Most games have forums – which can serve a variety of purposes for both the players and the company. I’m interested in hearing why you visit forums for a particular game. What is it that draws you to the official forums of a game website? Is it:
- The chance to ask questions of the developers, or to read official dev statements?
- You need technical support assistance and you’re researching the issue?
- You want to be more involved with the community and/or get to know fellow players?
- You go there for tips and reviews of the game from the horse’s mouth before purchasing?
- You want to make a name for yourself in that game’s community?
- You NEED to stay on top of all the latest changes and news in the game?
- You want to help out other players?
I’ve always been a reader/poster on message boards because I like to ask questions and help people out. I also prefer forums to wikis or FAQ’s because I like to see the variety of opinions that people have. What makes you, the end-user, seek out forums for the game you’re playing?
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I like to stay on top of things and feel like I am part of the community. Answering questions and asking them myself are two other benefits to forums. Strong forum communities are very important.
I agree with Keen that strong forum communities are important. I love to visit active game forums to learn about new features being added to the game, guides of my characters to follow, and to hear what others are thinking about the game.
I hate the recent trend for games not to have official forums. In Vanguard, I never felt like I was hearing the news that Vanguard was putting out. Plus, the unofficial forums were so negative. Unfortunately, Warhammer Online has also decided not to have an official forum. WHY???
I’ve got to admit, I avoid forums, official or otherwise. Plague-carriers have a better rep with me, to be honest.
From my perspective, the problem is two-fold. The first is obvious, and expected: the feedback is almost uniformly negative. If they didn’t have a problem, they’d be playing the game, not posting on the forums, right?
Second, too much anonymity, and too large a crowd for reputation to really have much effect anyway, especially for a casual visitor.
The above represents problems that could be fixed, I suspect… they just haven’t been yet, so most forums I’ve visited over the years are largely dominated by fanboi vs. troll flame-wars and plaintive questions followed by 5 pages of “they answered that last week, nub, use the Search!” before someone deigns to offer an answer (non-definitive, of course) out of the good of their heart.
Official information could be disseminated by official website, and made far more detailed and presentable than is generally possible in a forum post. Relatively neutral feedback can be obtained via in-game or web-site based polling.
The functionality that forums offer that little else can duplicate is an ability for players to connect with each other… and I do understand why some companies are actively wondering if that is a net positive under current circumstances.
I apologize for the contrarian viewpoint, but I thought it should be said at least once.
I go to forums for pretty much three reasons: learning about a game before I buy it, deciding which class to roll if I do buy it, and getting advice about developing my character (talent points and such.) As much as I’d like to say for community, that’s not true. Hopefully this will change soon and they will find a way to tighten the community back up like EQ/AC days and then I might be more interested in that sense. Help us bring back the glory days Cuppy!
I usually visit to be a part of the community. To get to know the other people I am gaming with or will be gaming with. It is also nice to ask questions and have the devs answer them!
Same for me as Kanthalos – built too many truly gimped characters in classless systems, or sneered-at-as-suboptimal-but-good-enough-for-me characters in classed systems, to not look for a lot more guidance than most devs give about character development paths.
I’d love to do more, but RL constraints keep me mostly solo in MMOs, so I really can’t get involved in the social side of the forums any more.
It depends for me. I avoid the WoW forums like the plague because the signal-to-noise ratio is so incredibly low. Anything useful gets drowned out. I sometimes peruse the LotRO forums, on the other hands, because I can engage in interesting discussion about game features, read useful announcements, and give & get help.
Guides. Plain and simple. Usually there’s a wealth of class information in class forums, and it’s also usually the most up to date info that you can find on the web.
If it wasn’t for guides, I’d avoid forums like the plague.
I like forums for the interaction between development team and the user base. However, it seems that the dev team does a minimal amount of communication on a forum, especially once a game goes live. Instead there seems to be a chain that is followed where information is filtered, edited, then relayed. This chain, in many instances, feels to be far more detrimental to the community than it is a boon.
It’s a lot like how the House of Commons Chats held over on stratics have diminished in quality over the years. Now there are marketing people sitting by in every chat editing and censuring the developers. It is almost as if the community is viewed as being too stupid to understand the message that devs are trying to get out, and that people are too incompetent to ask any questions of merit or depth.
Forums etc are more and more a tool for marketing to advertise rather than the communication that used to occur. A large number of times people ask very pointed very important questions that are outright ignored or answered with “we are not free to divulge this information yet”. And the questions they do answer give the exact same information that pops up in the half dozen or more previews which come out, that in and of themselves are just advertisements for games rather than a source of real information.
Now once the games are released they are a good source of information on class builds, places to hunt, quest hubs that I may have missed etc. Of course the usefulness of forums once the games release can be limited. Star Wars Galaxies’ forums are a perfect example of this. SWG has been in a beta state, more or less, since the game released. The team is definitely having, and have had, issues with where to go and where to take the game. Yet suggestions and criticisms alike are often deleted or edited in an effort, it seems, to hide the fact that the game is in such a poor state. Unless the poster does nothing but sing the praises of the dev teams and keep the conversation on a very superficial level. I definitely do not envy the positions of people like Q3P0, Tiggs and Brenlo in that sort of situation.
Forums, for me, are a place to get a pulse check on the state of a game. I read the forums, gauge the responses or lack there of and can usually make an informed decition about which server I might want to be a part of.
If I haven’t beta’d the game, the DEV RESPONSE PLZ: FIX MY CLASS NOW posts that litter every class forum can usually be discected to deliver the one iota of actual insight into class challenges and perhaphs which might be best suited to my play style.
Lastly, forums can be a nice way to enjoy your game from the outside. You can keep pace with updates, interact with the community in some small ways, and just generally get a quick fix while you are logged out, or don;t have enough time to really enjoy a play session.
I’ll go the forums if I encounter a bug. I also like to offer design input, but I suppose that applies more to beta forums.
Generally though, I agree with DamianoV. Frequenting the forums seems like a certain way to make the game less enjoyable. If you’re not reading about the game’s faults all the time, then you can simply accept it in the same way you accept a single-player game as finished. If you can treat it as a finished game, then the game’s faults rarely seem like the big deal other players make them out to be. Forums encourage players to dwell on what they don’t like.
As another commenter noted, I peruse forums primarily to tap in on where the major currents of player thoughts are going. I also use the search feature quite frequently if I’m looking on info about items, quests, or other info. I rarely participate though. As other posters have noted, too much time spent on the boards is a sure recipe to make the game less enjoyable. They are usually a cesspit of negativity, and it’s infectious.
One thing I wish board maintainers would stop doing is displaying individual post counts. I think post counts encourage the worst forum behavior, and are rarely an indicator of the quality of an individual poster.
The only reason I go to forums is for purely for information on: character builds (Profession combos), skills strategies, discussion on skill balance changes, event guides, mapping guides, etc.
I don’t go there for community or to talk to other people. Most really good forums are way too over populated for time-constrained people to become deeply involved in the community, unless you’re only playing that one game, and that one game takes up the bulk of your free time.
Most forums are for the really hardcore minority population. 80% of the people who play games don’t participate in forums. I’m part of that 80%. I will go to very small communities, however, because the amount of information is more manageable, and it is small enough that I feel my views can be heard.
Whether I visit the forums for a game regularly or not depends a lot on their community feeling in general.
For that reason, I pretty much ignored the WoW forums when I played that and similarly I did not read much on the SOE EQ2 forums either, although these were a bit better than WoW forums.
My forum experience for City of Heroes/Villains have been quite good though – people are generally polite and friendly, newbie questions get answered and there is lots of guides and suggestions and a decent amount of feedback from developers.
I do not spend a lot of time in the forums and do not post much, but I read them almost daily and also when looking for information on certain aspects of the game.
I do try to provide some helpful comments if there is something I can answer, although there has typically already been some by the time I see the question.
I used to troll community forums and contributed my fair share of flames when I was actively playing Lineage 2, which is more or less open PvP.
Community forums were essential and all discussions, from flame wars to discussing game mechanics were a huge drive behind the politics in game.
Community forums aside, I think official forums are mostly worthless. It’s heavily censored and run by a bunch of PR bunnies who tend to make posts disappear. Often, you’ll find more game information on community-run Wiki and the likes if class information and quests is what you’re searching for.
I go to Official Forums for a variety of reasons. I love to read the stickied threads that usually have great content and conversations between the developers and players. These threads tend to be moderated and gleaned for actual content making the reading somewhat fragmented but full of good information.
I also look for guides I haven’t found on the web. There are a lot of players who invest great time in creating well structured posts detailing everything from classes to zones. I usually end up bookmarking these threads and filling up my firefox favorites frequently. (lol, say that 10 times fast)
Its usually the 20 page threads that are nothing but 2 line comments about some asinine topic that usually choke up these forums though. “Search” is my savior.
One of my favorite forums to haunt when I was playing Vanguard was the VanguardCrafters.com site. Albeit not an actual official forum now, it was moderated well and had some interesting interaction between players and devs alike.