Some Real-Talk: Hawkspace After Dark Problems

changing user titles in specific is a so-called "punishment" that's comically petty, even impotent, and goofy to match. it might not be isolated in its effects to just hawkspace after dark and maybe fails there, but when it's so insignificant that its very insignificance is a joke (much like my dick) it's super-super-hard to care.

if there are no penalties or consequences, no matter how impotent, that accompany any of the goofy silly rules that hawkspace after dark is meant to explore, there's no reason to even have the rules. if there's no reason to have them, there's no will to make them, and the central conceit of this joke subsubforum dissipates in a fit of apathy and we just end up with regular hawkspace mk. II. the voting is the whole dang point of the sub-sub-forum, if we were going to do it that way we might as well have just made a fake voting thread that didn't actually effect anything in regular hawkspace. in other words, being mandatory is absolutely a prerequisite for having a subforum-wide game.

I disagree. I think, in the long term, it is actively harmful to the game to make it mandatory.

If the game aspect is optional, you get more people posting here, and you get people posting here at times when they don't really feel like dealing with the game aspects. That means more posts, which means more content for the game side of things to deal with.

If the game is mandatory, then if people don't feel like dealing with the game, they don't post here. Threads get less activity, and there are just fewer opportunities for the rules to be relevant.