Your RPG is dying? Here's why it's on you.

Because you are the administrator of your game. Your community relies on you to lead the way, to take the lead in developing it, and when it's in trouble, to front the rescue effort. So let's say your RPG forum {this can also apply to non roleplay forums; my warrior cats forums have both and have suffered slumps more than once} has done well up till now but is showing signs of low activity. So, when you bring this up, what is one thing that at least one person will say as a possible reason for the slump?

"It's a bad time of year. People are too busy to roleplay."

Really? What time of year would that be? Maybe...

It's January/February. It's post holiday blues, and people are all back in work/school, nobody has time to roleplay.

It's March/April--spring break time. Everyone's on vacation or doing family things, nobody has time to roleplay.

It's May/June. Final exams, graduation plans, who's got time to roleplay?

It's July/August. Summer time. People are having summer vacations, going away to camp, and, you know, spending time outside! Who's roleplaying?

It's September/October. People are all going back to school, taking up classes again. Nobody has time to roleplay.

It's November/December. Holidays--Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, just about everyone is too busy shopping and preparing for holiday events and vacations. Nobody has time to roleplay.


And so when the site goes down the tubes, at least you can sigh and say it had nothing to do with anything you did wrong yourself. I bet a lot of sites that aren't around now might still be up if their owners had taken responsibility for the issues and really looked into turning things around rather than saying it was a "bad time of year" and waited for it to improve.

In my experience, NOTHING ever comes of hoping without doing. Stop telling yourself it'll get better on its own. Look critically and objectively at your site. What are the patterns governing the low activity? Where are players stumbling the most? The information is all there, you just need to uncover it. It won't be easy, but nothing worth doing is. And if after all that, you try your hardest, trying everything and the site STILL must close, at least you can then say you tried your hardest and best. {By the way, it's never too late; see my articles on reviving a dead forum!}

The time to act is now.