to PSN will revitalize the fandom a bit, because we've run out of places to advertise (tumblr, plurk, DA). Right now all that's left is my first ad post on BG, SO THERE'S ALWAYS HOPE MAYBE

[innkeeper_erin]

A few friends were considering to join but the lack of their desired castmates discourage them :(

[moondoggie]

Nooo! D: Which castmates would they like to see?

I hope that's not the case with most of the players who have seen this game, lmao. Waiting to join until it's big enough or has enough castmates isn't a safe bet, because tbh this community could be dead by this time next year. Everything we do right now matters, and every player, post or comment helps tremendously towards keeping this around.

[innkeeper_erin]

Mostly from 2 and 4. I told them that it will be still fun without castmates, or at least if they applied first someone might apply as castmate in the future

Perhaps because my friends are more of fanartist than writers, too.

[blumelon]

Which characters do they wanna see? I've got a space available to apply for one at the moment. I only know 4 so I can't help with a 2 exclusive character.

[oh_bluebelle]

;;;; Seconding Delci's question! What castmates? I held off on grabbing a new character for ages because I wanted to potentially be someone's castmate, but there was nothing ;;;;

I think this place is slightly more non-writer-friendly because of the option of prose or not prose, too! But I know it can be tough to make the jump. :c

[moondoggie]

Thirding the question!

[saintdork]

From 4, Lazlo and the Razril Knight. Forgot which castmates from 2, it's either Millie or Meg.

[milliebon]

fml if it's millie

[moondoggie]

HAHAH OH MAN

[milliebon]

[blumelon]

I wonder if the style/format of how we rp here is too odd for rpers from tumblr. They usually do the big prose replies. But anyone already in dreamwidth games shouldn't be lost since most still use the style we use. It's normally just logs on DW that are prose, but like I said, if they've rped on DW or even LJ, there shouldn't be an adjustment problem.

Maybe 2 being re-released will stir up hype again hopefully. It is getting released again, right? I don't think I've seen an official announcement from Konami? I just see second hand sources talking.

[moondoggie]

The rp format might be a small factor, too. We've had someone ask us why this game isn't in prose and why it doesn't have a social network setting (voice/video chat), lol! Obviously our answer was "because there already are games like that".

Konami hasn't announced anything about it. ;; That's why I hope the possibility of it will be enough to reignite the passion in the fandom, and maybe even think "Hey, I really love the characters of Suikoden! I want to RP them in a Suikoden setting with other Suikoden characters and see what happens!"

[blumelon]

The social network thing wouldn't really make sense for this game either since it's just one series/fandom we're dealing with that's in a fantasy/medieval-like setting. There is no social network technology, or computers, smartphone type tech, etc. lol...

[moondoggie]

YYYYEEEP

Really no sense to even justify it with a reason so obvious, lmfao

[oh_bluebelle]

It's so weird! I actually can't figure out how to RP on Tumblr, since it seems a bit one-sided and unnatural to me with the chunk of text ;;;;

ARE WE A DYING BREED

[blumelon]

Yeah, tumblr isn't really ideal for discussion/commenting to me. I follow some rpers in another fandom and I can see how they do it. If you're watching from the outside, it's a bit harder to follow their "threads" (it's more like individual posts every single time you want to reply back lol) though sometimes.

I think our game in particular would be more welcoming to those who don't like to or aren't comfortable in writing much though. Tumblr rpers normally write a lot and descriptive so that might be the jarring hurdle for them?

[saintdork]

Same here, I'm not used to Tumblr RP because the quoting format seems too crowded for me ;;

I've seen comments about majority DW/LJ rpers being too uptight with grammar and characterization, too. Which isn't the case with this comm, but the image is too strong.

[moondoggie]

I'm not surprised if DW/LJ rpers have that reputation. That anon meme back in the day was vicious. ;;

I think that people are just reluctant to join something new, out of fear that it will get given up on and they've wasted their time. Which is a conundrum, because ideas generally get given up on when there aren't enough people to support it in the first place. XD;

NOT THAT WE'VE GIVEN UP~ If this is as big as the community's ever going to get, then that makes me happy enough. You guys rule!

[trueltning_fury]

Hi. We haven't given up yet. I've just been very distracted. Work slammed me for a bit and I'm eyeballing another wave of rush jobs and ergh.

But.

The game itself isn't the issue, activities or otherwise. It just needs more warm bodies. For that, you have to advertise on app_this_plz every month, at the very least, and possibly other places. I don't hang out on bakerstreet but some people go there to meme and look for rare muses. It's really all in the advertising. It's not foolproof - I know Luceti's dwindling Suikoden cast has desperately asked for characters every single ATP ever - but ATP is THE #1 main place people go to shop for new games.

Barring that, maybe some word of mouth could help. I could honestly be more proactive mentioning it on plurk, I know several people I used to RP with from Amat who have Suikoden characters in their active lists.

[moondoggie]

I'm glad to hear it's just a work thing! Except for the part where you're doing actual work, that always sucks. ;;

But those are some great suggestions! Julie and I have been out of the rp loop for a good 4 years, so some insider help is always appreciated. I discovered ATP only recently so we didn't have a chance to advertise on it that much, but when we did the results always ended up being zero. We've exhausted just about every avenue when it comes to advertising, there's even an rp advertising comm and variations of ATP on DW, but we keep coming up with virtually nothing. We'll definitely keep persisting on ATP though! To be honest, there's an awesome Albert on Luceti that I would die for!

Otherwise yeah, word of mouth would be a HUGE help, I know there's so many great Suikoden players out there that I wish would commit to more than just a lonely musebox. I feel like a kid with toys who wants to play with the other kid and their toys, hehe.

[trueltning_fury]

Yes, I'm doing a lot of actual work. I spend my days sequestered in the basement workroom sewing like a slave.

I know, I feel ya, man. Persistence really is the key. I saw this Dynasty Warriors ad on ATP for months - over a year, really - and they were just so cheerful and persistent that I finally gave it a try and ended up trying new muses and playing in a new game. So you never know!

In the last 4 years, RP has gotten really stuck in a rut. There are staid places and times in which to advertise, and people don't look outside them. Meanwhile dressing rooms have died out entirely, and single-fandom games are extremely rare. At the same time, people always complain about the current panfandom games not meeting their needs or being all samey. So while they WANT something like a single-fandom game from an older but still deep down beloved franchise, they don't patronize it out of...idk, sheer inertia probably. So it's nothing personal, it just means working a lot harder to convince people to play.