Ideas for the Future of Vapourbots

[steven_mcg]

I think this particular thread has been a long time coming. Thanks for getting the discussion going, Alex.

In all honesty, I think the number one reason for all the unwritten fights, cancelled tournaments and general lack of activity around these parts the last couple of years is relatively straightforward. It isn't really to do with the running of the tournaments themselves, although you do raise good points about reservations and sizes. I think we all know how much we have to bug each other for tactics these days as well. :P

For me, though, the biggest problem with the Fan Fic forum these days can be summed up in one word.

Stagnation.

Robot Wars itself has been off the air now for nearly 10 years. While robotic combat stuff has been steadily making the rounds in live events and such, it's pretty much dropped off the pop culture radar altogether since Channel 5 cancelled the show. The closest thing we have to exposure in the public eye right now is SyFy's Robot Combat League, which can charitably be described as a scaled-up Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

There are no new bizarre and innovative robots for us to imitate and expand upon. There are no new tournament structures, Extreme events or arena designs for us to build our contests around. Most importantly, there are fewer and fewer new people joining the forum and contributing their own unique perspectives on writing and robot design.

Then there's the problems of Real Life. I know I've found it hard to get in the mood to write most anything these past couple of years thanks to my struggles to find a decent steady job, both here and on my other forums, and I know the rest of you guys have your own distractions and duties to be going on with. We're all around that age now when work and family and take precedence over our little fantasy leagues, and that's OK. It happens to us all.

As a result, many of us have moved on to do other things (even trying to build our bots for real!) and hardly any new blood has come to take their places, leaving we few that remain to keep replaying the same tournaments with the same robots over and over. There are no more worlds to conquer, no more mountains to climb.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm as guilty of letting this place slide into inactivity as anyone else. There's no excuse for a tournament with only ten robots and ten fights to go over three years without being completed and I want to apologise again to those contestants who still frequent the forum. It's not as if I haven't had the time to get it done.

I still don't want to shut up shop though, despite how long it's been taking me. I don't care if it takes me till I'm 42 and the only bugger left here - I will finish that ruddy tournament some day, you see if I don't! XP

So yeah, long story short, I think the key to really injecting some life back into this place is a good-sized influx of fresh talent. How we get that fresh talent, however, is another debate in and of itself. Next year is the 10th anniversary of the death of Robot Wars. Perhaps some big fancy retrospectives on the show passed around via Facebook and Twitter or whatevs might help boost some numbers, maybe even starting up some discussion on other forums we frequent to rekindle some nostalgia for the old dear with our friends.

A more 'back-to-basics' approach with some of our contests might help open things up to newcomers as well. I know I greatly enjoyed writing that EXP League a long while back. If enough of us were interested in another PAC-style tourney like that, I wouldn't mind starting up one of those again sometime.

...

Yeah, I think I'm finally out of breath. Those who made it through the whole post, give yourselves a medal. That's the most I've written on these boards in God knows when. XD

Thanks again for starting for starting this thread, Alex. It's been good just to even talk about these sort of things again.