Blood Red Skies Ready Room on Facebook

[Renko]

Ok just to be clear these are my opinions, and I’m not affiliated to Warlord Games in ANY way. I also have to assure you that I don’t intend to annoy, upset or aggravate anyone. I run a Facebook page that is player driven as much as possible about the game. That’s it. So having said that..

Sorry guys but at what point did anyone say “joint FB or go away”?

Warlord have this forum and all official posts about the game appear either here or on the BRS website first. Ditto “support”. I know this, because I have to copy announcements to the Ready Room Facebook page.

If the only reason you have for stopping playing a game is that the Facebook community is more active than the “official” forum you really are going to struggle, not just with BRS but with any game with an on line presence. My musings above about Facebook superseding forums are just that, my musings. I can assure you I don’t have a hotline to Warlord HQ. I’m just a likely to be saying “WTH?” as the next man (see Wildcats in metal!)

I really don’t understand what more Warlord can do. They provide this forum, but they cant make people use it. It is not that they are constantly releasing stuff on Facebook but nowhere else. Personally I would like to see more official news and the like on any and all platforms

I really do understand why people may dislike Facebook, but you cant expect others to follow your path all the time. The solution isn’t to walk away from the forums and the game, it is to make them useful – start a discussion, create interest.

I realise I have not updated the beta files here – I will do so now, and add any new ones when they happen

All the best

Ken

[leopard]

Where you have a game, with a developer that have their own forums and the developers are ignoring that forum to use a system that many refuse to use for data protection and privacy reasons then there are questions to answer.

Sorry not interested in that sort of company, if Warlord are not themselves going to bother to use their own forum, why should anyone else?

last post on this or any other issue, adios

[Andy Chambers]

Well, late to the party but I’m here now.

This is a me the lazy designer problem rather than a Warlord problem. I got distracted by the more easily-accessible contact on Facebook so I apologise to all neglected forum users!

Probably too late for Leopard, but at least his sacrifice was not in vain.

[Koin-Koin]

It’s great to see you joining us. Better late than never.
I’d like to say that I understand both Leopard’s and Renko’s point of view.
I’m not a FB fan but I understand that it requires less efforts than a forum. Still if there any kind of official place it should be the first one to look at when searching information.
I’m not saying that other places should not exists, only that they all should work together for the community in its entirety.

If we want the forum to be valuable place we also have to make it a living one.

[Mark Barker]

I can also see both points of view, I’ve happily subscribed to Yahoo Groups, Boardgamegeek and Consimworld for many years, in fact much of the research, playtesting and development of GMT’s Flying Colors series (Napoleonic Naval – not aircraft !) that I helped with was done through the Consimworld Group as that was the designer’s preference and GMT do not have game-specific forums – they just put updated rulebooks on-line.

It is really good of Andy to join us here, and I appreciate Renko’s efforts in uploading the beta cards in particular so they can be seen by a wider audience.

From my point of view it might have been better if the FB page had been closed access from the start, because we have been given a glimpse of what a vibrant place it is and then the sweetie jar has been closed because a few people do not want seem to want to share. I still think this is the wrong move, but that’s my view and that’s it.

As an early internet adopter (this is an old Compuserve e-mail address believe it or not) I valued the openness and inclusivity of the web – hence I use my real name and not a profile ID – but perhaps I am just old-fashioned.

My problem with Facebook is that unlike my other subscriptions (at least to my knowledge) they seem particularly aggressive in analysing usage and then selling that data to parties like Cambridge Analytica including the targetting of political messaging.

That gives me the creeps, so when I can work out how to restrict FB’s use of my data I may dip my toe in the water.

Until then, I’m relying on Renko to cross-post across anything that we do really need to know about that comes up on the FB page and am thankful of his committment in doing that.

Hopefully more of a gentle explanation than a rant I hope, I’m certainly not stepping away from the game as I think it is a gem.

For anyone on the South Coast of the UK I will be running a partipation game of BRS (possibly with simplified tournament rules like the Battle of Brighton to get passing interest involved) at my club’s show in Bognor Regis at the end of October.

I will post venue details etc on the general forum when everything is confirmed.

Best wishes,

Mark Barker
West Sussex
UK

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