Communities are quite amorphous and have the ability to quickly grow, adapt or change. When they do, we don't normally focus on the rate of change during this transitional period as most of us are preoccupied by the excitement of what lies in the present. The entire community eagerly waited to see what the forge community would create and when Forge was released with the 'Cartographers Gift' update mid December, reactions have been explosive. As we ascend towards our brighter future together, I would like to take the time to share a statistical retrospective that outlines some of the amazing progress we have seen with our humble forge community over the past few months. Huge thanks to the forge community for sharing all of your work with us and of course the Forge Team at 343 for making everything possible.

FORGEHUB DATA STATISTICS

I'd like to make it clear that the amount of submissions displayed above are per month. During the time of the Master Chief Collection, we've seen about 50 maps uploaded per month. Within the first month of forge releasing we are now looking at a 900% increase in activity.

We are witnessing a flood of maps submissions each month. Each review provided by the community is greatly appreciated as it helps those looking for maps find the best content available more easily and in less time. We're really excited to see so many reviews and want to encourage you to continue providing them as much as possible in the future.


This is hands down my favorite statistic to see impacted in such a large way. Seeing so many friends get back into Halo and Forge has been a pleasant walk through memory lane. This graph however, suggests we should start building a 3 lane highway for that same walk in the future. Its great to see new faces come into the scene, the energy is widespread and we continue to learn and build from each other each day. Huge welcome to all of you and thanks for joining us!





FORGEHUB YOUTUBE CHANNEL
The ForgeHub youtube team is comprised of a handful of individuals with a common goal to provide excellence with map commentary, forge tutorials and more. Sometimes hard work and success aren't directly proportionate to success however with the combination of strategic timing this team has been able to create a new channel and bring up viewership to a total of 5.5K subscribers and we're extremely fortunate to have their help.



"Upon Forge's release, the channel really found an audience with its informative tutorial series. Today, ForgeHub videos make up nearly half of the first page search results for Halo 5 forge tutorials on YouTube. With more and more incredible forge creations being completed, the channel will be shifting its primary focus back to map features once again. The channel is committed first and foremost to spotlighting only the very best forge content and this relatively non-commercial approach has been incredibly successful in terms of viewership."
- Psychoduck, Video Team

The ForgeHub YouTube team currently includes AbleSir Thomas, MartianMallCop, Pa1nts, and Psychoduck. We're pleased to announce that CommanderColson will be joining the team in the near future to expand our focus to include environment art and aesthetic content.

TWITTER ANALYTICS
While Forgers are the largest collectively creative group within the Halo community, we're quite small relative to the entire population. Twitter is a great tool to help bridge the gap between our Halo audiences. Within the past month alone, we've seen a 104% increase in viewership (impressions) for the content we share on twitter. This substantially exceeds the progress we've seen from December and wanted to say how privileged we are to share the content you create with the rest of the Halo community. You can see the top performing tweets of the month below.

JANUARY (274 new followers)


DECEMBER (277 new followers)


NOVEMBER (65 new followers, 23 tweets, 41.2K impressions)


FORGE DEVELOPMENT TEAM
I'd like to thank the entire team that helped develop forge, the result of their hard work and determination to deliver a great product has helped bring back and build this community stronger than ever.

- Mike Byron, Forge Producer

- Tom French, Forge Design Lead

- Ben Walker, Forge Engineer

- Randal Shaffer, MP Environment Artist

- Ryan Kuehn, MP Environment Artist

- Shaun Mackey, MP Environment Artist

- Wade Mulheron, Lead Multiplayer Environment Artist

JOIN OUR STAFF
The increased growth of the forge community has created a direct impact on the growth of this site. We would like to meet the demands of the traffic and volume pouring in and would like some of your assistance with this. If you have an interest in becoming more involved with the Forge community please contact our staff by filling out the application below. We are looking for a few content contributors that can help out with featured articles on our homepage.

Spoiler: STAFF APPLICATION INFORMATION

Requirements:

• You must be 18+ years of age. Exceptions will only be made in the event of an outstanding applicant.
• You must possess a Skype account.
• You must not have been banned for more than one instance.
• Strong writing skills (proper grammar, articulation and brief understanding of journalism)

To apply, fill out the application below and send it via group Personal Message to both a Chunk and WARHOLIC. Please do your best to include us both on this private 'conversation'.


Name:
Age:
Location:
Skype:
Twitter:

1) Why would you like to join our staff at ForgeHub?

2) How many articles (150+ words per) would you like to write a week?

3) Do you have any previous experience being a writer? If so, please provide examples.

4) Do you read many online gaming articles and have the ability to cover Halo news?

<3 - The ForgeHub Team