[Pool Boy]

I've only been RPing for a year and a half, and from what I know, there are fewer animanga sites and hardly any of them last very long. I'm not sure if the animanga community is really down-sizing or not - it is a statistic that I don't keep track of - but a lot of people seem to be talking about how our genre is slowly fizzling away. If it really is, why is it? And if animanga rp is really declining, how can we stimulate it?

[WRATH]

In my opinion, it's not like the genre is dying per se, it's just that it's changing. Sites now tend to focus more on skins and graphics -- and while that's great, it also leads to the fact that people flock to the next sparkly thing to open up. And I personally think it feels as if the community is downsizing because the 'community' I think you're referring to pretty much includes all those people you see quite often on every site; the outskirts of said community, as it were, are the sites that don't have the most fashionable skins or whatnot. I mean, I guess it could be downsizing, but imo it's just that we start to see the same people over and over because that's just the kinds of sites we join.

I remember, back when I started to roleplay in the animanga community, sites on average lasted a few months (which is kind of a long time right now), and it wasn't uncommon for a site to keep going for a much longer time even if a bunch of people just faded away (read: Cheyenne and Anrui). Granted, I roleplayed pokemon much more than other genres, but I was also on another site that lasted for a good two-three years before we all just grew up.

I mean, that might be another reason -- the people that grew up with anime and manga, like Cardcaptor Sakura/Sailor Moon/Digimon/Tokyo Mew Mew, etc. are also growing up. No more time for roleplaying? (And pfft, c'mon. Kids now also have tablets and whatever advanced thing they come up with next; it doesn't apply to everyone, or even the majority, but the general mindset of the younger people is less on 'writing because it's fun' and more 'let's play video games and watch tv because that's what everyone else is doing')

... I do agree with the fact that sites don't last very long now, though. Again, it might be the whole 'oh look pretty skin LET'S JOIN' thing, but maybe because it's hard to get settled in a community that seems to know each other and divide itself into little groups, and with people who are hesitant to join newly-opened sites if there aren't already a few people there, if you know what I mean? People join sites that they know, and for newer people who want to make sites, that makes things difficult. For sites that are already established, or for people who are known for making sites, it's not as much of a problem -- but said sites don't tend to last very long anyway. (Why the sites die, I can't pretend I know. It could be the members, the admins, the timing, or a loss of interest, or anything else.)

Anyway, I personally see the animanga community growing quite a bit since I started to roleplay, but that was eight years ago, back when roleplaying on Neopets was also acceptable. |D Although I'm not on any real-life face claimed sites at the moment, I know that some of this applies to that community as well, it's just that there are much more people roleplaying real-life sites than animanga ones.

AND HOLY JESUS THIS IS BIG wtf. Why can't I spew out posts this big. "orz

[レドックスくん]

^ I'm not even going to try to match that length. DON'T JUDGE ME.

I've been rping for about the same amount of time (spent one of my two and a half years on a warriors one-liner site |D) but from my personal experience there really are a couple of key factors that determine whether or not the site gets good traffic, to be honest.

A lot of people tend to go first to a site and be like LOOK A PRETTY SKIN LET ME JOIN like Ari mentioned but those people are usually the ones that don't stay for long lengths of time and thanks to PRE's advert contests I've seen sites with blinding skins that still have decent amounts of dedicated members. But a good skin does determine the amount of traffic on a site and unfortunately there aren't many freakishly talented skinners out there like kat(who I'm very jelly of, ngl ;A;) who are also dedicated enough to a site to stay for when the members demand a change of skin(I think that's a trend).

But if you're really just looking at the skin aspect then there aren't going to be many dedicated members on the site and its going to die in three weeks flat. I think that from my personal experience the plot and the way the site works in general might also be a good reason. Since the animanga community (the manga the sites are based off of idk how to say it) have only a cluster that are ongoing still and others that have already been finished there's controversy about what the members think should have happened in the whole "xx years after the end" as opposed to what the main admin and the staff team as a whole thinks as well as some other that may be confused about how the system works because it's not user friendly, to those newer rpers out there. Its really about finding a system that's not only easy to understand but a plot broad enough on a spectrum as to continue to stimulate new ideas that the members themselves create without staff intervention (I think that war is an extremely good example of how this works). Members start to get bored or confused of a system that's too convoluted and a plot that's too rigid and stiff and that's when sites start going downhill, and this happens a lot on animanga sites because there's such a strict sequence of events that the actual manga follows.

Of course there's always that classic things about good staff, an admin that doesn't go and delete the site whenever they feel like it's too boring for them(I've had that before, trust me) and a good, trustworthy and dedicated co-admin/mods but I guess what I'm trying to say is that a lot of animanga out there don't fit the above criteria, especially the site system and broad plot spectrum, + the fact that many of the older animanga out there are starting to wane in interest (I can't remember the last time seeing a Sailor moon/Tokyo mew mew site that wasn't already dead) so its just hard to get members interested in rping it when they can barely get interested enough to read it. And not to mention the fact that sometimes creating a good broad plot involves changing the ending of that particular animanga and people just don't like change these days, idk whats up with that. Canon animanga sites just tend to die for me. OC ones like FTB are a lot better in staying alive (1k + members hehe |D).

But I guess the bottom line for what I'm trying to say is that people like to keep things simple - an element that many animanga plots just don't have. And as opposed to those that do have that aspect (FTB, Bleach, OP etc.) there's a lot of sites out there that are already opened and flourishing okay. From what I've seen users out there like simple battling systems, romance or something that's broad and gets creativity flowing. Get a good staff team together and an ad mod that does their job and you really have a good chance of keeping the site alive. But people have different interests in different manga genres, and its difficult to attract a big group that's interested in the same one like pokemon/digimon sites tend to do because they're age friendly (I personally didn't know about manga until 10, but that's just me).

As for stimulating things, I don't think there's really a way to do it right away, but with persistence and a lot of time to set up + advertise even a site that focuses on a generally smaller-ish manga like Sound Soul can work out okay in the end. It might seem like the animanga community is dying out but I personally think that its mainly for the smaller, lesser known manga. Bleach/One Piece/Fairy Tail sites are generally the most easy plots to work with since they've been ongoing for awhile and the author has a good, broad plot to work on and people out there are taking advantage of such a thing to make a great and popular site.

So its not so much a dying out genre to me as it is a genre concentrated in a few small clusters where the plot of the actual manga is easy to tie into a rping site. There're people out there that like a certain manga and create a site but in the end there's just not enough others that share their enthusiasm to keep the site alive, and that's also a reason why the site dies out as quickly as they does. Maybe some members don't find rping as fun as actually reading the manga itself and quit. There're endless personal reasons that could be listed, but the community itself is doing okay in terms of statistics wise, maybe a bit on the shabby side but still there. Of course its never going to surpass the amount of traffic that Pokemon/Warriors gets (THAT'LL BE THE DAY), but from my site-hopping experiences there're sites out there that, even with a smaller-ish manga base, still get great traffic (Ao No Exorsist also has a great rp site I saw the other day).

But in the end, interest of the masses is the main thing and the interest panes towards RL animal/human rps or pokemon rps based on all around games at the moment. Who knows? May be a phase, may stay this way for who-knows-how-long. Maybe this is a post where I spit out whatever my mind has to offer onto a xxx by xxx block of typing space. I don't have the cred. or amount of exp. to say that everything above here is the true way people think but I am certain that the animanga community has potential. We just need determined people out there to make a site happen and stick with it to the end. |D

[WRATH]

... you just wrote an essay. WHAT THE.

But Battle has a point; plots that are too convoluted or too specialized tend to run to the ground. People like sites that allow for tons of creativity (I know I do) but still have an overarching plot structure. I definitely agree with the dedicated staff, as well -- I know of a fantasy (not exactly animanga, but a site nonetheless) that's been going for six years, run mostly by a single admin who is incredibly dedicated to her site. I mean, it even has its own little mini wikia made for it, because everything's been so developed. It's developed enough so that it's an encompassing world, but easy enough for newer people to grasp.

[katya]

If it is dying and we want to save it, there's only one thing we can do: RP more. Pretty straightforward solution, really. Even if there's no problem, hey, RPing more doesn't hurt either way. It's kinda what we're here to do. Like Ari says, people do just fade out of the RP scene. It's hard to hole down a job and hold up your grades and then RP on top of that. But that's fine. There'll be new people too. Circle of life, and all that.

Personally, I don't think we're dying out. I do think sites have a pretty shitty life expectancy. For me, that's a huge bummer, because I mostly deal in long-term plots, long build-ups, longer payoffs. I don't really mind sites that close quickly (to each their own), but they're not for me, and in the animanga community we've got, that means most sites aren't for me.

From an admin perspective, I think we'd be doing better if things like pretty skins mattered less. If someone has a great idea and wants to make a site, they should be able to make it with words alone. Stuff like knowing how to code? Why the fuck should that be necessary? If you can copy and paste the cbox embedding code, we should be all set! Good skins obviously attract members, but that culture also makes it harder to make a site. In the videogame industry, it's so much work to create the graphics for a game that companies don't put out nearly as many games as they did before. The same is true for animanga sites imo. Sure, quality over quantity, but at some point, that's just elitism.

It is elitism too. I wouldn't join an ugly site, that's a given--if I can't read the text, obviously that's a no go--but I probably wouldn't join a plain looking site either. It'd have to be a fandom/genre that I've particularly been looking/hoping for, otherwise I'd just drop an ad and leave.

[lucius]

I've been RP'ing for eight years now, and I really don't think much has changed. Sites die pretty fast. Pern was notorious for this: open a site, have a hatching, die, make a new site, have a hatching, die. Welcome to the Pern Cycle. Dog and wolf sites, which I did before Pern, did this as well.

It's hard to say what makes a site last. I think in the end it's the dedicated members and admins that make up the site. So yeah. It's not dying, just sort of losing the floaters. I'd rather have one good site than a bunch of flouncy ones anyway.

[phosphorus]

i think there's an element of luck involved. from what i've observed in both admining and rping, the sites that last any significant length of time (only one of mine being memento mori - ao no exorcist i'll miss you!) attract members who don't float around the rpsphere, but rather are intensely dedicated to one site and will work with the staff to make it grow and improve. it's all about trying to attract people like that, and it's difficult. if you just end up getting wishy-washy people with no dedication to the site's vision, you won't be able to build a community and the site will die.

and i think, at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. community. yeah, i agree there's a greater trend towards graphics and code instead of writing and plotting, but it's kinda inevitable. if one person makes a gorgeous skin and starts getting all the members, nobody else will wanna go back to plain text and boring default skins. but if the staff and members don't have their hearts in it to continue, then you kinda need to ask yourself what the point is.

[/incoherence]

[cairo]

It isn't that the community is dying, just everyones gotten older and thus more lazy. Everyone has already made friends with people they like and are usually too scared to make friends with other people, ergo separating themselves into certain cliques or groups. When one person makes a site, only a certain type of people will join that site (especially if said person is popular), and sites usually revolve around friends bringing friends bringing friends bringing friends (that goes for any rp site). However if you're a new name and you come out with a new idea, you might actually get lots of different people from all around.

Hence why the more popular people name change so frequently because people don't realize that they subconsciously, or intentionally do this, and when they learn who the site is really by it changes their opinion based on not exactly liking the site idea, but rather the owner of the site.

itt: its not about sites itself but the person running it.

[blake]

i think more people should make sites lol. tired of seeing the same niggas run the same sites LOL it's been like the same generation for years! i'm biased b/c i do RL rps and they're fab. i like the versatility i get and the fact that the community is 10000x larger. but that's not about this and i pretty much agree with cairo.
at least we're not like the warrior cat community lol jk

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[lucius]

this is nothing compared to pern.

no srsly.

pern was so cliquey you don't even know. you don't even know.

[katya]

Yeah, I think the overall diagnosis of the animanga rp health is COULD BE WORSE BRO.

I really do think our penchant for pretty skins is the biggest problem, and it's not really one you can make it go away. After you upgrade to prettier, there's really no turning back. After you date a Versace model, you're not terribly interested in the guy next door unless he's one hell of a guy--and so we've got to make one hell of a site.

You can't just snap your fingers and make a genius coder though. I'm hoping that with skins being valued so much here (+100 points!), we might see some more premade skins for coding noob admins to choose from. There's so few premades out there that I've gotten really tired of seeing most of them by now, sadly. Ideally, what I'd really like to see is more premade MYO boards and BYO miniprofile stuff, so people can pick and choose stuff to make a semi unique skin despite being code dumb.

Of course, there's that whole spectrum of sites that you've never fucking heard of when you're reaching to the absolute ends of the proboards realm looking for sites to hit up for ad contests. I guess as long as the atmosphere is fun and welcoming, and the staff team can keep their shit together, any site will survive?

In general, something I ramble about a lot actually, I think an RP forum is a place. It's impossible to not forge a community when you get a bunch of people together talking in cbox regularly, and it's incredibly easy to forge an unwelcoming community. That's how it works irl, and that's how it works online too. So yeah, after you get past the hijinks of creating a site, imo a chill welcoming site is much more likely to survive the long haul.