Avoid going stale
I’ve just been looking around some websites of play-by-post games that I know, for the purpose of asking someone some questions for an article for this blog, and what I noticed is that sometimes the website haven’t been updated for a very long time, and in some cases they haven’t even been updated this year.
So I just shrug my shoulders and think “well, play-by-post games are sometimes slow, they probably do have an active community over email or something. I know what, I’ll check their Facebook and Twitter pages.” So I do that, expecting to see regular updates, even if it’s just general chitchat.
Nothing.
A cold shiver runs down my spine. “What if everyone’s dead” I start to think about the possibility of a serial killer picking off roleplayers one at a time until there’s nobody left, leaving our websites going stale, and our Facebook pages like ghost towns.
Of course they’re not all dead (although how can we know for sure?!), the games have likely closed down due to inactivity, or maybe all the players have been busy for the last few months and so the game hasn’t been updated. Or it could be that the game is running perfectly well, but it’s played by email so obviously I can’t see it, and it’s actually the fault of the webmaster who hasn’t updated their website.
What I’m trying to say though is that this is bad. Imagine walking into a burger restaurant with a real hunger for lovely burgers, but there’s nobody there to take your order. It’s dead. You’re more likely to go somewhere else where a happy waitress will give you service with a smile, even if the food isn’t as good – but at least you’re being served!
That’s what it feels like finding the website to a play-by-post roleplaying game that hasn’t been updated in a long time. I’m a roleplayer, you should be doing everything you can to get me excited about your game and to join in!
If you find updating your website too hard, at least post regular things on Facebook and Twitter. Even better, pull those to your website to show your visitors that you have an active community!
I’m glad that at least the OngoingWorlds homepage has been kept up to date regularly, whenever a new post is created in the game it’ll be shown on the homepage.
