The politics of games.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I disagree with Kekvit's proposal.
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[TosaInu]

Hello,

There were some discussions already about topics such as copyprotection and controversial steps in the industry. Those were in different TW gameforums. I think the Arena had or could have such as well, but ask frogbeastegg about that.

Piracy, assistance to avoid DRM (but not cleaning up after the game is uninstalled) and high running emotions is not going to become content anywhere.

The example about African children sounds like a Backroom topic. It's possible to give it a pre-fix (game) to make it easier to locate. It has however, not much to do with games anymore when it is about that. It's the question of exploiting people.

[Kekvit Irae]

I'm just tired of all the threads The Arena gets about game companies and their practices. The Arena is supposed to be about games. I would rather see a thousand posts complaining about the gameplay of a favorite game than one more post of someone getting on their knees and performing sexual favors on StarDock's proverbial male genitalia.
As noted in the thread title, at what point in time did gaming turn into politics? I remember a time when gaming was something you do for fun, regardless of what the company did.

[Husar]

I guess that was because what the companies did din't matter back then but nowadays they start bothering people with what they do., I can understand your concern but I can also understand why people are annoyed by certain copy protection schemes. Unfortunately for you you're an AM and have to read those threads while I can just skip them.

[Zenicetus]

As noted in the thread title, at what point in time did gaming turn into politics? I remember a time when gaming was something you do for fun, regardless of what the company did.

I don't remember a time like that, and I go back to being one of the SysOps on Compuserve's flight sim forums, in the dial-up BBS days before the Web was around.

I remember plenty of flames directed at game companies due to missed deadlines, bad design, bugs on release, bizarre early copy protection efforts (remember code lookup wheels?) or poor aftermarket support. You shoulda been around in the Flight of the Intruder - Falcon 3.0 days... whew! Talk about a gripe-fest.

People are going to have opinions about the quality of games they play. I don't see how you can draw bright lines around DRM as if it's an inherently different aspect of game quality aside from number of bugs, install hassles, aftermarket support, etc. It's the nature of the product you're dealing with.

As someone who posts here, I don't think it's helpful when DRM threads become huge, but they're easy enough to bypass. And I think it's important to have the freedom to say, when recommending a game for example: "XXX is a great RPG, I enjoyed it, but be advised it does contain YYYY DRM, just so 'ya know." That's information which is increasingly important to many of us PC gamers, and I've written a few posts like that. I wouldn't want to have to mention that in a separate sub-forum ghetto outside the thread, where it probably wouldn't even be noticed by the person I was responding to.

Another reason I don't like the idea is that I just don't like fractured forums in general. There are already 30+ main forums on the index page, and scads of sub-fora, almost all of which I never visit because it's too tedious to navigate. Every time you break out a topic into another area, you're forcing an additional page load on the user, and forcing a new mental scan of index topics. Many of us just don't have the time to check a dozen different fora, so we just hit a few of the main areas we're interested in and blow off the rest. If I ran this place, the first thing I'd do is a major consolidation to reduce the sprawl, instead of going the other direction with yet another sub-forum. But that's just me.

[Abokasee]

...I would rather see a thousand posts complaining about the gameplay of a favorite game than one more post of someone getting on their knees and performing sexual favors on StarDock's proverbial male genitalia....

These words shall echo across the forums.

[TosaInu]

How do people feel about a light compromise? Keep the games threads targeted more towards games, and keep the bulk of the DRM and similar discussion in a seperate topic in the same forum? Not a total seperation, just an attempt to reduce the way some games threads end up being more about the copy protection than the playing experience. Not heavy mod action, just a post nudging the discussion back towards the game and highlighting the other thread.

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No. It's little different from splitting the forum. The games exist with everything related to them. We can't and should not separate issues like DRM, system incompatibilities, breaking bugs etc. from the in-game stuff. It was the whole point of my post. (That aside, self censorship is hardly the right way to go. )
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Hello,

I think there are some keywords in frogbeasteggs proposal: more and bulk.

I think it's little different from requesting to stay on topic.

I think it's fine to mention cons and pros with a gametitle in the topic about that game, that includes DRM, bugs and compatibilities.

Just the DRM discussion is a multi-post discussion on its own, there's no problem when that's thoroughly
discussed. When done thoroughly in the very topic, there's the risk of the entire topic continuing about just that. When a topic gets mixed with another discussion, even when closely related, a spin-off topic can be made.

You could also make a DRM in general discussion.

[Lemur]

DRM is part of the gamers' world right now, like it or not, and I'm terribly sorry if peoples' approval of the StarDock business model makes you break out in hives. If you aren't getting reported posts to deal with and your time is being consumed by people "getting on their knees and performing sexual favors on StarDock's proverbial male genitalia," then it sure sounds like you have too much time on your hands.

[Crazed Rabbit]

How do people feel about a light compromise? Keep the games threads targeted more towards games, and keep the bulk of the DRM and similar discussion in a seperate topic in the same forum? Not a total seperation, just an attempt to reduce the way some games threads end up being more about the copy protection than the playing experience. Not heavy mod action, just a post nudging the discussion back towards the game and highlighting the other thread.

I must disagree again.

DRM is an important part of the discussion for individual games. Each individual game has different DRM, and it'd be confusing to separate the discussion of a single game into two threads. And the DRM thread would have discuss a bunch of different game's DRM, which would again be confusing.

I'm really not seeing the problem with talking about DRM as we currently do in the arena. It's part of gaming; it may not be what you would prefer to read about, but unfortunately for all of us it is relevant.

CR