Expanding Simtropolis to the rest of the sims games and more.

[IL. 1,043]

I was thinking why not expanding Simtropolis to more games, it is already a very big website, and popular, and you can actually get profits from letting ads if the website is very popular.

I think it wold be great if there was a section on the STEX for the rest of the sims games, and maybe even other games like Red alert or command and conquer series, etc... (should be an independent exchange  sub section so you don't mixe things up with the simcity4 uploads).

There already big websites for game mods and stuff like moddb.com and others.

 

Would you like to suggest that to the website owner?

[MandelSoft 2,769]

I think that will lead to too much clutter...

[timmie 988]

Hm, I think it's best to stay with city builders only, because otherwise this site would become too big, I'm afraid.

[Hamish 1,369]

We tried to accommodate the sims on our forums for years, but eventually the interest about the games on our website subsided, until we eventually retired the forums. 

 

Why did people loose interest in these forums? Scope.

The sims was just outside the scope of Simtropolis, which has always been focused with City Building games, primarily SimCity. There are other sites that focus on the Sims, and they do it well because their scope is narrowly focused on that one topic. For us, its SimCity, for others its the sims or command and conquer. Websites like moddb have worked because they were designed from the start to have a very wide scope.

Its extremely difficult to change the scope of anything, especially websites. Increase the scope too much and the direction of the site is lost because it is trying to accommodate various different groups, all with their own needs. It diverts attention away from other parts of the site, usually ending up with a loss of attention to the old core of the website. Decrease the scope too much and you find yourself removing parts of your established website, leading to an unsettled community anxious to find out what group will be cut next. 

 

The scope of Simtropolis has enabled it to become what it is today. Changes can happen, for example the scope of our website has recently changed to include SimCity 2013, it was effective though because it was seen as part of the natural progression of this site, rather than opening doors to other communities who already have established and functioning websites.

While it might sound like a good idea to open up a well established website to more groups in order to gain profits, it wouldn't be viable because of the scope of this site and of others. People come here for their SimCity news, they go elsewhere for their Sims or Command and Conquer information.

[Cyclone Boom 16,829]

Yes, I agree with the consensus.

It's a nice idea, but logistically, it would be very challenging. Simtropolis has traditionally been a community focused on city building simulation games. So essentially, everything revolves around them -- both with the design and layout of the site. As other games are completely separate franchises, they would each require a dedicated section -- or even domain. As others have said, it could easily create clutter, which could lead to confusion. Let's face it, Simtropolis is already the largest SimCity 4 fan base.

Of course, maintenance costs would also be a factor. The larger a community becomes, the harder and more expensive it is to manage. With the new SimCity, we saw how site traffic levels surged and impacted performance. If new franchises were added, the implications would be massive.

Even with unlimited resources, it must be considered whether it'd be beneficial. As most other games already have established communities (especially the Sims), there would be some doubt here. We do have the Gaming Talk and Strategy Games forums, where other non city building games can be discussed. But in my opinion, having dedicated sections would not really be a viable or sustainable option.

[IL. 1,043]

I see that the main problem here is the traffic and scope, I agree that it can divert the focus on simcity4 and the city buildings games to other games, so what about making sub sites, with free domains, for example Simtropolis-Sims.webs.com and make a tab for it in the ST that leads directly to that sub site, any member or mod can try to make one and the best one shall be the winner and take care of it, it should accomondate some sims wiki pages or omnibus, and helpfull links and stuff as a start.

This way it will not interfere wih the site traffic or scope as you said. It's is mainly like advertising for that website in Simtropolis (it shouldn't be a big website because it should'n have that much traffic as simcity's) it can even have it's own chatroom (many free chatrooms are avaible, simmania.darkbb.com is an example, it have everything a website can have, and it is using a free domain name).

 

The reason behind this, is that members will not even notice the other games section on the forums, me personally don't look beyond the BAT threads section, or above that, I had to find out where to post this for few minutes. So a whole sub-site that you can access via a button in the upper menu (just like if you're accessing the STEX or the forums), this way, Simtropolis will be forever focused on city building games, but as these sub-sites become more popular, and members just come to Simtropolis to just go to these sub-sites, may add more traffic and I see that a bit problematic to you.

 

Or, the simples solution, you can add the other games section of the forum, to a button in the menu, to access to it directly instead of going to the forums and then going to that section, and it can have many sub-sections that each section is for one game, like a sub-section in the other games section, like this: othergames->the sims->the sims1; othergames->the sims->the sims2; othergames->the sims->the sims3, othergames->the sims->Command and conquer games->RA2; othergames->the sims->Command and conquer games: generals....... etc...

So in another way, you're only going to make a button that lead directly to the other games section in the forums, and organise it a little bit with other sections.

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The basic problem is cost of resources both for the web presence and the management of operations.  This is a free site, paid for by donations and whatever we can glean from some small advertising revenue.  Expanding to other venues would require a much larger management group with salaries and all that that implies.  How much would you pay for a membership on an annual basis?

[IL. 1,043]

As for the idea of sub-sites that you can access via simtropolis, for example simtropolis-thesims.webs.com, and as you can obviously see, .webs.com, wich means it's a free domain, also what money will you spend for adding a button to the menue? If you are wondering about will manage the website, well anyone who wants to, he will manage it for free, it should'nt be that hard, it's just a forum and upload section not that much..  

 

The other idea I posed was..well you can go back to my post, and the important thing is, that it doesnt require any resources.. you're only going to add a button, and sub sections to the other games section, shouldn't be that hard now should it? as for who will manage it, well the same mods that are managing ST for now.

 

 

You didn't read my post did you? 

[hym 358]

As for the idea of sub-sites that you can access via simtropolis, for example simtropolis-thesims.webs.com, and as you can obviously see, .webs.com, wich means it's a free domain, also what money will you spend for adding a button to the menue? If you are wondering about will manage the website, well anyone who wants to, he will manage it for free, it should'nt be that hard, it's just a forum and upload section not that much..  

 

The other idea I posed was..well you can go back to my post, and the important thing is, that it doesnt require any resources.. you're only going to add a button, and sub sections to the other games section, shouldn't be that hard now should it? as for who will manage it, well the same mods that are managing ST for now.

 

 

You didn't read my post did you? 

 

I can tell you from experience that "just a forum and an upload section" is quite a bit more demanding than one may think.  There is a significant amount of behind-the-scenes work that goes into keeping a site running smoothly, even if it is something relative simple, like a forum or an upload section.

 

Additionally, let's avoid calling each other out.  It's not very polite.

[IL. 1,043]

Additionally, let's avoid calling each other out.  It's not very polite.

 

Yeah sorry about that

[simlink 1,098]

I can tell you from experience that "just a forum and an upload section" is quite a bit more demanding than one may think.  There is a significant amount of behind-the-scenes work that goes into keeping a site running smoothly, even if it is something relative simple, like a forum or an upload section.

 

Precisely. Some people grossly underestimate the amount of work that goes into running a site. Even if its a smaller site, which my experiences tend to be, there is a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that members don't see. Believe me, if ST runs anything like the sites I'm an admin at, there are several discussions relating to things from activity to new features. While on the surface adding attention to The Sims series would be a good idea, ST has established itself as a city-sim site. In order to attract the "The Sims" community the site would have had to focus on them in the beginning or when the site was smaller. With the size ST is now, discussions relating to these other games would easily get lost.

 

So it's a good idea, but from this particular situation on ST I don't think it'd work out well. ST is known to be a city-sim community, less so an all encompassing, fansite-for-all-sim-games site.

 

But that's just my $0.05

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

As for the idea of sub-sites that you can access via simtropolis, for example simtropolis-thesims.webs.com, and as you can obviously see, .webs.com, wich means it's a free domain, also what money will you spend for adding a button to the menue? If you are wondering about will manage the website, well anyone who wants to, he will manage it for free, it should'nt be that hard, it's just a forum and upload section not that much..  

 

The other idea I posed was..well you can go back to my post, and the important thing is, that it doesnt require any resources.. you're only going to add a button, and sub sections to the other games section, shouldn't be that hard now should it? as for who will manage it, well the same mods that are managing ST for now.

 

 

You didn't read my post did you? 

Of course I read your post.  The main objections are the ones I pointed out.  I suspect we don't want to manage more than we have.  As for links to other gaming sites, there are several at the bottom of the page.  There are also limits.  We really are only interested in city building games.

 

I have enough trouble maintaining my private site which really is only for picture downloads and a few personal things.  I've been in the computer business now for over 50 years, and frankly, I don't take on anything vicarious and I can't think of any reason why this site should.  Web space costs money because it is a finite resource.  I have to keep my site down to 20GB, and I am now using an image site to cut down on the space requirements of the actual site.  If you want an eclectic site, feel free to put it up.

[IL. 1,043]

I see, well, it wasn't a bad idea anyway