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When we asked for input in our 2019 Community Check-in, one of the themes present in more than one answer was the desire to build a feeling of belonging to a community and encourage participation in asking and answering questions by using contests, events, tournaments and the like. Now we want to hear your suggestions on what kinds of events we should hold!

Events? What are those?

If you weren't here when the site was young, you might not know that Arqade used to have different kinds of events back in the day, such as:

The last two were organized entirely by Arqade users, with no external support from the Stack Exchange network. While more SE-sponsored events are not outside the realm of possibility, we’re thinking all our future events will be community-run, with no prizes beyond the friends we made along the way. The main goal of these events will be to bring the community together and perhaps motivate users to ask and answers questions about the featured games.

We're hoping to get a variety of suggestions, with a focus on events that can involve anyone in the community. For example, a tournament for a niche game might not receive much attention without enough players, or a Let's Play of slow-paced puzzle game might not be very entertaining to watch, even if very fun to play. Suggestions for both one-time events and recurrent series of events are welcome.

In the end, we are here because we enjoy gaming, so let’s game together.

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  • How long is this question going to be open? Most answers (one exception) were posted between Nov 2 and Nov 5. I'd really look forward to experiencing community events, so I'd appreciate learning what the timeframe is for this inquiry.
    – PausePause
    Nov 20, 2019 at 17:01
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    @PausePause The question is going to stay open indefinitely. Some good ideas were posted and are being discussed, and should start once the final details are decided on.
    – Wrigglenite
    Nov 20, 2019 at 17:25
  • When we have some events i suggest adding them to e.g. a Google calendar, so you can get a better overview over what events take place at which time.
    – Tobias F.
    Nov 21, 2019 at 7:21
  • I'm considering livestreaming the process of answering tricky questions. Should I make a meta post every time I do that or is there a better solution?
    – Fabian Röling
    Jan 22, 2020 at 13:45

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How about a Screenshot of the Week?

I just noticed the Photo of the Week on Photography SE. I assume this will be easy to implement as it has already been integrated there.

While not really an event, it will help build "a feeling of belonging to a community and encourage participation".

A corresponding Hall of Fame (similar to the one Photo.SE) will leave a permanent record of the (top-voted) screenshots, and might inspire others to see creativity as part of gaming, and maybe to try their hand at games they are not familiar with.
It will also increase the visual appeal of the main page, and possibly make the Meta page - where the threads where we could cast votes would be found - more accessible to the more casual user.

Here's an example of an image hidden behind a spoiler tag:

enter image description here

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    Cool idea. My only worry would be about spoilers
    – Dragonrage Mod
    Nov 4, 2019 at 15:50
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    Do you think that would be a large problem? We could always make it a rule that a screenshot can't contain spoilers. I think it generally would be nothing to worry about.
    – Joachim
    Nov 4, 2019 at 16:08
  • Probably not a big problem, but I do know several games in which some screenshots i have would spoil a large portion of the story line.
    – Dragonrage Mod
    Nov 4, 2019 at 16:14
  • What do you define as a spoiler though? What might be a spoiler to one person might not be to another.
    – DeputyDylDog
    Nov 7, 2019 at 5:03
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    I agree spoilers could be an issue. I like this idea, but I think it needs to come with a disclaimer that you may get games spoiled if you browse the weekly thread.
    – John the Green
    Nov 8, 2019 at 19:36
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    Images can be hidden behind spoiler tags, if required. I'f gone ahead and added an example of this to the answer.
    – Wipqozn Mod
    Nov 16, 2019 at 11:28
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    IIRC, it took a lot of work to get that working properly on photo.SE, and it's stuff that's all custom to the site. Not sure if the devs would be willing to put in the effort for us.
    – MBraedley
    Nov 27, 2019 at 20:08
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I know it's often overdone, but what are your thoughts on an Arqade Minecraft world? I don't think it falls into a community "event" category, but more like "The Bridge" hangout space. I'm confident many users on this site have not played the game in a while (such as myself) and would appreciate the opportunity to return to Minecraft and see the recent updates.

Update: A similar idea was implemented in Game-On! a few years ago. I think the game has changed enough that it could still be attempted again.

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    I think this could be fun.
    – ave
    Nov 5, 2019 at 12:42
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    There was an Arqade Minecraft server for quite some time after the death of "Game-On!" A couple different modpacks were used over time. It seemed rather successful, overall, even if it was propped up by a small handful of regulars.
    – John the Green
    Nov 8, 2019 at 19:39
  • Minecraft is always a good idea.
    – dly
    Nov 13, 2019 at 10:16
  • Quite a LOT has changed in the last couple of years, alone the "new" combat mechanics and tons of new blocks etc. are worth giving it another try.
    – Tobias F.
    Nov 18, 2019 at 15:23
  • @PausePause have you thought of anything specific regarding what kind of MC you would want on such a server? e.g. Pure Vanilla, FTB, Skyblock etc.?
    – Tobias F.
    Nov 19, 2019 at 12:32
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    I'm personally a fan of semi-vanilla Bukkit w/ Spigot style of server where there are protections against griefing and some features for convenience but the core Minecraft gameplay is the same.
    – PausePause
    Nov 19, 2019 at 16:46
  • Sadly, protection against griefing is a must have nowadays, there are just tto many trolls out there :( But apart from some extra-commands to protect you stuff (e.g. /cprivate) i also usually play on a vanilla server with only griefing protection.
    – Tobias F.
    Nov 19, 2019 at 17:37
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I would like to take part in some Arqade tournaments for various different games. Personally I'm a big fan of Smash Bros., but there's plenty of games that support a competitive scene - pretty much any fighting game, League of Legends (could do 1v1), Age of Empires... heck, we could even do something like Minecraft Spleef or SkyWars.

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  • Rainbow Six Siege would surely also count as competitive, you can even give people handicaps to balance / make the game more fun to fool around and / or create interesting challenges.
    – Tobias F.
    Dec 17, 2019 at 10:33
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A specific type of game that could be fun is the Jackbox Party games.

These would work well because some allow higher player counts (8 players + an 'audience' with participation for some games).

Plus, they have a low barrier to entry, only requiring players to have access to a web browser (and some way of viewing the stream).

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    Even though it's not what first comes to mind when one thinks of "games", I really like this idea.
    – Wrigglenite
    Nov 7, 2019 at 8:31
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    Yeah, plus it doesn't have the issue TTS has of requiring people to own the game (though we should also play TTS)
    – Unionhawk Mod
    Nov 7, 2019 at 13:49
  • We do have a (community) discord. I've found that the video latency for that is rather low, whereas something like Twitch could be too high for Jackbox games.
    – MBraedley
    Nov 27, 2019 at 19:59
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I'd like to see weekly, monthly, or otherwise periodic gaming sessions for multiplayer games, with a focus on playing as a group rather than having one side against the other like in tournaments.

A multitude of games would be suitable for this, both PvE and PvP, such as:

  • Warframe
  • League of Legends
  • Minecraft
  • Monster Hunter
  • Overwatch
  • World of Warcraft
  • etc

Note that I'm not suggesting to switch games played every session, just listing possible games that could be good to play in a group. Each game would have its own schedule.

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    Add TF2 and/or CS:GO to that list, being free the barrier to entry will be lower :)
    – Robotnik Mod
    Nov 15, 2019 at 10:58
  • @Robotnik Warframe and LoL are both ftp
    – Dragonrage Mod
    Nov 15, 2019 at 22:50
  • WoW won't work well due to region restrictions and factions.
    – dly
    Nov 18, 2019 at 8:33
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This is more of an addition to other suggestions, really. For any event that would only involve a handful of users playing together, such as a tournament or any session of a co-op game, I would like to see the gameplay being streamed, so as to involve users who are either unable or unwilling to participate directly. This could be done from the perspective of a "spectator" or "commentator" for tournaments, or just one of the players' perspective for co-op games.

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  • You could also - enough people given - give people handicaps / advantages ingame by voting in chat.
    – Tobias F.
    Nov 18, 2019 at 16:54
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Bringing back Movie Nights could be a good idea, I think. IIRC the reason we mostly stopped was due to us all being busy, but things seem to have calmed down a bit for a lot of us, so I think there might be interest in this again.

Rabb.it going down will cause some issues with regards to watching the movies together, but if we do decide to start up movie nights again I'm willing to look up (and if needed, set up) alternatives for us to use.

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  • I ended up looking around for a Rabb.it alternative a few weeks ago for unrelated reasons and found a suitable one remarkably hard to come by. A lot of them only supported Youtube, or had serious usability issues. I always did enjoy the movie nights I was able to make it to, though.
    – John the Green
    Nov 8, 2019 at 19:41
  • @JohntheGreen I'm aware of a couple alternatives that'll do the job, I forgot their names though, I'll have to dig in my message.
    – ave
    Nov 10, 2019 at 9:48
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A Monthly Answer Challenge (or weekly, or Fortnitely, or bimonthly, ..): a rep bonus for the best answer given to an old question.

Piggybacking on Movies.SE's concept, this will give users an extra boost to travel deep into the depths of our 'Arqives' and solve some of its many mysteries.

We can set the limit to what counts as an 'old question' to 3 months - similar to Movies.SE - but can also work our way forward from the oldest posts, by setting an initial limit of 5 years, and see how that goes.

It's constructive, accessible to all users, and will hopefully decrease the amount of unanswered questions (currently 6.360 questions remain unanswered or unupvoted [(out of 91.207 total = +/- 7%]).
And, as the answerers dust off their old jewel and keep cases in anticipation, it gives them a chance to grab a few screenshots for whenever this topic will get its turn.

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    Arqives, that's brilliant.
    – Wrigglenite
    May 8, 2020 at 19:10
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Rep Bonuses or Featured Tag about games that have been released recently or ones that we can choose on a weekly basis. This encourages people to use the site, play games to come up with good questions and answer them!

If we can't do bonus rep, something like a featured tag would be cool. Last week would have been a great opportunity for a "purple" outline on questions with a featured tag of "the-outer-worlds" to give users a push to ask questions and answer a specific tag. We could implement this for 10-year anniversaries of games, sold benchmarks and all kinds of milestones.

For example:

Weekly Question Bonus Tag: Skyrim

Grab your double rep bonus on all voting on all Skyrim tagged questions for the week!

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    I don't think we could implement this ourselves in any reasonable way.
    – Wrigglenite
    Nov 7, 2019 at 8:34
  • You could maybe have something where either you or a group of users offer bounties to the best question(s) in [tag] asked within the past [time-frame]. Maybe users could offer to give the bounty so they can choose the game to promote playing. I'd be ok offering a prize to best Dungeon Defenders Awakened question when it releases next year. If we plan it out, we can avoid having too many "contests" at one time.
    – Batophobia
    Nov 13, 2019 at 21:14
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    @Batophobia I'm sure there are ways we could make something like this work. Currently all of the suggestions promote chat or meta, and none of them really address the need for new users asking questions about games. While I like the idea of us gaming together, I'd like to see more of an effort put into growing our user base.
    – FoxMcCloud
    Nov 13, 2019 at 21:18
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    Movies&TV does topic challenges, perhaps something similar?
    – Robotnik Mod
    Nov 14, 2019 at 12:23
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    @Robotnik Yeah exactly. Something that drives asking questions on the main site is what I'd like to see.
    – FoxMcCloud
    Nov 21, 2019 at 17:56
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I'd like to see another Holiday Bounty Giveaway this year (and would be willing to put up some rep for it too). Unfortunately, I'm a little too busy to also organize this year, though.

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