Malkovich: The flood is coming

[daniel_the_smith]

I doubt people will follow games as much if they are played on ogs or somewhere.

[Marcus]

I doubt people will follow games as much if they are played on ogs or somewhere.

I agree. I follow the games mostly because they are IN the forum.

[Kirby]

I think that:
1.) The current setup is fine as it is (my personal opinion).
2.) If not everyone agrees with #1, and there are enough people that dislike the "clutter", the games should still be held here on the forum, but with an option to filter for those that care so much about filtering.

[Phelan]

Even though I like the games, they do clutter a bit. Filtering would be welcome.

[fwiffo]

I have been looking into a filtering mod for PHPbb, and the only one I found so far was for older versions. It might take some work.

[dfan]

I agree with Kirby.

I think L19 as a whole is thriving, and one of the big reasons for that is the Malkovich games. There is a wide spectrum of commenting verbosity, but even the people who don't say much are generally good at answering questions.

This seems like the wrong time to try to place restrictions on Malkovich games (either quantity or quality). I do agree that tools to make it easier for people to track only the particular games they are interested in would be handy. But reacting by trying to restrict an activity that is obviously really popular seems backwards to me.

P.S. Number of Malkovich games started recently, by week (most recent week at the end of the list): 3, 4, 2, 2, 0, 2, 5, 4. I don't see any big trend.

[Joaz Banbeck]

my personal opinion: let the people who enjoys deep commentary make subforum and move.

Let's do it the other way around. The light/no commentary people get to move.

[Joaz Banbeck]

I see no need to place restrictions on games. People have different tastes and different habits. That doesn't mean we have to restrict any players or viewers. We can accomodate everybody easily. We need one forum for those who like long comments, one for those who do little or none. There is room for everybody.

As I said earlier, I intend to implement that unless there are vigorous objections. Today is busy, so I'll probably do it tomorrow afternoon.

There may be a possible third forum. Magicwand is so busy, we could even give him his own forum.
( actually, I'm about 1/4 serious about that )

[tj86430]

I'd like to suggest that the subject of each Malcovich game thread would say whether the game is supposed to have extensive comments or light/no comments.

[daniel_the_smith]

Why should anyone move? People know what to expect from the various personalities involved. I don't see a need to segregate the players. Besides, what do you do with a game played between a talker and a not-so-much talker? If Magicwand doesn't type in enough explanation for you, then don't watch his games... (except for the one I'm playing with him, of course ^^)

PS after seeing Joaz's latest: "Magicwand, the world's strongest 3d"... Seriously, has he lost a game on here yet? Anyway, I don't really care that much, I just don't see the need to do anything.

[dfan]

PS after seeing Joaz's latest: "Magicwand, the world's strongest 3d"... Seriously, has he lost a game on here yet?

He lost to zinger in game #33. I'm not sure if there are any others.

[Dusk Eagle]

I honestly don't see the problem with the current setup. Yes, I would prefer if people commented slightly more. However, I can keep track of which games are more likely to offer higher quality commentary, and only view those topics if I feel like it. It's the same with the Off-Topic and General Go Chat forums - I'm not interested in 90% and 40% of the threads there, respectively, but I know which ones I am interested in and stick to those.

I actually enjoy watching games even with just one-line comments, and I see no real reason to move them. I'm not opposed to Joaz creating a new forum either, with the new forum being for those who want to play with minimal/no comments about their thought processing. However, I am adamantly opposed to a restriction on the number of games of a certain type that are allowed to unfold at once, for the same reason I am equally opposed to restricting the number of active threads in the Off-Topic/General Chat forums.

[padic]

Creating a new forum is fine with me, but I'm strongly against anything that involves someone other than the players deciding what is and is not a "Malkovich game". I'm not sure whether there are players who feel that the games they play in the Malkovich forums are not actually Malkovich games.

It's clear that not all the ongoing Malkovich games are exactly like the first game that was played, but I don't think it's so terrible that the form is evolving into different directions. I enjoy several quite different commenter styles: the traditional long diagram commentaries, Araban's video commentaries, Magicwand's brief "feel"-based comments. I think some of these differences might even give some insights into differences in the way the different players think, which seems like exactly the sort of thing the name was referring to.

Furthermore, although I haven't played much yet myself, I feel there's a lot of educational value in just trying to justify my own moves in writing in a public forum. Possibly Malkovich games that are mostly instructive to the players and not to the spectators should have another name, but I think making this distinction now is premature. It's a hard distinction to make in any case, since the strength of the spectator would matter a lot in determining what is useful or instructive, and since things that are intended to be useful aren't always, and things that are not intended to be useful sometimes are. To me it seems better to stick to a simple and clear definition like "games that are commented by the players during play" instead of trying to dictate how the games should be used.

[Jonas]

Creating a new forum is fine with me, but I'm strongly against anything that involves someone other than the players deciding what is and is not a "Malkovich game". I'm not sure whether there are players who feel that the games they play in the Malkovich forums are not actually Malkovich games.

It's clear that not all the ongoing Malkovich games are exactly like the first game that was played, but I don't think it's so terrible that the form is evolving into different directions. I enjoy several quite different commenter styles: the traditional long diagram commentaries, Araban's video commentaries, Magicwand's brief "feel"-based comments. I think some of these differences might even give some insights into differences in the way the different players think, which seems like exactly the sort of thing the name was referring to.

Furthermore, although I haven't played much yet myself, I feel there's a lot of educational value in just trying to justify my own moves in writing in a public forum. Possibly Malkovich games that are mostly instructive to the players and not to the spectators should have another name, but I think making this distinction now is premature. It's a hard distinction to make in any case, since the strength of the spectator would matter a lot in determining what is useful or instructive, and since things that are intended to be useful aren't always, and things that are not intended to be useful sometimes are. To me it seems better to stick to a simple and clear definition like "games that are commented by the players during play" instead of trying to dictate how the games should be used.

As already said I think the idea of a Malkovich-Game itself is fantastic and actually I enjoy Sols videocommentaries as much as magicwands entertainment-comments of course each person has a different style of commenting.
Nevertheless I'm sure the creation of a new subforum for just turnbased games like on DGS/OGS will give some benefit for every willing malkovich player, because people who would like to play without the pressure to comment on the game would have a possibility to play without the need of littering up the malk-forum. Maybe there even can be a new feature to send an auto-challenge to a game via PM with an automatic created thread in the new subforum or something

[Kirby]

...without the need of littering up the malk-forum. ...

Basically, the point where I disagree with you is here. I don't think that they are littering the forum.