Changes to the Collabs section page 5

that makes so much sense.. People love the collabs.. the few that visit LOVE the collabs.. more visitors would mean more lovers of them no?

I’m sorry, but I really don’t back this idea. I’ve been listening to stuff on the collabs since I’ve joined this site. I have enjoyed the many submissions from various artists across the site and it was so much easier to use the collabs. I am seriously disappointed.

In addition, I agree that Kongregate can be a multi-specialty website. Having an active and awesome collaborative section in conjunction with a huge flash gaming community only adds to Kongregate’s appeal, and after talking with other friends who use this website, they agree.

Not trying to be overly sentimental or anything, but my hobby in remixing video game music started with some of the awesome artists that I discovered on here, and I believe that more consideration should be necessary in this matter before final decisions are made.

I smell GameStop on this one

D:

Originally posted by 09Kisame09:

I smell GameStop on this one

You know… I forgot that game stop owns this site.. makes since now. Collab section doesnt actually have anything to help benefit the site money wise.. all they are doing is spending some extra cash to keep that section up. which is covered by the rest of the sites advertisement and what not, but removing it will cut some cost..

so here is some major pros and cons i see in this.. plus a few personal
Cons- removes one of the main reason i come here (personal con)
no longer have a good/clean site to post on (personal con)
will kill all the potential that is in the collabs
will remove a way for artist of both music and art to gather and talk about their works and bounce ideas to one another.
Forces us to post in the forums, were we are easily skipped over without notice

Pros- save the site some money
allows more work to be done on other parts of the site
probably add some needed life into the forums
would no longer have to worry about the perfect upload picture for my art (personal Pro)

I think this is fairly relevant in this context (even though it’s taken from a different – but similar – situation):

Originally posted by AlisonClaire:

Well, that’s true, there were investors and now there’s GameStop, but they’re really not puppet masters. They, of course, want growth (as do we), but they’re not giving us specific orders to redesign the profile. They’ve been as great as any parent company could be, and any missteps are our own.

I’d like to believe what AlisonClaire is saying, but sadly I can’t. Maybe once I believed it, but not in this current time.

Having an active and awesome collaborative section in conjunction with a huge flash gaming community only adds to Kongregate’s appeal

Sure. However, from what the admins have said, it is not feasible to make the Collabs section “awesome” without neglecting the Flash games section, which is the core of the site. It would be like a restaurant that stops paying attention to the quality of its food in order to build a karaoke studio. Sure, it would be nice to have, but not if you have to sacrifice the very thing that made you popular.

And I don’t see how this can be possibly related to Gamestop (if so, it would have occurred two years ago when Gamestop first took over), so don’t go there.

Originally posted by racefan12:

Having an active and awesome collaborative section in conjunction with a huge flash gaming community only adds to Kongregate’s appeal

Sure. However, from what the admins have said, it is not feasible to make the Collabs section “awesome” without neglecting the Flash games section, which is the core of the site. It would be like a restaurant that stops paying attention to the quality of its food in order to build a karaoke studio. Sure, it would be nice to have, but not if you have to sacrifice the very thing that made you popular.

And I don’t see how this can be possibly related to Gamestop (if so, it would have occurred two years ago when Gamestop first took over), so don’t go there.

We have contrasting views then. I have discussed this issue with other friends who use Kongregate, and it’s a common denominator that we believe GameStop has influence over this decision be it more indirect than direct. Not just GameStop either, but any rivaling gaming and multi-functional websites that primarily specialize in flash gaming.

In addition, I don’t believe in cutting a unit from a whole just because it doesn’t fit in properly. The administration team should try to find ways to design parts of the website to function well with others so that the website as a whole functions smoothly. The collabs were a great part of Kongregate and I don’t see a reason for them to go.

Of course, with 20/20 hindsight, I say that the collabs should’ve been created since they’re going to be removed. I believe that Kongregate does have the ability to work on the collaborative section of the website so that it better meshes with the forums and flash gaming partitions, but it seems to be too late for that now which is part of why I’m disappointed with Kongregate.

Of course Gamestop has influence over how Kongregate runs. That doesn’t mean that Gamestop is hanging over Jim’s head and is micromanaging every single aspect of the site.

so I will never listen to my favorite music again?
http://www.kongregate.com/collabs/sounds/hugoleo777/across-the-fields

That makes sense. If you neglect part of the site, it won’t grow and you’ll eventually be moved to get rid of it. The collabs is something that SHOULD have had a much greater presence on kongregate.

They don’t fit because they aren’t “social gaming?” Wasn’t the idea of them to make gaming tools more accessible to the public, so more people (read: social) could be introduced to aspects of game making?

I haven’t looked at Collabs in a long, long while, but today I was going to check on it. I’m glad I did before it was scrubbed.

Originally posted by foolsguinea:

I haven’t looked at Collabs in a long, long while, but today I was going to check on it. I’m glad I did before it was scrubbed.

Exactly why I think even keeping them around as an archive is a grand idea..

Originally posted by himhim2340:

Originally posted by foolsguinea:

I haven’t looked at Collabs in a long, long while, but today I was going to check on it. I’m glad I did before it was scrubbed.

Exactly why I think even keeping them around as an archive is a grand idea..

It must be too expensive to keep the data. As in, the ads served against the archived data doesn’t pay for the bandwidth needed to display it.

One good supporting reason why the collabs should be kept

I’ll miss the collabs :\

Thanks for the warning though, I backed up all my old artwork and the funny comments on them

i refuse to make an opinion hear will it will never be read, im going to just make threads about it

Originally posted by adv0catus:

It must be too expensive to keep the data. As in, the ads served against the archived data doesn’t pay for the bandwidth needed to display it.

I don’t see how it will affect anything.. if it gets the same traffic and costs the same to keep expanding.. why would leaving it as it is would be too expensive..?

For example:

Monthly bandwidth to host the Collabs costs $10,000. Ad revenue from ads served on Collabs-related pages is $6,500 a month. Therefore, there’s a net gain of -$3,500 a month. That’s bad business.

I’m only speculating, though.

I don’t see how hosting the collabs would add a huge expense.. expanding the storage space would be costly, and maintaining it I get… (if there were frequent updates, which there aren’t really) The drop in overall site activity after the collabs is removed might be even worse for business.. then again they really didn’t say anything about the moneys, just the “not-so-awesomeness” of the collabs..

Originally posted by trickyrodent:

what Kongregate is about (social gaming), … improving the social and gaming aspects,

Be careful when you combine those two words together. You will end up with something not everyone wants. I appreciate social, and I appreciate gaming, and each should have a focus. They can be tied together somewhat, but I also appreciate them on their own. Don’t force me to socialize all aspects of my gaming here (and vice versa).

I know it’s just semantics, I just want to make sure staff here doesn’t have the wrong idea that everything must be social gaming.

Social gaming means something like Facebook games where you keep sending thousands of requests to people. Just because Kongregate has a chat doesn’t mean it is a social gaming site.

Originally posted by Kegfarms:

Social gaming means something like Facebook games where you keep sending thousands of requests to people. Just because Kongregate has a chat doesn’t mean it is a social gaming site.

That’s a type of social gaming and may be the most popular, but I wouldn’t blanket classify that as “social gaming” exclusively.

Hello. I’ve been away for a while. Busy busy student stuff. Only really have time to come on here during the holidays. I think its a real shame the collabs are being abolished. I hate the newgrounds music area and soundcloud just lacks something, not sure what. I agree with most things previously written, collabs has gone downhill but that is because it has been shoved into the corner and forgotten about so its no surprise that its not getting traffic. It needs a big link on the homepage, I’m sure it could do well. But at the end of the day its not up to me and as lots of people have already said kongregate is ultimately a business so what will be will be. But if it is possible to keep the collabs please keep them but not in the sad little corner they are in now. It was so cool when it first came out with the competition and the big links to it. Anything else I say will just be repeating what is previously said if I’m not doing that already.

tldr? Summary: collabs isn’t as good as it used to be but it could be. We probably can’t sway the decision now but there is the opinion nonetheless