Poll of the Day > According to the poll, most people here have been here for over 10 or 20 years.

(+) Yeah! (+)

First, I think it's cool to see a lot of long-timers here. I have been visiting GameFAQs for over 20 years and I am amazed to see that as the second-most picked choice. But the numbers for people who have been here for a shorter amount of time, aka the younger users, is quite small. Which makes me ask: Are we losing younger users to social media? If so, I think that's sad. GameFAQs was the original "social media". It was a place where you can discuss things without having your real name shown. Want to talk about a game? Talk about it on the forum. Want a social board to talk about other stuff. GameFAQs has that, too.

So are we losing new users because of social media?

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Actually I'm amazed ANYONE here over 10 years still actually answers the polls. I think I stopped doing that over 20 years ago.

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We're not losing new users to social media, they were never here to begin with.

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maniaxe613 posted...

Are we losing younger users to social media?

Nope. Message boards are actually a form of social media.

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I have been here over 10 years now (I think I started coming here in 09 and GFaqs in general in 08)

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What poll?

wwinterj25 posted...

Nope. Message boards are actually a form of social media.

Web 2.0 social media

My account is from 08 or 09 but there is a huge gap in activity

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^Fun fact: I met the voice actor of Joe Higashi a few years ago at a convention in Toronto.

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I've been here for almost 20 years, yeah. I almost never answer the polls.

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wolfy42 posted...

Actually I'm amazed ANYONE here over 10 years still actually answers the polls. I think I stopped doing that over 20 years ago.

I answer the polls more than I post. The poll is way more engaging than the users. I miss the heavier moderation rules....

This account is 15yrs old and wasn't my first account. Time flies.


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Its certainly a dying site. Theyve updated a few things about the forums in the past year but its still a very outdated system.

and the text walkthroughs are fucking ancient now. They used to be something so special 20 years ago but for some reason the site refuses to update their system with the evolving times

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i didn't have an account for a long time, i just used to use this site for quick game answers.

then i made an account because someone gave such blatantly wrong info about a character from paragon early access that i had to correct it
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Younger people don't bother with the polls -- in fact, a lot of people bypass the polls / front page and go directly to the boards -- and Gamefaqs doesn't bring in as much traffic in general thanks to video guides replacing text guides and supplementary resources being available. While Gamefaqs's most active boards include a lot of social boards, keep in mind that it's still a gaming site so the front-end traffic is generally going to come from gaming and then those who stay long-term will eventually become active on the social boards to the very gradual exclusion of the gaming boards.

FrozenBananas posted... Its certainly a dying site. Theyve updated a few things about the forums in the past year but its still a very outdated system.

and the text walkthroughs are fucking ancient now. They used to be something so special 20 years ago but for some reason the site refuses to update their system with the evolving times

That's overly dramatic and wrongly based on the notion that if you're not growing, you're dying. Clearly there's some middle ground. After all, sites far smaller than Gamefaqs with anemic growth are seen to be healthy and Gamefaqs has allegedly been "dying" for about 10 or 15 years. 10 or 15 years down the road, it'll still probably be around.

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Zeus posted...
in fact, a lot of people bypass the polls / front page and go directly to the boards

Been doing this for years.

Maybe will see the front page two or three times a year or when the site auto-logs me out.


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FrozenBananas posted...

Its certainly a dying site. Theyve updated a few things about the forums in the past year but its still a very outdated system.

and the text walkthroughs are fucking ancient now. They used to be something so special 20 years ago but for some reason the site refuses to update their system with the evolving times

They've updated the rules and introduced the ability to include pictures, multiple pages, a clickable table of contents, etc. They took so long on purpose because they wanted to keep the FAQs accessible to as many people as possible, including those stuck with older machines. But the update did come, and it works well as far as I can tell. But I do remember putting together my Opoona FAQ(my only FAQ, and to the day the only fully complete Opoona walkthrough) over a decade ago and manually making sure every line was under the character limit. 'Twas a pain.

But yeah, I've been here 17 years, and I recently hit ? block level. I remember early on that it was kind of exciting to hit a new level. But this last time it snuck up on me. And I've noticed that after a point, the level boards are really dead. Mushroom Kingdom has a couple spam topics going, but nothing interesting. The Sacred Realm(Sage) is only marginally better. If not for social boards like The Galbana Alliance and The Underground Garden, I might not visit much at all anymore tbh.

The ability to see results from earlier versions of the poll is kind of interesting. I only learned about that yesterday, and only by chance. What the results from previous years tell me is that the GameFAQs audience has always skewed toward gamers from the NES era. I'm not sure if I should be surprised by that or not.

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papercup posted...

I've been here for almost 20 years, yeah. I almost never answer the polls.

They keep randomly tacking on weird stuff to the semi interesting ones that makes any answer I pick technically a lie in some way. It's annoying.

Like even that one. Can't stay away? I've spent huge chunks of my time away from GameFAQs.

ChaosAzeroth posted...

They keep randomly tacking on weird stuff to the semi interesting ones that makes any answer I pick technically a lie in some way. It's annoying.

Like even that one. Can't stay away? I've spent huge chunks of my time away from GameFAQs.

The key word is "stay".

You haven't stayed away as you're still here.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

The key word is "stay".

You haven't stayed away as you're still here.

Fair.
Just usually can't stay away is used with something someone is like super attached to and has trouble staying away from.

If I wasn't so depressed I probably wouldn't be on here right now tbh. But life is what it is.

TheRedButler posted...

But yeah, I've been here 17 years, and I recently hit ? block level. I remember early on that it was kind of exciting to hit a new level. But this last time it snuck up on me. And I've noticed that after a point, the level boards are really dead. Mushroom Kingdom has a couple spam topics going, but nothing interesting. The Sacred Realm(Sage) is only marginally better. If not for social boards like The Galbana Alliance and The Underground Garden, I might not visit much at all anymore tbh.

I've never bothered with level-restricted and I can't imagine most people would.

TheRedButler posted...

The ability to see results from earlier versions of the poll is kind of interesting. I only learned about that yesterday, and only by chance. What the results from previous years tell me is that the GameFAQs audience has always skewed toward gamers from the NES era. I'm not sure if I should be surprised by that or not.

idk, the site has younger people as well. However, as a general rule, a lot of the people here today were here ten years or fifteen years ago as well.


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Are internet message boards in general declining in users?

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I answer the poll if I ever find myself on the front page. Mostly keep to bookmarked boards, though...

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I've been here since 1998. My original account got banned though for inciting a board invasion

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People look at the poll?

ancient running joke

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we dont get new users

everyone in this website has been in this website for years

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i made this account in 2005. idk why i come here tbh lol

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I really don't like the social media taking things over trend.

Social media accounts don't have easily organized guides and such, nor does Discord and a Discord server can easily poof.

It's the worst for art galleries with people "moving" to Twitter. Moving from sites with fully-featured gallery functions to Twitter and other similar platforms (that in addition to lacking a good gallery feature also run high-quality images through a .JPG meat grinder) is mindbogglingly awful.