a non-dramatic post, if you can keep it.

[Fragile]

I like to come on here occasionally. Usually, what I've seen is decline, but checking in again, I think I've been misinterpreting what I'm seeing. I think the future of this community, to move into broad appeal, is this:

No Servers. Less Organization. More Community.

How would this work? Essentially, we would dissolve our servers and shift into a true gaming community. Essentially, the community would operate around Teamspeak, Discord, Community Game and Movie Nights, and any other events our staff can imagine.

Why we would get more people in the community:

People love simplicity. As it exists now, the community relies on people liking one or more of our servers, and continuing to like them. That gets old fast, and we have to worry about keeping people on board more than we have to worry about bringing in new people, all because we need to make sure the community isn't shrinking. Removing our servers and transitioning would allow us to get people on board from other games and other servers, and it would rely on people liking really any game at all. Any Prison Architect or KSP fans in the house? I bet there are, but they're not drawn to EscRestart because they don't give a royal damn about Minecraft and wherever our other server is. We broaden our conversation and boom: we broaden the community.

Cutting Costs, and then some:

Right now, we need to raise $25/mo. I would wager that the forums cost $5/mo. That's extremely easy to fundraise, and could actually result in the community making a profit. Profit can be spent to advertise the community. Basically, this: Cost reduction > More Profits > More Ads > More Players > More Profits > More Ads > ...


Thoughts?

 

[Mastersten]

Well, this actually looks interesting but you got to keep in mind that the servers are also a strong rope that ties the players to the community. Removing all the servers at once will very probably cut the ties of many players that came here to enjoy the servers itself.

Also interested in how you wanna attract people to join the community for only a chit-chat and some game discussion boards?

 

[Psycho]

I think that they lowered the Donation amount because of the Patreon donations as well meaning that the server still costs ~$50

 

[Nillbugwtw]

I think that they lowered the Donation amount because of the Patreon donations as well meaning that the server still costs ~$50

Yup. The game servers alone cost the $ equivalent of €42 monthly - last month it was $49. Patreon covers a pretty good portion of that ($34 last month, after Patreon took their cuts out). Between the donation bar and average Patreon payout, we get a little more money than our hosting costs each month, but that money 1) goes towards months that we lose Patreon supporters or don't fill up our donation bar, and 2) goes toward other operating costs, like forum hosting, forum licenses, domain renewals, etc.

I'm pretty proud that we've been able to support ourselves financially (without having extra bills paid out of admin pockets) for a number of months now. Thanks to all the amazing donors in the community!

(sorry to go off topic from OP, but I figured a little financial transparency would be beneficial)

 

[Aqua]

I haven't been active on a server for nearly 2 years now, fair enough I was banned for quite a bit of that, but I don't think ur point about "people needing to like one or more server to be invested in the community" really stands, as I think quite a few members are just here for the bants rather than the minecraft.

 

[Vatumok]

Cutting the minecraft servers right now would be the perfect way to get rid of a lot of active members we have in the community. I understand your point of view and that's why a while ago I tried to build our community around discord. Deleting all minecraft servers now wouldn't be beneficial for the community except for saving money. Sure maybe some time we can and need to cut our server costs but at the moment people are still fine paying for it looking at the donations.

We will very, very likely not become a huge community again and IMO it's fine that we are just a group that likes to talk and play some minecraft or other games together. Assuming that less money spend on servers will just lead to more players is false, we can better use the money to keep our servers running which are niche but some people enjoy them.

Of course I'm always for more ideas to expand or improve our community structure but someone needs to come up with a plan and the motivation to go through with it. This idea whereas interesting, will probably only be harmful. The way we expand or go to a gaming community is not through cutting our minecraft servers.

 

[Catcocomics]

There was a great period of time a little less than 2 years ago where I completely lost all interest in vanilla Minecraft and only held on to the community because of a RP thread.

Of course, now's probably the reverse situation where I've only really been on because I've been making AoD maps like crazy and would be in a RP if there was one still properly active and alive.

 

[SirComputer]

Cutting the minecraft servers right now would be the perfect way to get rid of a lot of active members we have in the community. I understand your point of view and that's why a while ago I tried to build our community around discord. Deleting all minecraft servers now wouldn't be beneficial for the community except for saving money. Sure maybe some time we can and need to cut our server costs but at the moment people are still fine paying for it looking at the donations.

We will very, very likely not become a huge community again and IMO it's fine that we are just a group that likes to talk and play some minecraft or other games together. Assuming that less money spend on servers will just lead to more players is false, we can better use the money to keep our servers running which are niche but some people enjoy them.

Of course I'm always for more ideas to expand or improve our community structure but someone needs to come up with a plan and the motivation to go through with it. This idea whereas interesting, will probably only be harmful. The way we expand or go to a gaming community is not through cutting our minecraft servers.

I don't think I'm putting it in any better way.

If there is the demand for chatting about certain games, we can try to accommodate that whilst having Minecraft. If you have a big enough staff team (or even just a remotely organised one), we can have both, and that won't come at the cost of losing players. It won't be our main focus, but if we can see there are people who like it, we can begin to focus on it. The primary thing in this community currently is Minecraft, and until we begin to see demand for something else, cutting it out has about a 99% chance of killing us, and that's if half of the staff actually decided to stay after the cuts were made...

This won't happen in the foreseeable future.

 

[OgroovysamO]

Kinda think we would've been better off keeping the Blocktopia name and the notoriety that came with it, would've kept new players coming in even from different gaming platforms. Just my two cent.

Edit: Hate to be *that guy*, but it's kinda funny how many likes/agrees this post has got when the last time I posted this opinion I was kicked to the ground during the voting for a new community name. I'd honestly recommend re-adopting Blocktopia to ensure the future of the community. This is coming from somebody who literally studies this sort of stuff, it'd be a very productive move.