I am releasing a gaming forum hopefully some time in April. I was wondering, what kind of stuff would you like to see that would set it apart from the other gaming forums, I know there are a lot of them lol. Any ideas?
Don't focus on one game or a set of games. Do EVERYTHING, most gaming forums i see focus on one game or a set of games. Never address a game specifically when naming categories etc.
Why do you want to start a gaming forum? Do you know how many gaming forums have "closed" in the last week/month? Very very few people here have actually made a successful forum (500,000 posts). Even if you can think of unique ideas, what makes you think that you will do better than them?
On topic, it's really hard to say. Almost everything has been done related to gaming forums.
@death180: Sounds like a way to be *exactly* the same as every other 10 mintue gaming forum I've seen.
Thanks. I know how many gaming forums there are. My forum will be unique I can assure you that much.
I don't think my forum will or will not be better than any other gaming forum. That is not the point of creating the forum. I am not competing. I have a passion for gaming, and the forum is a result of that.
Is there a specific genre of games or specific game series you are interested in? Going with an "all the games" approcah is really hard. It will be much easier to attract members if you create a "RPG gaming forum" or a "Zelda gaming forum".
But if you're going for the "all" approach I think you should try to add things to the forum to make it more interactive and gaming like. Back when I had a gaming forum we had an RPG mod and arcade mod installed and it helped with the atmosphere. Users would be posting on the forum while battling each other in the RPG mod.
If you can not find a mod (I don't believe ADR has been updated in quite awhile for phpBB) then you might want to make a RPG section for your users to do battle in as those types of sections (with well defined rules) can really enhance your forum and build activity.
I think you should stick with SB, you move on at a very early stage, I am not trying to say that you can't still run SB but I think you should try sticking til you know it succeeds or sell it but a few ideas are listed below.
Gaming guides and tutorials. Critisism section for everyone to share thoughts and feelings, flash portal were they can submit all there flash games. Game maker, were you can create your own pre-made games but would be something big to code, recent updates with gaming news, keep a tracker of all game updates, organize some contest and events. In the profile field add either a PS3 gamertag or Xbox tag, I myself are not familar with gaming but I would love to see them.
In order to make your gaming forum unique, add unique qualities to it. Instead of having mere discussion threads for video games, why not add walkthroughs (as hishikawa mentioned), or even a section for users to write their own reviews on video games?
Unfortunately, there are many gaming forums out there, so it may be quite difficult to make yours in particular be successful. Either way, I wish you the best of luck.
