Thanks for dropping by, Aramithius, and inviting our community to be part of your research. Sounds like a really cool project and I hope you'll consider sharing the finished editorial with us here. :)
Happy to share if it helps.
1) What year you become involved with the TES franchise?
I was first introduced to TES when Morrowind was released. My brother picked up a copy of the game and I sat on the couch watching him play and sort of "co-piloted" the game with him. I was really impressed with how vast the world was, and it was completely unlike any game I'd known.
2) What your first TES game was.
I'd say Morrowind, but I also didn't actually go back and play it myself right away, so I don't think that actually counts. xD I knew how it ended, I had enjoyed watching it, so I didn't feel the need to go do it on my own. That was my senior year of high school, and like lots of seniors, my mind was on SATs, college admissions, moving out, and so I sort of lost the thread of the series for a while after that. I didn't pick up another TES game until Skyrim. The funny thing is, I didn't even necessarily want to play Skyrim. I was more interested in ESO and going back to Morrowind and seeing it in a new way with new quests, but it almost felt like I needed to get Skyrim out of the way first.
3) When you started becoming involved in the TES fandom.
It was 2015, and I wasn't even halfway through my first Skyrim playthrough when I realized I was utterly and hopelessly hooked on the world, the storytelling, the ability to create whatever I wanted. I remember Googling around for certain things in game and all the threads I had found were old, dead, people weren't replying to them anymore. It was sad to see these posts I would have loved to have participated with, except no one had replied in over a year or two. I was over the moon when I found The Skyrim Blog and an active community around the series, and Skyrim in particular.
4) What platforms you started talking to the fandom on, and what ones you interact on now?
I started on The Skyrim Blog, which is what this site used to be called years ago. I wasn't a content creator myself, but appreciated the active community and what others had done and were doing. I mostly just wanted to talk about the games and share in it with others. Content creation is cool, but I'm not necessarily one for the spotlight, so I mostly preferred to just chat others up more than anything else. :) I'm always interested in becoming a better player, so discussing with others how to better understand mechanics, or discussing moral implications of the way certain quest lines end, or wrapping my head around the depth of the lore are the types of things appeal to me most. These days I'm active here, occasionally on the ESO forums, and Twitter, mainly. I also tune in on Twitch to watch ESO gameplay and follow a handful of streamers. I also create graphic art for others when I can. I do community manangement, graphic design and video editing professionally, and when time allows I like to take on small projects to help out others or support things here.
5) How you think the fans have reacted to new games.
Despite the bugs, broken quests, and the long lead time up to TES VI, Skyrim was one of the most widely-loved games of all time. ESO was obviously a little bit more of a struggle for fans and was harder for folks to accept. In part it struggled for some of the same types of shortcomings Skyrim had, but the MMO format was totally new for the series, and I think it had a lot of hurdles to overcome with fans in that regard. It wasn't what they knew Elder Scrolls to be, and I think a lot of people were afraid it would fundamentally alter how they viewed the series, the universe, and maybe not for the better. Today that broader ESO community is so vibrant and the game is really deeply loved by its player base. The devs are always working to make the game better and I think it really shows. I had the pleasure of chatting with a few of the devs at QuakeCon this year and it's clear they really love what they do and pour a lot of themselves into the game. Looking ahead, I feel like the tide has turned the other way on TES VI a bit. I see that people are excited, can't wait for more information... but its still years off. This gap has gone on so long you can sense this little bit of discontent in the fan base. I think people feel like they haven't been brought along enough, and while it's sort of a joke that it's taking so long, I think a lot people wonder if they'll even be able to get to TES VI. Because who knows what sort of time commitments or priorities you might have in two years from now? So personally, I think there is some danger in letting it go too long. It builds some hype, but I think they also risk losing some fans along the way too to just... every day real life.
6) How the communities you are part of are different from the ones you started in (are they?)
Like I mentioned above, the ESO community has really taken off the last few years, and seeing more people get involved has been awesome. I second what Paws said too about YouTube and Twitter. Outlets like that make the fan base feel more connected and far less siloed than it used to be. Its great to be able to keep up with devs, streamers, guilds, and other people in the community. On the other side of that coin though, in some ways that's been a bit of a struggle for smaller niche communities like these. We've really seen these changes happen more and more over the last few years. Video editing is pretty easy to learn now, and video content has become more popular than ever. I find fewer people are interested in long form content. If it's not tweet-length, many people seem to prefer to consume other forms of media. Almost everyone has a Twitter and Reddit is a sort of ubiquitous choice for fans of any game. Our community has changed in that time too. In the 8+ years since it was founded our community has changed its name, turned over ownership twice, switched hosting platforms and migrated all its content, and in that time we've seen thousands of new faces. Some transients, some stick around, but the folks that hang around are some of the friendliest and most caring you'll find.
This post was edited by Edana at August 11, 2019 8:36 PM EDT
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