Developers/publishers vs specific games in the Games forum
1 replies, posted
Right now, we have these as the subcategories:
https://i.imgur.com/R2FK2fE.png
Valve games mostly already had their own subforums and with the way some of the threads are titled I guess it's best to leave them alone, Games in Progress is its thing, VR is a broad enough subject to warrant it, but let's take a look at the Far Cry category.
That's a single series from a massive publisher with several other franchises. As it stands, looking at just Far Cry threads alone, it doesn't even take up a full page, and half of the threads are five or more years old. There's a Rainbow Six thread on the first page of Games and a Ghost Recon: Wildlands one on the second, and there's still a couple of "big" games coming from Ubisoft in this year alone, like The Crew 2 and Skull & Bones. That's two currently active Ubisoft game discussions, and at least two potential other ones. Why not just make it a Ubisoft franchise-wide discussion area rather than restricting it to specifically Far Cry? If the Far Cry 5 discussion dies down, the "Far Cry" label would go completely unused until the next one in, presumably, somewhere around three years.
GTA is a similar story. Obviously, that's a huge game and it's what Rockstar is most well-known for, but they also develop Red Dead Redemption, Bully, Max Payne, and at this point, L.A. Noire. RDR2 is coming out in October, assuming no further delays, and that's definitely going to be a topic of heavy discussion in the weeks building up to it and post-release. Plus, while unlikely, maybe one day they'll release Agent after however long it's been since announcement.
I'd make the case for "Nintendo" instead of "Mario" as well, but, obviously, it's already been made.
Why not just have a system of tags rather than traditional sub forums? The current system seems to want to be something like that, but it doesn't really go all the way. Rather than having "Games > GTA > How do I get free shark cards? ", you would have "Games > How do I get free shark cards ([GTA], [Rockstar], [Question]) or whatever in the little box below/next to the thread name. Just have a list of tags people can use and add to when creating a thread, and then have a list on the left side of the main sub forum page that lists the most popular tags, with a little icon, and the number of threads made with that tag in parentheses, and allow the user to filter the listed popular threads via any number of those tags. So by default, the "games" sub forum would present with the most popular threads first, as it is now, but you can see on the left some of the most popular tags, and filter the page via those tags; this way, if there's a tag you don't want to see at all, like threads for a game genre you detest, you can cut them out, but you can still have a very populated main page full of new threads of all the types of content you want to see. Maybe allow users to save that filter as a custom subscription so you can create and browse your personally curated list(s) of specific games you want to follow. Maybe you have a list that's just advice threads, or another that's a bunch of FPS games. There's no reason Far Cry needs an entire sub forum, but it's probably got more than enough for one thread. There's this weird in between where you want multiple threads but you don't want sub forums to create artificial categories, especially when those sub forums will end up being incredibly empty. By adding filters people can create themselves, you basically replace endless sub-forums with specific games/developer tags, merging a bunch of sub forums into a single customized "sub forum" that a user designs based on their preferences, especially if people can tag a thread as having multiple categories. If I look through the list and don't see an "Age of Empires 2" tag, let me create one and then other people can search for it, see it, and use it, making it a self populating list of tags. Hell, you could even scrape for icons automatically via Google images to get little images for each game to create thread/category icons, or allow users who use the tag first to upload a small icon themselves, obviously banning if a thread made uses a custom icon that's inappropriate or derivative (like if someone creates an "AOE2" tag when there's already "Age of Empires 2"). There aren't a lot of games Facepunch plays a lot so it wouldn't be a huge chore after the most popular game tags get added, though I'm sure Garry could do that manually and users would only do edge cases. Could possibly even just do what Twitch does and scrape game databases instead, though tags are obviously applicable to more than games. This could mean the Lifestyle sub forum could have any number of valid but perhaps not super popular tags for stuff that shouldn't be a sub forum, but shouldn't be just one thread. [books], [music], [automotives], [firearms]. Then people can curate this content and have their lifestyle sub forum only with the stuff they like; they hate drugs, don't have those tags show, and maybe not firearms either, but perhaps everything else.
You get the idea.
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