Uninteresting and useless data, actually. You're going to look at one set of four numbers, and suggest to me that this by itself should convince me that your interpretation of the data is correct and that we should merge with IOT and strive to take ourselves less seriously? Sorry, bro, but that is what we call highly suspect. Let's suppose your idea is correct. What we would expect to see, if people aren't starting NESes for fear of criticism, is that people would be proposing ideas or starting pre-NES threads, and then actively abandoning them. We would expect that not only are the number of NESes going down, but the failure rate would increase, owing to the increased "strain" put on moderators. We would expect the number of players in the forum to be constant even as the number of games declined, or at least only decline a little. We would expect the number of updates posted to have declined significantly in this period compared to similar periods in the last few years.
And even if you could prove these were the case, I would probably not be convinced an active push towards quality was a bad thing. I'm always going to encourage new moderators, but you shouldn't disparage people because they prefer a more substantive game than you. I happen to like the complexity of a deep NES; if they were simpler I'd probably just end up playing computer games multiplayer.
My intent is not to disparage people who like complexity, and your NES is an exception in so very many (good) ways. I've never objected to complexity, my argument is simply that our current focus on deep NESes is discouraging the development of new NESes. The failure rate of NESes HAS increased, depending on definition of failure. If you define failure as a certain amount of updates, in the past year, only a single NES has been started that has managed to pass ten updates. Only three have passed five updates. The number of updates has definitely declined, but I neglected to mention that because of a rise of non-update oriented NESes in the past year which skew the data when it comes to update comparison.
If it hasn't been clear, I'm arguing that the atmosphere of the forum in general does not encourage the creation of even a pre-NES thread. This is after all a theory, and I suspect the psychology is as follows for anyone considering to make an NES:
1. I won't have the ability or time to make an NES as good as _______.
2. I could be spending the time I would be moderating an NES playing a game which models the era better.
My theory is simply that those who would in past times be making (and admittedly still failing at) NESes are choosing instead not to. I believe that this is due to the environment of the forums in general not being an environment conducive to creation. You're right, we could expect to see a large amount of failed "pre-threads," but what if we are past that point already? What if we're already at the point where people just decide not to bother? About a year ago there
were a number of pre-threads, and posts relating to NES creation, and fewer NESes made.
I don't blame anyone in particular for the environment that has been created, I'm just presenting what data I've put together as I have for the past two years, and drawn a conclusion. I would enjoy being wrong in this case, and would receive evidence that I am wrong with jubilation.
@Luckymoose: End of Empires is a good NES, I am not going to argue against that. I just don't think that that NES alone will keep the forums alive and thriving. My own belief is that the forums are healthiest when a large number of NESes are popping up, as it displays interest in the game in general. At the moment there are very few NESes popping up. IOT has the same sort of trend ongoing. To use a narcotics metaphor, a simpler game like an IOT would make for a good gateway drug for use of a more sophisticated NES like EoE, maybe not immediately, but a few years down the line.