The good old forums?

In many ways the changes back when were a rollback. We used to have badges, user levels, blog spotlights... Help me out here, I can't remember everything.

Now GS is owned by a new company. Do you think it would be useful to write a persuasive request to restore the forums to their splendiferous glory? Or is it too late?

Yeah, the unions, the user made boards, the game specific forums being shared with Gamefaqs.

In a lot of ways GS was like Reddit before Reddit in its features. Pretty weird how they gutted all that out and assumed the community was bluffing about leaving.

No I don't expect them to bring anything back. The idea of improving and repopulating these forums, that ship has sailed long ago.

As a matter of fact, I fully expect that one day we'll try to log on only to find the forums are gone without warning lol.

I agree with conan; when admin in any organization say they are going to make xyz changes, they don't care what employees or end-users think about it. The old forums were proprietary, then the blue forums an in-house design that focused on community but probably cnet could not justify the expense of upkeep - the forums were down quite frequently for maintenance and they have progressively gutted the end-user experience which was once quite intricate and unique to gamespot. The business model of gamespot complete was abandoned in favor of a parent company with extensive resources and advertising revenue that do not need to cater to the users. this is not something we will probably see again in a larger network.

@Lu_Bu01: I guess it’s not a sustainable business model then. 🤷🏻

One day Gamespot will disappear is what you’re hinting at.

@outworld222: in time all things pass away. Maybe the niche that the old gamespot filled could not be replaced. The unions lost their activity toward the end just like myspace did when facebook came around.

@Lu_Bu01: very true.

This happened with Eurogamer.

Maybe old-fashioned but prefer forums to Discord and Reddit etc...

But can see why these are more appealing.

@uninspiredcup:

Yeah definitely a different experience.

Tbf, never posted on Reddit, just a place I frequently end up on random searches.

Discord though, certainly not a forum replacement. Not really great for long form convo, or specific topics, especially when it's a busy server. And if it's a group I'm familiar with, like Champ and the bros, prefer just hopping on voice chat anyways.

Aside from the user experience, kinda sucks how much info is being buried on Discord. No longer a search string away. Though that's a different topic.

Sucks that forums are becoming a relic. These other formats/platforms obviously have their place, but not at all the same.

I still love these forums. You guys are awesome.

Lol, I was one of the few people to have a Union before GameSpot had it as a site feature. It was a parody called the PaperClip Union. And then some guy created a rival Union called The Tack union. We used to have rival wars lol. This was all in OT.

As for the user boards, someone created The Man Board. They used to post a lot of NSFW pictures lol. And there used to be “Would you hit it” threads 😆 I think we used to have those in the OT as well. This is like 2003-2004 time lol.

Yea, this place has digressed so badly over the years. It’s like they don’t care anymore. They don’t do interesting features. I don’t know who the reviewers are. At least in the past, even if the reviewer was controversial, they made a name for themself.

I kind of do expect them to end the forums. SW is pretty much the only one that has some traffic and even that is dying.

These forums used to be more robust, huh?

Hmm if GS could revert back to the old, you could see a lot of older users returning that were once here.
Of course if they found out. I know some still poke in every now and then.
Though I do miss the badge system and leveling up.
I used to manage the leaderboards for those and that in itself would inspire people to be more active
in hopes of making the said list I used to keep track of. Now whether it was good activity or not, that's another story. :P
But there were a lot of positives with the old site that simply vanished in the new. Now had they been able to shift to this new while keeping the old as well, I think things could have been better.