How did gaming forums die?

[Roger Cobb]

Years ago, forums used to be very popular for gaming discussions, and people would hopefully police them in a way that was integral to their success, making you stick by them.

For well over 16 years, I have noticed that not many users are active on even the more well known message boards, and that's sad to witness, because forums that have software like XenForo are way nicer looking than Twitter and Facebook.

Like everything that was once engaging, time catches up with us, I suppose.

 

[digitalwanderer]

It's Youtube's fault, people don't like to read as much as watch. (I prefer to read)

 

[orangpelupa]

Forums took too much effort maybe?

Tweets, fb, YouTube comments, etc took less effort.

 

[BRiT]

Forums are merely following in the life-cycle exhibited by MySpace, just on a slower progression.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Steam forums are pretty active.

I think that most people that used to post on smaller forums gravitated to Steam forums, Reddit, and ResetEra. Also, gaming news site and YouTube comment sections along with Twitter/Facebook ate a bunch of forum traffic as well.

Regards,
SB

 

[Roger Cobb]

One of my favourite sites (Silent Hill Community) was taken offline for months, and recently, finally returned. Only the owner deleted the old forum, meaning all of the threads are now gone, as it's completely different. But while I never question the reason behind this type of thing, it seems a shame to waste all of these threads, post counts, and so on.

As you say, Reddit took over, as did Facebook. I do genuinely miss the old days of forums. Like in 2003, there was new posts just about every minute. But it declined, probably after 2006.

I don't think Silent Hill is coming back any day soon. For I mean the schedule for Tokyo Game Show has been revealed already. It starts at 11 AM in the UK, but it doesn't seem likely Konami will mention it. Also, it's an adult themed game, so it would be likely to be unveiled at a big Sony or Microsoft event after 9 o'clock at night.

Anyway, message boards are kind of dead, and I retired from them because there was nothing interesting to talk about, and some Australian guy kept being a pest.

 

[Nesh]

Years ago, forums used to be very popular for gaming discussions, and people would hopefully police them in a way that was integral to their success, making you stick by them.

For well over 16 years, I have noticed that not many users are active on even the more well known message boards, and that's sad to witness, because forums that have software like XenForo are way nicer looking than Twitter and Facebook.

Like everything that was once engaging, time catches up with us, I suppose.

Oh I remember those amazing discussions about Silent Hill games.
Silent Hill were amazing because they told the background story by throwing elements and hints. They expected the player to make the connections.
This made players form a lot of interesting theories and they were hunting for clues.
Which also contributed to the discovery of crazy amount of easter eggs.
There was an interesting forum discussion decades ago about SH1 where people found countless of them. Unfortunately the forum has either closed or got buried under the enormous amounts of internet data.

 

[zed]

I notice eurogamer just took their forums offline a few days ago

Its not just gaming, the forums I was most active on were the imdb horror film forums, and then bam ~5 years ago no more

facebook is friggen terrible (half by design as they dont want you organize threads by unread/most recent as they want to choose what you read by who gives them moneys) but even the layout in FB is terrible I have a 16:9 screen and it uses ~1/4 of the width for posts (I cant imagine how it looks like on 32:9 screens, just a small sliver of text in the center . Sure everything now is designed for mobile but in time use, I use devices thusly PC (80%) > phone (15%) > ipad (5%) )

 

[Davros]

I cant imagine how it looks like on 32:9 screens

Like this :

 

[zed]

yeah reddit is the same, Im looking now on a 16:9 screen and it is using 1/4 of my screens width!
FFS how did these worse design choices win out over the traditional forum format like here this forum (Oh sure its more than just how the layout is presented but still its a head scratcher)

 

[entity279]

Yeah, it's def not just gaming.
I think any hobby you follow (e.g. I am into audio gear and music in general), most of the text-based interactions happen on Facebook Groups & Reddit . Even though they are so much worse..
And yes, youtube replacing most of the webpage reviews also must have a role in this.

It's mainly the fault of mobile being the overwhelming way to access the webs nowadays, in my mind. Plus the invention of scrolling ad infinitum through items, which I guess brings a bit of excitement since people now "discover" posts instead of going directly to them by means of.. organisation

Also, while taking little part of it, I think we also lost irc in the process; as a place where people with the most niche interests could gather and belong

 

[digitalwanderer]

I really miss IRC.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

yeah reddit is the same, Im looking now on a 16:9 screen and it is using 1/4 of my screens width!
FFS how did these worse design choices win out over the traditional forum format like here this forum (Oh sure its more than just how the layout is presented but still its a head scratcher)

For reddit posts, just replace www with old and you get the MUCH MUCH MUCH better layout they had before they revamped the look of the site.

I think I've read that if you have an account at reddit that you can go into options and choose the old layout, but I'm not positive on that since I don't have a reddit account.

Yeah, one of my pet peeves, that I get the feeling that most web developers feel that web design should revolve around mobile devices. So, even though there are mechanisms available to code a website for multiple types of devices/displays they only code their sites for mobile device use. And then maybe, just maybe they'll put something in that just widens the mobile device view for non-mobile devices. Bleh.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

They follow the same trend everything else does.

Small forums like this used to be popular and they would all cater to a niche crowd. But then a big company came in and allowed everyone to make subreddits which are basically sub forums and people stopped going to a bunch of different sites and started going to just one main one. There were other sites like digg and stuff that tried to do the same but failed early on. Reddit is starting to get extremely bad with their moderation and are trying to clean up its act for an ipo and so now other places are started to pop up trying ot mimic reddit.

 

[entity279]

Wasn't reddit always extremly bad with moderation?
Then there's the, on many subredits but not all, poorly used upvote/downvote system.
Then there is the fact that messages don't follow a strict sequence. Or anyway they are not read as such instead people see mostly what's being replied directly to their messages. So an exchange of opinions quickly just becomes a 1 - on - 1 discussion.
And the fact that the older stuff is harder to find (posts there have an effective lifetime of anything between a few days and few months), so you get the same questions/topic over and over again.

I think to everyone, at first, it looks like a forum. But actually is vastly inferior

 

[Gubbi]

Forums took too much effort maybe?

Tweets, fb, YouTube comments, etc took less effort.

This.

I think it is about discovery. Because FB, Twitter and YouTube are easier to access, they get more views, and more views directly affects search engine results. The really high quality discussions are often found on page 3 or 4 of a search result.

Cheers

 

[zed]

For reddit posts, just replace www with old and you get the MUCH MUCH MUCH better layout they had before they revamped the look of the site.

OK thanks, oh yes I remember this layout

I can see why they upgraded
http://zedzeek.com/junk/red1.jpg // 3 posts and an wacking great ad
http://zedzeek.com/junk/red2.jpg // 14 posts with that ad

 

[Sxotty]

I have definitely noticed for many things we now have worse ways to interact and find info. YouTube can be great for things like autorepair, though so can forums, but YouTube is often awful for this like some obscure setting that written instructions could cover in short order. Partially I think it might be a language issue as well. Like Ikea instructions. Easier to do a YouTube video that people can watch instead of a page they can read with one image.