Inside the Creatures Community

In 1996, I was given a game called Creatures. In 2006, I sought to communicate with other fans of the series. This is what I found.

Note: If you are easily offended, I wouldn't read this. It's not all bad, mind you, and I'm not setting out to make anyone feel bad, but it's all pretty true whether you want to admit it or not. Also, this is not the "End All, Be All" overview of the community and I'm not trying to say that it is.

The Good

• Community members, for the most part, really do love this series. They would like to see a new game and aren't afraid of letting the company in control of development know that.


• Most members tend to try to be nice to everyone. There are the occasional issues, but things go pretty smoothly for the most part.


• There are a few stand-out talents within the community. These people are wonderful coders, artists, writers, and leaders and are building skills that they will find useful for their entire lives.

The Bad

• Spam. Lots of spam. If you can't handle spam, this is not the place for you.


• General immaturity. Whether it's because most of the people populating the CC are ages 11-15 or just because they're mindlessly immature like that, I really don't know.


• CCers, as they are sometimes called, tend to not be very informed about anything. I'm pretty sure that this is because they choose to be uninformed.

The In-between

• While many members are eager and willing to develop bits and bobs for the games, they do not necessarily have the skills needed to make real quality products yet. This often leads to them being disappointed when no one downloads or talks about their projects.


• In relation to this last point, some will tend to try and get other people to do all of the work in creating said bits and bobs and do not plan on developing any of said skills themselves. Whether they have a valid reason for not doing their own projects is usually questionable.


• Many users try to organize development groups and teams, but they do not yet have the people or communication skills needed to keep such teams in working order. This usually leads to the teams dissolving.





8/30 Today I have noticed that members tend to dismiss and even sometimes stick-up for other peoples' stupid and/or immature behavior. I'm not sure if it's because they don't find it as annoying as I do, or if they just aren't the kind of people to try and minimize things like that. It's all very vexing.






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These are my own views. If you really have a problem with them, you may take it up with me. However, I am allowed my opinion and am not forcing you to read this, so I would appreciate some level of maturity in any response that you may have.




Also, I do not want comments on my "lack" of webpage design skills. Multimedia is my major, and I am perfectly capable of creating an attractive, functional website. This was hand-coded in notepad because I need the practice. So there. =p