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An Experiment: How Important is NeoGAF?

C

Clockblockers

Member
ShockingAlberto said:
We at very best affect a small fraction of the game buying audience.

There are outlier cases, of course, but those tend to involve way more people than just GAF.

Edit: I will give the game a shot, though.
Click to expand...

But we represent the segment of the market that probably spends the most on games, and while NeoGAF has no impact on shovel-ware and children games, major game productions should be targeting the NeoGAF population to help promote their game.
 
M

mollipen

Member
tokkun said:
What kind of person buys a game solely to make a statement about the power of an online forum they frequent? I would like to hope that most GAF members are not such tools.
Click to expand...

I don't care at all about making a "statement" for GAF. toythatkills said there was a great indie game that deserved more love, so I bought it. End of story.
 
T

toythatkills

Member
tokkun said:
What kind of person buys a game solely to make a statement about the power of an online forum they frequent? I would like to hope that most GAF members are not such tools.
Click to expand...
It's not really like that. I've changed the title of the thread slightly, even though it doesn't show up on the index, to make it better.

I'm just trying to get people to play an awesome game that I've really enjoyed the last month, and this just seemed like the funnest way to get the message out there, with an interesting challenge to GAF within. If I'd made a Hyperspace |OT| then it wouldn't have had nearly as much interest because as I said before, as soon as someone hears "Xbox LIVE Indie Games" they think of Baby Maker Extreme and Try Not To Fart and assume that everything is shovelware shit, and they don't click the thread.

If you think people are tools for playing an excellent game and wanting to help it get a few more sales than it's getting right now, fair enough, but I'd urge you to have a go yourself before you write it off like that. People should buy the game because it's great, and they will if we can get them to try it.

Getting people to try it is the hard part.
 
S

Shanlei91

Sonic handles my blue balls
Always-honest said:
i think Neogaf contributed to the sales of Demon's Souls.
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I was about to say after seeing the title. I didn't even know of the game's existence until seeing that thread.
 
T

thcsquad

Member
tokkun said:
What kind of person buys a game solely to make a statement about the power of an online forum they frequent? I would like to hope that most GAF members are not such tools.
Click to expand...

I think the point is that the game mentioned is a great game for $1 that is criminally overlooked. The point is to use the power of GAF (buying it ourselves, promoting to our friends and on the internet) to give an indie developer the sales they deserve. In other words, this game will sell itself, it just needs a catalyst for people to try it and start the word of mouth chain reaction. And NeoGAF is a community that is large enough to start this chain reaction.

What you are describing would make sense if the OP had said 'lets all buy Big Rigs! LOL'. That would be immature and 4chan-ish. But if you had read the entire OP, you'd see that this is not the case.

Personally, I'd buy it and try it out to see if its as good as the OP and Eurogamer say it is, but I don't have a 360 at the moment.
 
S

sooperkool

Member
Flying_Phoenix said:
By far and wide this site's biggest uptick of users was solely due to the fact that a topic made the Digg front page...

Don't get me wrong GAF is pretty damn big, the most active forum in the world. But it's merely a drop in the water compared to many other communities out there.

EDIT -

Numbers don't mean shit if people aren't active. GAF is one of the most active forums in the world.

I don't know how trust worthy this is, but I go by it.

Believe it or not, message boards are very very very niche.
Click to expand...


you sorted by page views and not posts. On a lot of those categories, GAF isnt even in the top 10 or 20.
 
T

toythatkills

Member
thcsquad said:
I think the point is that the game mentioned is a great game for $1 that is criminally overlooked. The point is to use the power of GAF (buying it ourselves, promoting to our friends and on the internet) to give an indie developer the sales they deserve. In other words, this game will sell itself, it just needs a catalyst for people to try it and start the word of mouth chain reaction. And NeoGAF is a community that is large enough to start this chain reaction.
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Yes!

Also: If a bored mod could change the title to "An Experiment: Can NeoGAF make a difference?" I would smile!
 
L

Lone_Prodigy

Member
In terms of gaming, I'd say GAF is pretty big. Gaming industry people actually post here.

In terms of consumers though, GAF is puny. We've seen with sales that the "casual/mainstream" gamers outnumber the "hardcore" gamers. Only the latter post here.

Otherwise the biggest threads on here would be the "Just Dance OT" and "Wii Fit Plus Thread of More Good Vibrations"
 
S

Scrow

Still Tagged Accordingly
sooperkool said:
you sorted by page views and not posts. On a lot of those categories, GAF isnt even in the top 10 or 20.
Click to expand...
it's very high in the categories that MATTER

unique visitors daily = #10 overall (#1 gaming specific board)
daily page views = #5 overall (#1 gaming specific board)
online users (daily average) = #4 overall (#1 gaming specific board)
online users (daily max) = #7 overall (#1 gaming specific board)

and you also have to remember that GAF has gone through 2-3 iterations in the past, moving from one server/database to another and has lost lots of threads and posts from those old-school days.
 
EviLore

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
You can't go by posts per day since we have heavily regulated account approvals. GAF is designed to be worth reading, rather than all about participation: out of the 50k members you have maybe 10k active posters, but the site gets one million unique visitors per month.
 
Z

Zeliard

Member
Scrow said:
it's very high in the categories that MATTER

unique visitors daily = #10 overall (#1 gaming specific board)
daily page views = #5 overall (#1 gaming specific board)
online users (daily average) = #4 overall (#1 gaming specific board)
online users (daily max) = #7 overall (#1 gaming specific board)

and you also have to remember that GAF has gone through 2-3 iterations in the past, moving from one server/database to another and has lost lots of threads and posts from those old-school days.
Click to expand...

GAF also has far less members than most of the other top sites there.
 
M

MetatronM

Unconfirmed Member
IPoopStandingUp said:
I was about to say after seeing the title. I didn't even know of the game's existence until seeing that thread.
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Yeah, I didn't really know anything about Demon's Souls until after it was already out in the US and GAF was talking about it. Part of that was because I didn't own a PS3.

Now I own a PS3 and a grand total of two retail games for it, one of which is Demon's Souls.
 
R

RSTEIN

Comics, serious business!
EviLore said:
You can't go by posts per day since we have heavily regulated account approvals. GAF is designed to be worth reading, rather than all about participation: out of the 50k members you have maybe 10k active posters, but the site gets one million unique visitors per month.
Click to expand...

I dunno about those stats, you better double check them with Tyler.
 
M

MiniBossBattle

Member
GAF is important for the games industry both for developers and journalists alike. Here are some examples:

My friends heard about getting let go in Factor5 before they got the news in their office.
Getting invaluable, intelligent crowd-sourced information (UI & Menu Designs)
Hyping and bringing games that we don't hear from game websites (Demon's Souls)
Giving praise on specific things that people work on is one of the best feelings ever.
Giving rage on specific things that people work on is one of the worst feelings ever.
GAF loves games! There is so much trolling and hate and racism on the internets, GAF and their mods make this forum an oasis in a sea of badness.

There are lurkers and many of them are in the industry. Your opinion / comments are noticed for better or for worse.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Zellard said:
GAF also has far less members than most of the other top sites there.
Click to expand...

GAF may not be huge in memberbase, but that's because of the waiting period that culls out a hundred thousand whiny thirteen year olds going "teh Wii sux and has no games Haloz fur life!!!1"

Unfortunately, however, we represent probably the smallest gaming population segment: not "casuals", not "bro-gamers", but "gaming enthusiasts"

I would say GAF matters because its memberbase is by far the most articulate and polite board I've ever read (due in no small part to the entry-wait and iron fists of the mods), and it creates an intelligent culture that can discuss games in a meaningful way.
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
An Xbox Live Indie game has the creator making .68 cents on every dollar. This is why I get pissed off when people expect games to be so cheap. $1 is unfair to expect a game to sell at.
 
L

LosDaddie

Banned
ZealousD said:
NeoGAF's greatest impact on the industry likely isn't on sales.

There's two things that I think NeoGAF is particularly influential in.

1.) Industry News. Everything gets posted here. Everything. Lots of the top gaming blogs and websites add NeoGAF to their lists of sources. A small group of bloggers or news staff simply can't beat the hundreds/thousands of users on NeoGAF when it comes to breaking stories. One site breaks a story, it gets posted on NeoGAF, and it spreads from there.

2.) Developer interaction. When developers are trying to gauge reaction to their games from the players themselves, they go to two places. The first is their own message board. The second is NeoGAF. Sometimes, the fan community of a developer is actually stronger on NeoGAF than on their own message boards (PlatinumGames is a great example). Developers clearly favor GAF over any other gaming message board on the net. Period.

But it still should be mentioned that NeoGAF is still a very small portion of the gaming populace and is not representative of the entire population. Lots of games are hyped to hell and back on GAF but this doesn't necessarily mean that they end up selling well.
Click to expand...

That's how I see it too.

GAF, alone, isn't important to the gaming industry. Nor does the forum represent a significant portion of the gaming audience. But GAF is active enough to garner respect by many in the industry.
 
S

Scrow

Still Tagged Accordingly
Zeliard said:
GAF also has far less members than most of the other top sites there.
Click to expand...
number of members is not a good metric to use since there could be heaps of "dead" accounts or many accounts belonging to one person.

in my opinion i'd say that daily unique visitors is the most important metric to judge a board's "success" or popularity.
 
F

Flying_Phoenix

Banned
Sobriquet said:
That site's kinda weird because it seems to only track forums that install their software. There are a lot of major forums that aren't listed. A forum that I moderate, judging by those numbers, should be in the top 10.
Click to expand...

Wow thanks for that info, didn't know that. That being said most important message boards I know are on there, including 4chan. Just curious, what site do you moderate.

sooperkool said:
you sorted by page views and not posts. On a lot of those categories, GAF isnt even in the top 10 or 20.
Click to expand...

It was meant so you can categorize yourself.

Sort it in categories of the actual amount of people on the site (traffic, max users online, page views, etc.) and GAF wins.

Again not trying to say GAF is a significant portion of the internet or even the gaming industry, but it is one of the biggest message boards out there.

EviLore said:
You can't go by posts per day since we have heavily regulated account approvals. GAF is designed to be worth reading, rather than all about participation: out of the 50k members you have maybe 10k active posters, but the site gets one million unique visitors per month.
Click to expand...

People seem to forget this. There's a reason why GAF is so harsh on members. It's meant to be a site worth reading for news, information, and interesting topics. It's meant to pleasure the readers not the posters.
 
M

Monroeski

Unconfirmed Member
Clockblockers said:
But we represent the segment of the market that probably spends the most on games, and while NeoGAF has no impact on shovel-ware and children games, major game productions should be targeting the NeoGAF population to help promote their game.
Click to expand...
I would guess that we may spend the most per capita, but as far as marketing looking for a group of people to really jack up the sales numbers I think GAF is a bit too niche enthusiast.

Toyota didn't get as large as they did by marketing to the guy that buys a Ferrari every year, by way of (an admittedly flawed) example.
 
S

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
Well, I'll do my part and buy it. I've only purchased 1 indie game so far so I'm due for another one.
 
Z

Zeliard

Member
Scrow said:
number of members is not a good metric to use since there could be heaps of "dead" accounts or many accounts belonging to one person.

in my opinion i'd say that daily unique visitors is the most important metric to judge a board's "success" or popularity.
Click to expand...

I was saying GAF has relatively few members as a positive thing. :p The fact that there are so few members here relative to the other major boards, but GAF still generating as much traffic as it does, makes it even more impressive.
 
T

toythatkills

Member
Cheesemeister said:
Yay, viral marketing thread. It's my favorite type of thread next to free market research threads and birthday threads.
Click to expand...
Just to re-state: I am in no way affiliated with this game. I just love it :D
 
S

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
Zeliard said:
I was saying GAF has relatively few members as a positive thing. :p The fact that there are so few members here relative to the other major boards, but GAF still generating as much traffic as it does, makes it even more impressive.
Click to expand...

Quality over quantity. IGN and Gamefaqs and all that other garbage may have more users, but they're mostly idiot children that simply can't compare to the content that GAF offers.

Best gaming site on the innernet, bar none. It's not even close.
 
S

Scrow

Still Tagged Accordingly
Zeliard said:
I was saying GAF has relatively few members as a positive thing. :p The fact that there are so few members here relative to the other major boards, but GAF still generating as much traffic as it does, makes it even more impressive.
Click to expand...
thumbs_up.jpg
 
S

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
Cheesemeister said:
The experiment doesn't work if you can't measure results.
Click to expand...

It's unlikely, but maybe it could pop up in the XBL indie games top 10 that Major Nelson posts if enough people buy it.
 
F

FoxSpirit

Junior Member
Snuggler said:
Quality over quantity. IGN and Gamefaqs and all that other garbage may have more users, but they're mostly idiot children that simply can't compare to the content that GAF offers.

Best gaming site on the innernet, bar none. It's not even close.
Click to expand...

Wait, wait, is this turning into a "in appreciation of GAF" thread?:lol

Yes, GAF is so very awesome and we have to thank our mods for that. EviLore ftw :D
 
T

toythatkills

Member
Cheesemeister said:
The experiment doesn't work if you can't measure results.
Click to expand...
Well no, but this isn't meant to be a serious scientific experiment or anything!

The game'd sold a few hundred copies a few days ago, but I believe that between us, and the people we know, and the people they know, we can go some way to increasing that a fair bit, because the game deserves it.

Even if people just go onto the marketplace and rate the game, or tweet about it, it'll absolutely help. If we can get enough people on GAF doing it, I just wonder how much of an effect we could have.
 
G

Gowans

Member
It's in the top rated section in the UK.

Justed checked it out, it's fun and has a surprising amount of character for what it is.
 
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