Where are the developers?

[jannesiera]

So many (persistent) browser based games out there... then why is this forum still *so* small?

I realise posting this question here won't change the fact there are only that many active members on this forum, but I am curious. Shouldn't this forum represent all the PBBG developers on the internet? Or is there some other community hidden I haven't found until now?

Are the developers shattered over various forums and communities, all related to browser gaming, in some way? Forums like GameDev and php forums? That's kinda sad, because browser based game development is such a big topic. It deserves it's own community (like bbgamezone) instead of forums only related to making games (not only browser based!) and coding.

Or maybe the developers don't want to meet other people? They live on their own island, and they never leave to talk to others... ?

These are the things I can come up with. Why do you think I get to meet so few fellow PBBG developers?

[codestryke]

I've asked myself the same questions. I could go either way with the forums, yes, I would like to see them grow and just have a plethora of knowledge from other developers to tap, and no, it's a nice small niche community that is really friendly.

What surprises me is how few developers stuck around after the PBBG contest. The contest got some great press around the internet, we had a few new people show up, but very few stuck around after the contest. So to me advertising isn't going to work for longevity.

SMF (like a lot of forum software) is really, really bad for indexing. Which to me is pretty sad since there is a ton of good information here to index on the forums. I've been tinkering with a keyword generator to add to the SMF software to help with this.

Right now our top 10 keywords as reported by Analatics:
1. galacticimperator.com
2. difference between memcache and memcached
3. bbgamezone
4. rails host scalable
5. legendsofthegods
6. refused to get unsafe header ""x-json"
7. refused to get unsafe header x-json
8. browser based game zone
9. buying mafia game script
10. httpmmo

The top referring sites to us are:
buildingbrowsergames.com
google.com
pbbgnetwork.com

It's not worth showing the top 10 on that one, after pbbgnetwork the number of hits from the referrers is less then 2 a month.

[JGadrow]

Personally, I've stuck around simply because it's a small, friendly community. I've tried other forums (gamedev.net and etc.) but I mainly end up stuck lurking because the're so populous that there's 5 replies before I even manage to get time to look for new posts because there's 10,000 posts a day! lol

It's quite overwhelming.

[Fizzadar]

Personally, I've stuck around simply because it's a small, friendly community. I've tried other forums (gamedev.net and etc.) but I mainly end up stuck lurking because the're so populous that there's 5 replies before I even manage to get time to look for new posts because there's 10,000 posts a day! lol

It's quite overwhelming.

This, although slightly bigger might be nice

[Dasein Fiasco]

codestryke, that's a very strange collection of keywords. O.o

I think that a majority of pbbg developers congregate around technologies, so you're more likely to find them on, say, flash forums, or the many sprawling php communities. It could also be that since the developers tend to already come into pbbg with experience, they're more inclined to be found around seo and marketing oriented sites, because to be honest, a lot of pbbg revolves around monetizing it more than a lot of us here would probably like.

[dbest]

I found this forum in my journey to find a resource center for PBBGs and to see how PBBGs are developed. I have not been a member for long, but I suppose if I spend the amount of time on actually developing my game, that I am spending here, my game would have reached would have moved on a bit.

What I am trying to say is that, when a PBBG is made, the developers would be busy with either of the following:

1. increasing their members
2. fixing bugs/ resolving issues
3. making some money
4. thinking about the next game

Very few would have time to join a forum... There might be some who do all of the above and still are frequent visitors of the forum.

[Glenugie]

On this matter it could be down to people just not being able to find it, I know when I was looking for help with PBBG development, I had to search for quite a while to find this place (Before that I was merely lurking in PHP Freaks). But I imagine when people find this place, if they plan to make a PBBG they would stick around, it has been very helpful, even if I've only started actively posting recently