The Games Category: Discuss

Anti

I think people would rather stick to the organizers of the cup's events them selfs, ya know the way its been done since the dawn of online gaming.

Dont be at yourself

Right, the last current release was 2142 which sucked a lot, BFV, BF1942, BF2 are still being played, when BF2 was released I'd say there was a good 2 / 3 years activity on that forum.

Even with the BFV, BF1942, BF2 and BF2142 on release, the place still is barely ticking over. There's no doubt that whenever the next installment comes out, but I'd question whether there will be so much discussion over a sustained period of time to warrant a board. A Latest Releases or Online Gaming board might facilitate things better.

I do think its great for communities to have their space to discuss particular games. However, I don't think that enough of a community exists to support half the boards in the category. It also hampers the gamer with a more passing interest in certain series discussing them, and that in turn restricts the growth of the community.

Sorry, I still don't see the logic in the argument FOR amalgamation of all the forums, but you're the boss.

I'm not the boss at all. I don't even claim to have the answers, but I think its worth discussing the questions!

I would be in favor for amalgamation for the following reasons:


- There is currently too much overlapping areas of discussion with existing boards - meaning that to read or post about a game that interests you, you may have to visit anything up to 5 separate boards.

- Discussion is being splintered and virtually every board moves at snail's pace

- Smaller communities are slowly withering away, as opposed to growing


On the community thing and the organizing of events and matches...

The Battlefield forum currently has two threads around this (both for clan recruitment), neither of which are particularly active. The Call of Duty forum has three threads regarding organising games/clans. These kind of threads could possibly be better handled by an Online Gaming/Matchmaking forum. Such a forum would undoubtedly get more footfall than these game-specific forums.

Retr0gamer

I don't think these forums for specific online games and series really take anything from the main games forum and should be left the way they are or at least the active ones. There will probably be a good few iterations of the CoD and BF series that will keep those forums ticking over and are good for the online community.

The main problem I see is with the console specific forums which are taking an awful lot of discussion away from the Games forum and away from interesting discussion in general. Series specific forums take away the discussion of maybe one game every once it a while and are usually discussed by their diehard fans. The console forums are taking discussion of all games and splitting them across 4 forums, even with multiplatform games and diluting the amount of discussion that can happen. Some of these forums are ignored by many posters.

I think the main issue is getting rid of the platform specific forums, possibly not sega, and turn them into a dedicated games discussion forum and a console tech forum or something else if there is a better suggestion.

Secondary to that should be pruning of dead forums. I think BF and CoD should remain since I wouldn't call them dead since the franchises are still healthy. These forums aren't taking as much away as the console specific forums. i think there should be a bit of leniency in terms of culling the game and series specific forums.

miju

quarryman wrote: »

IMO, Trophy manager is a perfect candidate to get killed off. A forum that barely gets 1 post a day should be merged with something else.

goes to show that your talking ****e about something you know nothing about. the TM forum is actually a very , very active forum and continues to grow in traffic each month.

nkay1985

Hey,

So, I came here from the thread Ponster started in the Trophy Manager forum.

I'm not a "gamer" at all. I posted once or twice in the Call of Duty forum as I was playing that at the time. It remains the only PC game I've played in the last 8 or 9 years. And I don't play it anymore.

The only game I play is Trophymanager, a web-based football management game. The Trophymanager forum here is how I got into this game. The forum has been an excellent resource to get me up and running in the game, with lots of active members who've been around the game for a length of time, always quick to come forward with any advice etc.

If this forum was absorbed by or merged with another forum, rather than make me more interested in the games section as a whole I'd probably just stop using it. One thread covering this game wouldn't cut it. As it stands, the thread for this season's general discussion has 650 replies in less than 3 months from over 30 different Boards users.

If you don't use this forum, fair enough. But for us who regularly use it, we know how beneficial it is in terms of helping out existing managers and also drawing in new members. I think it's more than justified in its existence.

miju

also to add to what nkay is saying some of the users on the TM forum have already suggested that they will jump ship to another forum.

I don't think it would be to big a leap of faith to say that many others across all the sub fora would do the exact same thing which would kill off the remaining ones even more.

There are two simple solutions here:

Cut off the dead wood forums which are attracting zero posts and merge them into one general forum / archive thing. In the process leaving the active forums well alone.

OR

Leave things exactly as they are and do nothing.

Anything other than those two options IMHO would be damaging to boards.

Retr0gamer

I don't think Trophy manager should have been mentioned and it's hardly a factor in the main discussion here especially if it's as popular as these guys are saying.

Kurtosis

miju wrote: »

There are two simple solutions here:

Cut off the dead wood forums which are attracting zero posts and merge them into one general forum / archive thing. In the process leaving the active forums well alone.

OR

Leave things exactly as they are and do nothing.

Anything other than those two options IMHO would be damaging to boards.

This is a very sensible suggestion, I'd support either of these options.

miju

Retr0Gamer I'm using that forum as an example as it's the game forum I'm most familiar with. I would be willing to bet the same points stand for all the other active game forums.

mayordenis

Sacrifice for the greater good

tba

Well what constitutes a dead/active forum?

A point nobody has addressed, and I think with good reason, its intangibale.

There are a few people here very worried about the future of their forum, nobody has taken anything away yet, so relax. Try to be a bit empathetic to the people who are concerned about the other forums, this is a disscussion not an attack.

A "culling" off of dead forums is a simple solution, but is it the best?

miju

tba wrote: »

A "culling" off of dead forums is a simple solution, but is it the best?

I know no-ones made any decisions I'm actually not being defensive as believe it or not we've plenty of different fora to go to if ours got merged.

Anyways back OT I personally I don't think a culling of the dead forums is a good option either but neither is merging forums.

What exactly is wrong with the other forums that warrants a mass merge? I mean surely if traffic has slowed to a crawl in certain forums then that simply means the forum has run it's natural life cycle no?

nkay1985

miju wrote: »

What exactly is wrong with the other forums that warrants a mass merge? I mean surely if traffic has slowed to a crawl in certain forums then that simply means the forum has run it's natural life cycle no?

The same as happens with many forums across the entirety of Boards. Maybe it's the case that because there are more games forums, more of them run their life cycle.

tba

True, but when a topic arises in, say, strategy, i usually don't see it for days, in fact I have missed a few PBEM civ games that i may have been interested in. This is not because I have a declining interest in Strategy, its just I look at the nintendo/games/half life/eve online/several other forums and it just fell off the radar a bit.

Its very easy if you are merely interested in WOW for example, check the WOW forum, but alot of people just like games, as such the inclusion of so many sub forums makes it incredibly difficult to find an interesting conversation if not nigh on impossible.

I have no problem with the Trophy Manager Forum, it seems pretty niche and as such a decent candidate for a forum of its own. It also appearsto be more of an MMO if truth be told so I would stick it under the MMO section as I have described here.

nkay1985 wrote: »

The same as happens with many forums across the entirety of Boards. Maybe it's the case that because there are more games forums, more of them run their life cycle.

I find that the games forum seems to be the only place to warrant forums for titles, the film forum does not have a driving miss daisy sub forum, the music forum does not have a Madonna forum, it would be stupid!

As such the reason that certain games forums survive should be self evident, it is nothing to do with the game, it is the social interaction that the game facilitates.

As such I alter my previous suggestion

Games Discussion---

Games Discussion
New Releases/Upcoming
Retro/Arcade
Games Reviews/Awards

Online Games---

WOW
CS
Trophy Manager
etc...

Gaming Hardware---
Quake---

nkay1985

Well, like I said, I'm not into gaming and therefore don't know anything about the games forum as a whole and what may or may not benefit it. My only input is on the Trophy Manager forum, and I think it needs a forum of its own like it has. Maybe users of other small forums within Games might argue the same, I don't really know.

tba

Thats fair enough we need input from as many people as possible, we will be the people using these forums so we need to make sure it suits us.

I know alot of people are suggesting radical ideas, but without them we will never think about how things can be better suited to our needs.

Raphael

A point that seems to have been completely ignored in this thread is that the Roleplaying forum, which is honestly the main thing in the Games cat I care about, crosses the video games/real life games border - it covers both CRPGs and pen and paper/ live action RPGs. So most of these suggestions involving making it a subcat under games, with subcats for particular RPGs etc. or just doing away with it entirely as it can fall under games would kill the RL aspect, and vice versa throwing into real life games with magic and poker would kill the CRPG aspect.

My €0.02

the_syco

Silverfish wrote: »

I believe anything with a community, clans, teams and future releases should be left alone, i.e Battlefield, CoD, Quake, and CS or whatnot.

I second this. Would you split them up again, when a new one in the series comes out? CoD5 will be coming out sometime, not sure when the next Battlefield is, a new Quake pops up every so often, CS is continuous.

|Games|
|Games|Game Reviews
|LAN Parties|
|Strategies|
|Strategies|Command & Conquer
|Strategies|Warcraft
|Shooters|GTA
|Shooters|CoD
|Shooters|Half-Life
|Shooters|Counter-Strike
|MMO|World of ****
|MMO|Second Life
|Real Life|Poker
|Real Life|Chess
|Real Life|Role Playing

tba

Raphael wrote: »

A point that seems to have been completely ignored in this thread is that the Roleplaying forum, which is honestly the main thing in the Games cat I care about, crosses the video games/real life games border - it covers both CRPGs and pen and paper/ live action RPGs. So most of these suggestions involving making it a subcat under games, with subcats for particular RPGs etc. or just doing away with it entirely as it can fall under games would kill the RL aspect, and vice versa throwing into real life games with magic and poker would kill the CRPG aspect.

My €0.02

I knew I forgot something. I figure it would be a real world game and as such fit in with poker, games workshop, chess in its own forum, maybe?

Raphael

See, then the CRPG aspects get thrown by the wayside, and having checked it up (I'm that bored), first page atm has 8 threads on C-RPGS and 10 on LARP/Pen and paper, not including stickies. So there's kind of an even split.

You could put it in with all the real world stuff and just have the CRPG stuff get funneled away, however imo that's not a decision that should be made lightly. It's one I'd honestly support, but it still shouldn't be made lightly.

faceman

Was just thinking about this again earlier, is there a way to see what the traffic is like in each of the forums over the past say 6 months?

It might be wise to see what is working and what not first before making big changes? Is it something S-Mods or admins can do?

rizzla

I would have it so the consoles section remains with the Xbox, Playstation and nintendo, etc still remaining, with hardware and console exclusive games discussion going in there.

Then the Games forum would contain multi-platform releases.

Then get rid off the games specific sub section's based on how little traffic they may recieve.

quarryman

rizzla wrote: »

I would have it so the consoles section remains with the Xbox, Playstation and nintendo, etc still remaining, with hardware and console exclusive games discussion going in there

But that is still leaving the structure they way no one wanted it, ie split across consoles. That was when it stopped working.

Kinetic^

Kind of coincidence that as soon as the recession comes along, all of a sudden the games category stops working

Dont be at yourself

See, then the CRPG aspects get thrown by the wayside, and having checked it up (I'm that bored), first page atm has 8 threads on C-RPGS and 10 on LARP/Pen and paper, not including stickies. So there's kind of an even split.

You could put it in with all the real world stuff and just have the CRPG stuff get funneled away, however imo that's not a decision that should be made lightly. It's one I'd honestly support, but it still shouldn't be made lightly.

I think this is really indicative of the nub of most of the issues: nobody wants to destroy, merge or split any self-sufficient communities - and nobody wants to shoehorn niche communities into boards they don't belong in.

How much of a crossover is there between the LARP/p&p and CRPG communities on the board? Is it a case of two largely separate communities living side-by-side, or do posters generally post on the two topics?

Looking briefly at the RPG board, it does seem quiet, and I do believe that the CRPG-side of things could be better discussed on a board like Games. There are only two threads that have posts in the double figures, and I think it is fair to say that that figure would rise where they on the Games board.

When I suggested the merging/culling of inactive boards, I did not have obviously thriving niche communities like Trophy Manager and LARP/p&p in mind.

Maximilian

but leave Quake.

I mean it.

Bubs101

faceman wrote: »

Was just thinking about this again earlier, is there a way to see what the traffic is like in each of the forums over the past say 6 months?

It might be wise to see what is working and what not first before making big changes? Is it something S-Mods or admins can do?

I'd agree with that but I think that certain forums, such as mine:p, should be given special consideration and be left alone. When Chess was grouped as part of Real World games it got very little traffic but now we have a league going and with continued interest, a ladder so I would request that in any shake up we'd be allowed to remain as a forum and not a sub category.

As for the situation now with computer games, it's clear that there are far too many forums that just cater for new releases and the granting of forums is really inconsistent. Fifa for example, has a new game every year and great online functions yet doesn't get a forum whereas Pro Evo does? I think a bit of shrinkage is in order by categorizing them into genres like FPS and RPG with sub categories from there which has probably already been suggested but I'm not reading the whole thread

quarryman

This is going to happen with every forum. A shortlist will be made.

Then someone will pop up saying "you can't get rid of trophy manager!", "ok we'll keep that one."

"you can't get rid of chess!"

Eventually we're going to have a list of forums that's pretty similar to what we have now.

Anyway, this topic seems to be getting ignored by the admins and since the games forum split was performed by them against the wishes of the mods i don't see anything getting done about it.

*runs off to browse through the 20-odd games forums to find all the stuff that interests me*

Bubs101

quarryman wrote: »

This is going to happen with every forum. A shortlist will be made.

Then someone will pop up saying "you can't get rid of trophy manager!", "ok we'll keep that one."

"you can't get rid of chess!"

There's a massive difference. Trophy manager, football manager and Pro Evo could all be morphed into a football game forum whereas Chess stands practically alone

CuLT

Thread isn't being ignored, fyi.