I Think I Am Moving to RPGgeek.com
I am increasingly sad that Google+ is closing down and I haven’t quite found my footing with MeWe or any of the other proposed social media options.
However, I think I have finally found a home and I would invite all of you to join.
I am heading to RPGgeek.com and I think I have a pretty good case for it, having been a heavy user of it’s parent site, BoardGameGeek.com, for years.
1) RPGgeek.com is run by a small company that is okay with being in a niche market. They make money off of ads that are specifically targeted at the populations that use their sites (as much as they can get), their own store that sells items that their population would be interested in, by running their own conventions, their Youtube channel (which could really use some RPG content, and probably would with a larger user base) and through partnership deals and convention appearances.
2) They are not closing shop any day soon. In fact, they have been expanding their full time staff.
3) Community spaces exist tied to the games themselves. Just go to the Dungeon World entry on RPGgeek and you will find forums (that support polls), an area of linked videos, pictures, an uploaded files section (they will host the files, linked items that are part of the games ecosystem (and a process in place to add more to the database), a place to link to relevant websites, a place to link to relevant companies, the ability to find other users that own the same game, and much more.
4) You can subscribe to threads and be notified of updates to them.
5) You can private message people and search their past posts if you like what they have to say.
6) You can create your own communities, which take GeekGold (which you can purchase, but can also be gifted or earn), that have most or all of these tools for your specific community and you have some level of moderation over those communities. Those communities also have their own Calendars.
7) It has it’s own internal blogging platform that you can share publicly. You can even maintain more than one blog (Kind of Like Google Plus’ Collections, which I personally loved). They even have RSS feeds from them and you can link the content to places outside of RPGGeek (you can’t do that on MeWe).
8) You can keep a list of all the games that you own (if you like) and that can springboard into further community connections.
9) You can upload photos, lots of photos, or files AND you can designate “All Rights Reserved”, “Creative Commons”, or “Public Domain” for the licensing of those files.
10) As the RPGgeek population of active users grows, so will RPGgeek.com and with that growth will come more investment in the platform and the network effect of being one of the go to places for RPGs on the Internet. That same thing happened for Board Game Geek. It is the defacto juggernaut in the hobby board gaming space and, for the most part (though I am sure there are counter examples), they have been good stewards of that placement.
11) The platform promotes podcasts. If you have a RPG related podcast, you should add it to their catalog which will then consume the RSS feed and regularly update the site when new shows appear (and you can listen through the site itself).
12) Geeklists are are very flexible tool for all sorts of things.
13) You can sell things through their marketplace and they take only a small cut.
14) You can set up trade lists and wish lists and you can search the site for people looking to buy, sell, or trade the things that you are interested in.
15) They care about gaming.
So, in the coming months, I am going to try switching my stuff to RPGGeek.com. I am morlockhq on it and boardgamegeek.com. I am hoping to add a separate blog for each of my collections, The Dungeon World Gazetteer being the most relevant to this community. Check it out for yourselves and I hope to see you there.
