How important is a discord channel to you?

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Discord seems to be really popular, a lot of devs now offer private Discord channels for their supporters. Is this important to you, do you really like the option of having a dedicated Discord channel? Does it make a difference for you?

 

[Carrera]

I tend to stay away from it personally. My experiences have all been gaming related (except once), whether being in a guild in GW2 (recent) or a clan in Conan Exiles or ARK and my experiences have NEVER been positive.

I went into the Discord channels for 1D2 games (who's recently changed his name to something utterly stupid) and Decoherent and while I love their streams the hypocrisy and BS they allow in their discords while preaching against things like politics is so sickening that I won't even watch their streams any longer. Yes it may be their Discords and do whatever you want with your discord but it just further pushes the fact that Discord servers no purpose to me.

I went into a Discord that supposedly was based in science, mostly astronomy related and the amount of easily disproved bunk being tossed around and moderators abusing their positions again only reinforced,,,,,,,

You know what, it boils down to a Discord channel is a microcosm world where petty ass hats who've never accomplished anything in life get to play god occasionally. Serves me no purpose at all.

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Carrera I'm with you there. Have not had good experiences on Discord, IRC or whatever. Also as an old guy, trying to keep up with whatever is new and big at the moment such as tiktok, snapchat etc just seems like a waste rather than working on my art.
However, many of the top creators right now offer Discord as a perk... I'm like, you guys really have time for that??

 

[Deleted member 3145675]

Hi,
the only use I would find interesting for a "discord" - is that it may provide an adequate place to find bugfixes and extra art for some games.
i.e. Secretary does that - users report errors bugs etc... Dev provides rather quickly Fixes (a new Html in this case) - ofc the fact it's a html game makes it less complicated to do just that.

I avoid all other categories or discussion related posts.

 

[Omae wa shinda]

Discord is fun until you invite wrong person to your house (server) I tend to use it for game searching non-h games or a place to chat and play online through with friends communication for games

 

[Rinbael]

I only use discord to find tips and guides for fighting games or to find matches for them. Otherwise I stay away from discord especially for adult games, since in my experience it becomes an echo chamber for fanboys of the developer with power hungry mods that ban you at the slightest hint of criticism about the developer's game.

 

[Umbra Nensei]

If you run a project fueled by crowdfunding, personally I think it's mandatory. The least you can do is give your supporters / potential supporters / people interested in your project a platform to give feedback and ask questions.
But I might be a little biased, since I've met a lot of great people through those very servers. And because I love lurking around.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

I grew up with forums, dunno what these anxiety-inducing voice apps are for.

 

[khumak]

As a customer it doesn't matter to me. I've never used it. As a dev it would depend on whether a significant percentage of my fans wanted one and if I thought there was something of value that I could offer fans or patrons by having one. I would probably err on the side of making one and seeing whether people actually liked it or not as a dev.

I think any opportunity to give paying customers a little something extra without detracting from your game is probably worth the effort, whether that be a Patreon only discord, some live streaming sessions of your development process, previews of scenes that aren't in the game yet, letting Patrons vote on cosplay type renders of whatever they want even if it never goes in the game, etc.

 

[Carrera]

I grew up with forums, dunno what these anxiety-inducing voice apps are for.

I've never used the voice feature in discord. Last time I spoke in voice chat was Vent when I was still playing world of warcraft ages ago. Err no that's a lie. I was playing ARK while i was still in early access and didn't realize it had a built in voice feature, anyway normally when I game while at work I'll wear some headphones but I had taken them off to bitch at an employee, I was loud enough that even though the mic was a foot away my entire clan could hear me ripping into my assistant at the time. Last time anyone in a game has heard my voice.

Anyway, I prefer plain old forums myself.

 

[Bucketbot89]

I like the people I've talked to on Discord, hate the UI, so I don't use all that much

 

[Dice Station]

I prefer the text-chat over the voice chat. The noise that random people do, without any regard to others bothers me. But is a good place to collect information about the game development and bug's work around.

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

If you run a project fueled by crowdfunding, personally I think it's mandatory. The least you can do is give your supporters / potential supporters / people interested in your project a platform to give feedback and ask questions.
But I might be a little biased, since I've met a lot of great people through those very servers. And because I love lurking around.

This is a good point! What about using the Patreon or Kickstarter pages themselves as a place for supporters to comment on updates from the author?

 

[Umbra Nensei]

What about using the Patreon or Kickstarter pages themselves as a place for supporters to comment on updates from the author?

It might be sufficient, but I don't think it's as inviting or effective as an open discord server. Patreon pages never had, and will never have communities as active as discord servers, where people can just jump in and talk about whatever in designated channels. Not to mention you have to be a member in the first place to even become a part of those communities. I've seen people join the servers as regular users, lurk around, chat with others, and over time become supporters themselves. Now, I don't have a tested statistic, but I do believe having an open discord community has a lot to do with it in some cases.