The Games Category: Discuss

Dont be at yourself

This post is in reaction to various threads that have appeared across boards.ie recently. On the forums board, three are currently requests for three new additions to the dropdown (FIFA, Fallout, LittleBigPlanet). On the games board, there is a thread - largely contributed to by old hands - bemoaning the downturn in posting on the board. And on the moderators board, I recently posted a thread suggesting a re-organisation of the category.

If I have my history correct, the entirety boards.ie grew from a Quake board. Certainly when I joined back in 2000 (and again in 2001!), the Games board was at the very centre of boards.ie. It was, for a long time, the most popular, most active forum on this website.

By my count, the Games category now consists of something like 58 forums - making it far and away the largest category on boards.ie. There are also additional games-related forums under the Hosted category.

It seems clear to me (and others too, judging by the aforementioned Games board thread), that as the number of boards has increased, the quality of discussion has taken a nose-dive. With no concrete policy for approving the creation of boards, perhaps too many were created too quickly - and this created problems.

A big problem is undoubtedly the issue of overlapping forums. Were one to draw a venn diagram of the various boards and their areas of discussion, it would look like it were created with a spirograph. Do I post about the latest Street Fighter in Arcade & Retro, in Competitive Gaming? In Playstation, or XBox? In the Games board itself? Does LittleBigPlanet fit under Playstation, Games or Game Editing? Does Wipeout HD fit under Games, Playstation, Arcade & Retro, Racing Sims or even Webgames? There are too many boards with overlapping areas, and it's completely killing discussion rather than fostering it.

Another problem which I would say has arisen from the scattershot policy on the creation of boards is that many were created before the groundswell was there to support them. Boards are perhaps best left to grow naturally - to be created if the current boards cant support them. There is certainly merit to the 'If you build it, they will come' approach, but in many cases we built it, and they haven't come. Indeed, many have possibly been driven away. We're left with boards that - while still active - do not have anywhere near the volume of traffic to warrant a dedicated board, and could be better re-incorporated into or merged with pre-existing boards.

A certain portion of blame lies at the feet of the various forum moderators (myself included), who should be more active and more strict in moving threads that are best suited to different boards. In the past, I've been reluctant to move posts on the Playstation board discussing a multi-platform game, but I think that those kind of posts should be moved to the Games board itself in order to foster better discussion. The Playstation, Nintendo and XBox boards should be solely for talk of titles, features and so on that are exclusively to do with that console. The same approach can be applied to many of the other forums in the dropdown.

So, what was I prattling on about anyway?
- There are too many overlapping forums
- There are too many forums that don't warrant their own forum
- Moderation needs to be stricter in moving threads to more suitable boards

The Games Category is at a crossroads. We can continue with our current approach, by adding boards as there appears to be demand in Forums, or we can cull forums and cut the category back to its healthier roots, and let it develop organically, as and when demand for new boards manifests itself in terms of volume of posts.

I'd welcome the thoughts of other users, games-category moderators and admins on this.

Kinetic^

Tbh, I think it's fine the way it is. Perhaps another cmod as well as 1 or 2 additional mods could be brought in to help make sure threads get to their correct home.

Stercus Accidit

Have to agree, and I suggested one of the forums listed above.

The cross over with consoles, pc's and games on them, some competitive, some rpg etc. I dont know where to post on what.

Ok, in the case of what I asked for, Fallout, I could post in xbox, games, rpg. or if I had another format, ps3, pc, etc.
So not knowing the extent of the amount of categories I asked will there be a fallout forum.

Too many subcategories thin out discussion, and keeping up with any one game requires checking a few different fora.

Kinetic^

A fair point. Why not just create game genre forums rather then specific game/format forums?

Stercus Accidit

If ever I get rrod, I know to ask in xbox what to do.

So those forums have a place, but with a game, its hard to know where to post.

Krieg

I would leave the generic "Games" forum and console forums as they are and just trim some of the game specific forums.

For example the "Unreal" tournament thread received very little activity during the release of UT3 and there has been only the odd postings for the last year afaik. It also links unreal.ie as a place for Irish UT players to have discussion, which confuses me a bit

Im only picking the unreal forum as an example. Say you remove it, anymore posts regarding the game will end up in the generic games category and may propagate further discussion in general

Ultimately theres going to be a lot of forums set-up and taken down in the games category since games generally only last so long, I don't see anything wrong with game specific forums so long as there is a decent amount of discussion on (i.e. at least one new thread a week type thing).
If a forum does lose popularity, let it die and start another forum for the next big game release. I personally think some of those game specific forums should have died some time ago (Except! quake forum ofc, its now a shrine as I understand it, a pilgrimage for the long time boards users)

AlmightyCushion

I think when it comes to the cosole forums they shouldn't be used for the discussion of games (threads like "what do you think of x game" type think). Hardware, features specific to that console (eg xbox live), bargains for that console (e.g. cheap ps3 games in currys thread) should be discussed there and any games threads moved to the relevant forum.
The way it is now a game could be getting discussed in xbox, playstation and games forum which is a bit of a mess.

For the game specific forums I don't really see a problem with them. They only tend to be busy when a new iteration is released but if they were to be closed then the games forum would be bogged down with threads whenever the new iterations were released.

Retr0gamer

Perhaps we could keep the console forums to specific threads about the hardware etc. while moving any game related topics to the games forum?

leninbenjamin

it's funny, but i'm doing a course in video games yet rarely ever post in the games category because since i've joined boards i've just found it a bit of a quagmire to navigate really.

I agree with the above posters who suggest reorganising it into genre's.
It will be a difficult process to rearrange the category to a coherent format, but i believe in the long term it would be worth it.

console forums should be just for discussing hardware. end of. threads on specific threads should be moved.

game specific forums shouldn't exist as a forum in their own right. sub forums to co-ordinate the various communities perhaps, but overall the forum-per-game ideology should be binned.

Kintarō Hattori

Battlefield
Call od Duty
Counter Strike
Half Life
Halo
Quake
Unreal
Wolfenstein

Just to give an example they are in the list yet they could easily be lumped into an FPS category, though perhaps with the exception of Quake for historical reasons of course.

Other categories could be created such as RPG, online, sim etc, really just the most relevant ones. As another poster said game talk should really be limited to a games forum and in the case of consoles the respective forums should really be used to discuss consoles itself.


Some clever reshuffling and any issues should disolve.

R0ot

I think the Category is fine the way it is.

I may be wrong about what was said above but if you group lots of fps games into one forum you will get one big explosion of chaos very fast.

(Could always remove the Football Manager forum altogether.

tba

I like the genre idea, it fits more in tune with the way things are going. However then we get the problem of games that defy genre.

FPS
MMO
SIM
SPORT

we have a STRATEGY forum, it does work in some senses but topics on DOW or C&C get lost in there cause they overlap with their real forums.

But what about the odd balls?

Its a very kafkaesque system.

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

tba

I think that about sums it up, there are too many forums and not enough posters in the games section, we keep walking into rooms and missing each other, thus no discussion takes place!

I not sure if the idea of putting halo/half life/cod etc in sub forums is a good idea, I would much prefer to see them in a forum simply titled action as you put it, more forums = greater spread of eyes and discussion.

Cuddlesworth

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Battlefield
Call od Duty
Counter Strike
Half Life
Halo
Quake
Unreal
Wolfenstein

Just to give an example they are in the list yet they could easily be lumped into an FPS category, though perhaps with the exception of Quake for historical reasons of course.

Other categories could be created such as RPG, online, sim etc, really just the most relevant ones. As another poster said game talk should really be limited to a games forum and in the case of consoles the respective forums should really be used to discuss consoles itself.


Some clever reshuffling and any issues should disolve.

Best to leave the CounterStrike forum where it is. Best for everybody else.

Sabre0001

Would agree with grouping most games by genres. Some should stay seperate, for example CS and CoD. It would be good to see the console forums used for hardware issues, etc but I think the mods will have quite a bit of work to keep things in order at the start

tman

Nobody listened to me when I said all these extra forums would cause unnecessary segregation... Nobody ever listens to me:(

I'm happy enough with the current layout, but do find myself skimming through various forums to get my fill of posts that could have been in just one.
Perhaps just one "console issues" type forum, and anything else could go into the main games forum.

Rabies

The Games category is split so much that I only read the Games forum now. Very rarely any of the other forums unless something catches my attention on the front page.

Creating forums for popular games has spread discussion thinly across too many places.


I don't have a structure in mind to throw forward as an idea. Will take a look later.
My head is wondering why there is no water in my body after too much drink last night

Kiith

I also think it should just be a Console section, where all technical questions can be asked (and flame wars can be started). Keep the games questions to the Games forums. A lot of new forums get created when a new big game comes out, then it dies down massivly after a few weeks. GTA, Metal Gear Solid, Warhawk and Resident Evil (to name a few) could all be condensed back into the main forums.

I guess its just personnel preference though. I'd prefer to have most topics on the one forum.

Maximilian

I think a lot of people look for new game forums (latest being fallout 3) for no other reason than the kudos of getting a new one created and perhaps a hope they will be made moderator of it.

The Games category is confusing at the moment. I think so many of the forums are totally pointless graveyards. The ones dedicated to single games, other than online games/mmo's with large followings, should go. Genres probably works best.

Forums like Strategy & RPG should have far more traffic than they do. I think the reason they don't is that they don't have a critical mass - people tend not to post in forums they think people don't read. So people post about rpg games for example in the main Games forum.

Could I suggest that an effort be made to move threads to appropriate genre forums - might help kick start the ailing ones. The other option being scrap all of the genres and organise generally according to platform.

Exception being Quake. I think I would be horrified as a Feb '98-er if this went

Dr Bob

Krieg wrote: »

I would leave the generic "Games" forum and console forums as they are and just trim some of the game specific forums.

For example the "Unreal" tournament thread received very little activity during the release of UT3 and there has been only the odd postings for the last year afaik. It also links unreal.ie as a place for Irish UT players to have discussion, which confuses me a bit

Im only picking the unreal forum as an example. Say you remove it, anymore posts regarding the game will end up in the generic games category and may propagate further discussion in general

Ultimately theres going to be a lot of forums set-up and taken down in the games category since games generally only last so long, I don't see anything wrong with game specific forums so long as there is a decent amount of discussion on (i.e. at least one new thread a week type thing).
If a forum does lose popularity, let it die and start another forum for the next big game release. I personally think some of those game specific forums should have died some time ago (Except! quake forum ofc, its now a shrine as I understand it, a pilgrimage for the long time boards users)

This is good,
But add a PC gaming forum as well.

Mr E

I think alot of fora could be merged... perhaps some tags, a-la the developer forum could be used to categorise threads at a glance?

LoLth

hmmmm, personally I'd leave Quake as a seperate category... it was the daddy of all of this after all but definitely categorise the remaining games.

FPS (single & multiplayer)
Driving sim
Flight Sim
management Sim
MMO
CCG
RTS
PBeM
RPG


Ignore platforms. so what if there's a copy of quake on the xbox, the DS the wii and the PC, they're all quake.

Awards , editing , reviews and workshop should all be sub-categories of the general Games.

Console and PC hardware should be discussed in the tech section where it belongs.

it will take a good bit of policing to ensure threads and categories stay organised but will make the fora much more accessible and will encourage readers to read threads they would otherwise have missed unless actively looking ( I for example regularly read the AoC board even though I have no intention of ever playing it, it just happens to be in the MMO category that I frequent).

Retr0gamer

I think Categories is the wrong way to go. There are far too many games out there that defy genres and it will be confusing where to post them. Also searching through 5+ forums for the info I want that used to be in one forum is bad enough but segregating it into even more is just going to make the matter worse. I'm totally against categorisation into genres.

Also keep the arcade/retro forum. It's far from dead!

quarryman

FPS (single & multiplayer)
Driving sim
Flight Sim
management Sim
MMO
CCG
RTS
PBeM
RPG

that still seems like a lot to me.

I would have said:

Consoles (discusses all hardware questions)
Games (All games)
Arcade/Retro
MMO

And THAT's it. No more sub-division. Its already killed what was a great games discussion forum.

Sub-forums are the way of the devil. I think it was written in the Bible somwhere....

mcgovern

I like it the way it is, you are going to end up with huge flaming wars if you have a game released on PS3, X360 and PC, with just the one thread in the one section for all.
You'll have the PS3 and X360 players arguing over which version has better framerate/multiplayer and the PC gamers shouting to all and sundry how its not a real game on consoles because they don't use mouse and keyboard. We get enough of this already, but it will be even worse if they are all together.
You'll also end up with every thread for an exclusive game turning into a pissing contest, with "Exclusive for A is crap and the new Exclusive for B which is coming out next month will be ten times better, which proves that B is the best!!".
Keeping it the way it is now, minimises the fanboys exposure to threads they can flame, and stops the rest of us searching through all the threads for something relevant.

Ponster

NekkidBibleMan wrote: »

There is certainly merit to the 'If you build it, they will come' approach, but in many cases we built it, and they haven't come. Indeed, many have possibly been driven away. We're left with boards that - while still active - do not have anywhere near the volume of traffic to warrant a dedicated board, and could be better re-incorporated into or merged with pre-existing boards.

I've been admin of Vbb sites in the past were we had a policy of creating forums based on public support and also when we knew in advance that the release of a product was going to result in an increase of traffic. When forums were no longer active (<10 new threads per month) then we closed the forum and merged it back into the general 'games' forum.

As mod of Battlefield I can say that it looks like a forum that should be closed and Battlefield threads/discussions moved to a general FPS forum. But if EA release BF3 next year then with a potential 10+ new threads per day it will be almost impossible to manage if we didn't have a dedicated forum. So yes to closing some forums and creating more generic ones leading to, I guess, more activity but NO if it means that in times of need we have to go through a 3+ months long process to get forum approval again.

tHE vAGGABOND

I was actually a made a mod of the first spin off forum of the original quake board, the unreal board. I earned this honor as I had a warez copy of a beta of the first unreal tournament a while before it was released [warez being a very rare thing back in 56k modem/isdn land].

For a number of years the Games board was very good, as you had a diverse range of things going on there at one time. Its now dead as a door nail now tbh.

We now need to merge a lot of the games which were made for individual games into a lesser number of forums. I like the idea of sorting it my genre, and maybe have console specific forums, as there are always people asking basic questions about where to get a cheap wii or how do I fix my broken xbox etc

Retr0gamer

mcgovern wrote: »

I like it the way it is, you are going to end up with huge flaming wars if you have a game released on PS3, X360 and PC, with just the one thread in the one section for all.
You'll have the PS3 and X360 players arguing over which version has better framerate/multiplayer and the PC gamers shouting to all and sundry how its not a real game on consoles because they don't use mouse and keyboard. We get enough of this already, but it will be even worse if they are all together.
You'll also end up with every thread for an exclusive game turning into a pissing contest, with "Exclusive for A is crap and the new Exclusive for B which is coming out next month will be ten times better, which proves that B is the best!!".
Keeping it the way it is now, minimises the fanboys exposure to threads they can flame, and stops the rest of us searching through all the threads for something relevant.

It's far worse than it used to be when we had the one forum.

Ponster

A problem I see is deciding who gets to keep a forum and who gets merged. If we take FPS as an example we have 'Battlefield' Call of Duty' CS' 'Helo' 'Quake' and 'Unreal'.

Do people think they all get lumped into FPS? I'm sure some mods and members will fight to have their forum saved...

tHE vAGGABOND

Do people think they all get lumped into FPS? I'm sure some mods and members will fight to have their forum saved...

there are not a lot of recent posts in any of the forums you mention..

The only problem with that list is that some folks may want the quake board saved, as it was the original forum..

But why have 20+ dead forums, where you could have circa 5 or so active ones - is that not what boards is about