90 replies to this topic

[Atticus]

I've been an IMG member for thirteen frickin' years, covering my most formative years as a Mac and computer user. Some good times here--including getting a beta WoW invite (can't remember which Blizz employee used to frequent the boards) that opened a literal whole new world of gaming for me. And I'll never forget the day Martin Bom, without knowing me from Adam, hooked me up with his Apple Employee discount on my Rev. 1 Mac Pro purchase via these boards. Priceless stuff, man.

Seeing IMG shut down would really hurt, but I understand the realities of keeping an Internet business going. And I'll be the first to admit that as very infrequent visitor these days, I'm part of the problem. My excuses are like anyone's--work, I'm now married, have two kids, etc. Not to mention that I just did a massive overhaul to my gaming PC and haven't played a Mac game in a long time (I now have a Mini).

What's crazy is that Apple's market cap has hit $680 billion and as the company grows unbelievably huge, the universe of journalism orbiting around it seems to have shrunk. We just lost the print version of Macworld, and I wouldn't be surprised if only the Macworld Web site survives in a couple of years. Why all this is happening, I have no idea. With Apple at its most successful, you'd think that Mac sites and magazines would proliferate to catch some of the trickle-down, but I reckon the harsh realities of online business dictate otherwise.

In any event, I'm sure Tuncer will make the decision that makes the most logical sense, and while I hope IMG remains, I understand if it doesn't.

Atticus

[Thain Esh Kelch]

To me, it wouldnt matter if I went to the MGS og IMG forums - As long as the majority of cool people from this place follow along.

I wuv u guyz!

[Frost]

As a small business owner myself...

I say, if there's sufficient cash for it, go for #3. If not, kill the IMG site and kill the MGS forums and merge the IMG forum with the MGS.

An active, friendly community forum for a dead news site and a dead forum for an active retail store site, all run by the same entity, makes extremely little sense both from a business and a workload perspective. I would like to see IMG survive, but if worse comes to worst, taking the active site and pairing it with the active forum seems the best option.

EDIT: And if you DO do that... for the love of all that is holy, don't just tell everyone here to move. This place's long history of discussion and problems solved makes it a cornucopia for searches. That's a big asset.

[iRolley]

Well, the time they are a-changing.

Whatever happens, I'll never thank you enough for the excellent site and forum you provided us with.

[macdude22]

Frigidman™, on 22 November 2014 - 08:03 AM, said:

PS: I wont miss the loss of MGF. I wrote that back in '99 lol... and not much has changed since! Stale old useless site.

Most of the "files" sites have gone with the wind. With popsnizzle like steam workshop, nexus mods, sparkle, and other internal updaters there just isn't the need for these repositories anymore. A little sad but it is what it is. *tear* pours one out for my files homies.

[Matt Diamond]

Seems to me that the main thing IMG has going for it is this community. I know that doesn't pay the bills, but maybe we can reorg IMG around the community and drop everything else. Perhaps a wiki of some kind that tracks new games and rumors, price breaks and whatnot? (Plus the forum of course.)

But part of me thinks, maybe its time... And if it is time, I believe we should celebrate both the life and death of IMG. Let  Make the big announcement, start the countdown, and have one last week that celebrates IMG. Some ideas:
Publish a timeline with IMG and Apple milestones on it. Get quotes from Aspyr, Feral, MacSoft, Spiderweb. Collect our favorite IMG memories. Track down folks from Freeverse, Delta Tao, Pangea, Bungie, Ex-Apple game evangelists, game porters. Get comments from Peter Cohen and other fellow Mac game journalists of the golden era. I dunno, give away an IMG floppy signed by Tuncer or something. Have people vote on their favorite Mac games of each decade, then reprint the IMG reviews of the top games.

I would miss this place though.

[macdude22]

I will say I'd like to help but I don't know how. I've got a jerb, two kids, a house that is constantly falling apart. The american dream! At least it's full of macs. I just don't game as much as I used to, sometimes I come here to live vicariously through someone who is.

I was just going on with my Apple rep about how Apple is bigger than ever yet all the traditional Mac media sources and conventions have been shutting down. I just can't fathom how when a good year for Apple was a million devices in a year we had MacWorld conventions all over and a fleet of magazines and now that they sell that many an hour there's nothing.

If anyone needs me I'll be in the basement with the centris rolling around in MacAddict CD-Roms.

[Jan]

Definitely keep the forum. It's the friendliest, warmest nest for Mac gaming geeks in the cold wide web. If you need help with a community-focused relaunch of the site, count me in for screen/interface design. I would happily contribute to keep this shelter alive. Maybe we can set up an internal project at our design studio.

[Matt Diamond]

Just thinking aloud here, but maybe a Slashdot-like format would work? The community would submit news, tips, links, press releases or whatever, and people would simply upvote and comment on anything worthwhile. We'd need moderators and spam controls and whatnot.

Cons:
Maybe not a good fit for the Mac gamer demographic of today.
For all I know it's just as hard to run these as it is to run the IMG page today.
Game reviews don't fit neatly in this world. (But we haven't done many of those recently so I'm not too concerned.)
Extremely dependent on how active the community is, so we'd have to find a way to get people excited and engaged, especially at the outset. Maybe active members get an MGS discount, or ad-free forums or something.

[Frigidman™]

What if "Inside Mac Games" simply just became only the forum install (as its home page)... and let the community continue and create some sub forums for community posted news and reviews or other things they wish to share. IMG as a community hub, without a lot of work involved to do it because we would just use the IPB set of code and nothing else.

I "could" write something that takes all the old review content and creates old topics. Wouldnt be a few hour job, but its possible. We'd also need to run a cleaner to remove all the news article back links since all those would die.

---

It was mentioned above to ditch the MGS forums, and keep the IMG forums. Easy to say, but it brings up a big blinking question mark on how to handle the domains and cross-talk. Signing in to a shopper account, but needing to sign in (or sign up) a second account just to use the forums. Cross domain policies and sharing of cookie/session data, things of that notion. A lot of messy technology to hurdle around to make it work smoothly.

And I know Tuncer wouldn't go for that, because I brought it up with him a couple years ago ;-) He definitely wants (or wanted?) to have forums under MGS, and not bounce users to some other domain.

---

All in all, I do agree with the census of keeping at least the community around somehow. Ditch the rest.

[Tetsuya]

Frigidman™, on 23 November 2014 - 12:01 PM, said:

) He definitely wants (or wanted?) to have forums under MGS, and not bounce users to some other domain.

MGS Presents: Inside Mac Games, a forum community for the discerning mac gamer.

[Frost]

Frigidman™, on 23 November 2014 - 12:01 PM, said:

It was mentioned above to ditch the MGS forums, and keep the IMG forums. Easy to say, but it brings up a big blinking question mark on how to handle the domains and cross-talk. Signing in to a shopper account, but needing to sign in (or sign up) a second account just to use the forums. Cross domain policies and sharing of cookie/session data, things of that notion. A lot of messy technology to hurdle around to make it work smoothly.

What can I say, I've got 10 years of forum moderating experience under my belt, but I have no clue how the backend works.

[DaveyJJ]

Wow. And I haven't even gotten to use the big red hammer of ban-doom on anyone.



I've been here 13-1/2 years (forgot my original DavidJJ password after one post). I joined the 2nd day this place even existed. When I first logged onto here my teenager (about to go to off to university next September) was a toddler. And tBC was a young man. I don't know what I'd do without IMG forums. Okay, the rest can go, but somehow everything here has to live, dammit. I actually like a lot of the people here; their opinions, their sense of humour, the sometimes fractious opinions, but most of all the atmosphere.

Whenever I wonder about politics etc on forums and unnecessary heavy-handed censorship, I always remind myself that this is one of the key reasons this place remains such an oasis of calm and rational discussion about stuff we all like, without all that crap. It can't go anymore than tBC could be a Marathon-hater.

However it continues, rolled into some other site, standing on its own just as forums, whatever, this can't be lost.

And I'll ban anyone who says it should.

[Tuncer (IMG)]

I think a very simple news/forum set up similar to MacRumors.com would be cool. We just need the help to get it set up. WordPress?

[Frost]

DaveyJJ, on 23 November 2014 - 04:48 PM, said:

Whenever I wonder about politics etc on forums and unnecessary heavy-handed censorship, I always remind myself that this is one of the key reasons this place remains such an oasis of calm and rational discussion about stuff we all like, without all that crap. It can't go anymore than tBC could be a Marathon-hater.

Rules of Politics on IMG:

1. It is okay to have strongly-felt convictions
2. Just like work, feel free to share and discuss them elsewhere in order to maintain as civil an environment as possible here
3. If the above fails, Keep Calm & Blame Canada

[the Battle Cat]

DaveyJJ, on 23 November 2014 - 04:48 PM, said:

Wow. And I haven't even gotten to use the big red hammer of ban-doom on anyone.

Where is our resident red-shirt Sneaky Snake?  I'll give him a tricorder and send him into a lonely back room to look for subspace tachyon signatures for you.  When he is completely out of sight then go ahead and thin the herd.

[Frost]

the Battle Cat, on 23 November 2014 - 05:58 PM, said:

Where is our resident red-shirt Sneaky Snake?  I'll give him a tricorder and send him into a lonely back room to look for subspace tachyon signatures for you.  When he is completely out of sight then go ahead and thin the herd.

He's off obsessively trying to beat my nigh-insurmountable Destiny Crucible high score.

And by the looks of it, he pulled it off by about 100 points. WHAT IS THIS! He should be back soon.

[macdude22]

DaveyJJ, on 23 November 2014 - 04:48 PM, said:

And tBC was a young man.

Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

Jurassic Park 4: When tBC Was Young

[Frigidman™]

Tuncer (IMG), on 23 November 2014 - 05:54 PM, said:

I think a very simple news/forum set up similar to MacRumors.com would be cool. We just need the help to get it set up. WordPress?

Hehe, WordPress... just make sure wherever you set that up, it is nowhere near the MGS servers ;-) we dont need that huge security hole.

You know, if the forums did become an existence by themselves, it would greatly simplify the updatability of its code... because it would not contain all the hacks I have peppered about to make it link in with IMG News, and IMG Pro account blogs and whatnots. We could even get with some newer themes by 'community vote'... as then it wouldnt have to look like the main IMG site (even though this current theme has been in effect for awhile and doesnt look like the main site).

I admit, I barely ever load up the IMG main pages. I just click "New" on the forums here multiple times a day, and get my Mac News due to the IMG Pimpbot I wrote in.

[Sneaky Snake]

Frost, on 23 November 2014 - 05:56 PM, said:

3. If the above fails, Keep Calm & Blame Canada

I take offense to this. Someone please timeban frost

Frost, on 23 November 2014 - 05:59 PM, said:

He's off obsessively trying to beat my nigh-insurmountable Destiny Crucible high score.

And by the looks of it, he pulled it off by about 100 points. WHAT IS THIS! He should be back soon.

I finally beat your score on Crucible The sad thing is that I wasn't even trying to beat your score - I was trying to beat the number 1 guy on my list which has 7600 points. I got 7590.... I'm considering just deleting him as a friend so I can have the number 1 spot.

In all honesty though, getting a score that high isn't even really possible without pristine conditions. What basically has to happen is that both teams have to suck horribly and get virtually 0 kills, and in the meantime you can just mop the floor. I had games where I have a 5.0 KD and 25+ kills and I still only net 5000-6000 points.



Now back to the topic at hand, I've been watching this post since Tuncer posted, and it brought a lot of sadness. My honest initial reaction was to think "Ha! IMG is posting April fools stuff", then I realized it was November...

I am in very strong favour of keeping this forum alive. This is the first forum I've ever really felt like a member of. I love how there's a a few dozen of us users who know each other well, and have even shared gaming experiences outside of the forum (me and Frost gang up on the casuals in Destiny some nights). I feel like I truly belong here. There's a atmosphere here that I haven't discovered anywhere else on the web. It brings a smile whenever I see a new member post a topic, and the second it is answered the thread erupts into the most random off-topic adventure, much to the confusion of the new member. People are civil and friendly here, but also care-free and like a good time.

If the forum must be merged with the MacGameStore one, so be it, the most important thing is that this community lives on.

I would gladly help in any way to help with any sort of transition needed. I actually write a lot of articles/blogs for a dozen or so websites for my day job, and would love to help IMG stay alive in any way I can.