I don't know if you're seeing the same things I'm seeing in my game-related correspondence. But what's happening is making things a little more complicated.
We don't talk the way we used to
I spend all day in email inboxes -- my work inbox, my personal inbox, etc. But over the past couple of years, my use of email for personal communication has dropped off quite bit. I still use it, but more often than not it's where I communicate as a consumer rather than as a friend.
Facebook, twitter, SMS….. these are the tools that are starting to really take over the namespace.
The Best Place to Reach Me is …….
A few years back I started a new game group at the request of a friend who had a couple of high school aged boys (his son and a friend) who would play in the group. After a few failed attempts to engage with them via email, I was told that I needed to try to get them on Facebook -- they never used email.
So, I created a Facebook group for that game, and used that to communicate with the group. At first, I had to use both email and Facebook to reach all of the players to try to plan game sessions, but over time the need for the email communication has dwindled.
At the same time, my long-standing group has become harder and harder to connect with via email. This is a group that has played together for more than 10 years, with some personel changes. We've used a Yahoo Group to manage group emails for all of that time. We're all gamers of "a certain age" -- but still, the Facebook effect is happening to that group, too. For the past several sessions, I've had to reach out to players via text and Facebook just to try to determine if they were planning to come to the next game session or not.
It's not just me
So, this phenomenon is being talked about by others. Marketing gurus pay a lot of attention to what works for reaching out to people, and many of them are talking about the decline in email usage. Stories about the way kinds were leaving email for social media and texting started turning up years ago, but what started as a kids' phenomenon is spreading through the generations quickly.
In marketing circles, the idea that people are moving to Facebook for communication is actually fairly old news -- but a recent Pew study shows just how prevalent Facebook has become. Fully 67% of online adults use Facebook -- and a good portion of those who don't either want to or have been on Facebook in the past. Facebook is quickly becoming the most universal experience we share, the way network television was in the years before cable. (Dark times, they were. We watched The Love Boat. Seriously).
And according to last year's Social Media report by Neilsen and NM, I'm not the only one using a mobile device to check social networks in the bathroom.
View attachment 56829
If you can't beat 'em
It makes a lot of sense. Facebook is fast, it's easy, and it's where a lot of people spend a lot of their time. It serves much the same purpose as email used to -- letting us keep in touch with friends and family -- but it's a better experience than email. Our email accounts are cluttered with spam and promotional emails from all of the different companies that we have shopped with. My email inbox is stuffed with offers from Amazon, Audible, Levenger, and Kickstarter. Good lord, the kickstarter emails are a tidal wave.
The Neilsen report I linked to above found that fully 76% of people felt positive and energized after interacting with social media -- when was the last time you felt that way after deleting a bunch of emails in your inbox?
Facebook is more of what we want -- connections with real people, the people we care about, not the companies that want to sell us something.
So, why not make Facebook part of your everyday gaming communication. It takes just a few seconds to create a Facebook group, which will allow you to have a special page on Facebook just for your game conversation. These groups can be set up with some reasonably granular permissions and security, so you can make it invite only and totally private if you want. You can create events for your game sessions, use FB posts for game recaps, etc. File Sharing notifications, and a bunch of other features make it a terrific solution for managing the communication needs of your campaign.
You may be tempted to try to demand that your players communicate with you in a specific way, but in the end that will backfire unless you're looking for ways to alienate some of your players and cut down on the size of your group.
Email has worked, for years, because we all have lived in our inboxes. But more and more our private time is spent communicating in ways other than email, and that means that email is less and less effective. It's not that your players are uncommunicative wankers, just that they've moved on to a tool that fits their needs better. You, like me, might need to embrace that transition.
Of course, it's not going to be perfect. There will be a few holdouts who are not on Facebook in a lot of groups. You may end up having to connect with those players in other ways. In the end, until your group transitions from one to the other, you're going to be caught, like me, in an awkward place trying to coordinate a conversation across multiple platforms just to organize a game day.
Are you still arranging your games via Email? Have you moved to Facebook? Twitter? What else works for you?
We don't talk the way we used to
I spend all day in email inboxes -- my work inbox, my personal inbox, etc. But over the past couple of years, my use of email for personal communication has dropped off quite bit. I still use it, but more often than not it's where I communicate as a consumer rather than as a friend.
Facebook, twitter, SMS….. these are the tools that are starting to really take over the namespace.
The Best Place to Reach Me is …….
A few years back I started a new game group at the request of a friend who had a couple of high school aged boys (his son and a friend) who would play in the group. After a few failed attempts to engage with them via email, I was told that I needed to try to get them on Facebook -- they never used email.
So, I created a Facebook group for that game, and used that to communicate with the group. At first, I had to use both email and Facebook to reach all of the players to try to plan game sessions, but over time the need for the email communication has dwindled.
At the same time, my long-standing group has become harder and harder to connect with via email. This is a group that has played together for more than 10 years, with some personel changes. We've used a Yahoo Group to manage group emails for all of that time. We're all gamers of "a certain age" -- but still, the Facebook effect is happening to that group, too. For the past several sessions, I've had to reach out to players via text and Facebook just to try to determine if they were planning to come to the next game session or not.
It's not just me
So, this phenomenon is being talked about by others. Marketing gurus pay a lot of attention to what works for reaching out to people, and many of them are talking about the decline in email usage. Stories about the way kinds were leaving email for social media and texting started turning up years ago, but what started as a kids' phenomenon is spreading through the generations quickly.
In marketing circles, the idea that people are moving to Facebook for communication is actually fairly old news -- but a recent Pew study shows just how prevalent Facebook has become. Fully 67% of online adults use Facebook -- and a good portion of those who don't either want to or have been on Facebook in the past. Facebook is quickly becoming the most universal experience we share, the way network television was in the years before cable. (Dark times, they were. We watched The Love Boat. Seriously).
And according to last year's Social Media report by Neilsen and NM, I'm not the only one using a mobile device to check social networks in the bathroom.
View attachment 56829
If you can't beat 'em
It makes a lot of sense. Facebook is fast, it's easy, and it's where a lot of people spend a lot of their time. It serves much the same purpose as email used to -- letting us keep in touch with friends and family -- but it's a better experience than email. Our email accounts are cluttered with spam and promotional emails from all of the different companies that we have shopped with. My email inbox is stuffed with offers from Amazon, Audible, Levenger, and Kickstarter. Good lord, the kickstarter emails are a tidal wave.
The Neilsen report I linked to above found that fully 76% of people felt positive and energized after interacting with social media -- when was the last time you felt that way after deleting a bunch of emails in your inbox?
Facebook is more of what we want -- connections with real people, the people we care about, not the companies that want to sell us something.
So, why not make Facebook part of your everyday gaming communication. It takes just a few seconds to create a Facebook group, which will allow you to have a special page on Facebook just for your game conversation. These groups can be set up with some reasonably granular permissions and security, so you can make it invite only and totally private if you want. You can create events for your game sessions, use FB posts for game recaps, etc. File Sharing notifications, and a bunch of other features make it a terrific solution for managing the communication needs of your campaign.
You may be tempted to try to demand that your players communicate with you in a specific way, but in the end that will backfire unless you're looking for ways to alienate some of your players and cut down on the size of your group.
Email has worked, for years, because we all have lived in our inboxes. But more and more our private time is spent communicating in ways other than email, and that means that email is less and less effective. It's not that your players are uncommunicative wankers, just that they've moved on to a tool that fits their needs better. You, like me, might need to embrace that transition.
Of course, it's not going to be perfect. There will be a few holdouts who are not on Facebook in a lot of groups. You may end up having to connect with those players in other ways. In the end, until your group transitions from one to the other, you're going to be caught, like me, in an awkward place trying to coordinate a conversation across multiple platforms just to organize a game day.
Are you still arranging your games via Email? Have you moved to Facebook? Twitter? What else works for you?
