What's your Opinion of the Gamefaqs Message Boards?

[Aurabolt]

First off, I know how suggestive this is but given the growing hate on the GFAQs boards over the last decade to their disciplinary system, I decided to ask this on a couple of fansites I frequent. Answer the above questions at your discretion. I'm well aware when it comes to forums and interactive websites you prettymuch to agree to surrender your freedom of speech when using said services.

Disclaimer: The rest of this post is my opinion on the subject and should be taken with a grain of salt.

The reason Gamefaqs is considered a special case by many is because their forum rules have greatly changed over the last 12 years. I've been using Gamefaqs since early 1998 and the site's gone through a crapload of changes since I first started using the site. As you can guess from a few of the questions and answers above, I've been around long enough to remember when people could talk freely about R4s and Fan Translations (as long as they didn't talk about where to get the illegal goods). Now, simply saying you like or use flash carts is grounds for disciplinary action. There are many theories going around for the abrupt about face on what was once commonplace back in the day. The most popular and likely reason being Gamefaqs simply got too big for its founder (Chad Veasey, better known as CJAYC on Gamefaqs) to run by himself and sought to merge with various other game sites (finally settling with CNET) to keep the site alive. Although the merge with (what was at the time its biggest rival) Gamespot was viewed as the beginning of the end, it more or less ensured Gamefaqs would stay open indefinitely.

Of course, CJAYC has since turned the site over to SBAllen and socially Gamefaqs has been on the decline. The site's growth indirectly killed off many of the fansites that were created during the mid and late 90s. Now people who've had it with Gamefaqs have departed to create fansites of their own in defiance of what they were denied.

...Sites like Serenes Forest, Serebii.net, Fantasy Anime, Court Records and Serene Adventure are rare in this day and age. They somehow find a way to stay relevant to their repsective Fanbases =D

[Celice]

I started answering, but then... almost every answer was slanted to be negative. Rather than give us "it sucks" answers to choose from (with one or two positive), it may be more condusive to ask us what we think without giving us a colored view of things some of us might not have realized, such as the rules. Especially now that I see you're forced to answer questions just to reply. Whatever answers you were wanting, you're asking for them to be fed a certain way with your stylization of the questions.

I answered the last tick on every question for the sake of getting this reply, after I stopped answering the questions honestly when I saw they were all bashing, not asking. You should remove 1 tally from those last checks when you take a final count.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Celice

[Original Alear]

The only time I was wrongfully moderated (for "trolling") I appealed the decision and eventually got the moderation reversed by a lead moderator - and had fun doing it, because I got to get in disagreements with moderators. You seem to have left that option out.

I'm a little surprised they don't allow discussion of fan translations. That's pretty stupid, unless the game company that owns the fan translated content actually made a move to have the translation taken off the internet.

For using gfaqs boards, I occasionally go on the gundam board to see what's up, other than that I don't touch them anymore. Not because I think they've "declined" but I just stopped going for no reason in particular.

EDIT-Sometimes I visit the "Be Honest With Me People" topic on the megaman x4 boards to see how it's doing.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Mr. Game and Watch

[Esau of Isaac]

I've used GameFAQs for years. I continue to go to the boards, but I'm not sure why. They are all festering boils of elitism and circle-jerking.

Though there are some users on less-known boards (such as Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines and Alpha Centauri) that are laid back dudes who are cool.

[TheEnd]

Trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls?

[Aurabolt]

In case anyone was wondering, I wasn't being sarcastic when I put the questions and answers together. I several windowsfor Gamefaqs open when I put them together. Feel free to check their ToS if you want to verify anythin.

I started answering, but then... almost every answer was slanted to be negative. Rather than give us "it sucks" answers to choose from (with one or two positive), it may be more condusive to ask us what we think without giving us a colored view of things some of us might not have realized, such as the rules. Especially now that I see you're forced to answer questions just to reply. Whatever answers you were wanting, you're asking for them to be fed a certain way with your stylization of the questions.

I answered the last tick on every question for the sake of getting this reply, after I stopped answering the questions honestly when I saw they were all bashing, not asking. You should remove 1 tally from those last checks when you take a final count.

Only the last question as an answer choice asking you to explain one of your answers.

The only time I was wrongfully moderated (for "trolling") I appealed the decision and eventually got the moderation reversed by a lead moderator - and had fun doing it, because I got to get in disagreements with moderators. You seem to have left that option out.

I'm a little surprised they don't allow discussion of fan translations. That's pretty stupid, unless the game company that owns the fan translated content actually made a move to have the translation taken off the internet.

For using gfaqs boards, I occasionally go on the gundam board to see what's up, other than that I don't touch them anymore. Not because I think they've "declined" but I just stopped going for no reason in particular.

EDIT-Sometimes I visit the "Be Honest With Me People" topic on the megaman x4 boards to see how it's doing.

No I didn't.

One of the options regarding appealing a moderation was if you appeal, etc.

@Bolded: It's been like that for almost 10 years now. Their "explaination" for disallowing it is because ROMs are involved in the Fan Translation process. Since Gamefaqs shot itself in the foot back in the day in allowing Employees of Video Game Companies to have their employment visible in their Account Profiles, it was basically CJAYC (and now SBAllen) covering his ass. The irony of course is it's becoming more common for legit companies to "borrow" Fan Translations and use them as official localizations. Weather or not they credit the guy who made the translation (both in name and in paying them) is gray area of course.

...As far as I know, no video game company has publicly or otherwise said they oppose Fan Translations. Heck,Fantasy Anime Guru Gideon Zhi even got a uh..."Honorable Mention" in an article published in Game Informer last year. See what your hard work gets you?

I've used GameFAQs for years. I continue to go to the boards, but I'm not sure why. They are all festering boils of elitism and circle-jerking.

Though there are some users on less-known boards (such as Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines and Alpha Centauri) that are laid back dudes who are cool.

Gamefaqs has been liberally swinging the banhammer kicking people out of dead game boards as they find them. It's been like this for about seven years now. I remember when you were considered a "landlord" if you laid claim to one of the literally HUNDREDS of game boards that die off as newer games and consoles are released.

Mad Stalker is quite possibly the one exception. For as long as I can remember it's been used as a place for people to swap best practices for dating, marriage and the like XD

Trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls?

*Mindblown*

[13th]

I use them occasionally.

Mainly I use the awesome boards like FE7 and KH: 358/2 Days. The first because the vets, when they show up, are hilarious to listen to (if you ever go there, post something about the Goat Demon Fad. It gets people off their rockers there.) The second because my friends on there reside there.

[Tangerine]

@Bolded: It's been like that for almost 10 years now. Their "explaination" for disallowing it is because ROMs are involved in the Fan Translation process. Since Gamefaqs shot itself in the foot back in the day in allowing Employees of Video Game Companies to have their employment visible in their Account Profiles, it was basically CJAYC (and now SBAllen) covering his ass. The irony of course is it's becoming more common for legit companies to "borrow" Fan Translations and use them as official localizations. Weather or not they credit the guy who made the translation (both in name and in paying them) is gray area of course.

Gamefaqs has been liberally swinging the banhammer kicking people out of dead game boards as they find them. It's been like this for about seven years now. I remember when you were considered a "landlord" if you laid claim to one of the literally HUNDREDS of game boards that die off as newer games and consoles are released.

Mad Stalker is quite possibly the one exception. For as long as I can remember it's been used as a place for people to swap best practices for dating, marriage and the like XD

@ Bolded: That's not true. GameFAQs does not ban people or delete threads or anything for fan translations. Dragon Quest 3 SNES has been available on the forum for years. Tales series games still have several fan translation threads on their boards, especially for the unreleased handheld ones. They don't even ban for ROM hacks, Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen's board has over half of its active threads dedicated to ROMhacking and brian sulpher is a frequent visitor of the board, who participates in the discussions (he's a mod if you didn't know). And that's just for the patches I've personally used, there are tons of other boards with translations and mods available for download on the forum.

@ Italicized: That's not true either. GameFAQs even gives away private message boards in contests. Hitman: Blood Money is used for the GameFOX Mozilla add-on, as well as ChromeFox. There are a bunch of dead boards being used for random junk and GameFAQs doesn't do anything about them unless it's already covered by one of their own social boards.

Edited January 7, 2012 by Tangerine

[eclipse]

The more obscure the title, the better the quality of fans. My favorite group of all time was the Izuna gang. They were hilarious, helpful, and generally cool.

[Tangerine]

The social boards are generally alright, as well. Things to avoid are all message boards having to do with whatever the current generation consoles are .

[Galenforcer]

I scroll through them just out of boredom. But it's mostly just trolls and meme spamming.

[Anouleth]

I've never been moderated, once in my six years there, so I really don't see what problem other people have. Also I can't answer the poll since I can't answer question 3.

[Rehab]

I don't use the boards much myself, possibly because a friend who used to post there a lot vigorously warned against it, but asking their game-specific boards questions from time to time hasn't resulted in getting my fingers getting bitten off.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Rehab

[Zak Something]

Alright.

I haven't been paying attention to the ToS since I first signed up, and I've been following it quite closely (no swearing, although I have seen the words "shit" and "fuck" in some guides, so what the shit fuck), and keeping my mouth shut for the most part (I signed up for the message board before I turned 13, and I didn't want to say anything stupid to give that away) I haven't been moderated as far as I remember, with the exception of the one board for the iPhone app "Gay Sex", although all that happened was that everyone's posts were removed, with no Karma loss or anything.

Fan Translations, Roms, Early Releases and Cheat Devices...

Well, discussing ROMs is more or less against the rules on ANY forum. I find it bullshit that you can't talk about Fan-translations (face it, how many of us would know about Live-A-Live if we didn't read about the fan-translation somewhere?), or even cheat devices.

I use Gamefaqs for the guides and the trading/battling Boards for applicable games, such as Pokemon. There's also a YuGiOh board on there where I plan to ask for advice on my deck when I stop being a lazy-ass ass.

TL;DR?

[CrashGordon94]

Just one query, you haven't been paying attention to the ToS but you've been following it quite closely?

[Zak Something]

I haven't been paying attention to any amendments made since I first read it when I signed up.

[CrashGordon94]

Ah, I understand.

[Tangerine]

GameFAQs doesn't do anything about fan translations.

[Celice]

As the entity, no, but the moderators are the ones who make decisions, and they've often gone after fan translations under the guise of other rules. For example, you are NOT allowed to discuss any games that have not been released in your region yet. Popular games like Phantom Hourglass were being censored all the time when it first came out, and everyone was trying to play it and ask for help. I was moderated several times trying to explain what the Japanese directions were saying.

It's the sceptres, not the castle, that's in charge :/ If a moderator feels like a fan translation falls under unreleased content, they can strike you for it.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Celice

[Anouleth]

Oh, I'd also like to add that there was one incredibly annoying guy called Ando who kept on trying to troll me or annoy me or whatever, but the mods were fairly prompt in banning his ass, if I remember correctly.

[Esaka]

mods are idiots, but I like the community, plenty of good people on the FE boards and such.

But getting a 30 day suspension for making a censor bypass on an ITT is just dumb.

[Vorena]

I'm surprised to hear there is such a problem with GameFAQs. I suppose not using the boards all that often will do that though.

I go there for the quick info. more than anything. If I want to discuss, I'd rather go to an individual site like serebii, pokecommunity, serenesforest, smashboards, etc. The quality of knowledge and other things is usually much greater than on gamefaqs.

Do the forum rules change frequently, or only with how many management changes the site sees?

[Esaka]

Got banned again for making a joke topic.

God damn it, these guys need a sense of humor >_>

[Life]

I've fought with GameFAQs mods many times over the past. And I've never had a single ruling overturned. I would always point out where in the ToS it said that my action was OK and the response I would get would be "Doesn't matter".

That's my problem with GameFAQs. The mods are too stubborn to admit when they're wrong.

[Geriba]

I've used GameFAQs for years. I continue to go to the boards, but I'm not sure why. They are all festering boils of elitism and circle-jerking.

Aw, you're sweet.

As someone who originally hails from the GameFAQs FE7 community, I feel like it's pretty solid as far as the ToS is concerned. There's definitely leeway for moderator abuse, as evidenced by the recent surge in questionable moderations over the past few years, but it's ultimately part of an attempt to curb back offensive or irrelevant posting. Which is probably a good thing, especially compared to more leniently-run forums. Like Serenes, for example. The crap I've gotten away with is ridiculous.