Hey, in the interest of trying to get a better picture of who's using Flowlab, I've created a Survey!
Yeah, I know that surveys are lame and everyone hates filling them out (I do anyway), but it would super helpful if you would fill it out anyway (yes you )
Hey @CrimsonBlackGames - a lot of the teachers that are using Flowlab signed up because their students requested it. Do you have any multimedia or technology focused classes at your school?
I've been around for 4 years, and there were never more than 10 active forum users at a time, if even. Most of them were very young and didn't understand how to use flowlab so they eventually quit, because they didn't like their games. We had a handful of really good game creators as well, but I have no idea why some of them left. A few guys I haven't seen in a while are @muddyapples and @leonknighte, who were pretty big on the forums last year. They may still be around, but I never see them make topics. The thing is, we need people to want to be active, so we need an active community, but we can't seem to get an active community, because people don't want to be active. It's like trying to get a first job at a place that wants 2 years experience, but you can't get experience if nobody will hire you.
Flowlab does deserve better, grazer has more than earned it. I'd love to get my game working real nicely and use it to advertise flowlab to people with Facebook ads. For $50, I can run an ad for 50 days at $1 a day, and hopefully 12,000-33,000 people will see it.
Here's a good example of advertising. Male age 16-28 in the United States, interested in Video Games, Technology, Music, and Smartphones. 12,000 to 33,000 people might see this ad over the next 50 days and join flowlab. This would be how I would try to help grazer out, once my game is worth promoting.
So the forum activity isn't really indicative of users overall - for some reason very few users actually interact on the forums at all. Maybe the forum just sucks? I dunno, I wish more people would try coming here for help instead of emailing me directly
Oh, right, I forgot you had an email just for this.
Anyway, I’d like to say, I think the forums are just as lively as ever. It feels welcoming. We don’t have any toxic people (although I might count myself as one), and you can pretty much do anything 2D here.
The reason I have the game dev discord was to have a real time alternative, so if someone wanted to ask a quick question without creating a whole new thread (or gravedigging), they could refer to that, where comments are much more “disposable”
See, I don't like vanilla forums. I like bb forums. There's no organization here. It's basically a postboard. With bb forums, I'd have lots of categories and subforums for tutorials, bugs, already asked questions archive, game examples, and try my game. Yeah, we have categories in vanilla, they're on the side of the screen as tabs. However, everyone thinks the all posts tab is all there is, and they don't know how to search. People don't know how to use vanilla and so there's too many repeat topics.
As for emails, make a button on the contact us tab for "ask for help on the forums" instead of chatting. Some people don't even know what forums are.
Comments
So far I have 1 response, but that was just me testing it
@grazer, if it helps, I convinced two of my friends to join after showing them SB3 and Unnamed drawing.
I don't understand why flowlab is so dead, grazer deserves more.
Flowlab does deserve better, grazer has more than earned it. I'd love to get my game working real nicely and use it to advertise flowlab to people with Facebook ads. For $50, I can run an ad for 50 days at $1 a day, and hopefully 12,000-33,000 people will see it.
12,000 to 33,000 people might see this ad over the next 50 days and join flowlab.
This would be how I would try to help grazer out, once my game is worth promoting.
Columbia high school.
What part of south Florida?
Anyway, I’d like to say, I think the forums are just as lively as ever. It feels welcoming. We don’t have any toxic people (although I might count myself as one), and you can pretty much do anything 2D here.
The reason I have the game dev discord was to have a real time alternative, so if someone wanted to ask a quick question without creating a whole new thread (or gravedigging), they could refer to that, where comments are much more “disposable”
As for emails, make a button on the contact us tab for "ask for help on the forums" instead of chatting. Some people don't even know what forums are.