Fish
Rungjumpin' Ragamuffin
mostly on discord
Posts: 285
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Fish on Apr 14, 2016 22:04:51 GMT
There've been a few news articles out . . . unfortunately, most of them were based off of this rather short Kotaku piece. One called the game "Hivewarp." Another was an editorial from a university student newspaper. I'm "attaching"?? a screenshot of current Google Trends for four webcomics. Homestuck has garnered a lot of interest this month, though the numbers will drop by the 30th unless the game is released soon. I expect following the epilogue, it'll return to its gradual decline, but at least we can say it outlived Penny Arcade.  |
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loading
Raise of the Conductor's Baton
Posts: 435
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Post by loading on Apr 14, 2016 22:30:56 GMT
I saw an IGN article that was pretty similar to that one.
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Post by humbleElitist on Apr 14, 2016 22:34:51 GMT
Why does xkcd have a jump at the same place as homestuck just recently? That's weird.
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Post by Shadow of the Lotus on Apr 14, 2016 22:58:15 GMT
That is a damn shame for Order of the Stick. It's such a good comic.
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The One Guy
Rust Maid
Posts: 1,148
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Post by The One Guy on Apr 14, 2016 23:01:29 GMT
Why does xkcd have a jump at the same place as homestuck just recently? That's weird. Maybe because of xkcd's "garden" page that came out on April 1st? |
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Post by ConstantTroublemaker on Apr 14, 2016 23:45:02 GMT
That is a damn shame for Order of the Stick. It's such a good comic. But it has been going veeeeeryyyyy slowly for several months  I sincerely hope it gets completed... but it'll take quite some time. |
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Post by Strawhat Luffy on Apr 14, 2016 23:52:25 GMT
Order of the Stick has had slow pacing for years, but the story keeps a high level of quality.
Also the pacing is not that slow when you consider the amount of content they put in each strip.
It should be completed in 8 years or so based on the length of previous books. That's a lot, but it will be a good ride.
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Fish
Rungjumpin' Ragamuffin
mostly on discord
Posts: 285
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Fish on Apr 15, 2016 0:05:51 GMT
Why does xkcd have a jump at the same place as homestuck just recently? That's weird. Keep in mind that April is not over yet, and the current peaks aren't representative of the final values for those comics. It may be that something relatively minor happening in the last couple weeks caused this peak for xkcd. |
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Post by Shadow of the Lotus on Apr 15, 2016 1:40:43 GMT
That is a damn shame for Order of the Stick. It's such a good comic. But it has been going veeeeeryyyyy slowly for several months I sincerely hope it gets completed... but it'll take quite some time. Yeah, it's taking forever. But Rich seems to have a pretty firm idea of what's going on in his story and is sticking to his guns on it. I personally love the art upgrades he's done in this past book and can't really point to any low point in the story. The recent Miko callback cameo? Classic. Another example of slow quality would be Lackadaisy. Though I think the story-telling suffers a bit from it. I really need to give that a reread now that book 2 is done. I feel like sometimes oh crap, what's the name of Lackadaisy's author again... well, she focuses so much on page layout and accuracy to the period that the story itself can be a bit jolting. Though that probably just reflects the very sporadic update schedule. Edit 5 seconds later: TRACEY. Maybe Tracy, but definitely Tracey, right? |
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Post by trek on Apr 15, 2016 4:54:20 GMT
I'm curious as to how Gunnerkrigg Court is reflected in there... Definitely my favorite story with regular updates!
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Post by ForestGardener on Apr 15, 2016 14:52:32 GMT
I'm curious as to how Gunnerkrigg Court is reflected in there... Definitely my favorite story with regular updates! It really is a high quality story. Just doesn't have much of a viral factor. I am hopeful its graph will continue to look like that for the life of the comic (another 10 years or so). |
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Post by Strawhat Luffy on Apr 15, 2016 21:02:34 GMT
Order of the Stick and Gunnerkrigg Court are both examples of comics that seem to have perfectly mapped stories with balanced highs and lows so that the quality never seems to go down, nor it ever looks like the author is improvising.
Another one I love that also has that level of consistency is Girl Genius.
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Post by Neptz on Apr 15, 2016 21:43:50 GMT
I absolutely loved Gunnerkrig Court, but I lost my place in the story and I'm not really willing to search through the comic to find it. I don't remember where I stopped, either. Sooo many webcomics need the auto-save/save feature like MSPA DX
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Post by trek on Apr 15, 2016 22:46:06 GMT
I'm curious as to how Gunnerkrigg Court is reflected in there... Definitely my favorite story with regular updates! It really is a high quality story. Just doesn't have much of a viral factor. I am hopeful its graph will continue to look like that for the life of the comic (another 10 years or so). Thanks man! Neptz The thing is, GC is really easy to get sucked back into. I end up re-reading it at least once a year, and if someone links me to a chapter, I at least read the entire thing |
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Post by Neptz on Apr 15, 2016 23:16:59 GMT
Here ya go. It really is a high quality story. Just doesn't have much of a viral factor. I am hopeful its graph will continue to look like that for the life of the comic (another 10 years or so). Thanks man! Neptz The thing is, GC is really easy to get sucked back into. I end up re-reading it at least once a year, and if someone links me to a chapter, I at least read the entire thing I guess. I'll check it out someday later in the future again. |
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Post by Ariestinak on Apr 16, 2016 2:22:26 GMT
We really have to keep in mind that Trends is not a very good indicator of the popularity of a piece of fiction. It shows "percentage of searches of the phrase", not "the number of times it was searched". As time goes, Internet gets bigger, and so a constant "the number of times it was searched" will be shown falling in Trends.
So, for all we know, OoTS might still be as popular as before, even more. It's just that the Internet has grown faster than the amount of interest in the comic.
That being said, I couldn't find any other webcomics that could compete with these lot on the level of interest in Google Trends.
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Post by Shadow of the Lotus on Apr 16, 2016 2:43:34 GMT
We really have to keep in mind that Trends is not a very good indicator of the popularity of a piece of fiction. It shows "percentage of searches of the phrase", not "the number of times it was searched". As time goes, Internet gets bigger, and so a constant "the number of times it was searched" will be shown falling in Trends. So, for all we know, OoTS might still be as popular as before, even more. It's just that the Internet has grown faster than the amount of interest in the comic. That being said, I couldn't find any other webcomics that could compete with these lot on the level of interest in Google Trends. I wonder how Nuklear Power / 8-bit Theater would fare. 8-bit theater, vgcats, and oots were my earliest comics along with Dinosaur Comics. |
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Fish
Rungjumpin' Ragamuffin
mostly on discord
Posts: 285
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Fish on Apr 16, 2016 14:34:54 GMT
Yeah, as comics become more known about, they get searched less and less. Until they actually start expanding out of their normal demographic, which xkcd has done consistently and which Homestuck has done since Act 5. You can view google trends as a combination of appeal to unusual demographics, devotion of the fans (who talk about homestuck on e.g. facebook posts and make people wonder about it), and media coverage (this doesn't seem to make too big of a deal, though - Dinosaur Comics and other hipster type comics get a lot of coverage, but don't get many searches, probably because their demographic already knows about them). Penny Arcade's decline can also be seen as an exhaustion of its primarily white, cis male gamer demographic. OotS doesn't deserve to decline, but it is probably running out of folks who know about D&D. These aren't webcomics, but here's some valuable perspective.SotL, there's not much to say about 8-Bit Theater. It's been dead for yeeears. But I found out Google Trends has a new Topics option. So it turns out OotS was actually a lot more popular back in the day:  |
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Post by Ariestinak on Apr 16, 2016 14:59:57 GMT
I actually want to know what happens to Homestuck after the end. Does it get a sharp decline to January level interest? Or does it get a slower decline? What would Hiveswap do to this chart? Guess I have to wait for those.
Anyway, OotS is probably so well known now that It can't really grow much. A pity, even without its D&D jokes, it is a very solid piece of work and could appeal to a much larger audience.
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Fish
Rungjumpin' Ragamuffin
mostly on discord
Posts: 285
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Fish on Apr 16, 2016 15:48:36 GMT
Project Wonderful is back up, so for posterity:  I remember years ago when it was at half a million, but we were thinking PW recalibrated how they track Uniques. |
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Post by Neptz on Apr 16, 2016 17:49:22 GMT
Yeah, as comics become more known about, they get searched less and less. Until they actually start expanding out of their normal demographic, which xkcd has done consistently and which Homestuck has done since Act 5. You can view google trends as a combination of appeal to unusual demographics, devotion of the fans (who talk about homestuck on e.g. facebook posts and make people wonder about it), and media coverage (this doesn't seem to make too big of a deal, though - Dinosaur Comics and other hipster type comics get a lot of coverage, but don't get many searches, probably because their demographic already knows about them). Penny Arcade's decline can also be seen as an exhaustion of its primarily white, cis male gamer demographic. OotS doesn't deserve to decline, but it is probably running out of folks who know about D&D. These aren't webcomics, but here's some valuable perspective.SotL, there's not much to say about 8-Bit Theater. It's been dead for yeeears. But I found out Google Trends has a new Topics option. So it turns out OotS was actually a lot more popular back in the day: Huh, I thought 8 bit theater would be more popular. It's referenced quite often in sites I visit (like tv tropes) |
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Fish
Rungjumpin' Ragamuffin
mostly on discord
Posts: 285
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Fish on Apr 17, 2016 17:43:01 GMT
It's a pretty good comic. But yeah, it ended, and it's hard to stay relevant when you're only talked about by tropers and webcomics theorists (i.e. why Dinosaur Comics isn't that big a deal).
I should track down a list of other Completed Webcomics and put those up for comparison to HS. There really haven't been that many! I can only name Irregular Webcomic, Spacetrawler, and Little Dee off the top of my head.
P.S. for posterity, back in 2012 Homestuck posts only got like 6000 notes maximum, right? Now they're getting 20k pretty frequently.
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Post by Arashi500 on Apr 21, 2016 7:29:22 GMT
Another example of a finished (and quite long) comic would be the Hellsing-fan comic And Shine Heaven Now. Doubt it really scores up there, though.
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