So things have settled here nicely, and considering multiple folks warned us that running a community forum was a thankless, arduous task, I’m pleased to say that so far it’s the opposite. The overwhelming majority of you are lovely and your attitudes (and our self moderation tools!) do make our lives a lot easier, so thank you.
The reason I’m posting here today is to discuss with you the future of the Xbox Game Studios OT.
In other places, the XGS thread became a bastion of sanity in a mire of relentlessly negative and hostile threads and bad faith users. Naturally, as we launched, we wanted to include the familiar and it made sense to do so.
As we’ve stabilised, we’ve noticed that despite having an ENTIRE FORUM to play in, that “safe space” mentality has persisted.
The thread becomes incredibly difficult for newcomers to follow. Having said that, we don’t want to arbitrarily make a change that negatively impacts everyone.
What should we do?
Do we carry on, and it just becomes a weird quirk of this place?
Do we create the OT as a source of information, but lock it to prevent it being used as a catch-all community thread?
Do we do away with an XGS studios OT entirely?
Something else (Post your suggestion)?
0voters
We’re open to suggestions, and would appreciate as much input as possible.
Retitle the Xbox Game Studios OT to the Xbox OT or Xbox General OT starting with the next one.
Make an XGS OT as well and lock and pin. Just the first 2-3 posts detailing the studios and their titles.
It helps to have a place to discuss things that aren’t particularly thread worthy or 100% related to a covered topic like Acquisitions or CyberPunk are. A place to share the ads, tweets and impressions of games (many of which aren’t even XGS tbh). Idk, just my 2 cents.
Firstly I think everything should stay like it is.
Reason: not enough people
I really like to chat and talk about all thought of things. But many stuff is not thread worthy or interesting enough. Most of the times a thread has a couple comments and quickly dies…
A example: I like to talk about games I completed and I could create a thread and tell people about it but the reality is not many will answer.
A good idea would be a chat channel where people can talk about simple things in gaming.
Dangers are that people will use the general OT even more.
I’d just leave it, maybe re-title it to better reflect what it ultimately is. It would be kind of neat to see it become a thread where people who want or don’t want to change from the way conversation was had at other forums can go. Especially if there was some sort of statement explaining the history behind the “mega thread” where it comes from etc. A bit of a tribute.
The only other option would just be to purge it entirely. It’s years of muscle memory at this point. People aren’t going to just move on in the time frame you want if ever.
Does it? Haven for example wasn’t really talked about and got a thread from someone. I think four people comment on it. As of now I think the forum does not have enough people to fill all conversations. The Halo OT for instance works perfectly fine. From the thousand so people not all talk and even less played Haven. I mean I haven’t yet. Tell me Why had a decent thread.
the site format is a little annoying, is there no way to have a page format with say 50 replies per page?, this continuous page is a not great IMO. Other than that i say carry on with the original OT.
Personally i like the main conversation page rather than lots of smaller places. Less chance that you might miss something. When someone pops up with Klobrille just said X or Timdog just said Y, we can then discuss immediately - other forum pages should be kept for reviews of game, technical issues, top 10 rankings, competitive gaming groups and so on. The main conversation page is the life blood, the news feed, and therefore is tied completely with gamepass/game studios, especially now the machines are released and that is no longer a big topic, it is just the games/game news in there.
As I’ve said before I don’t like that administration is pushing us towards mega threads, like that digital foundry one, xbox game studios and so on. If we’ve got the whole forum, what’s the point in having a few megathreads and that’s it? It’s counter productive if you ask me. That said, having a dedicated thread for Xbox games studios as a whole is not a bad idea. We can have different threads for different games from each of the studio, but one thread for all the studios. I hope administration reevaluate their decisions on this issue. The forum and this community is amazing.
I don’t mind the XGS thread, but it has effectively become a Community thread as opposed to something being about a specific topic. Perhaps a dedicated community thread would help keep the XGS one on topic?
The “general chat”-feeling of the XGS OT is great and something to be maintained, it’s a great part of the forum and should be maintained in some form.
My initial issue with the XGS OT thread was in thinking it was about Xbox Game Studios. It is not. So I completely agree with your first two points.
Make a General Xbox News OT discussion.
Make an Xbox Game Studios discussion.
Point out there is a Whats On GamePass discussion.
Why I dislike mega threads is it become impossible to follow for news on particular subjects. Thats why general threads should be made for more than bite-size items.
Take for Instance Call of the Sea discussion. Its being swallowed up in the XGS OT thread that moves very fast. It will be nearly impossible for casual forum goers to know how the game actually is and may be up their alley unless it has its own thread. And yes, it does have its own thread.
But no one is posting in it because Mega threads devour everything like black-holes. Forum goers are now conditioned to post everything into a single thread. This is very hard to uncondition and it becomes tireless for moderators and admins to spawn out relevant topics into their own topics.
I still prefer for games to have their own dedicated thread regardless of how unpopular they are. It makes it very clear what the discussion is about. If they’re entering or on GamePass then the GamePass thread may be suitable instead of its own thread.
Agreed, we need to retitle the XGS OT in a general Xbox News OT or just Xbox OT. And I think people here just aren’t as used to open a new thread for new topics. Somehow we need to promote that, if smaller more specific threads is what we want.
Let ma add that I really like this forum and the community. It’s a much nicer overall tone than other communities I have seen. Also I love the platform overall.
From my perspective it makes sense to close it down for a few reasons. As you’ve said it tends to suck all new news and info into one place, this has a couple of negatives for me. Firstly (generally) I don’t get much time to read and comment, so individual threads make it much easier to find the right place for a discussion or topic I’m interested in, secondly because it covers everything (not just Xbox game studios related topics) it moves too fast meaning lots of posts get missed and nothing gets any decent discussion (or it can’t easily be found).
I get why people who come from other forums like it, but, I don’t think it’s needed here.
A good example is today’s project Athia 2 year exclusive period. No new discussion thread (when I looked) but some short commentary in the studios thread. Maybe because people want to be first to break some news they prefer to drop a one liner in there than taking the time to think about the news and what it means to them so that they can create a good quality new thread. If that’s what we want here then I think the studios thread as is hindering that process.
Perhaps if we had some mechanism (or maybe we do and I don’t know) to allow people to “claim” a topic for thread creation (for +1 hour? perhaps a way to create a place holder topic thread that is locked for replies until OP finishes population) they would be more inclined to put some effort into opening a thread with decent content or opinion as they know the effort won’t be wasted than sticking a quick 1 liner into Studios?
I pretty much agree with this. I know people will argue against a “catch all” thread and I understand it, but I think it’s nice to have at least one thread that everyone eventually will post in that feels reliable day to day. It’s kind of like a comfort thread if that makes sense.
I think you should make two XGS OT’s one for speculation, talking about who Microsoft should acquire, etc etc, maybe unannounced game project like the rumoured perfect dark game, topics of discussion that have no real evidence to them.
And a second XGS OT for the more grounded discussion, like we could talk about halo infinite, and avowed, fable etc, and maybe the more obvious speculation like where forza horizon 5 is set. That would also be were you can talk about first party releases, all that sort of thing.
