I am doing a term paper on Forge and the communities that have been built because of it for my History and Culture of Games class (I am a game design major). So if you guys, especially those of you who have been around since the early times could answer these questions i would really appreciate it. What made you decide to join this website, and what do you do in the community? What did you think of forge when halo 3 first came out, before Foundry? How much of an impact did you think Foundry and the items you could use influenced the future of forge? How do you think standards have changed as new forging techniques have been developed and the maps and editor itself have been improved? What do you think it takes to make a successful community? Feel free to add any thoughts, or ignore questions you don't think are important. Anyone's perspective is welcome.
1)I first decided to join Forgehub... i think from hearing about it through bungie forums? im not exactly sure where i first heard of it, but i ended up being a last minute entry in the first TGIF. I'd say my main reason for getting involved was just wanting to play more custom games. I dont do anything for the community. 2) Pre-foundry, i still thought Forge was amazing. At that time, maps were nowhere near as detailed as they are now, but they were still completely new experiences. Forgers came up with crazy ideas for minigames, and were able to use the minimal tools provided to still create awesome new custom variants. 3) Foundry changed everything for Forge. The ability to actually create a map and not just modify one, brought huge popularity to the Forging scene. I remember the night Foundry came out, we all stayed up all night, forging for about 10 hours straight. The resulting map was epic. 4) Standards have been raised dramatically. It has almost become hipsterish how quickly people start to hate on a new technique or forge style. It only takes a couple maps before what you thought was cool is suddenly considered lame. This is an unfortunate side effect. But overall, the increase in standards has been a good thing for Forge. It has forced many community members to try harder to make well balanced competitive maps, and to put more artistic vision and effort into their creations. 5) Dedicated staff, a "well-oiled machine," and a solid base of mature community members who actually give a ****. (things that i believe we do have here at FH)
I initially joined because I was asked by the founder (TrueDarkFusion) to become a Guilder... which was basically a moderator. Well, that didn't workout, and in the meantime i found this community to be much more genuine and professional, as compared to Bungie, which was (and still is) full of trolls and immature kids who rate maps based off appearances, not things like gameplay, layout, weapon placement, etc. I thought it would be extremely cool. I remember imagining building a really high tower out of antennae on Valhalla... This idea of building things on a preset map was completely new to me, and I've always loved games that involved building from scratch (like legos, random games on the internet, etc.). So basically I was fueled by this overwhelming desire to build my own map in a Halo game. I mean it was two of my most favorite things: Halo and creating. Bungie basically made Foundry so that the community could build things from scratch. This idea was unique because we'd always had to build maps on top of other maps. So of course Foundry practically revolutionized things.. It let us make ideas from scratch (with the exception of the map geometry)... It's personally my favorite map because it has so many movable objects.. And I love building mechanisms and switches and unique things that enhance and attract gamers. Standards have gone from, "Hey look, a floating base!" all the way to, "Maps should be professional". And that's what we created... guidelines to the "perfect and ideal" map. Everything from switches to spawn placement were analyzed and described in-depth to the point where you HAD to be educated in the forge in order to create a unique, professional, and fun map worthy of being featured. A successful community is one that attracts and inspires members. This whole site began because it was founded by the most popular forgers out there... And they created guidelines (Forging 101) so that people had a reason to continually revisit and even begin posting their maps here. So all in all, Forgehub has continued throughout the years because people got hooked from the beginning.. and enjoyed the community ever since. Hope that helped!
i dont think TDF ever asked anyone to join and become a guilder, especially in Jan 08 which is basically a month or two after the founding of the site. you had to apply to become one.
What made you decide to join this website, and what do you do in the community? I was spending a lot of time around Bnet from the time Halo 3 came out, making and downloading maps and whatnot. I just migrated over here as you do. For the first few months, i was just a community member playing customs with the big guys. That's what made this place really fascinating, the ability for new members to play with the well-known forge names. it's interesting to look back now, i've become friends with quite a few of these "big names" hah What did you think of forge when halo 3 first came out, before Foundry? It wasn't really what i thought of forge, it's what i thought of those who made some really fun maps out of it. What some of these guys did with merely putting boxes on teleporters was truly impressive. How much of an impact did you think Foundry and the items you could use influenced the future of forge? It revolutionized it, made it more accessible to the more casual mindsets. So many more ideas were instantly made possible. A simple object moving feature became a full on level creator. How do you think standards have changed as new forging techniques have been developed and the maps and editor itself have been improved? Well, since there has been over 3 years of developing ideas and tools the standards are quite high. We're all craving originality on top of solid building. What do you think it takes to make a successful community? good question.. enough people who all share the interest, and having the right people in charge. It's oddly like a society in real life, and any society can collapse from a number of things.
I joined the site after hearing about if from a friend who played in the first TGIF. I made a map, which became decently popular and was 'encouraged' by TDF to apply for guilder. He was feeling some pressure from the community to accept a new guilder and he played what I had made and saw that I had the potential to be his little white knight. So while I had already joined the site and applied for guilder, I was asked to apply by TDF and some of the guilders did scout for forging talent outside of the website, but was a more idealistic time.
He asked beforehand, over xbox live chat. Told me about the site, I looked into it, and I didn't want to at first. Then the community progressed and I saw it was getting pretty popular so I joined the new site and was denied because they already had a lot of guilders and most of them didn't like my maps.