Internet Comments

[shannon_a]

I've been continuing to post board game blogs every two weeks to Board Game News. Here's a listing of all my articles.

Today I posted a new article on The Problem with Horror Games, in which I discuss how horror games generally fail the genre because they're not scary; the horror is just theming. I mention this because the article has been one of my most popular since moving the blog to BGN. I've picked up 15 responses thus far (or, actually, 14, because one was a dupe).

Now, the internet is a damned curious thing, and one of the things that always makes me damned curious is what people respond to. Here are my three most-commented upon articles in the last year:

• The Problem with Horror Games (10/30) -- 14 comments
  
• Whose Job Is It Anyway? (4/3) -- 15 comments
  
• The Expansion Game, Part One: The History (1/31) -- 14 comments
  

So why were those so commented on and not others? The oldest one was more scholarly, while the other two were more aggressively opinionated. I usually think the latter draws more comments than the former, but here they're really mixed.

So why do people comment? To me, it remains a mystery.

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Well, you asked a question, so people are answering it.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Also, number of comments has little to do with popularity.

[shannon_a]

I totally understand that, and I can actually figure popularity better in advance. It's just what gets people to respond that I find mystifying.

[shannon_a]

Yeah, but I _always_ ask questions. Well, almost always.