Sadly, the market is very tough and thus saturated, especially in gaming. I think that as long as gaming is a secondary niche on your forum, then you should be fine.
For example, Japanese Metal Forum also has a dedicated gaming section, and we even discuss anime and other Japanese entertainment. It all depends on what your community wants to discuss, so dedicate your efforts to them.
I like to try and work hard to keep the forum alive for as long as possible. Sometimes though, there's just a time and point where you have to call it quits. I felt that way recently with Petalburg, but things are definitely improving and I'm grateful for that. I hated being the only one on the staff putting in effort and work, and things just stayed the same. I didn't rely too much on one admin since he holds the title because he's the owner, and one of the other admins just handles all of our technical issues. Another admin I knew was busy with school, and our mods were pretty much non-existent for the most part. I'm really glad we've all sat down and reorganized things though. I think things have really started to improve since we've done that, so I think you just have to keep going at it until you feel you've done everything possible to breathe life into that site.
If the community if not active and you invested a lot of time into it, then it comes down to marketing. Sit down and think about your website's brand and its image. Then ask, "is the site inactive because of the content or because no one knows about the site?".
If no one knows about the site, then you can fix the issue by befriending other websites (sponsors, partnerships, affiliates, etc..). You can also pay for ad space. Getting your name out there IMO is easier than figuring out ways to generate new content.
Someone said above to have a plan to quit in 3 months.... That is way too little time.
I see forums from this point of view:
I can't quit because is something I like and I want, even it is hard. That goes before the business model. At the end a forum is a community. Now, of curse you can make money and I mean a lot depending how big it is and how you manage it.
The first persons in line of fire are the leaders of the community(no leader, no followers, no community)
No Active members? I can assure you have tons of areas to work. Just ask yourself what makes you stay active on some forums and not in others? (There are may factors: 1-Current active members. This along is a community killer(its like the chicken and egg problem and is poisoning whey you lack or you start getting less and less activity.
But there are other factors that users will stay or visit often when they get value, entertainment, companion, hobbies, knowledge, and a ton of other factors.
In marketing, the money is in the list, in forums, the money is in the activity.
You must create incentives for you "TARGET" audience. ( Many times we look in places where you target is not and we get discouraged by low traction/retention/activity.
You must create momentum to kick start with odds on your favor. Is not enough just to have content anymore(the content is created by the community), remember that!
