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[Paul Eres]

EDIT: this post was originally a response to phubans asking about alternative forums besides tigsource

indiegamer.com is even older than these forums, but more business-oriented. they tend to care more about maximizing sales than making good games, but are certainly more 'adult' in their discussions there, with trolling being tolerated less

gamedev.net is good but the users there tend to be the type of people who work forever on engines and don't actually make games. but it's probably the largest forum for game developers that i know of

something awful's games section isn't specifically for developers but i've had some good discussions there

eo is pretty good, if you can get in, but also pretty dead now. still some of the best discussions i've had on forums have been on eo

reddit has an indie game section, a game developer section, etc., but is not strictly speaking a "forum"

livejournal has several game developers communities/groups, as do many other social networks: facebook, fitocracy, etc.

most engines have a game development forum specifically for that engine (e.g. game maker, mmf2, rpgmaker, unity, silverlight, xblig, ohrrpgce, etc.). many engines have a 'main' official engine forum and several unofficial spin-off forums, and often the spin-off forums are better than the main one

the retro remakes forum focused on remakes before but has game developers of all kinds now i believe

there's also an indiedb forums but i haven't tried that

there's various smaller ones too like super friendship club, devmaster forums, notgames forums, etc., but most of those i haven't tried either

there's also a shmup-dev forum for developers of shmups

basically there are about 1000 game developer forums, so there's a huge buffet of choices. however, it tends to work like this: the larger a forum (the more people who visit it) the lower the quality of discussion is. so it's a trade off between being able to communicate with a wide variety of people and one's tolerance for newbs and trolls. so it really depends on what matters more to you. larger forums have more good posters as well as more bad posters, even if the ratio tends to shift towards bad posters

[Capntastic]

something awful's games section isn't specifically for developers but i've had some good discussions there

Birthplace of The Zybourne Clock.  There's actually a ton of goon iOS developers these days and they pretty much all hate each other.  Specifically, lots of people hate Nimblebit because their 'games' are, arguably, less than really interactive.  (Of course, that didn't stop everyone from going silly for Pocket Planes)

[ThemsAllTook]

From my perspective, there are enough people here with worthwhile and interesting things to say that I can ignore the ones who just want to be obnoxious. I don't get much out of the General forum, but everywhere else seems nice.

My original game dev home on the internet was iDevGames. Back in the day when the community was thriving, there were a lot of similarities to TIGSource, though it was always much smaller. Nowadays though, most of the people who post are iOS developers I don't personally know who seem to be all about business, so it's a lot less interesting than it used to be. TIGSource feels vibrant and full of life and creativity. I don't let the negative threads/people ruin all of the positive stuff for me.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

The technical and creative sections of TIGSource don't ever seem too bad to me. Is this about the general section specifically?

Indiegamer.com feels like it has a fair amount of bitter posters.

[moi]

Indiegamer.com feels like it has a fair amount of bitter posters.

just one actually, but he is very annoying

[InfiniteStateMachine]

Ah how could I forget mapcore.net? TIG and Mapcore are the only 2 game dev related forums I visit.

Everyone on mapcore is amazingly helpful but it's more focused on level design than game design. They are trying to move towards a more holistic game design focus but it's been a slow transition.

[Alec S.]

I recently did a cursory search for other game dev forums as I was feeling nostalgic for how TIGSource was when I first joined.  It used to be that there was a fairly prominent host of talented and established game developers regularly posting on the forums.  

I remember when I posed my first game to the feedback forum and Matt Thorson gave me helpful suggestions, and I thought "wow, what a great place.  Someone who's games I've played and appreciated is helping me out with my own path of becoming an indie game developer".  I think that sense of community is one of the reasons I took to the indie scene, and TIGSource in particular.  I think about how Fish, Edmund, Podunkian, cactus and Terry (among others) all used to be fairly active on the forums.  Now even Derek only seems to pop on occasionally, and it seems Tyler Glaiel has left as well.  It's hard not to feel nostalgic.

But here's the thing.  We have the power to make the forum what it used to be.  Not by bringing back the old crowd, but by being the sort of poster we want to see on the forum.  Phubans, when was the last time you posted in the Feedback forum?  If we act respectfully, encourage people to make games and become better at making games, discuss the process of making games, we will attract and foster the sort of people who make games and want to talk about making games.

I love this forum.  It is the only forum I'm really active on.  There's no other game development forum I've seen that has both the activity and the friendliness that this one has.  What TIGSource was when I first joined is gone, and it's never coming back.  But we can help make it into something new with that same spirit of community between indie game developers and indie gamers.

TIGSource is dead!  Long Live TIGSource!

[Dragonmaw]

Split into a new thread. Discuss other game forums that you think are work visiting! Please don't drag any drama in here.

Personally, while it's not really strictly game development in the sense that people are starting from scratch, the modDB forums are where I first got started in this scene. I haven't been there in a while, but it was pretty cool. Worth checking out if you are into mods and stuff.

[Capntastic]

I'll add some hot fresh content and go on to say that the SA forums are typically not-dev-oriented, and while there's the occasional 'make a game' contest, the conversation level is going to be fairly baseline. 

The thing about SA's forums is that the $10 paywall really does allow them to have a huge userbase that is "decent".  So if you wanted to show off a game and get some attention from a section of the general populace that is above the gurgling pits of Reddit or whatever, it's a good spot.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

Ah yeah I'm a member on IndieDB/ModDB (the forums/account login are the same). It's quite dead though.

I just checked indiegamer since this thread reminded me about it. It's more bot threads than real threads these days.

[julmust]

But I don't agree with OP's comment, there are so many sub-cultures on TIGSource -- look at the art section, which I personally haven't noticed the proclaimed "snarkyness". Also, I think people are looking for scapegoats for the fact that we just don't have any superstars here anymore like in the old days.

My advice to create a healthier community? Start a new indie game oriented discussion section and moderate it like Gestapo. Give key-members of said community more power, people who realize the difference between disagreement and flame-baiting. Let the community moderate itself. Heck, I'd even go as far as to not give the current moderators any power in there. Give the community power to remove elevated personas by democratic voting. Any posts irrelevant to the OT? Delete! Any member being repeatable demanding? Ban him from that specific section.

Chances are it would become an even more condensed version of the community or it could be elevated place which attract not only current forum members to behave better it would maybe invite other indie developers to come here for healthy discussions...

Anyway..

[Aquanoctis]

I think people are looking for scapegoats for the fact that we just don't have any superstars here anymore like in the old days.

Ah, but the new 'superstars' of today are being created here as we speak.

And yeah, it's a tricky situation. Like you say, it would be could to give the power to the people so to speak, but it's hard to balance. If there's some kind of voting, or even 'karma', system, you tend to see a kind of mob mentality form when certain topics arise.

EDIT: And more on topic, there's the GameMakerCommunity for anyone who works with game maker. I have no idea what state it's in now to be fair, but I remember people being very helpful when I used to frequent it.

[Superb Joe]

Goons are fucking dumb as shit, the mods are terrible, and jokes are illegal. If you want a large forum to post on, then it's certainly that, but I can't imagine it being worth the 10 dollars if you're interested in it from a developer's perspective. There's a lot, like, a lot of human flotsam, and cultish self congratulatory masturbation is de rigueur.

[C.A. Sinner]

My advice to create a healthier community? Start a new indie game oriented discussion section and moderate it like Gestapo. Give key-members of said community more power to steer the discussions, people who realize the difference between disagreement and flame-baiting. Let the community moderate itself. Heck, I'd even go as far as to not give the current moderators power in there. Give the community power to remove elevated personas by democratic voting. Any posts irrelevant to the OT? Delete! Any member being repeatable demanding? Ban him from that specific section.

i used to be a mod on a forum like this (banning people left and right, deleting every "off topic" post etc.) and i can tell you what's going to happen.

1. you get a lot of insincere passive aggressive "politeness" with the same old drama still bubbling underneath

2. power tripping, arbitrary mods

3. the forum dies a slow painful death

also yeah "karma" systems are p much universally a bad idea. ever notice how the supposedly "least helpful" reviews on amazon are always the ones with the lowest star ratings, regardless of content?

[Capntastic]

Goons are fucking dumb as shit, the mods are terrible, and jokes are illegal. If you want a large forum to post on, then it's certainly that, but I can't imagine it being worth the 10 dollars if you're interested in it from a developer's perspective. There's a lot, like, a lot of human flotsam, and cultish self congratulatory masturbation is de rigueur.

The Zybourne Clock