[Event] Johannesburg Community Evening - 8 December 2015

Karuji

This event happens monthly, is free to attend and anyone may come and play boardgames!

Test games! Talk games! Make games!

When:18:30 until around 21:30, Tuesday 8 December
Where: Microsoft Campus Bryanston, 3012 William Nicol Drive, Bryanston, Johannesburg. In Auditorium 2

Content
- 6:30 - 7:00 Grab food elsewhere + bonding time
- Play boardgames

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Ok it's December, which for some reason we still have a JHB meet which not many people come to. So instead of lacking content and just sitting around we can play games and sit around chat, and drink coffee.

In other news I'm sorry for the thread being up late, and I might have to miss the meetup. Someone drove into my car and everything is currently a mess ~_~

Tuism

Aw man that's not good, sorry to hear. Hope you sort everything out soon. I'll probably be there, let me know if you need me to err, stand and tell people to play games :P

johnny_final_02

Hmmm... I have 2 games that I wanted to show and get some feedback on, is it still worth coming through?

Karuji

@Tuism thanks :)

@johnny_final_02 December normally has a very low turnout hence the decision for hanging out and playing some boardgames.

That said the people there are really dedicated members of the community from whom you can get good feedback. So just show them your game and see what they think. No one needs a projector to get people to watch/play a game :)

johnny_final_02

Sounds good! I will have them ready to play on my phone :)

Chris_Bischoff

Does anyone have any incite or suggestions as to 'why' the meetups in JHB (I cant speak to the CT ones) have died down like they have?
Even the forums themselves are almost a ghost town.

Are there any plans by MGSA to boost the community? We have had some huge local releases recently, and honestly this should be a time where these forums are teeming with life! Why the silence?

Perhaps someone on the backend of the forum can tell us if there are new members, are they just being quiet? Is anyone new signing up? Are people afraid to post discussions or get involved?

Karuji

@Chris_Bischoff It's a seasonal thing. Things tend to get quieter come year end when people are planning vacations and time away from computers.

Aside from December July/August normally have our lowest attendance for community nights in JHB despite the forum being rather active. I believe this is due to the cold and the early sunset at that time of year. So it's really just a seasonal thing, and I expect that come Jan we'll see a rather big uptick in number of active people :)

Chris_Bischoff

I hope so.

dislekcia

Chris_Bischoff said:

Does anyone have any incite or suggestions as to 'why' the meetups in JHB (I cant speak to the CT ones) have died down like they have?
Even the forums themselves are almost a ghost town.

Are there any plans by MGSA to boost the community? We have had some huge local releases recently, and honestly this should be a time where these forums are teeming with life! Why the silence?

Perhaps someone on the backend of the forum can tell us if there are new members, are they just being quiet? Is anyone new signing up? Are people afraid to post discussions or get involved?

There's usually a downturn when students head off on holiday. That said, CT's meetups are gaining numbers again after the venue switching that kept happening, so this might be a mostly JHB thing with meetup numbers. There won't be a Dec meetup in CT because of the timing, so we don't really have anything to compare to in the same way.

I'm also pretty sure that big releases actually have the opposite impact on the forums: People focus more on releasing big, finished things instead of trying new stuff and posting it early. I suspect that when the holiday jams kick in you'll see more movement.

dislekcia

Here's a shot of the forum stats since the forum's been collecting stats. The average discussions per month (that's new discussions created) is around 70 or so, some months are higher, some lower. November has been the lowest so far...

I'd just like to point out that in the literally 10 years I've been running game development community forums (yeesh), this is nowhere near a massively low participation point at all ;)

Tuism

Hey for those who're coming, I have a boardgame to playtest, I'll also bring another non-prototype boardgame :) See ya'll :)

Tuism

We had a rad playtest session of my boardgame Burjs/Abraj/Dubai/Burjat (name not decided on yet :P)

Thanks for everyone who came! :D

Karuji

So super thanks to the people who came! It was good to play some games with all of you :3

Also double thanks to @Tuism for the really entertaining Bur.js