Possibly! A game like Hard Puzzle 4 is very conducive to lots of quick back-and-forth banter – the opposite of the long analytical reviews that people tend to write. It’s counterintuitive, but I think casually chatting about games often leads to more in-depth understanding. You end up hearing more perspectives about little details, which can shed light on unexpected corners and lead to new insights.
Yeah, that’s a factor. Might be tricky to get around that. But I’m hopeful!
Tough question! There’s pros and cons to both threads-by-game and threads-by-author, which Josh’s original post does a really good job laying out.
To spur conversation and cross-pollination about games, it makes a lot of sense to have threads-by-game–I was a bit surprised when I came here last year that that wasn’t the norm. I would love to have more casual conversations about games.
But I do really like some aspects of having a separate review thread, including that (1) I can be confident I’m not spamming the uninterested, because people can easily avoid my thread, and (2) because I don’t read other reviews or spoilers until I’m done writing, what I have immediately on finishing a review is a chunk of text that is assuredly not going to be continuing any existing conversations and could potentially derail an existing discussion if I just dropped it in there.
So I guess I’m coming around to the idea of:
if we can look deep within ourselves and discuss games Even More. Although maybe not a *ban* on reviews in the discussion thread, maybe just shorter or more casual reviews?
Per-game threads sound great to me; I love the idea of fostering more discussion about the games. And echoing others, agreed that it doesn’t have to be an either/or—those who want to do their own review threads still can, while those who want to post in the per-game threads can do that.
I was here when we tried this before, so it’s not completely hypothetical to me. I had always posted my reviews directly to the forums before that, and I wasn’t the only person doing that, even if it was also not uncommon to post to external blogs. But when we switched to per-game threads, I did create an external blog, because my recollection is that no one was posting longer reviews directly in the threads and I didn’t want to be the only one doing it. To me that suggests that Mike’s concerns aren’t totally unfounded re: per-game threads having a different dynamic from per-reviewer threads, one that discourages longer posts that don’t engage with any of the other posts in the thread. But I know that it could be different this time.
Oh, I wasn’t thinking of an official ban on reviews in the discussion thread; that sounds like a nightmare to try to enforce. I just think there’s value in having a space for discussion and casual reactions as distinct from in-depth reviews.
Would it get too convoluted to have two threads per game (along with reviewers’ threads if they want them): one for general discussion, and one for formal/in-depth reviews?
Then there’d be like 150 threads, which is a little too much…
I’m willing to give this a try because it might mean I don’t have to check the review spreadsheet as much as I need to. 
As for the review wall text problem, I’d probably use “Hide Details”. More people could follow on this; that way, if there was somehow a splurge of reviews on the thread, people wouldn’t necessarily have to go through a lot of reviews just to find incidental discussion on the game.
Just so yall know. This has been seen by the IFComp committee and is being discussed (if/how it can happen, organisation/moderation, etc…)
I was more thinking it was individual decisions of how people post their thoughts, but cool cool.
The only thing that occurs to me that might want mod support is… what if there were separate tags (ifcomp2024-reviews? in addition to the ifcompYYYY-game that we’ve used previous years?) to make it easier to list kinds of threads? I guess forum “Regulars” at least can create new tags but a pinned mod post (?) suggesting tag usage might be good if the committee wants to encourage something like that…
We mean it more in terms of setting up the threads when the comp opens 
EDIT: yeah, this is actually probably not a good idea in hindsight. Thanks for the feedback yall!
Oh. Hrm. Well, let me cast my vote against that, because dumping 70+ threads into the forum at the start of the game sounds like an INCREDIBLY TERRIBLE idea to me, and a good way to put people off per-game threads.
I was figuring whoever had something to say first would start a thread, whether they want to simply name it “<game name> Reviews,” or if they want to take the opportunity to have fun coming up with an amusing thread name.
Since you’re thinking that way, obviously other people have very different opinions.
But for me personally? If the IFComp committee sticks their nose in by starting up threads for each game I’m going to seriously regret having ever started this thread.
I’d agree. Having forum members do it means it can be more selective and feel more natural. For example, there might be quite a few games that … just don’t need a discussion thread. People post their reviews in personal threads, I’d say, but discussion/spoilers for the game go in the thread. Like, “@person you said in your review that xxxx. I didn’t get that response!” Like was done with DMcB in Is this the first review?
I kind of agree. I understand the desire to keep forum discussion tidy, and we can assist with merging similar game threads, but automatically creating official Forum threads to me seems a little bit like the Staff trying to dictate how everyone has to discuss games. Implying to people “You have to put all discussion of this game here and nowhere else” is going to rub someone the wrong way.
This forum makes it very easy to link content together by quoting messages and pasting message URLs into a message. If people want to create glossary or index topics that link to every mention of a game, that’s easily done.
In fact, if people tag right using ifcomp2024-game we have this nifty forum feature called “Search” which allows you to put in a game title and locate content wherever it is on the forum.
I don’t mean to be a buzz-kill about this and I’m on board if that’s really what people want but I’m not sure everyone wants to follow this format. We can help merge similar threads if multiple discussion topics emerge, but I’d prefer the community create the content as we go instead of clear-cutting everyone’s “Latest” page listing with 75 empty thread stubs.
I thought this discussion was encouraging the community how best to organize their IFComp content, not that Staff would be involved encouraging people to follow a specific format.
Yeah, it’ll be my grade school Valentine mailbox experience all over again 
I’m also veering to no because I think it would be psychologically deflating to find the game you’ve worked on for a year or more to have an empty thread. I don’t want authors to keep refreshing on a thread forever. It’s much better if some of us just decide to make a thread on a game by our own accord.
You could certainly make that tag, however the original tag structure of ifcomp2024-game is intended to imply specific game discussion and potential spoilers (which reviews would be) and there’s no reason you can’t also include the reviews tag alongside ifcomp2024-game .
EDIT: I’ve updated this topic with that information.
That means you include both tags when searching for IFComp 2024 reviews.
Yeah… having slept on this, it really bugs me on principle. I know all the comp committee members mean well, but even if I was 100% agreed with their course of action, it feels kinda tone-deaf and authoritarian for the committee to try and put their thumb on the scale of the formats that a bunch of random internet strangers use for their public conversations about the event. It’s not your place; butt out.
Yeah, my thought was that, while you can easily search for multiple tags: it doesn’t look like Discourse lets you search for ifcomp2024-game while excluding reviews. So that scheme would let you filter for only by-reviewer threads, but you wouldn’t be able to filter for only by-game threads. I don’t know if anyone would actually want to do that, but it does seem to be a technical limitation (unless I’m missing something, which is entirely possible).
Yeah, that’s fair criticism. We were thinking about how we could assist discussion of games, but yeah, also having slept on this, I get how it would be weird and overwhelming in threads. My bad. 
so something like an ifcomp2024-discussion tag for the by-game threads?
You can put both tags on any message you want if it’s a “game” and also “discussion” 
if you’re high enough trust level and want to make another IFComp tag you’re welcome to do so, however more tags = more confusion for people selecting them. And if tags don’t get used a lot, I’ve occasionally pruned out low-use tags or merged them with a tag that is used more often. Too many “sort of the same” tags render them useless if people aren’t sure exactly what the differences are.
We of course appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm for IFComp and the format of discussion has evolved over the years. It does get some special attention but historically, we’ve found KISS is often the best course of action.
We used to have two separate public categories on phpBB every year (IFComp YYYY Discussion; IFComp YYYY Game Discussion) specifically so people could avoid spoiler “game” discussion if necessary, but on Discourse we have tags which means people can filter specific tags instead of avoiding a category and this reduces forum clutter.
Perhaps #ifcomp2024-gamethread for game-specific threads?
I mean, the game thread about an IFComp2024 game is already in the IFComp discussion category and is a thread about a game with a tag ifcomp2024-game … If people really want another tag I guess it’s cool, but it seems a bit of overkill akin to writing “HEY MAILMAN, THIS ENVELOPE WITH A STAMP IS A PIECE OF MAIL JUST IN CASE YOU WERE CONFUSED” on my bills that I put in the mailbox. 