Flaws? In MY games?

Been sitting on this for a while now but I figure this is probably the best time to say it.
I did notice the ol' GameFlaws forums, and I liked the concept. I'd sorta thought of making a thread in order to direct people's attention there and hopefully let it see some activity, but a couple of things worried me.
The forum was designed very interestingly, with a different section for each potential flaw. Whilst this would limit the degree to which any one game can be talked about, it meant that separate areas of a game could also be focussed on individually. Forgive me if I'm projecting here, but I got the feeling that it was specifically more about discussing the flaws in games and how they could be improved, rather than constantly arguing about what constituted a flaw in the first place and then also mixing this up by talking about what was good about them (although there was a forum for that as well). To me this was what set it apart from GameFAQs and other sides like that, since it actually had a direction and wasn't some dodgy personal review site were a couple of assholes spread their opinion around like it's gospel. Then I sorta hesitated, because I realised that there wasn't really anything stopping people from posting the usual "LOL CLOUD IS A FAG" or "HALO SUX" or whatever.
So I guess what I'm asking here is what GameFlaws' purpose is/will be specifically, and maybe if the guidelines and such can be discussed at some point.
That'd be cool.

 

Glad to see you are so interested in becoming active in the Gameflaws forums when it opens again DoubleThink.

Yep! In a nutshell, it was to discuss the types of flaws found in games and discuss them in such a way to where that same or similar flaw could be improved upon or avoided altogether in other game designs. It was originally designed to help gain some feedback on what elements of a game seem to bother people the most and hopefully designers could gain insight on intelligent reviews about what exactly was wrong with a game or series of games that contain the same issue or problem area.

Shirofan and I are currently revising the Gameflaws idea improve on the "flaws" that we had with it when it was originally active. I'm helping Shirofan with some feedback and such, but the eventual plan is for Shirofan to be the main administrator for both the Gameflaws site and Gameflaws forum.

Shiro, you want to go ahead and field this one? At this point, you could probably answer his question better than I could.

-SkyeWelse

 

Well I'm still trying to work out the format for the forums, whether to stick with how they were or start again with a new focus.

I admit I dislike the idea of single topics for each game as some issues would take the fore and curtail what may be a promising discussion on another aspect of the game in question; whereas limiting the topics to single flaws means people have to stick to the topic creators first point. I would be likely to remove posts for going off topic.

As for what constitutes a flaw, I only have one definition and that is something that detracts from your enjoyment of a game; it doesn't matter how it manifests, the important thing is it did manifest and you paid attention to it.

As for anything along the lines of "CLOUD IS A FAG" or "HALO SUX" well there is nothing preventing such posting, but there will be something preventing such posts remaining there for any length of time: me.

As most flaws are a form of personal opinion then I would require justification for any flaw that people wished to post. Bizarrely, while the latter example is just a general opinion and would be rejected because of lack of specifics, it would be possible to construct a coherent argument for the former using in game material that would warrant its retention.

If you wish to discuss this further, I am open to suggestions.

 

Thank you both for the replies.

As for what constitutes a flaw, I only have one definition and that is something that detracts from your enjoyment of a game; it doesn't matter how it manifests, the important thing is it did manifest and you paid attention to it.

No qualms here, although there are often things that are technically "flaws" that one can still find enjoyable (translation quirks etc). However, what I was attempting to question was not what constitutes a flaw but how they will be discussed. I was trying to imply with those examples that the kind of vibe I got from GameFlaws was less "I talk about this game and how it sucks and why I think it sucks" and more "Here's a flaw I found when playing this game, let's discuss how it detracts from the game's enjoyability (that even a word?) and possibly how we think it could have been better implemented". Something that was more about subconsciously improving games rather than complaining about them, because Lord knows there are more than enough of those already. My apologies if this sounds a bit ambitious, I'm not saying it has to be a lovey-dovey "let's all talk about good things!!" affair, there will be a balance just as there is with anything. But I think it would be great for the site to re-start with a definite positive outlook rather than a negative one.

 

Whilst I do agree that you have certainly nailed the purpose of the forums, actually putting it into practice is somewhat harder than you might expect.

I can insist upon posts having justification for their subject matter, but I cannot tell people how they should feel about expressing it.

If you try and dictate the tone of a forum without letting the members there do so for themselves then you end up with few members. Personally I prefer a more analytical approach but there is no way I could ask people to refrain from making emotionally driven posts based on the subject matter.

While the hope would be that discussions regarding flaws would turn to ways of rectifying those flaws, or at least minimising their impact; I would not like to insist upon such discussions as it might put some people off from making an otherwise good post if they felt they had to come up with solutions as well.

As many solutions would result in other inherent problems then hopefully people would discuss those as well, weighing up which of the original flaw or the solution to it is actually worse.

With any luck there will be some threads that exemplify what is wanted that we can highlight as examples of how to post; I find that natural such examples would have much more impact than anything artificial I could come up with.

 

iReport.

 

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iBeat you to it.