Does Dark Souls deserve its own subforum?

Dark Souls is the first game on Broken Forum to get its own subforum. Some think this is the best thing ever, others find it unnecessary.

Go forth and let your opinion be known in 100% unscientific fashion. The results are non-binding and will be published in my paper "I like to make polls to amuse myself. Am I wrong to do this Y/N?"

I assume Lum was bored and the new forum will disappear eventually.

I assume Lum is angry and Creole Ned will disappear shortly.

Isn't Dark Souls just the modern version of Deadly Towers?

I like how Creole Ned pretends he's a harmless kitten and then dumps over the table and throws everyone's drinks on the floor yelling "Fight! Fight!".

Deja vu all over again.

Damn do I want someone to port that game to the PC so I can play it again. I had at least a half-dozen notebooks filled with maps and those godforsaken 900 character codes as "save points".

The question no one is asking: Why are there Dark Souls threads that aren't in the Dark Souls forum?

Because Dark Souls players are free spirits who refuse to be categorized by anything, even their love of Dark Souls.


Their threads are similarly free spirited.

It's not that it deserves its own place, exactly. It's just that if you put Dark Souls, Dwarf Fortress, and X-Com in one forum, you risk accumulating a critical mass of sadistic, unexpected death that devours us all in a cloud of masochistic despair.

If you replace 'does' with 'should' and 'deserve its own' with 'be placed in its own' and 'subforum' with 'concentration camp', yes.

I think Charles needs his own forum. Does that count?

I don't know if framing the question as 'is Dark Souls deserving' is the best way to go if we actually want to be serious about discussing the merits of sub-foruming any particular game that inspires the level of fanaticism in its fan base that spawns prolific posting. For example, it is obvious why the main 'Dark Souls' thread remains in the games forum if you understand the intent behind the sub-forum to be setting aside a place to both allow for, and encourage, more in-depth discussion on the game rather than just to separate the Dark Souls players from everyone else.

As it is now with a general thread in the games forum and a subforum for more indepth discussion it is unlikely that anyone could 'miss' that Dark Souls exists and the creation of a sub-forum in itself could perhaps serve as the 'high level of player interest' indicator that a large post count thread might previously have prompted. Those signals aren't being lost so long as you occasionally check the index of forums (which I'm guessing most people do even if they largely use the 'new posts' functionality for their day to day diet).

In this particular case there is no issue of community ghetto-isation or other such potential stigmatisation that we could perhaps have seen (but didn't) in the last subforuming incident.

So the main issue that remains to my mind is whether having a plethora of sub-forums makes the forum index too unwieldy for general use, or for some specialised but popular uses (on mobiles for example). The default setup still seems bearable on PC, actually I think the newly visible subgroupings actually help my navigation, and it is still shorter than many other popular forum indexes. I can't really judge what it does to mobile as I don't have the equipment. Maybe it might help if there was an alternative index that sorted the forums by popularity, user-choice or some other metric?

I just don't understand why Dark Souls isn't nested within video game discussion.

As for its existence, though, I have no opinion.

I don't really see the problem with giving a sub-forum to a popular game. I'd rather have a sub-forum then having half the page of the normal gaming forum being taken up by one game. Not that this was the case yet, but we've seen it happen with games like Skyrim, and from the amount of threads in the Dark Souls forum they certainly feel like they could use more then one thread. It's easier for those playing the game to have all information like builds and strategies and all discussions, both spoiler and non-spoiler, in one convenient place.

As I said before, Lum can always merge them back in with the normal games forum if interest wears off and people aren't really posting much any more, which Lum confirmed.
So there won't be a waste-land of sub-forums dedicated to games that were once popular or anything if that's what worries people.

I suppose it all depends on whether you like a minimalistic approach or whether you like everything neatly organised in it's own place. The first prefer the least amount of sub-forums as possible, whereas the latter finds multiple sub-forums preferable.

I think that cats deserve their own subforum, because we all love cats and can post lots of things about cats and pictures of them too. Even androids write odes to their cats, why not give them a special place here?

Bolded for untruth.

I'm cautiously in favor, on the expectation that we'll do this for every big zeitgeist catching game that comes by for a few months after its release, and then one excitement levels die down, fold all the threads in the subforum back into the general population of PC/Console Game Discussion where they'll fall away from notice due to lack of bumping.

My question still stands. Right now there is a Dark Souls subforum and the original Dark Souls thread is also the freshest thread in the video/PC games forum.

I don't care -- no hand wringing from me. I'm just curious why Lum left some Dark Souls threads outside of the Dark Souls sub. I plan to pick the game up during the Steam winter sale and I'd like to have only one place for all of my Dark Souls learning needs.

Right around the time Dark Souls 2 launches I bet.

Let's wait a bit from the "ooh new forum lets fill it up with threads" vibe to cool off, we'll see how active it is in a few weeks. Even adding those threads to the games forum wouldn't do much - if they were added right now it would mostly push threads that were last updated 2 days ago off the front page.

I honestly cannot fathom how this is worth getting worked up about in any way whether it stays as it is, reverts to how it was, or turns into some new configuration.

There may be some mild concern over growing forum clutter if more games get their own subforums but I don't think people are exactly boiling over with passion on either side of the issue. It's just a discussion.

However, if I get my own subforum (I would accept the title LIGHT SOULS) I will be appeased.

Let me stop you right there.

Dark Souls getting its own forum is FUNNY.