Can ISes Work? A Roadmap to Making it Happen

[Clovis15]

Back in the day was a time where ISes used to be far more successful than they are now. Also back in the day used to be a time where you couldn’t watch clips on YouTube, find up to the minute games news on Kotaku, research things on Wikipedia, search the internet with Google, view TV shows on Hulu, browse fan art of every topic and preference imaginable on DeviantArt, endlessly grind your way to greater stats and gear on World of Warcraft, or shoot the breeze with every last one of your friends on Instant Messaging (some of you were back then, but its importance has greatly increased since back then). So, back in the day, constantly refreshing your forum to see if someone had said something was a way of life; if you didn’t have someone to talk to on the forum, you didn’t have anything meaningful to do online.

ISes die often because people lose interest with where the story currently is, and their only passion remaining with the story is with where it might be; as the story will never get to where it might be as they are no longer interested in the now of the story, the story invariably dies. Back in the day, however, this was not the case; for, back in the day, if the Website Master ordered you to make a post to move the story forward you leapt to. Sure, it might have sucked writing something you had no passion for, but once it was out you and everyone else began gleefully posting en masse again because you were now at the part where your passion was once more. This could be done because the Website Master could tell you that you would either post, or be excommunicated from the group; being excommunicated from the group, in those far more boring days of the internet, was a fate worse than death.

The rot of IS began in 2003, with a few crazy fuckers claiming all was well in early 2004 despite the fact they were in a coffin six feet under. This is when the internet truly began to be a place where you did not need a singular forum community to have stuff to do; both by the rising propagation of broadband, and the emergence of services that capitalized on it. This was when people, with better things to do, left the ISes the second the story began to bore them; they were threatened to finish, such that we might we get back to better days, but no longer did they ever finish excommunication anymore. Thus an era was dead.

If we want to make an IS today, we need more than just good intentions and people goofing off; although people goofing off are at the very heart of ISes, many of the successful ISes back in the day thrived from people posting in them during time on the margin. Time on the Margin is time that you can’t use meaningfully in any possible way because it’s time between scheduled events, high school students used to have these in abundance if they got class stuff done early. We are now college graduates many of us, we do not have time on the margin moments, thus we must remember that if we take the responsibility of an IS living more seriously that it will not see past it 20th post ever.

Perhaps we need to learn to be happier with shorter posts, but we also need to learn that the use of shorter posts is only to serve the greater good of justifying to ourselves a responsibility to post continuously. I don’t care to count how many posts you make in a period of time, it’s too much work for me actually; but I do care to make sure that you all know that if you post with the knowledge of responsibility that you have to, it will die. Even if you want it to live, posting once every 2-3 will kill it; no IS can ever be healthy like that, and there is a grand tradition of dead ISes that accrued about 10-20 over 4-6 weeks before dying because nobody was taking responsibility for its life. If you don’t post, and often, it will die; you will all be responsible this, this is why I accept the bitter pill that we may have to learn to like smaller posts as a means of enabling to successfully pursue such responsibility.

You must also accept, as part of this responsibility, the fact that this story will blow at first. It takes time to find something awesome, this is set in stone; the amount of time is random, but it almost assuredly will not be our first or second wave of posts. If you can’t dedicate yourself to push towards the time when it is awesome, then it will never be awesome; this is why we can’t afford to mollycoddle those who are only interested if it one days reaches that awesomeness, you who are on the fence may as well be the doctors aborting the baby prematurely.

We can do an IS, but we have to agree to actually do it; the days of lollygagging from the past, where the IS would take care of itself, are dead thanks to the modern wonders of the internet.

[Laserkid]

I agree with everything said here, we've also determined that to get better exposure since, lets be honest, most of the forum doesn't read this section to run this on the Forum Games tab.

[N64Player]

Now that I think about it, that didn't just happen to the IS forums, but all of our forums in general. 2003 was around the time our forums on Delphi started to die out in terms of activity.

[Laserkid]

Thats a very estute point.

[Clovis15]

Yes, 2003 was a time that saw people no longer needing to cling to micro enclaves on the internet just to have stuff to do.

While Delphi's decision at the time may not have helped, people have tried to claim that the reason the IS scene died before was because of delphi's changes alone. However, Delphi's changes coincided with other factors making them obselete; the changes were designed to increase profit in a time of decreased use due to obselesence. Unfortunately the changes were maximizing profit at the grand expense of users, and only hastened their demise; all such forum super coalitions like Delphi, such as easyboard and the like, died the same fates without doing the things Delphi did. If we want an IS to work, we must assume that it wasn't just the delphi clusterfuck that killed the IS scene; there are plenty of IS failures that came after this, all of which prove that ISes can no longer self perpetuate without people making it their responsibility the perpetuate them.

[TaraGraphics]

Well, figure that the incident will effect old but yet active users, Wouldn't it be better if we improve the old and make the new? People always indulge this to many amount of Users this days...-_-...

[Laserkid]

Well, if you're interested, we'd love to have you with us!

[TaraGraphics]

Oh, um, I was just making a comment. I have no experience in this section although it was very interesting. You guys are the pros. I am just a burden. But I'll support you all the way!

[Clovis15]

An IS is where everyone adds to a story in little bits over time. Did you ever play a game when you were younger where one person would make up a story for a while, but then he would stop and someone else would continue it? It's like that, except that the story fragments are being posted to a forum.

The IS stands for "Interactive Story", some of the people here met a long time ago through a forum system known as Delphi because of their mutual interet in ISes.

This discussion here is about the feasibility of running a new IS, as well as the fall of Delphi.

[Clovis15]

Also, Taragraphic, congratulations on getting over 25 posts and reaching the second rank on the forum.

[TaraGraphics]

I know how the game works Clovis. Thank you. =). But still, I'm no good in such of writing. =P
Your talent is beyond me. I can't keep it up as u do. So, I guess that's that. =)

By the way Clovis Thanks a huge bunch for informing about the good news. Because of you guys helps and compliments i can achieve such high rating. THANKS!!!!!!YOU!!!!!!