Message boards devoted to gaming, retro gaming, TCGs and the like?

Basically any place like GameFAQS, Serebii, or Deviantart?

I guess that works too....<_<'

Any mainstream ones though you know of?

There's like 40 game forums on 2ch

uisukii Wrote:http://bit.ly/160kFc5

There's a lot to be said for this method. However you do need to know what to search for and the easiest way to build up that vocabulary is Wikipedia. Just search a term in English and then click on 日本語 on the left.

walkthrough
retro game
TCG

With that said there seems to be a bit of a cultural gap here. Westerns might be happy to wallow in nostalgia by making funny t-shirts and silly memes, but most of the Japanese content seems to be based around actually playing the old games themselves. Putting レトロゲーム アート into Google Image search did yield some results though.

Also with google.co.jp you can search with partial English a lot of times. "pokemon 攻略" "ポケモン walkthrough" and "ポケモン 攻略" all give correct, though slightly different, results.

tokyostyle Wrote:With that said there seems to be a bit of a cultural gap here. Westerns might be happy to wallow in nostalgia by making funny t-shirts and silly memes, but most of the Japanese content seems to be based around actually playing the old games themselves.

But Japanese internet culture is full of video game memes

[ファブリス]

uisukii Wrote:http://bit.ly/160kFc5

I deleted your previous post because it doesn't help at all. This doesn't either. If your post was deleted it was for a reason. (corrected below) Also URL shorteners should be avoided as those links have a short lifetime, and eventually either break or lead to other random websites.

[ファブリス]

I'm pretty sure we had a similar thread (japanese gaming websites) ... edit: victoryyyy!!

Best Japanese gaming sites?
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9012

Possibly relevant:

Bilingual Gaming website
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9296

Japanese websites
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=8153

Japanese video game streams/playthroughs with commentary?
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7029


Going on a tangent...

And personally, I don't know if I'm alone in thinking this.. but once you get the basics of Google down, Google is actually a rather lousy tool for discovering good content. To my knowledge no one yet has cracked a really "intelligent" search engine.

A pet peeve of mine is searching for how-to's and troubleshooting issues in Linux, say, and Google keep listing articles from years ago which have become completely irrelevant. But then, if you set "within the last year", it won't list the Wikipedia pages relevant to the search terms, because they were created longer ago.

Anyway I see nothing wrong with the topic. Forums and social sites can be much more helpful where Google fails miserably. Even when you have the search terms, it's actually quite hard to find good websites, because the search engine ranking algorithms are abused all the time by content farms looking for advertising profits.

Back on topic...

Feel free to revive the older threads with more links.

ファブリス Wrote:

uisukii Wrote:http://bit.ly/160kFc5

I deleted your previous post because it doesn't help at all. This doesn't either. If your post was deleted it was for a reason. Also URL shorteners should be avoided as those links have a short lifetime, and eventually either break or lead to other random websites.

What do you mean? The link loaded up a Google search result listing several Japanese gaming forums, which is exactly what the question in the thread post was asking. Compared to the many other posts, in several current threads, this was actually addressing and providing a possible answer for the user who started the thread.

If you were going to delete posts which "doesn't help" in the general discussion board, you may as well remove half the content. Seems like cherry picking.

[ファブリス]

I'm sorry I didn't notice the search was actually working. I've seen this "let me google that for you" joke many times and usually it's implying the OP didn't make any effort to search.

The site description itself states: "For all those people who find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than google it for themselves."

So imho, I still think it's not very helpful nor is it nice to answer someone looking for resources with lmgtfy.com links.

I would imagine the point of a thread on a forum like this, is to get some links and recommendations from other people instead of having to sort through tens of pages to find one or two decent sites.

uisukii Wrote:

ファブリス Wrote:

uisukii Wrote:http://bit.ly/160kFc5

I deleted your previous post because it doesn't help at all. This doesn't either. If your post was deleted it was for a reason. Also URL shorteners should be avoided as those links have a short lifetime, and eventually either break or lead to other random websites.

What do you mean? The link loaded up a Google search result listing several Japanese gaming forums, which is exactly what the question in the thread post was asking. Compared to the many other posts, in several current threads, this was actually addressing and providing a possible answer for the user who started the thread.

If you were going to delete posts which "doesn't help" in the general discussion board, you may as well remove half the content. Seems like cherry picking.

Did you actually look at the results your search gave? None of them were good. You have:

1. A game dev's page
2. Wikipedia
3. Otome game company website
4. Amazon
5. Blog post about a Serious Games "Forum" where forum is in the other sense of the word
6. Finally an actual forum, but about the C programming language
7. Website with info on a random music festival

Finally Google autocorrects your search, but it still doesn't help:
8. onlinegameforum.org, but again, "forum" is in the other sense of the word
9. A place that has been permanently shut down
10. An actual forum which does seem like it's about games, but the encoding of board doesn't match the encoding of the messages so it's difficult to use. Also, the last post was 8 months ago.

The reason the quality of search results is so poor is that フォーラム has "a meeting place used in ancient rome" as its first definition and "a meeting place" as its second. The definition we want is third. It's just not as commonly used in that sense though; things like "BBS" or 掲示板 are more common.

Normally, people ask about stuff like this because they tried Google and it wasn't good enough, or they don't know what to search for, and the recommendations a real person can provide are often far superior. If you don't have any real recommendations, and you can't offer good searching tips either, it's better to just leave the topic alone.

I'm not sure what オゲーム is meant to mean either...

[ファブリス]

I was wondering too. Seems to be another shortened imported word videogame => オゲーム?

What I find myself wanting nowadays is a small, reasonably mature community driven board/imageboard for general video game, anime, manga and Japan/Japanese-related topics plus any other miscellaneous discussions. Since there's quite a high correlation between these topics I think this is a fairly reasonable desire.

Big sites have to be inevitably split into sub-boards by topic but then end up losing any sense of unified community or culture (or post quality). Each board ends up becoming a separate site in itself where you can only discuss one topic only. Okay if you just focus on one or two things to abandon, but not for someone who enjoys a lot of different things casually or wants to have off topic discussions sometimes.

I guess I'm just looking for an online hangout for like minded people that isn't another chan-inspired secret club. Japanese and/or English, I don't care.

ファブリス Wrote:I was wondering too. Seems to be another shortened imported word videogame => オゲーム?

I think it's just a typo

headphone_child Wrote:Normally, people ask about stuff like this because they tried Google and it wasn't good enough, or they don't know what to search for,

With have a different understanding of what consists of "normally". I would say that "normally", people tend to ask questions without having explored any of the avenues there exists to be explored. If your ideal of the norm where accurate, this website would not have an archived search function replete with the same questions being answered by different people over a period of time- but it exists as such, fundamentally because generally speaking, people tend not to try and seek their own answers until they run into nothing but dead ends; they seek to be spoon-feed.

Notice how popular the internet personalities surrounding language learning are who offer "shortcuts to fluency", "fluency in 3 months", "learn any language without having to study textbooks", etc. One could easily glance a little further over and notice a very large culture surrounding the concept of gaining something without having to put effort into it. This is, in respect to how people behave, far more "normal", then your assessment of the situation.

headphone_child Wrote:and the recommendations a real person can provide are often far superior.

...and often far more misleading, inaccurate, biased, etc.

headphone_child Wrote:If you don't have any real recommendations, and you can't offer good searching tips either, it's better to just leave the topic alone.

Or you could just ignore the post, as you managed to ignore this post:

Quote:There's like 40 game forums on 2ch

easy enough. ファブリス has already expressed his opinion and suggestions on the matter, which I fully intend to adhere to. Aside the obvious blind spot in your judgements (being that your post could be taken, word for word, and used in response to large handful of other posts, on any given subforum on this website, comprised of posts created within the past few days alone), your responsibility as a member ends with yourself. You are not a moderator, so there is no need to stand up as one, unless you are of the opinion that ファブリス's post was not enough, and you needed to add your say in order to give it enough weight. Personally, it seems a little like an opportunity to grandstand and be opinionated, merely using the topic as a means to an ends.


Either way, there is a project to get back to, which is funnily enough, primarily for other users to be able to benefit from. Internet forums, eh.

Sorry, I meant "40 game boards".

What was I thinking.

So a bunch of unrelated google search results are more helpful that peoples' recommendation?

Did you read the rest of his post before getting all defensive?

EDIT: ^Doesn't a "board" consist of several "forums"? Or is it actually the other way around?

A forum consists of boards usually

Right.

2ch board for retro: http://kohada.2ch.net/retro/
and for tcg: http://anago.2ch.net/tcg/

I'm not too crazy about 2ch though... would be interesting to see what other options are out there. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the games section of Chiebukuro (知恵袋), but that's just a Japanese Yahoo Answers.

Stian Wrote:So a bunch of unrelated google search results are more helpful that peoples' recommendation?

Unrelated? The suggestion was the Google is a poor search engine compared to people's recommendations. If you haven't noticed, a lot of these questions get asked on various internet forums, and they tend to turn up in a search fairly often. In relation to English speaking Japanese learners, plugging in a related term tends to return hits from this website, the Tae Kim forums, etc. So basically instead of waiting for someone to respond a to thread, a simple search will more often than not yield similar questions from a range of related forums.

Which is basically "people's recommendation" on a larger scale, which allows for easier cross referencing. The argument debasing internet search engines in favour of direct human questioning is basically a misunderstanding of the structure.

Quote:Did you read the rest of his post before getting all defensive?

Yes I did.

Quote:EDIT: ^Doesn't a "board" consist of several "forums"? Or is it actually the other way around?

Not really sure on the technical terminology (might have to look it up) but I think it is generally broken down from a main forum which hosts various boards, or sub-forums, with their own further branching contextual boards, then possibly some boards having their own specific related sub-boards. A big tree, I guess.

Quote:Unrelated?

...

Quote:1. A game dev's page
2. Wikipedia
3. Otome game company website
4. Amazon
5. Blog post about a Serious Games "Forum" where forum is in the other sense of the word
6. Finally an actual forum, but about the C programming language
7. Website with info on a random music festival

Finally Google autocorrects your search, but it still doesn't help:
8. onlinegameforum.org, but again, "forum" is in the other sense of the word
9. A place that has been permanently shut down
10. An actual forum which does seem like it's about games, but the encoding of board doesn't match the encoding of the messages so it's difficult to use. Also, the last post was 8 months ago.

So, which one of these match exactly what the OP was looking for?

Google isn't useless... but it can be pretty frustrating at times because of the vast number of scam sites, dead websites, etc.

[ファブリス]

Brain... hurts...

Thanks to people that actually responded to my question. That "adding nihongo to the search" hint was something I didn't think off, I usually just changed the language of Google to Japanese and went from there.

And Uisukii, I'm of the opinion that message boards are to discuss and answer questions. Even if those questions are repetitive or have been answered before. I get the same thing on boards I frequent and if I feel like answering, I answer. If I don't, I don't. Wasting time on a google link is time I could have spent helping the guy, I feel. I let it slide because I didn't care to start an argument.

Comparing me to someone who wants a shortcut to learning Japanese the quick and easy way, was just, uncalled for. I asked because I don't fancy looking all over for something specific in a language I'm not even that fluent in yet. If you're trying to say I'm lazy because I don't want to look up my own interests, I got a whole shelf of gaming magazines, games and guides I've ordered over the past 5 years, you know, just looking around on my own. Because obviously I can't do that just because I wanted someone with more experience in Japanese to point me in a more accurate direction to a gaming board.

I actually forgot about this thread, because I was so focused on keeping up with reviews, finishing up a chapter in my guide, and teaching my nephews and nieces how to read over the past week and working my ass off in general. I didn't think I'd have to come back to it to defend my work ethic.<_<