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Just over 5 years ago, I wrote a small blog post thanking the community. It may not have been seen by many that are here currently, but I was just thinking about it tonight. Here's the contents of that blog post.
"Over the years, gaming has gone from a sort of niche hobby to a full-blown, mainstream activity. I seen gaming go from an activity that only a few of my friends growing up did to dorm room gaming to my 1080p, 5.1 audio setup at home. The first community I was a fairly active member of was the GameFAQs forum. Did the collection on IGN, tried out Digital Press forums before finding my way here. I lurked for a while, primarily using only the Collection tools. I finally started posting more and more, and the people here are extremely nice and really my kind of people. Then came the chat.
I jumped in, and as the new guy, I sort of found it difficult to jump in. After 2-3 times (that I could tell), I felt like I was starting to feel as a part of the group. I am now on a first name basis with pretty much everyone in chat. This type of small community is what I need. I grew up in a small town, and that's the sort of vibe I get here. These people are RFGeneration, down to the roots.
I'm very thankful for this place. It's kind of hard for someone like me to put myself out there and jump into conversation, but when I did, I wish I would have sooner. I plan on sticking around for a long time and I really hope that the community grows while keeping the roots of the small site. I consider all of you my friends and hope to meet many more of you along the way.
Thank you."
I re-read that when I was thinking of it and I still feel it is relevant, even 5 years later.
It's been quite a ride since then. Personally, I have gone through ups and downs. Trouble at work. A minor bout with depression. A new job. And now my family is going to be getting bigger in a few months. I'm now selling and trading more of my collection off rather than hoarding every single thing. The site has gone through some issues and come through very strong after each of them.
This site has been a huge part of me. Despite the fact that I haven't been posting as much as of late, I still stop in to threads as I can. I've gained more and more friends. I started and gradually wound down a podcast only for another team to jump in and step in with their take in a huge way! We have an app!
I went from a user and the occasional (non-staff) contributor on the blogs and database to a director.
We had 3 years of forum posts that were gone... Thought the whole thing was going to be lost. But it's always come back. We had months of nagging server issues from speed to just plain failures. But we're back on a blazing server.
I know, it's not the standard "Thanks" blog post, but I really felt that I needed to let every single member know that as long as I'm here, I'll try everything I can to ensure that this site stays up and running. It's not for me (well, not all for me). It's for everyone that uses this site. It's for the community of RF Generation and for video games in general.
But I can't nor don't do it by myself. There is an excellent group of people on staff that take what they do seriously. There are plenty of users who submit data on new games and old, pictures and screenshots, to try to document everything that we can on a game or hardware.
So, this is to everyone. Thank you all for continuing to make RF Generation the best site on the web.
This is just a little different than the typical "RFG Thanks for (insert month/year)".
I was going through some of my old blog entries and I found one I wrote as an open letter to the community. It was written 3 years after joining, but a mere 2 months after I really began to get involved with the community.
As I sit here now, my son is playing Pokepark on the Wii as I look at my TI-99/4A that I need to test so I can sell it. There have been a lot of changes for me personally as well as for the site in the time since that blog post. I have gone from grabbing everything in sight to being selective and selling off stuff that I have just to have it. I'm now a director on the site. We had a pretty big disaster on the site that easily could have been the end of the site potentially. I recovered what I could with what I had, losing a couple of years worth of forum posts and maybe 6 weeks of database submissions.
The forum was slow to come back, but here we are. We have a bunch of new members and old members who have returned. We have new bloggers and a new podcast. We are nearing in on 70,000 software entries and 5,000 hardware entries! We have a new server with more power and drive space for us to grow with! And we have continued to do so with just the support of the community and their donations. We have no plans to be sold or put up ads.
We're doing this on our own. I see and hear things happening elsewhere that I never want anything to happen here. We want you to communicate to us and let us know about any issues you have or any ideas to make things better. Together, we'll continue to get better as well as grow.
What this all boils down to is... thanks. Without the passion of the community, we wouldn't be here. Thanks to the bloggers for writing about your perspective. Thanks to all of the staff for your work on keeping that submission queue low. Thanks to everyone who was here before me who started the site right. Lastly, thanks to every member for making this a great place to be, day after day.
And as always, keep it on channel 3!
Over the years, gaming has gone from a sort of niche hobby to a full-blown, mainstream activity. I seen gaming go from an activity that only a few of my friends growing up did to dorm room gaming to my 1080p, 5.1 audio setup at home. The first community I was a fairly active member of was the GameFAQs forum. Did the collection on IGN, tried out Digital Press forums before finding my way here. I lurked for a while, primarily using only the Collection tools. I finally started posting more and more, and the people here are extremely nice and really my kind of people. Then came the chat.
I jumped in, and as the new guy, I sort of found it difficult to jump in. After 2-3 times (that I could tell), I felt like I was starting to feel as a part of the group. I am now on a first name basis with pretty much everyone in chat. This type of small community is what I need. I grew up in a small town, and that's the sort of vibe I get here. These people are RFGeneration, down to the roots.
I'm very thankful for this place. It's kind of hard for someone like me to put myself out there and jump into conversation, but when I did, I wish I would have sooner. I plan on sticking around for a long time and I really hope that the community grows while keeping the roots of the small site. I consider all of you my friends and hope to meet many more of you along the way.
Thank you.
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This is bickman2k's Blog.
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As much as the world has changed, our still somewhat niche spot as gamers has adapted to the times as well as the games. We have created our online museum of our past. We share our experiences about the present. And we will evolve together as the gaming community continues to change. I hope to write about some of my experiences with gaming, as well as on some topics that were not directly relevant to me, but to the community or you personally. |
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