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FORUMS
Bubblyboo2
Posts: 52 Member
Which did/do you prefer?
FORUMS 29 votes
Having the just Australia And NZ forum?
31%
9 votes
The Way it is now?
68%
20 votes
2
Bubblyboo2
Posts: 52 Member
9 votes
20 votes
Comments
You can always start a new foum, It does not cost a lot. All you need is one of you to know how to set such a forum. For example, we predicted that our foreign EA forum will not survive and we now have our private "The Sims" forum for half a year now, and it is much more alive than those we left.
Hero on EA AHQ
I support Evie0602's idea of foreign language section in English forum. Why couldn't the moderators of to be closed forums moderate their respective languages on the foreign language section here in English forums?
@kreatora We are already building a Forum outside the EA regime, but I still feel it's an emergency solution and a loss of belonging to the community
If the whole active community of the forum moves to your new ones forum, nothing will change. Those who know English can continue to visit here, those who don't know English further will stay in their own company, as before but under a different name.
Now when EA just announces that technical advice on forums will be closed, these forums will be in fact die out.
Anyway, let's be honest, this technical advice on foreign forums was made by players, In my country English knowledge is still not common. Moderators usually have little technical knowledge so you can only count on helping players. Now when most of the old players have moved to our new forum with their technical knowledge, the our EA forum is slowly dying anyway and telling the truth I'm not crying because of this.
Hero on EA AHQ
But I think that the problem is that EA_Mage and other staff don't understand our language perfectly. Try and turn it the other way around: We don't understand English perfectly either. Are we facing the day, that we can't play our favourite game The Sims in our own language like before? Many of us have been playing The Sims since The Sims 1 and gladly payed lots of money to keep playing, well knowing that we could set the game to Danish. Most of us will have a lot less fun with gaming, if we don't understand half of what is going on.
So they close the Help Center in the Forum?
This means that you can not even get help from experienced players here?
I've got the best knowledge from other sim players and even they've got their knowledge somewhere.
At the Danish Forum, I got useful help when I bought a new gamer computer ..... by writing with other players about their experiences.
Where should you ask the type of questions in the future?
So in six months we can get a new market analysis, justifying that all forums are not being used ...... and they should therefore be closed.
And the sims players are scattered apart in small invisible subcultures
Read here
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/944810/update-on-the-sims-4-help-center
Hero on EA AHQ
..... maybe because one assumes that Scandinavians are so good at English. But I do not understand technical answers in English and I rely on help from fellow players.
I understand that EA are modernizing Forums with the machete method.
We will probably find our own solution to keep a Danish gaming network, but it will be completely outside of the EA community and therefore also completely beyond their reach. I am very frustrated that EA is totally deaf for that fact.
I think that finally all forums will be liquidated together with the USA forum,
From the point of view of corporations, forums do not bring any gain. This is the place where you meet mostly, older players whose favorite activity is complaining about the game. It is simply anti-advertising! And EA still pays for it!
The market goal of the company is the youth and children and not a bunch of pensioners, And now it is clearly visible.
Hero on EA AHQ
1. Game forums exist for a lot of games and have done so in many years. Earlier they were the place where gamers could give feedback and tell the developers what they wanted in the game. But now most games are multiplayer games and the forums for them are mostly used to get friends and tell other players what a gamer wants as gift or to discuss strategies with their teams. A few games has an ingame forum for this. But most games haven’t.
2. The game companies earlier wanted the forums for feedback. But now especially games target at very young gamers (E rated or T rated) give much more feedback on the social media like Facebook and Twitter. (Therefore EA also has told all the developers to write on Twitter every day and not use this forum much anymore.) But I still think that it is a little different for M rated games which only are played by older or more mature gamers.
3. I don’t think that the English forum soon will be closed too. But with the reduced importance of the forums EA is likely to reduce the number of forums even more because EA doesn’t want to be responsible for the content of forums without having paid employees to control and moderate those forums. So to reduce costs by having fewer moderators EA needs to reduce the number of forums and close forums that only have limited flow. (EA has also already reduced costs by replacing gurus who know the game with general moderators who only moderate EA’s games without knowing much about those games and likely aren’t much interested in the games either.)
I have since worked with unskilled work since I was 17. Has since done me roughly 45 years in the labor market.
Has through my work done me with English and German through practical experience because of my job as a truck driver in most of Europe.
But there is no doubt that I speak best in Danish.
Therefore, I can not see why we can not have a place where we can express ourselves in our own language.
I do not care if we have our own forum or forum of the English forum.
What I want to miss is that you can speak in one's own language and do not need a language that is only known.
We are of course making a private forum where we can continue with our own language, but it can not be EA's interest that forums should be private or?
This is translatet with google.
The problem is forums cost money to operate. If there wasn't enough activity (unique members) and enough money coming in as a result of that forum, then all it does is cost EA money. Especially now with the trend for people to use social media sites rather than forums to complain about bugs or discuss the game, forums that cost EA money aren't likely to be retained. And that one day may happen to this forum.
There wasn't an official forum for Mass Effect: Andromeda when it launched and it's owned by EA. Sims as a franchise only has an official forum only because the fanbase for it has such a higher percentage of older members compared to games like Mass Effect. Sims is a game someone with lowered reflexes due to age can play with great success. Unlike first person shooters or racing games.
The reason for requiring English here is the moderators here don't speak other languages so in order to make sure everyone is moderated evenly, members have to communicate in the language the moderators understand.
1. Many young simmers often visit the forums. But only for reading about the game and become inspired.
2. Young simmers often write their first message in a forum when they need help and other simmers usually help them if they can and the problems are solved. If the forum doesn’t exist anymore then they will either stop playing the game or try to get help from EA’s support. But EA’s support doesn’t even give help in Danish anymore because that would cost EA money too. But then EA will lose a lot of young simmers who just will give up on the game unless their parents can help them. And a lot of parents can’t and will just tell the young simmers to play another game instead.
So closing the Danish forum will likely cost EA much more money than EA imagine.
I have spent a lot of hours browsing the Forum to find answers and inspiration for my game.
My problem with many of the new modern platforms, such as Facebook and twitter is that you can not use it as a reference book you can return to. Communication is now and here and is quickly forgotten.
Twitch I have no experience with.
YouTube can give very good inspiration, but it's one way communication from the Youtuber to the viewers ...... although I'm well aware that many YouTube movie makers like to get feedback on their movies .... it's anyway not a real dialogue.
I'm really sorry to lose my Danish Forum ....
Not because I'm afraid to make mistakes here or because I'm afraid of the development, but because I found it valuable that I can communicate with players in a language I understand.
You are so right. It feels like a slap in the face, especially for us who have been using our forum regularly to ask, to answer, to help and to inspire each other in a language we all understand well. Treating us like outcast makes us frustrated and not wanting to go to the English forum either. Like I mentioned earlier, we spent our money in many years buying and playing this game - Sims 1, 2, 3 and now 4. Is this a way to treat regular customers?
That's all I can advise. I've gone through 20 years of EA's forum closures!
Nevertheless, I'm going to try make new forum for the Finnish Sims community. Still I think it's pity to close our little forum.
Sorry about my poor English. You maybe have to use to poor language when the small forums are cloused...
moderator Hilbert from Finnish Sims Forum
But how much money compared to what they losing by having the site up?
If they lose $1000 a year to not having Danish support but lose $2000 a year by running a Danish forum, then it makes perfect business sense to consolidate forums. Especially if you understand that EA is moving away from the usage of forums for their games. They will not keep a forum that loses them money.
And they're already starting to pull off parts of the English forum. The help sections are about to be closed and people directed to EA's Answers HQ.
Yes, it's unfortunate that they are pulling the cord while Sims 4 is still in active development and not at the end of its life between iterations and that they are moving away from forums all together. Hopefully, they are giving each forum they are closing plenty of time to organize to figure out where to move to and to pull of the useful information posted on the forums so that it's not a mad dash to save everything and move.
I'm dissapointed of the closing solution. I wonder if it could be cheaper to ask every Finnish player to call help desk and keep the waiting times quite reasonable than direct them to the Forum with some volunteers with a large knowledge about the game.
Agreed. But the only expense that matters is the wages to paid moderators who moderate and maintain the forum. We now have made our own forum for free instead by using free software and a free server. So when other companies can offer this for free then so could EA. But EA just doesn’t want to have forums without paid employees to moderate and maintain them. This is the problem.
The problem here is that EA has moved all the gurus away from the forum and over to Twitter instead. The reason is that many more read what they write on Twitter. As an example polls about the game on Twitter that only were open for one single day produced about 30,000 votes which would be impossible if the polls had been held here in the forum instead.
But in Denmark the problem still is that EA is closing the forum and already closed the game in Danish in September 2017. So EA seems to just want to lose all the Danish customers who can’t read and write English. At least there isn’t any support for them at all anymore.