Ok, ok. First off, I see a good amount of support for YouTube stuff, including from Runouw, so anyone who wants to do that, is good to go.
I would personally LOVE to see my WITBLO entry review by Amp, but that's just because I'm an Amp fanboy. *hides* My only suggestion in that regard is to make sure to have links to this website in the description, and possibly in some - what do you call it when you put a comment on top of the video, gods I feel dumb right now - in your video.
Secondly, yes, there is a certain level of maturity that the forum as a whole has gotten, which is a good thing, but we also need to remember where we came from. Everyone was a n00b once, and had no idea how to work a forum, how to register, how to post, how to read the rules, much less follow them, etc. There will always be new members at that level, and we need to be able to handle that too. I like the idea of a mentoring program, but we would need to talk about how that would work. In all honesty, I kinda saw that as the UR position, but maybe we could make an even lower position for people who are just there for welcoming/mentoring, in addition to making a new "Mentoring" subforum under "Welcome", or something. Or maybe we could get URs to do that. Let's discuss. And, as for the lack of drama (good gods, some people
like drama?!?), it will come with fresh faces, don't you worry.
We are getting new members, though it isn't the tidal wave we were seeing before, and they have been mainstreamed for the most part. I remember when Amp was new, much less anyone here from after her. And as for us oldbies growing up, you will notice that Blab, MoY, and a number of others
are still hanging around because we love this place, much less the fact that once a gamer, always a gamer. I'm never going to stop playing video games permanently, and I don't see anyone else suddenly thinking this is all childish and unnecessary.
Finally, I agree with Runouw that a lot of SM63's popularity was just market saturation. I did not come from Newgrounds personally. I actually found out about NG from
here. I came here from
OfficeGameSpot of all places, and it is because SM63 was uploaded and re-uploaded
EVERYWHERE that it got as much attention as it did. Perhaps a search of flash games (in order to find the overall hosting sites) would bring a load of places to submit LL to, and would get it some better visibility. We could at least hit the other two major Flash hosting sites:
Armor Games, and
Kongregate. I don't think Flash is really dying as a platform, it's just maturing into it's own niche. No, it isn't the new hotness any more, but Casual Gaming will never go away, and Flash is the home for those players. Newgrounds isn't dying, so I don't think we really have anything to worry about until they do. There's still plenty of attention being put into frameworks for anyone to make flash stuff. Look for game maker stuff, and you will find plenty of flash frameworks. That's not a problem. I think just uploading both LL Chapters to a bunch of other sites would get it the attention we are all hoping to see. LL deserves the recognition. I believe Runouw has another winner here, and I am sure you all agree.
P.S. @Harmless If you don't want your posts to be just text, then you use BBCode. All the tags recognized by this board are
here.
EDIT: I was just rereading some stuff, and I think LordFalcon has a good idea about letting people have their own space. To that end, perhaps we could remove the restriction on continuing a welcome thread past the first week. That would give them a personal space to hang out, and a number of friendly Runouwians already hang out there...