Current Events > Age Demographics of GameFaqs over the years...

(+) Yeah! (+)

This is copied and pasted from my very first topic analysing the business/marketing strategy of GameFaqs back in 2020
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/573081-hellhole/78345919

Poll from 1999

• 6,509 total user votes.
• 75% of users under the age of 18.

Poll from 2010

• 128,745 total user votes.
• 78% of users over the age of 18.

Poll from 2019

• 14,173 total user votes.
• 97% of users over the age of 18.

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New Entry:
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Why wont anybody think of the children!

I go on and on like this for 7 pages, if anyone's interested you can click the link in the OP. But I've been preaching corporate overhaul for 4 years now, and my stance has more or less remained exactly the same. I knew it was only an eventuality until we finally got it.

Fandom has already begun implementing some of the simpler step, hoping to see them eventually start to take some huge risks with how they position the site to new (younger) users!

---

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STEROLIZER posted...

Fandom has already begun implementing some of the simpler step, hoping to see them eventually start to take some huge risks with how they position the site to new (younger) users!

What a dumb take. Sorry but it has to be said tc. This age demographic thing you quoted is happening pretty much everywhere. Anime / pokemon / comic book / videogame / superhero movies / etc. What started as basically entertainment for kids now have fans from all age ranges. However unlike fandom, they know how to retain their longtime older fans.

STEROLIZER posted...

I go on and on like this for 7 pages, if anyone's interested you can click the link in the OP. But I've been preaching corporate overhaul for 4 years now

ahahahaha

What a weird obsession with this site.

thisworld posted...

However unlike fandom, they know how to retain their longtime older fans.

I don't think you can place the blame on Fandom like that. GameFaqs itself under the old regime couldn't retain it's users. This place was the 81st most trafficked website on the entire internet in 2011-- modernization or not, the reason we lost so much engagement on the forums was due to the vibe and culture of GameFaqs not aging into adulthood as it did with it's users.

It took so long for us to get swearing for crying out loud. Around 2011 the medium age was 24 years old -- we were all just basically getting out of college, shedding our awkward young adult skins, and becoming normal, mundane, average joes. So the folks who moved on with their lives, and started racking up their various adult milestones posted less and less, meanwhile the folks that didn't do these things, and more or less just retained their "awkward young adult skins" posted more and more.

It upset the vibe of the platform, where the minority of active users had a very large voice...the vocal minority set the tone of what GameFaqs were to become, and it ostracized your normal everyday average joe, which unfortunately made up the vast majority of the active userbase.

A poll of the day in 2010 got 120k votes -- most of those votes were from users under the age of 25. At this point everyone is just an akward kid. We aren't adults yet. We have no credit, we drive crappy cars, and most of us live at home with our parents still. Flash forward to 2016 and where down to 25k users, most over the age of 25. What happened to the rest of them?

Sure some will always just "move on" but for the most part the vibe and culture of GameFaqs continued to appeal to awakward teenagers, and less to normal adults with salaried wages, home ownership, teslas, and wives.

It wouldn't be so bad if the site was also attracting younger users to replace the ones that were aging out, but the newer generation was growing up with smart phones, social media, and influencers -- GameFaqs had none of those things integrated into its platform.

The place didn't evolve with its own userbase, or with the world around it. It just remained frozen in time, and unfortunately the user that attracts is very niche, and not that conducive to growth or monetization.

Fandom recognizes this I'm sure, and I look forward to watching their progress. Will they succeed? Probably not, but I'm eager to watch them try!

--Zero- posted...

What a weird obsession with this site.

Yup

STEROLIZER posted...

I go on and on like this for 7 pages

As you do

STEROLIZER posted...

the reason we lost so much engagement on the forums was due to the vibe and culture of GameFaqs not aging into adulthood as it did with it's users.

That's your opinion. I disagree. Engagement on the forums declined virtually everywhere, because traditional forums have simply become less popular. That's it. And nothing that Fandom does here will increase traffic to the forums. They are shutting down more and more of them, and limiting what can be talked about on the remaining ones. And no I'm not talking about the perverted talk shit, nor am I talking about CE, as CE was not indexed, so search engine traffic wasn't feeding anyone here.

this really is a core millennial community

This is Tails level manifesto weirdness. Stop posting and play a game or something.

basically your point is gamefaqs missed its opportunity to be what Reddit is now.

cause the people in charge in the 10s didnt understand its core user base was aging rapidly.

Which is 100% true.

message boards are dying because Reddit and Twitter have basically swallowed them all up.

Young people have no need for text walkthroughs. Why would they? Youtube is easily accessable now.

no forum from the early 00's has anywhere near the traffic it did then and forums in particular have greatly declined. gamefaqs has never gotten most of its traffic to the boards and no 'average joe' is writing writing a tails level diatribe about gamefaqs.

tc hasn't highlighted a single way in which fandom has worked on improving gamefaqs. smells like a 'libs bad' type insane rant tbh

STEROLIZER posted...

Fandom has already begun implementing some of the simpler step, hoping to see them eventually start to take some huge risks with how they position the site to new (younger) users!

STEROLIZER posted...

modernization or not, the reason we lost so much engagement on the forums was due to the vibe and culture of GameFaqs not aging into adulthood as it did with it's users.

It took so long for us to get swearing for crying out loud. Around 2011 the medium age was 24 years old -- we were all just basically getting out of college, shedding our awkward young adult skins, and becoming normal, mundane, average joes. So the folks who moved on with their lives, and started racking up their various adult milestones posted less and less, meanwhile the folks that didn't do these things, and more or less just retained their "awkward young adult skins" posted more and more.

STEROLIZER posted...

The place didn't evolve with its own userbase, or with the world around it. It just remained frozen in time, and unfortunately the user that attracts is very niche, and not that conducive to growth or monetization.

Fandom recognizes this I'm sure, and I look forward to watching their progress. Will they succeed? Probably not, but I'm eager to watch them try!

Your argument is that GameFAQs needs to the with its users better, saying it took too long to get swearing as an example. Then you say you look forward to Fandom being better at this and that they're implementing steps. So far they've implemented banning politics and restricting posting about sexual themes even further. How does that help with your earlier stated concerns? Earlier you even said they were trying to attract kids, which doesn't fit your enthusiasm for evolution that retains their userbase.

andel posted...

tv hasn't highlighted a single way in which fandom has worked on improving gamefaqs.

They are quarantining the boards where the core users reside, to try and curb the culture this place had cultivated, and make the rest of the boards a bit more vanilla

which is needed if they want to put money into any type of user aquisition campaign.

If the end of the funnel of a paid ad campaign is dropping off a newly acquired user onto a board where a bunch of 40 year olds are discussing the attractiveness of cartoon characters then that user isnt going to stick around, theyre going to dip out.

There is no logic in allocating funds to modernizing the site or acquiring new users if youre just going to drop that user off in the basement of a magic the gathering party, or in the midst of a political thrashing.

They need to make the boards more generic and vanilla so that these users can stick around without being chewed up and spit out by the board regulars.

AppleJoe743 posted...

So far they've implemented banning politics and restricting posting about sexual themes even further. How does that help with your earlier stated concerns? Earlier you even said they were trying to attract kids, which doesn't fit your enthusiasm for evolution that retains their userbase.

Because they need to acquire new, younger, more casual users. The existing userbase thats currently here is not the userbase they are going to try and cultivate. They wont be going after 35-50 year old males.

Theyll be going after the 18-34 market, which great empthasis in the 24-34 year old market, since they have the disposable income to spend and are the bridge between the existing users (that they dont really want) and the upcoming generation (which they definitely want).

havean776 posted...

Young people have no need for text walkthroughs. Why would they? Youtube is easily accessable now.

You would need to get a mobile app, and then have influencer marketing campaigns so that notable creators made exclusive video walkthroughs for the platform.

Video guides that Fandom would own, and the influencer would send traffic too via promotion on their native channels.

Then youll offer bounties for video guides of former games, and perhaps some sort of native social streaming aspect that would encourage users to team together to create their own guides.

Bounties could be paid out probably not in money but some sort of partnered cryptocurrency that can rise in value based upon site engagement. That in of itself would bring additional traffic to the platform and allow GameFaqs to fund itself but it could also just be money

You started with an interesting topic and ruined it with your dumb corporate rhetoric. You've been missing the point for 4 years that Gamefaqs is and will always be a one man show that won't ever have any bells or whistles because that's too much work for 1 person. Allen was the best thing that ever happened to the site, with Devin being a great second admin to work the database, but that's as good as it gets for Gamefaqs.

TC has no fucking idea what he is talking about.

It's kind of wild noticing how people have changed over time.

I think you have some funny ideas about the attractiveness of a 'vanilla, generic' messageboard to 18-35 year olds.

And as for taking on YouTube as a source for video guides, via a 'bounty' of crypto? I'm wondering if your intent is is sabotage Fandom, rather than help them.

Gamefaqs is a geriatric relic of a bygone time. Let it live out its last years with dignity and peace, rather than dressing it up as a clown and trying to convince people it's still cool.

STEROLIZER posted...

Because they need to acquire new, younger, more casual users. The existing userbase thats currently here is not the userbase they are going to try and cultivate. They wont be going after 35-50 year old males.

Theyll be going after the 18-34 market, which great empthasis in the 24-34 year old market, since they have the disposable income to spend and are the bridge between the existing users (that they dont really want) and the upcoming generation (which they definitely want).

So they want to get rid of the exisiting userbase? And just hope it gets replaced?

Why not make a new website instead?

ai123 posted...

And as for taking on YouTube as a source for video guides, via a 'bounty' of crypto? I'm wondering if your intent is is sabotage Fandom, rather than help them.

I don't think Fandom need help in that regard they seem perfect capable of destroying the site themselfs.

havean776 posted...

So they want to get rid of the exisiting userbase? And just hope it gets replaced?

Why not make a new website instead?

A new website would be considerably cheaper the overhauling this one.

STEROLIZER posted...

Because they need to acquire new, younger, more casual users. The existing userbase thats currently here is not the userbase they are going to try and cultivate. They wont be going after 35-50 year old males.

There are quite a few trans women on Gamefaqs as well. And they are now prohibited from discussing how politicians and laws affect them *or how said laws could affect future trans representation in videogames* outside of CE, which is just utterly and completely fucked up. Fandom claims it wants to be inclusive, yet its ToU prohibits trans people from promoting activism against politicians and policies that would harm them or worse.
Please pause for a minute and think about just how incredibly fucked up and absolutely deranged that is! "Fandom has a policy against support campaigns for political candidates/parties who are running against a candidate/party whose stated goal, should they be elected, is to commit genocide against trans citizens. So go take it to another site, you're only allowed to discuss trans activism regarding media and entertainment here, and not something that directly affects every trans person in the country."

P4wn4g3 posted...

A new website would be considerably cheaper the overhauling this one.

Right?!

The TC is saying Fandom will improve the site by getting rid of the users, the boards and moving onto video guides over faqs.

Why not just make a new site at that point?

Gamefaqs boards are dying because boards are dead.

I used to be a member of many. They either died or got shutdown. I don't like it at all.

Sadly, I do see this pattern of unhinged people seemingly staying around forums. Not sure what that says about us. I don't doubt this is part of the reason why they're being killed off. What's a forum really do for a brand anyways? It used to be a perk for us now it seems to just be a liability longterm. Again I don't like it but that's what it is.

Shit, I remember when chat rooms were a new and cool thing. They don't exist anymore in mainstream the way they did. Any that exists is purely creeps.

I used to post at 360 achievements. That place is a tomb. Sad to see.

I also remember the days here as a 360 player. A new game came out and the 360 board would get 20 topics an hour while the PS3 one was doing 30-40 an hour. PS4 XB1 era starts and there's some new games that had ZERO activity for Xbox and far less for PlayStation as well.

I also do not get how video guides got so big. Who the fuck wants to watch a video? I gotta take my headphones off and watch a 3 minute video when if its text I can keep my game on and read what to do in 30 seconds.

The ONLY needed changes are mods enforcing the written rules equally and fairly against all users, and get rid of mod discretion so they can't invent rules to punish those they don't like for no real reason.

P4wn4g3 posted...

You started with an interesting topic and ruined it with your dumb corporate rhetoric. You've been missing the point for 4 years that Gamefaqs is and will always be a one man show that won't ever have any bells or whistles because that's too much work for 1 person.

They need to pay community managers. They technically could take just one single executive salary (250k) and divide it amongst 20 moderators.

So 20 volunteer mods now get 1k a month, and they become official community managers. This of course comes with some KPIs, and a contract.

Then you just hire a mobile developer (which they already have Im sure) and you use the marketing and UA department thats already on staff.

ai123 posted...

I think you have some funny ideas about the attractiveness of a 'vanilla, generic' messageboard to 18-35 year olds.

No. You would have to build lots of belts and whistles, but thats the foundation you start with.

I envision a mobile app that allows for beta & pre-registration sign ups. Thats an easy bell to add, and it comes with whistles in the form of income from brands willing to pay for the service.

EXAMPLE 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/ff7b88c1.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/6bf336df.jpg

EXAMPLE 2
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a138d408.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/92646f8c.jpg

Hyena_Of_Ice posted...

There are quite a few trans women on Gamefaqs as well. And they are now prohibited from discussing how politicians and laws affect them *or how said laws could affect future trans representation in videogames* outside of CE, which is just utterly and completely fucked up. Fandom claims it wants to be inclusive, yet its ToU prohibits trans people from promoting activism against politicians and policies that would harm them or worse.

Isnt the rule that if it fits into the discussion of whatever the topicality of said board is then you can discuss it?

But the current landscape cant really handle politics in its own. I think once this place onboards a bunch of new users and gets rolling it might be able to support such a board, but with the current size & niche of the community it just becomes to central to the entire platform

STEROLIZER posted...

Isnt the rule that if it fits into the discussion of whatever the topicality of said board is then you can discuss it?

Nope. It's okay to discuss trans issues as it applies to movie/videogame/etc. topics (characters, representation, etc.), and general social activism *not related to laws or government representation*, but politics is banned on all boards outside of CE, PERIOD. So, for example "Trump's AG pick wants to ban media representations of trans minors" would be prohibited on the movie/etc. boards, I'm fairly certain.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


I use to run one of these platforms. Companies will purchase for high quality users. Gamers that play longer, spend more, and get in on the first day. 24-44 year old males that consider themselves hardcore gamers.

On Google Play you cant cultivate that. On GameFaqs you can reasonably guarantee that everyone who clicks that button fits thats description.

The average revenue per user would probably be some insane number like 7 dollars, as opposed to Google Plays 25 cents or whatever it is.

Do you ever buy games from the Amazon purchase links on GameFAQs?

Admitedly, no.

Hyena_Of_Ice posted...

Nope. It's okay to discuss trans issues as it applies to movie/videogame/etc. topics (characters, representation, etc.), and general social activism *not related to laws or government representation*, but politics is banned on all boards outside of CE, PERIOD. So, for example "Trump's AG pick wants to ban media representations of trans minors" would be prohibited on the movie/etc. boards, I'm fairly certain.

Hmm. I guess I dont agree with taking it that far. Id ease up on that some.

--Zero- posted...

What a weird obsession with this site.

Can you at least admit that I get a kick out of this. Like the past week has been heaven for me finally people are actually willing to chat about this.

Its not me just talking to myself while filling up hellhole and sex board topics.

Sure, weird obsession. But also one unique to me. Theres no hidden agenda here. I genuinely like to discuss this stuff.

While I understand the financial necessity, I'm really not a fan of the "stop talking to each other and buy something" vibe that I'm getting.

STEROLIZER posted...

They are quarantining the boards where the core users reside, to try and curb the culture this place had cultivated, and make the rest of the boards a bit more vanilla

which is needed if they want to put money into any type of user aquisition campaign.

If the end of the funnel of a paid ad campaign is dropping off a newly acquired user onto a board where a bunch of 40 year olds are discussing the attractiveness of cartoon characters then that user isnt going to stick around, theyre going to dip out.

There is no logic in allocating funds to modernizing the site or acquiring new users if youre just going to drop that user off in the basement of a magic the gathering party, or in the midst of a political thrashing.

They need to make the boards more generic and vanilla so that these users can stick around without being chewed up and spit out by the board regulars.

Imagine thinking 13-28 year olds don't like discussing the attractiveness of fictional and cartoon characters let alone not realizing that's the peak age for a person to discuss them nor thinking they wouldn't want to discuss politics in an era where it greatly affects them. Yeah, the biggest sites with a zoomer userbase like Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Discord, Reddit, Youtube, even 4chan are known for not having hornyposting and politics /s. It's hilarious how out of touch you are while thinking you want to gain a younger userbase as it's perfectly onbrand with out of touch corporate executives.
Honestly the worst part of Fandom's moves is deluding you suspension subreddit dwellers into thinking you had a point.

Was tc the weird guy that tried to sue gamefaqs or something

Guide posted...

Was tc the weird guy that tried to sue gamefaqs or something

No, that was Jacob Curnow

GiftedACIII posted...

Imagine thinking 13-28 year olds don't like discussing the attractiveness of fictional and cartoon characters let alone not realizing that's the peak age for a person to discuss them l

Its seen as weird when a bunch of forty year olds on the internet do it. But not when teens and young adults do it. Double standards or whatever.

What Im about to say is just an example, its not reflective of GameFaqs, so dont get all triggered. But in essence, no college aged kids wants to come hang out with a bunch of 40 year old virgins.

So you dont want GameFaqs to appear as if its representative of that type of community.

The fact of the matter is that GameFaqs is mostly folks in there late thirties and early forties. Thats just the demographic thats here, so guiding them to stay on topic and not devolve into weird internet culture, 4chan types of discussion will help cultivate the vibe so that it appears to a younger audience that thus place isnt some weird, dark corner of the internet that they need to run away from. But rather a place they could waste some time on, and make some new friends.

TheSavageDragon posted...

No, that was Jacob Curnow

I thought that was tails or was he the one that called the FBI on gamefaqs?

TC never did anything like that. He made a reddit all the racist chuds flocked to it than failed to run it.
So I don't think hes a good advisor on how to run a website.

havean776 posted...

He made a reddit all the racist chuds flocked to it than failed to run it.
So I don't think hes a good advisor on how to run a website.

Thats actually a valid point. Well done.

--Zero- posted...

What a weird obsession with this site.

Especially considering he worked with the shit tier bottom feeders in harassing gamefaqs employees in an effort to get the site shut down.

Heineken14 posted...

Especially considering he worked with the shit tier bottom feeders in harassing gamefaqs employees in an effort to get the site shut down.

No I didnt.

Also can we not derail the topic to make it about me again, like its getting old.

"Fandom doesn't want to attract you old ass losers! Now, aren't you excited about Fandom's plans to attract a new audience and change this website?"

hockeybabe89 posted...

"Fandom doesn't want to attract you old ass losers! Now, aren't you excited about Fandom's plans to attract a new audience and change this website?"

I mean, whats the alternative? How do they make money? More ads?