It just occurred to me today that whenever Fan Dumb, bickering, or drama rears its ugly head, word of it tends to spread very quickly, yet we seldom hear about a fandom being cool. So are there examples of cool fandoms out there somewhere?

The only one I can think of was Super Monkey Ball back in the day - it had a small community of Challenge Gamers who would exchange tips and strategies to help each other improve. Unfortunately, they died out many years ago.

Anyways, I figure there have to be some more out there, but I can't think of any. Anyone else know of some examples?

Dare I say the Touhou-fanbase? With so many impressive and varied fan-remixes of music, detailed fan-videos, spectacular fan-art and well-written pieces of fanfiction and doujins, it is certainly one of the most creative, productive and dedicated groups of fans out there.

edited 28th Sep '12 2:24:23 AM by Lemurian

Aside from Touhou, most videogame fandoms I'm familiar with are either dead or in a state of constant war

AI War: Fleet Command? There's always crazy ARR to read at least, which is damn entertaining...and generally the fanbase are pretty nice (then again, small size)...try visit the official forums...

Another good one I think is Tales of Maj'Eyal...in-game chat help loads with people helping each other...

Generally though it seems to me that the smaller the fanbase is, the better it is, with only small exception on smaller and larger ones...

V Also absolutely crazy awesome...

edited 28th Sep '12 3:45:13 AM by onyhow

I've heard the Dwarf Fortress fanbase is mostly cool.

kirby appropriately has a fanbase that almost never argues about anything.

I've had bad experiences with members of the Touhou fanbase.

Honestly, there is no such thing as a consitently awesome fanbase. Every fandom has bad apples, some more than others.

This post was thumped by the Codfish in a Derby Hat

Streets of Rage is the only one I can think of.

>pops head up from bong
>... huh?

edited 28th Sep '12 7:20:40 AM by Schitzo

Best fanbase: Any fanbase I'm part of. Shit fanbase: Any fanbase of a game I hate.

There ya go.

Eh, but seriously, I think the Black Isle fanbase is a great, if slightly easy to anger, community.

edited 28th Sep '12 7:46:10 AM by Kev-O

The Kirby community is chill, and Infinite Space has one of the most dedicated lot of fans I've seen. The MOTHER fanbase is alright too, from what I hear.

Touhou has a nice fanbase, as far as I've experienced.

Sly Cooper has a pretty cool fanbase as well.

Pre-Other M, Metroid had a pretty good fanbase. There are some great fan websites like Metroid Database and Metroid2002 that churned up things like speedruns, glitches, interviews in old magazines, etc. There wasn't much bickering over games; the most I saw was against Hunters, and the Hunters hate was pretty light-hearted and silly. People were generally excited and happy because Nintendo was finally making new Metroid games, and the new fans from the Prime series tended to get along pretty well with the OG 2D fans.

Post-Other M... Um... Yeah, Metroid's fanbase is no longer as awesome. Oh well, I still like it.

edited 28th Sep '12 9:25:50 AM by Scardoll

Absolutely none in existence. Some are nice up to a point, but once their favorite game changes even a few things around or adds in a new feature to attract more players (adding in multiplayer to typically singleplayer experiences being a good example), the fanbase will quickly begin to fragment and become hostile to certain ideas.

For example, that new indie game that's promising to be Dwarf Fortress, but in 3D and in a steampunk world? It already has some haters due to the fact that it's not built in ASCII, or they're watering it down for the "masses" and are sell-outs as a result.

edited 28th Sep '12 10:00:55 AM by SgtRicko

Probably going to agree with Ricko. A different point, though - small fanbases are usually going to be amicable, because everyone in it knows you. If it goes out of that size, people are free to be as indignant as they want because of anonymity.

edited 28th Sep '12 9:58:40 AM by VutherA

There's a trope describing that phenomenon, but I forgot its name.

Is this it? I disagree with it though, just seems flat-out proportionate to popularity to me, the really popular stuff is still filled loud jerks and a Broken Base.

edited 28th Sep '12 10:20:26 AM by VutherA

I know the one you're talking about. The first incarnation was more or less completely re-written and had all examples removed because of the massive natter and YMMV. But nowadays, it's more of a mix between G.I.F.T. and Why Fandoms Can't Have Nice Things.

Half-Life/Garry's mod/Valve etc. (they tend to stick together)

Simply for the sheer size and general coolness, and phenomenal amount of content created by the fans.

edited 28th Sep '12 10:36:26 AM by Ryuhza

Okay, I must admit, I haven't seen anyone from the Half-Life fanbase who are bad.

The TF 2 fanbase turned kinda nasty over the whole free-to-play thing.

What about the fat jokes

There's some present disgruntlement over Valve being generally silent about Half Life 3, but on the whole the fanbase is pretty solid.