Why should you ever have a "Forum Games" area?

Frankly, while there's nothing wrong with having a general discussion board.. why should you ever add a "Forum Games" area to your board?

On my forum, well it's apparently one of the few places that gets a little activity.. but I'd prefer most of that activity to be in the other areas of my forum(like Gaming and stuff)..

 

Well, let's say that getting many messages helps promoting the forum. It's harder for me to promote a 2k posts forum, even if most are very on topic and would be easier to brag with a 10k posts forum, even if 70% of the posts are in the general chat or the forum games. It's claimed these help members unwind and have some fun, I consider them to be 'fluff' and won't waste time with them. In the end it depends on how you want to manage your community and what your expectations are from your members. I also have other forums where I blocked the general chat, because many new members wanted to get their 5 posts to have a signature and post links, so they'd go for the easiest category. Not to mention ALL SPAM I ever got was directed there.

 

Well yes, but some of the activity on my forum is apparently forum game-based..

 

Well I think having Forum games is actually a great idea.

First off, it breaks away from what plenty of people would consider the mundane of posting.
Second, forum games tend to show you and help you evaluate who your most loyal posters and members are Because more often than not, your most devoted members and the forum game participants will be one and the same.

 

It's not really a problem, its a good way to let users have fun posting various things - outside of the other boards. I'm all for having a forum games forum as its quite nice, but if you're not a gaming forum or something, I don't see a point in having one. Sure, it encourages spam, but only if you promote it.

 

This is a lovely way of looking at it

Personally i have a forum games area and it is the most dominant area. it sits at about 40% of the overall total post.
I originally added for...actually i have no idea WHY i added it. i think in the early days of startign the forum, I had no idea really how to set up and organize a forum and one of my original members brought the idea from established forums and I added the forum games and it has grown ever since.

You can always tell the dedicated and loyal members who want the forum to grow. They are the ones who post in the actual topics your forum is about. They post the quality threads and post and keep the activity going.

Then you have the more liberal members who do post daily but 90% of their post are in the forum game section.

i actually tried to do deter the forum games section by not making it count towards post count but they stopped posting there altogether and of course it also brought down the overall daily activity so i figured why not just keep it. LOL