Hey all, I’m back with an important topic for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. It’s all about forums.

Forums?: A lot of developers nowadays are forgoing the use of forums and to me that seems to be a really bad thing since it doesn’t encourage community interaction or feedback. Given how many titles ship now with game breaking bugs, that seems to be a really poor way of handling the concerns of players. I remember nearly 20 years ago being able to go to a forum and post about a bug that was affecting me in World of Warcraft, and it was actually seen and acknowledged by the developers. But there are downsides to it since it is a place where a bunch of people will vent at developers as well, though that is part and parcel of being a video game developer. Not everyone will be happy, and some people will be very vocal about it.

Why are forums going away?: Maybe because it’s yet another expense that comes with significant downsides as well as some upsides. I know some developers refuse to interact at all with their communities like Infinity Ward of Call of Duty fame, which is an issue I’ve covered multiple times. But the inability to go to a forum and see that such a bug was affecting other people, and it wasn’t just me messing up was a godsend. Most days I have to turn to Reddit for that now, and Reddit really isn’t a great substitute for a proper forum.

So, what now?: Well, I hope that this trend reverses because community interaction is a major thing that more developers need to commit to. Frankly the fact that major developers like Infinity Ward don’t have a forum is not really okay in my book.

That’s it for this Video Game Tuesday!