Any one remember when these were the best game forums?

Obviously corporate came in, changed everything for the worse and called it a day.

Giant bomb and IGN have almost the exact same forum/site lay out as well now.

Think about how dead all the forums are now. The Pc forum has the same topics on the front page for weeks. Gamespot was once a fun place to BS on. The forum lay out worked and looked great, minus casey wagner.

Now this site is all but dead, luckily Im older now and dont care as much but its still sad to see such a great site ruined by corporate takeover. Reviews are a business and your crazy to think money dosent affect the review score

Yuup.

Yup, like a decade ago. Back in the Greg Kasavin, Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Alex Navarro, Brad Shoemaker days.

Makes me sad you forgot Rich Gallup
Loved him as a host

Killing unions and removing levels from post were two of the worst ideas they ever came up along with the rule change making what was a strict and civil(for the most part) site into an uncreative troll haven. I called it when it happened that this site would go the way the old gamepro site did with the redesign where an active and fun forum turned into a wasteland because of drastic change.

There was a time where the bottom thread on the first page was only an hour old tops... now it is well over 2 days. A shame that the glory days are over.

@chaoscougar1: nope, didnt forget the amazing Rich Gallup, and don't forget Homer Ribera!

Yeah I miss the unions and the post levels. The old ToU was also easier to understand.

@halvedlife:

Agreed, those were the days.....I even miss the titles they gave you when you levelled up. I was like lvl 67 last I recall.

Killing unions will forever be the greatest mistake that happened to this community. That was one of the most innovative ideas of its time on the site and GameSpot staff kept calling it a backwards relic.

I mean, that's basically the idea of user-powered sub boards before Reddit even existed. Damn was it dumb to kill them.

@fueled-system: Remember the Staff account? Whoever posted on it basically admitted that doing away with the rules was punishment for the community. Hope he got fired..

It's like GameSpot is ran by 9 year olds, people kept asking for easier rules and they went "how about we just straight up get rid of em, huh, how about that?!".

Community features disappearing killed it here. Remember when they still had an "Ask Gamespot" thread, where you could ask the staff questions? Or events like Tournament Tv and the weekly "On the Spot" segments? They even got rid of the "User Soapbox", where they featured an interesting user blog each week. Social media changed everything. I hate Twitter, though. I am never going to sign up for a service to read some GS editor's 10 word sentence. That's not connecting with your user base. The old site gave you a lot of insight into who the editors were; their personalities, and tastes in games. These new people are pretty much faceless, although Mike Mahardey is writing good reviews. He's doing a good job.

the drama, the lawsuits, the annual nominations, the alts, the cliques, the lesbian women and the deception

this place was awesome, and the memories will stay with me for a long time

I havent been to gamespot for a very long time until a few months ago... and JUST NOW, I have noticed my level (30-40) something in between that is gone hehe... at least there is some Points on ur page.

EDIT:

WOow, Happy 10th Anniversary to my Account.... :P

No.

It could be that the ones above Staff again are simply more "professional" leaders now than before. By professional here I mean the leader type with a heavy focus on making money, and less about quality.

Lies and slander, monsueir poopypants.

Does the site really make money anymore? Is the ad revenue enough, when the members have dropped off so dramatically? I can't see how this site is sustainable anymore. Too much overhead.

It was the death of the site if you ask me. Reviews have never been the same.

I can rattle off a few things I miss...

1.) The old review system.

2.) Unions

3.) Levels in forums

4.) The old forum rules

5.) The old segments

Notice how the emblems were even removed from the "trophy rooms", which showed our old levels. That turned out to be a useless feature on the new site.

I havent noticed any changes at all.

2005 - 2008 was a fun period on this website. Especially around E3.
I personally have nothing against this new site layout, it works perfectly fine. However, times change and communities shift, like is the case on almost all forums. Sooner or later the party will end.

yup

It's not as busy now....other than that.....same.

Yeah, nostalgia

Its more the lay out of the site and every other site. It look like they made it more for touch screen and made everything big. Another web site I go to done and I asked why they made everything big as it looked like I clicked zoom by mistake. They said. Its how the times are. We just want to keep up. I think it makes sites look goofy. Why do people think they got to change because of one person says it time.

And easier to abuse for moderators. So much as a "bad word" was enough to have a 1000 words post removed.

I would agree with the unions and post levels, although I never much cared for either feature. I think the change that turned off the most people actually was the one to the layout.

Yep, it was really good before the 2013 change of doom!

The forums in general were about 20x better before the Great Website Overhaul of 20xx (I forgot what year it was, pretty recent though, like 2013?).

After that, and the April Fool's Day Massacre, a lot of excellent contributors left.

indeed; im not one for censorship, but this place was a lot more civil when we could not swear.

Yep, and since then I've been trying to get things done but it's proved very hard.

I agree.

i still don't understand how removing the leveling system could possibly make one's experience on GS any better.

Yeah I so very agree with you. There were times I thought I couldn't live without GS, but we change and things change and lalala...

It's not just here, forums all over the internet are generally quieter now.

I think facebook and Twitter has taken away a lot of regular forum users.

So where are all of the cool kids hanging out now then? Instagram?

Yup, the site overhaul a couple years ago forced me out. Still don't come here often because its mostly dead relatively speaking.

The forums really used to be hoppin' back in 2002 or so. I'm sure some of you were barely out of diapers then.

Good ole times. This is my first time posting in about 11 years BTW..hah.

I do. That's back when I used to come here more than twice a year. We came here for what the site was. When the layout of a site changes as dramatically as this site changed to some degree it becomes a different website. It's arrogant to think that major overhauls will be a win with the users.

Agreed.

I practically visited this site everyday years ago when it was still cool. The forums were always so busy and the leveling system was rewarding and awesome. I lived overseas in Thailand and other places, and this was one of the few places I could still come to where I could speak English and hang out with people I knew. I looked forward to it almost everyday.

Now it's a ghost town, and it's truly, truly sad. I haven't logged in for nearly 2 years now and just came back a few days ago.

I'm still of the belief that if we put back the unions and leveling system it would do nothing but good.

It never was. I preferred Ars Technica at the time.

They made a ton of mistakes a couple of years ago. Getting rid of the dedicated PC and AV boards was a terrible move that pushed a lot of people away. And, the new forums are plain and generic. Missing features, no signatures, no html formatting, no leveling system, no unions, no excitement, no fun...