While in wider circles gaming may have garnered a reputation as a somewhat solitary hobby, those involved in the scene know it’s always been about community. From the earliest days of the internet to the modern era, online discussions around gaming have been a central part of pop culture, oftentimes shaping the way the mainstream approaches entertainment news.
Online gaming communities laid the groundwork for modern social media from the frontlines of wonky bulletin boards and Usenet groups, proving that where passion lies, conversations flourish. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is up for debate, but what we can say is that the links between gaming and online discourse deserve to be documented and heard today.
With that said, let’s take a look at the evolution of gaming forums and the future of the medium.
1960s – 1980s: The Land Before Time
Video games predate the internet, which itself predates the first online gaming communities.
1962’s Spacewar!, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is widely accepted as the first modern video game, a project that predates the web by over 20 years.
In the earliest days of gaming, discussions on the topic were mostly confined to the arcades and (very few) front rooms where cabinets and early consoles were installed. At this stage in the history of gaming, communities were small and fractured, but the rising popularity of the medium lay fertile ground for rumors and tall tales; the foundations of video game discourse.
1980s – 1990s: The Birth of Gaming Discourse Online
The relationship between gaming and technology is, for obvious reasons, strong. So, it’s no surprise that the earliest gaming forums arose shortly after the birth of the internet. Well, we may not consider them forums in the same way we do now, but the earliest platforms where gamers engaged in discussions online were freely-accessible Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).
BBSs could be accessed by anyone with a modem and a telephone line. They allowed users around the world to post messages, trade files and interact with fellow fans in real-time. The beginnings of this tech were a little rough on gamers, however, as the growth of BBSs came at the same time as the video game industry crash (1982), stalling discourse for a little while.
1990s – 2000s: The First Modern Video Game Forums
BBMs became increasingly populated by video game fans as the industry bounced back with the release of the NES. Soon, supported by the growing popularity of video game magazines like Nintendo Power, fans began to branch out to explore the wider reaches of the new web.
The early 1990s saw most video game discourse conducted over disparate Usenet groups, an evolution of the 80s’ BBMs, and the first real example of forums as we know them today. Usenet had existed for a while, but by the 90s, had become more sophisticated than a BBS.
The mid-to-late 90s is really where things became more modern. The launch of Newgrounds in 1995 is perhaps where many millennial gamers got their first taste of gaming forums. Then after the launch of Google in 1998, gamers were able to search for popular forums by name.
2000s – 2010s: How Social Media Changed Everything
The early 2000s saw a golden age for gaming forums. Sites like Newgrounds grew rapidly and new platforms like NeoGAF took a foothold in the market. With more households online, and sites able to handle bigger transfers, it was easier than ever to chat about games online.This golden age also saw the rise of viral games and community-driven content that blurred the lines between players and creators, transforming casual play into global entertainment.
Then in the mid 00s, things started to change. The lack of structured moderation on popular forums led to controversial topics being freely discussed, which when coupled with growing media coverage over video game violence, caused public opinion to sour on gaming forums.
But as always, the internet had an answer. The mid-to-late 00s saw the birth of social media as we know it today, with websites like Facebook, YouTube and Reddit made available to the public. This began a more corporatized era of the internet, one where forums were far safer and more readily-accessible, though became increasingly constricted and advertiser-friendly.
2010s – Today: Bringing Communities Closer Together
The social media era dominated much of the 2010s, but towards the middle of the decade communities began to rally against the restrictive nature of the corporatized, dead internet.
The launch of Discord in 2015 brought a little more freedom back to gamers, enabling users to build and moderate their own gaming-centric text and voice chat servers. As more gamers progressed towards community-forward thinking, calls for more interconnectivity grew louder.
Now, platforms like Nerd Culture bring a new sense of community to gaming discourse and help answer the question of how to make friends online—making it easier than ever to connect over shared interests. With quick filtering abilities to find games, secure messaging and event management features, Nerd Culture is designed to foster meaningful connections across virtual and physical worlds. While Discord has strong links to gaming, it’s not solely dedicated to making it easy for gamers to find other gamers; platforms like Nerd Culture seek to address this.
“When I moved to LA, I was shocked by how difficult it was to find a D&D group. Sites upon sites, Discord invites, bouncing between Reddit threads and Meetup and Facebook groups. It felt like yelling into a void. So our team set out to build the platform we all wish existed — a single place to connect and share stories with people over the things we love.” – Steven Weingarth, Nerd Culture founder.
This is the ethos of modern gaming forums, a revival of the DIY attitude lost to social media, enhanced by the flexibility of modern technology. As gaming becomes more popular, the focus of gaming discourse will be on community building, shaping the future of game forums.
