Poll of the Day > It kinda makes me sad to see GameFAQs finally dying.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I haven't been here in years, but this site was a huge part of my younger years. It's kinda sad to see Fandom strip out the soul of the site for all to see.

It's been an honor shitposting with you all.

I'm certainly going to miss this place....

I miss some folks who've left us with no means of contacting them. The place itself, I'm not sure I can say I'll miss it.

One of my favorite memories occurred on the Starcraft 2 board. Some guy posted a ton of nothing topics over the course of weeks, and then bumped EVERY SINGLE one to flood the front page. The long con.

Share any positive GameFAQs memories you have :)

I started on the Ocarina of Time board and the Animal Crossing Wild World board. Back in 2006, the ACWW board was insanely fast. The full first page of 50 topics would fly by in a matter of a minute or two.

There was a user on the OoT board named Danimakesitrain who was awesome. She was genuinely one of the nicest people I've ever seen on this site. She had some health condition though, and in 2010 she used to talk about how she was excited for Skyward Sword but was worried her health condition would make it hard to use the motion controls. She suddenly stopped posting in the summer of 2011, before Skyward Sword even launched. We heard she was hospitalized. We never heard anything from her again. That was the most emotionally difficult thing I've seen on this site.

Runescape General Board during the mid to late 2000s was awesome. The only GameFAQs user I ever encountered in real life was on there, his name was coneheadsguy. He worked at a very well known restaurant in a town my family would vacation to each summer, and he was working the day I visited there in the summer of 2009. The Runescape Social Board was also great, this moment gave me a great laugh.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3c553262.jpg

PotD has been my main GameFAQs home since 2010, obviously representing the vast majority of my time here. I'll miss it when this site shuts down in the likely not too distant future, but I'm glad a Discord was made.

^
Thats hard man, what happened with Dani on the OoT board.
Im part of a small community of friends on a private discord chat we formed from the botw board, about 9 of us for 5 years now, just in case something like that ever happens.

Lynyrd_Skynyrd posted...

It's kinda sad to see Fandom strip out the soul of the site for all to see.

You say that as if it wasn't already slowly dying for a decade before they even bought it.

I had my fun. I was here for some of the best times on potd. Glad I got to come back to see it all burn.

I'm just making sure to go through and save any content I can. Fandom destroys everything it touches, so you can't count on anything staying. I suspect forums will be removed entirely soon. There'll just be one long column on the main page with posts going down, designed to be as useless as possible.

i figured it would continue to slowly die as it has been the last 10-12 years but it looks like theyre just killing it

waterdeepchu posted...

I'm just making sure to go through and save any content I can. Fandom destroys everything it touches, so you can't count on anything staying. I suspect forums will be removed entirely soon. There'll just be one long column on the main page with posts going down, designed to be as useless as possible.

is there really anything worth saving

Some of yall are being dramatic i think.

Toonstrack posted...

Some of yall are being dramatic i think.

Zoomers being doomsdayers? WELL I NEVER

i think most of my favorite memories involving this place end up involving a bunch of stuff outside of the website. paradiso and the off-shoot board wars and left 4 dead with the diso crew, early ass world of warcraft with clench, overwatch (the good version) with blighboy and papercup.i do hope a good portion of users end up on the discord or reddit page. it's not the end of the world but i would be bummed to lose this board entirely, i've grown to genuinely like a lot of the people here. and yeah the site's been slowly dying for years, but it feels kinda shit for someone to just swoop in and gut it like this.

it might not be a bad time for someone to make another off-shoot message board tbh.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

You say that as if it wasn't already slowly dying for a decade before they even bought it.

We were witnessing gamefaqs age into it's twilight years. Now we are witnessing fandom smothering gamefaqs with a pillow.

TomNook posted...

Zoomers being doomsdayers? WELL I NEVER

Almost no one that's posted in here is a Zoomer.

Imdb boars all over again

Nade_Duck posted...

it might not be a bad time for someone to make another off-shoot message board tbh.

SBA Paradiso Reborn v2.0 when?

The irony is, making an offshoot board is harder now than it used to be, because InvisionFree is dead itself now.



Lynyrd_Skynyrd posted...

Almost no one that's posted in here is a Zoomer.

Zoomers don't even know what GameFAQs is. That's why it's dying.
We haven't had an actual new user (as opposed to old users making new accounts) since 2012.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The irony is, making an offshoot board is harder now than it used to be, because InvisionFree is dead itself now.

And this is why some of us are taking to Discord.

Entity13 posted...

And this is why some of us are taking to Discord.

Yeah, but the problem with that is...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/9526-do-you-use-discord

discord isn't bad now that i'm kinda used to it. message board format is just easier to keep up with casually. if there are any discords going i'm happy to join them though, already in delta's.

and yeah i haven't kept up with invisionfree or any of that stuff for years and years, so that's a bummer to hear even if it is unsurprising. RIP diso. guess there's always the reddit that nobody uses.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yeah, but the problem with that is...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/9526-do-you-use-discord

Maybe more will use it now that this site is dying. And it would be a way to keep in touch with users you have made connections with. Many of us have been here for years, and it would suck to never speak to some of them ever again

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yeah, but the problem with that is...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/9526-do-you-use-discord

Not everyone still using the site touches the poll, just as not everyone touching the poll frequents the social boards. So that is a flawed sample size of people, to say nothing of how recent changes to this site will cause a shift in how many people will even consider it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

You say that as if it wasn't already slowly dying for a decade before they even bought it.

I blame Red Line Media.

Entity13 posted...

to say nothing of how recent changes to this site will cause a shift in how many people will even consider it.

It probably won't.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It probably won't.

I cant say the shift will be significant But there are some people who didnt use it who now use it to keep up communication with people from certain boards

All the CE rejects coming here, and well the ppl who never identified themselves as CE ppl. I meant to go to the ACKTUAL PotD, I hold no ill well to this board though. There are plenty of boards here. FANDOM CAN'T close them all.

I was using this site for like 4 years before I ever even touched CE, and that was before 261 closed and those users went to CE.

I joined CE because someone told me about it on a board hunter board. I guess I was bored and checked CE again and stuck there for a bit.

It is a quarantine zone now, but the reason I joined is that Kbelf made a Discord she promoted on CE but you couldn't post during her boyfriend's band practice you know how that went. She also refused to turn off message alerts. That was the real kicker. She was probably insane, but would not use options provided.

__starsnostars posted...

We were witnessing gamefaqs age into it's twilight years. Now we are witnessing fandom smothering gamefaqs with a pillow.

More like slowly offing it via arsenic or antifreeze poisoning.

Toonstrack posted...

Some of yall are being dramatic i think.

They just closed down the Religion board a couple of days ago, and part of Fandom's justification is that "it was barely active"

Hyena_Of_Ice posted...

They just closed down the Religion board a couple of days ago, and part of Fandom's justification is that "it was barely active"

So, a bold faced lie. Because I know another board thats very inactive, yet its still around

It's ok when Fandom does it.

Probably not for at least 50 years. Come on.

Lynyrd_Skynyrd posted...

One of my favorite memories occurred on the Starcraft 2 board. Some guy posted a ton of nothing topics over the course of weeks, and then bumped EVERY SINGLE one to flood the front page. The long con.

Share any positive GameFAQs memories you have :)

My favorite experience on GameFAQs was this thread:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/950181-chrono-trigger/47450821

Hyena_Of_Ice posted...

They just closed down the Religion board a couple of days ago, and part of Fandom's justification is that "it was barely active"

I frequented that board.

They were right. There was literally maybe 10 people that still used it aside from a few trolls here and there.

Threads would stay open for months.

Toonstrack posted...

I frequented that board.

They were right. There was literally maybe 10 people that still used it aside from a few trolls here and there.

Threads would stay open for months.

Yeah. But they are other boards that have less people. I checked the other board, and it was still active. Last post from like June of last year So, why target that one specifically?

If I leave here tomorrow...
Would you still remember me?

For I must be traveling on now...
Cuz there's too many places I've go to see

I have some many wonderful memories of gamefaqs, though most are like from 20 years ago

Should have been dead for at least 10 years by now. Doubt it will anytime soon. As long as it's even slightly profitable it'll stay up.

CarefreeDude posted...

I have some many wonderful memories of gamefaqs, though most are like from 20 years ago

Most of my best memories come from either pre-2012, or from the Geek topics before they died.

It's almost entirely inertia keeping me here at this point.

I just enjoy the place as a little slice of 90s-era internet, one of the few that's still running these days.

I still don't really get why the "forum" model of the internet died out. Nothing that's replaced it seems like an improvement to me, at least in terms of being able to find stuff. Even Reddit - which is the closest thing to forums that still exists on a large scale - is suboptimal thanks to the way that the upvote/downvote system skews both conversations and how posts/threads get ordered.

darkknight109 posted...

I still don't really get why the "forum" model of the internet died out.

Older generations become role models (influencers). Seek out new impressionable youths to take money from.
Younger generations are impressionable as they lack experience or critical thinking skills (undeveloped brain, no life experience) so they look up to role models (influencers) for inspiration.

This cycle has always existed but is more pronounced in the digital world. I looked up to popular Web Admins like W13 (of Runescape fame) back in the day. GameFAQs had CJayC, Devin and Allen. 4chan had moot, ect. There were lots of smaller forums where I looked up to their leadership but I won't name any specific people as they're all long gone. Even GameFAQs boards had certain prolific members that were looked up to. Think of all of the big JRPG guide writers like Shotgunova.

The role models seek mediums to interact with youths. This can either be for altruistic reasons (community building) or malicious reasons (gifting. for profit influencer media). Each generation so far has had a new medium. Gen X had BBS, Gen Y had Forums. Gen Z had Discord. Gen A has TikTok.

^ This is also why you will see gaming communities with older audiences gravitate towards Youtube for content creation (and streaming) over Twitch. Youtube generally targets older audiences than Twitch and newer platforms (e.g. TikTok) do. I will not watch any streamer that uses Youtube as a secondary content platform because Twitch does not respect me.

darkknight109 posted...

is suboptimal thanks to the way that the upvote/downvote system skews both conversations and how posts/threads get ordered.

and discussions longer than 5 replies gets pruned...

darkknight109 posted...

I still don't really get why the "forum" model of the internet died out. Nothing that's replaced it seems like an improvement to me, at least in terms of being able to find stuff.

It's a combination of wikis and other social media formats, I'd say. As semi-permanent repositories of information, wikis generally work better than forums because they're organized somewhat logically instead of just by who felt like discussing the subject and when, plus they tend to be more reliably updated. Upvote-based social media platforms also work better than traditional forums for people that are just googling whatever question they have, since they can generally rely on the assumption that an answer with lots of upvotes (which will also show up higher in search results) is more likely to be correct (strictly speaking, that's fallacious, but most everyday questions don't actually need rigorous, logically-valid proofs of their answers). That lets them avoid having to sift through a whole thread to see if there were any major corrections or better answers, which is better for people that aren't looking to actively participate in a thread.

On the social media side of things, it's a shift from sitting down and participating in a community to being able to casually peruse a feed of new content. For those who want to immerse themselves in a community and see its history and whatnot, that's a downgrade, but from the perspective of those that just want to kill a bit of time by checking in and see what's new/interesting, Reddit and Facebook both do a better job (the latter actively curating things according to perceived interests), and newer social media has continued that trend. It's become harder to find older/less popular conversations as a result, but most people aren't thinking about finding older/less popular conversations when they pull out their phones to kill a few minutes.

Judgmenl posted...

I will not watch any streamer that uses Youtube as a secondary content platform because Twitch does not respect me.

Youtube respects users only marginally less than Twitch, and is arguably even worse to creators.

Twitter is terrible in a forum sense. The interactions there are lame with most posters not bothering to reply and just doing posts for clicks

Reddit sucks too and I found most subreddits have power hungry mods, Alot of echo chamber style posts there too and downvoting can be contagious

Fuck FB

I dont do Instagram or TikTok

Whats left ? People still use mIRC? Or ICQ?

TimeCrisis posted...

Twitter is terrible in a forum sense. The interactions there are lame with most posters not bothering to reply and just doing posts for clicks

Reddit sucks too and I found most subreddits have power hungry mods, Alot of echo chamber style posts there too and downvoting can be contagious

Fuck FB

I dont do Instagram or TikTok

Whats left ? People still use mIRC? Or ICQ?

discord

TimeCrisis posted...

Whats left ? People still use mIRC? Or ICQ?

I still use IRC but that's literally just me and a few friends lmao

Did build a bot tho so we could have cross talk with discord

People hang out in personal discords now.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Most of my best memories come from either pre-2012, or from the Geek topics before they died.

It's almost entirely inertia keeping me here at this point.

Aren't the Geek topic kinda sorta still going? I ironically ask.