Katawa Shoujo Forums

Yeah, these days I'm not so much interested in replaying the game as I am speculating on what the future holds for the characters. And I agree the most fun is welcoming new members. It's fun reading their thoughts, and letting them know they're not weird for feeling all those crazy feels. Brings back fond memories of my early days here.

The public discussion section is not the only section of this forum. The fanfiction section gets new threads and replies all the time.

Exactly right. The fandom isn't so much dying as moving on.
Within that first year when many of us were enjoying KS for the first time, the forums were a place for anyone who had finished an arc and needed to know they weren't crazy for feeling the feels they did to come. There were a lot of people at once all needing someone to share with, to reflect on the established story they had just gone through.

Now though, new readers aren't so common, and much of this fanbase has found peace with the feels that were stirred up, hence why the growth moves from discussing the stories in the Public Discussion boards, to creating new ones in the fanfiction section to create and explore new avenues for what we learned.

Also, on a more personal note, I've become less obsessed with finding where every arc went and experiencing it all. Now that I've found peace, these forums are less a place to pour out my aching heart for some urgent relief, and more just a place to check in and discuss a story I enjoyed.

I agree about the fanfiction section. We've still new projects starting all the time, most substantially, the pseudo-routes. One possibility for a 'revival' might be that some big youtube guy starts playing through it and their subscribers get the game. That was how I and a fair amount of others were introduced.

Or maybe something like a mod or other fanmade addition to the actual game? The Japanese translation is also fairly big news and we know for sure that that's coming.

Draganada wrote:Or maybe something like a mod or other fanmade addition to the actual game?

That would be a violation of the license...Though I'm sure there are those out there who don't pay much if any mind to that.

pandaphil wrote: Its fun reading their thoughts, and wondering if they're weird and feeling all these crazy feels. Brings back fond memories of my early days here.

Who're you calling weird Panda!? ;p

Xanatos wrote:

Draganada wrote:Or maybe something like a mod or other fanmade addition to the actual game?

That would be a violation of the license...Though I'm sure there are those out there who don't pay much if any mind to that.

Aw, really? My dreams of a Rika-route mod will never come true.

Merloficus wrote:

pandaphil wrote: Its fun reading their thoughts, and wondering if they're weird and feeling all these crazy feels. Brings back fond memories of my early days here.

Who're you calling weird Panda!? ;p

Sorry, just another of my famous typos. It was supposed to refer to them wondering if they're weird.


Jeez, you'd think I'd know how to write english by now.

And now we have a new translation release...
The fandom doesn't seem too bad does it?

Seeker91 wrote:And now we have a new translation release...
The fandom doesn't seem too bad does it?

Guess not. Things seemed to have picked up nicely this week. I guess we were just in a slump or something.

pandaphil wrote:

Seeker91 wrote:And now we have a new translation release...
The fandom doesn't seem too bad does it?

Guess not. Things seemed to have picked up nicely this week. I guess we were just in a slump or something.

Tell me about it...

pandaphil wrote:

Seeker91 wrote:And now we have a new translation release...
The fandom doesn't seem too bad does it?

Guess not. Things seemed to have picked up nicely this week. I guess we were just in a slump or something.

Like [guy whose name I forgot] said, slumps happen but it's hardly death. I actually threw the link to this place at Facebook just before the new blood started in. I wonder how much of that is coincidence. XD

What does it mean when a fandom dies? How does a fandom not die, what keeps it alive?

We never wanted to foster a fandom (we never expected one to emerge and didn't need one), so places connected to us, like these forums and our public IRC channel haven't been especially fertile ground for one to grow up. Still, we (well, some of us) have tried to at the very least make ourselves available to you guys, even if we aren't proactive in the interactions with the fandom. There should, I hope, be a very low bar to contact us for whatever, and there are lots of ways to do so from Ask! thread to PMs to email to coming to our IRC and so on. I think that's the level of involvement we're comfortable with.

But should we do something about the issues, if there are any concretely identifiable ones? We aren't likely to try to invigorate the fandom ourselves with the most obvious ways, that's just not something we want to do. It might be that none of us really reads these forums, but I recognize the fandom, and these forums, are valuable to a lot of people.

Aura wrote:What does it mean when a fandom dies? How does a fandom not die, what keeps it alive?

We never wanted to foster a fandom (we never expected one to emerge and didn't need one), so places connected to us, like these forums and our public IRC channel haven't been especially fertile ground for one to grow up. Still, we (well, some of us) have tried to at the very least make ourselves available to you guys, even if we aren't proactive in the interactions with the fandom. There should, I hope, be a very low bar to contact us for whatever, and there are lots of ways to do so from Ask! thread to PMs to email to coming to our IRC and so on. I think that's the level of involvement we're comfortable with.

But should we do something about the issues, if there are any concretely identifiable ones? We aren't likely to try to invigorate the fandom ourselves with the most obvious ways, that's just not something we want to do. It might be that none of us really reads these forums, but I recognize the fandom, and these forums, are valuable to a lot of people.

the only way to revitalize the dying fandom would be to make a sequel, which obviously isnt going to happen, or a new project with ambition for these fans to move to. so if neither of these happen, sad but true, the fandom will die slower and slower. im going to guess by next year unless something big is announced the forums will be all but dead if not sooner.

hereforawhile1 wrote:

Aura wrote:What does it mean when a fandom dies? How does a fandom not die, what keeps it alive?

We never wanted to foster a fandom (we never expected one to emerge and didn't need one), so places connected to us, like these forums and our public IRC channel haven't been especially fertile ground for one to grow up. Still, we (well, some of us) have tried to at the very least make ourselves available to you guys, even if we aren't proactive in the interactions with the fandom. There should, I hope, be a very low bar to contact us for whatever, and there are lots of ways to do so from Ask! thread to PMs to email to coming to our IRC and so on. I think that's the level of involvement we're comfortable with.

But should we do something about the issues, if there are any concretely identifiable ones? We aren't likely to try to invigorate the fandom ourselves with the most obvious ways, that's just not something we want to do. It might be that none of us really reads these forums, but I recognize the fandom, and these forums, are valuable to a lot of people.

the only way to revitalize the dying fandom would be to make a sequel, which obviously isnt going to happen, or a new project with ambition for these fans to move to. so if neither of these happen, sad but true, the fandom will die slower and slower. im going to guess by next year unless something big is announced the forums will be all but dead if not sooner.

I don't think so.

hereforawhile1 wrote:

Aura wrote:What does it mean when a fandom dies? How does a fandom not die, what keeps it alive?

We never wanted to foster a fandom (we never expected one to emerge and didn't need one), so places connected to us, like these forums and our public IRC channel haven't been especially fertile ground for one to grow up. Still, we (well, some of us) have tried to at the very least make ourselves available to you guys, even if we aren't proactive in the interactions with the fandom. There should, I hope, be a very low bar to contact us for whatever, and there are lots of ways to do so from Ask! thread to PMs to email to coming to our IRC and so on. I think that's the level of involvement we're comfortable with.

But should we do something about the issues, if there are any concretely identifiable ones? We aren't likely to try to invigorate the fandom ourselves with the most obvious ways, that's just not something we want to do. It might be that none of us really reads these forums, but I recognize the fandom, and these forums, are valuable to a lot of people.

the only way to revitalize the dying fandom would be to make a sequel, which obviously isnt going to happen, or a new project with ambition for these fans to move to. so if neither of these happen, sad but true, the fandom will die slower and slower. im going to guess by next year unless something big is announced the forums will be all but dead if not sooner.

I don't think it's that simple. There are many people who have not played the game and yet we see new people are introduced to it and the forum. Some have not played it because it is not in their native language, and the translation projects practically have just started to release their versions, so expect even more new blood. Lastly, there is the section of the fan works that gets updates often from old and new members alike, which is quite a nice board to browse into both for the fans to express themselves and purely for fun. As xanatos quoted we are just in a bit of a slump, which is reasonable compared to the hype of the release.