Text Based Games Forums

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This article is about the separate Text Based Games Forums. For the original Text Based Games Forums that were part of the main Scratch Forums, see Archived Forums#Text-based Games.

Note:

This article contains links to the original TBG forums. All links there will result in a 404 Error.

The Text Based Games Forums.

The Text Based Games Forums, often known and referred to as the "TBGs" for short, was a forum on the Scratch Website where Scratchers could play text-based games. The forum was opened in late October 2009 and had been gaining in activity until its closure. The official replacement to the original Scratch TBG Forums is available here.

History

The forum's history started in the Inspiration and More section of the Scratch Forums. The games were filling the forum - to fix this, a forum was created for them on March 23, 2009. There, the Text-based Games continued to grow in popularity - they were becoming hard to moderate. A user asked if it should be suggested that the Text-based Games should be deleted - most users thought it was a joke, but moderators agreed with the suggestion. This led to the closing of the forum - on October 27, 2009, a new forum was made for the text-based games at a completely different place, with special moderators.

The opening of the Text Based Games Forums started off with much initial success, with many users joining. Nikkiperson2 and The-Whiz were selected as the moderators for the newly created forum. Over time, however, many users left, and the forum was slowly becoming inactive. It rose up again in activity, but then nikkiperson2 was becoming inactive. She announced that she was too busy for Scratch and left in January, and resigned her moderator status.

The growth of the Text Based Games Forums led to the need of new TBG Moderators. Compounded with the fact that nikkiperson2 had resigned, a second moderator election took place.

The-Whiz announced the new moderator election in February 2010, giving users a chance to speak their case for being elected as a TBG moderator. A week later, the voting began, with 283 voters participating in the election. Chrischb and Vista4563 were elected and were appointed as moderators the day after.

Some months later, WeirdF suggested that another moderator was to be chosen, as The-Whiz had become inactive. An election was soon held, with the intention of gaining one new moderator - however, it did not go to plan, with flames circulating in several threads. The flames were killed, but then it was discovered that there were multiple cases of cheating in the voting due to Selectricity's anonymous form of voting. A final election was held, and only eighteen votes were counted in that one - it was swift, and all cases of IP cheating were uncounted. Due to a tie in the results, two new moderators were appointed: BulboGrubb and Survivorduck. After the election, The-Whiz was dropped from the moderator roster for idleness.

As of February 1, 2011, the TBGs were split up into two main sections: RPG and TBG. The RPG section contains all RPG games, and RPGs from the old section were moved.

The TBGs officially closed its doors on March 1, 2013, since Scratch Team decided to discontinue it in Scratch 2.0. Prior to the closing, some TBG members decided to continue the TBGs on a site, and in late 2012, the forum opened making it the official replacement. Many users, particularly Scratch users, participate in the new TBGs, whether they're former TBG members or not, forming a small community. The official TBGs can be accessed here.

TBG Description

When originally opened, the new TBGs' description read Also known as Forum Games. This is an experimental category intended to contain this kind of threads to a particular section. But in the later months of 2010, it was decided this was out of date, considering the TBG not being experimental anymore, and so a change was suggested. The first alteration changed the description to simply A spin-off from the Scratch-Forums. However, this too was not popular. Finally, Vista4563 made a thread asking the TBG community to give their suggestions which greatly contributed to the final unanimous decision by the moderators, to change the description to: Also known as the TBGs, this is a forum intended to contain forum-based games. When the forum was split, it was changed to Text Based Games for TBG, and Role Playing Games for RPG.

Types of TBGs

There are several types of text-based games. These include, but are not limited to:

• RPGs: role-playing games, e.g. "Flag RPG"
• Rate the person above: games where something posted by the user above oneself must be rated, then one's own must be posted, e.g. "Paste!", where whatever content is in one's clipboard is pasted and rated.
• Count up: Games where players must count up as they post, usually until a user with a particular attribute (uses Firefox, or has an R in their name) posts. e.g. "Post to 50 before a Mod posts"

Important Threads

There were many important threads in the forum, each of which play their part in its history. They were:

• Welcome to the new TBG forums: Andresmh created this thread as a welcoming to all of the new users who would arrive during the TBGs' time.
• Announcements: Originally created by The-Whiz, it was closed, then later removed due to a lack of announcements - an action slightly regretted once the second TBG election had arrived. However, it was later restarted.
• TBG Resources: Also created by The-Whiz, the thread was created to avoid a cluttered sticky area.
• TBG Guidelines: As Vista4563's idea, he posted guidelines to help others comprehend the rules - but prior to its release, others helped write parts of it. It explains and summarizes general forum etiquette. A duplicate has since been posted in the RPG forum so it could be viewed from there.
• Questions and Suggestions: Created by The-Whiz, this forum led to the birth of featured games, and was a discussion point for the election. It also led to the change of forum signature requirements and began the second election in February 2010. It was originally specified for suggestions, but was changed to allow questions as well.
• Featured Games: This forum was where games could be recommended to be featured. There had been a discussion on featuring RPGs, but there were far less of them. But the system was changed: then games were only featured if there was a suggestion during the week - otherwise, nothing was done.
• Reminder about this forum: Due to several arguments, andresmh created a sticky in early March 2010 to remind users that if the arguments grew larger, the forum would have to be closed.
• TBGs will not be hosted on Scratch after 2.0: After consideration by the Scratch Team, they decided to discontinue hosting the TBG forums after Scratch 2.0 was released. It was announced by Lightnin and many TBGers discussed the announcement as well.

TBG Moderators

The status that appeared alongside a TBG Moderator's post.

The final set of TBG Moderators were:

• Vista4563

Duration: 2/17/10 - 3/1/13

Becoming a moderator with Chrischb after the second election, he started the tradition of "Operation: Cleanups" to help clean up the Text Based Games Forums.

• BulboGrubb

Duration: 6/3/10 - 3/1/13

Winning the final third election with a tie to Survivorduck, he was appointed soon after.

• Survivorduck

Duration: 6/3/10 - 3/1/13

Also winning the final third election with a tie, she was appointed as well.

• cpumaster930

Duration: 2/18/12 - 3/1/13

Winning the fourth election, he was appointed shortly after.

• coppearlix

Duration: 4/7/12 - 3/1/13

Just below cpumaster930 in the fourth election's results, she was appointed later.

Past Moderators

• nikkiperson2

Duration: 10/27/09 - 1/23/10

Tied with The-Whiz in the first election, she enthusiastically began helping users out but realised she was getting too busy for Scratch. She has resigned from her moderator duties and is mostly inactive; she appears in the forum every month or so, and posts some projects.

• The-Whiz

Duration: 10/27/09 - 6/3/10

Running in the first election, he won with a tie to nikkiperson2. He had stayed during many months of the TBGs' time, creating most of the stickies and being an important figure in the Text-Based Games Forums. He later became inactive and was eventually removed from the moderator roster.

• Chrischb

Duration: 2/17/10 - 10/3/12

Winning the second election, he and Vista4563 joined The-Whiz in the moderating team. Over two years later, he retired so that he could have more time to concentrate on real life studies.

• somelia

Duration: 4/7/12

Somelia was upgraded to the position of TBG Moderator completely by accident. Most users believe that when coppearlix was upgraded to TBG Moderator, the Scratch Team member administering the change accidentally upgraded somelia as well.^{[citation needed]} This was quickly resolved and did not result in any damage to the Text-Based Games Forums.

Splitting the TBG Forum

There was much discussion about splitting the forum into two or more sections. Originally the suggestion was to split it into "RPGs" and "Other Games." This was enacted February 1, 2011, but instead of "Other Games", it became "TBGs".

Operation: Cleanup

These operations were started to keep the forum of a reasonable size, clearing it of unneeded threads closed to replies, threads with no responses, and the like. There were six completed Operation: Cleanups^{[dead link]}.

Operation: Cleanup involved doing the following things:

• Deleting old, closed topics that weren't for reference (the reference topics were archived instead)
• Removing spam from the forum
• Moving threads to the correct forum

Users were encouraged to report anything which fits into the above categories, and in the second Operation: Cleanup TBG Credits were being offered for those who report things to be deleted.

When the RPG forum was created there was an "Operation: RPG" asking users to report RPG threads in the TBG forum. Technically, this was not an Operation: Cleanup per se, but a means of adapting the RPG forum for casual usage.

The last Operation: Cleanup (dubbed Operation: Hexaclean) was the sixth Operation: Cleanup.

TBG Credits

See also: Frequently Rejected Suggestions#Digital currency

TBG Credits was an unofficial currency used in the Text-Based Games Forums, started by the TBG Moderator Vista4563. It used "c" as its symbol (e.g. 450c). They were mostly used in TBGs, however, some shops also opened.

Credits were most popular in May to August 2010. Unfortunately, the system became inactive as it was proving too difficult for the moderators to update.

Ways to Earn Money

• The first five applicants had received 500 credits each.
• New applicants would receive 100 credits each.
• On authenticating a game that will use credits, one would receive 100 credits extra to manage one's game.
• At one's first transaction to the bank, one would receive a 50 credit opening bonus.
• In some games that used credits, they were offered as rewards.

Interest

• When the amount of money in the bank reaches 100 credits, one would start receiving 50c interest monthly on the banked credits.
• When the amount of money in the bank reaches 500 credits, one would receive 100c interest.
• When the amount of money in the bank reaches 1000 credits, one would receive 200c interest.
• When the amount of money in the bank reaches 5000 credits, one would receive 500c interest.

Extensions

• Auctioning Center^{[dead link]}
• Copyright Office^{[dead link]}
• Shops and Games^{[dead link]}

Alternate Currencies

The closing of the credits system did spark a new generation of currencies run by moderators and Scratchers alike. These included:

• Coins
• Gems/Currency (Deleted in Scratch 1.x forums)
• Fakemony
• Jules/Jewels
• Tokens
• Pennies

Pennies became the generally accepted currency between September 19, 2011 and the closing of TBG Forums, with the Credits Center website as its eventual successor.

Multi-File Games

Multi-file games, also known as MFGs, are games that have different storylines, or "files", for each user. The idea originates from the Scratcher wiimaster, who created the concept and the first game. wiimaster deleted the first ever MFG, which was called 'Paper Mario: Torn Pages 3FG', because of the restrictions on multi-file games.

Location

Most MFGs were made in the role-playing games forum. Some were made using projects or studios, but this was not very popular.

Restrictions

There were two restrictions on multi-file games. First, no multi-file game could have more than eight files. Games from before the restriction with more than eight files could not make any more. Second, each user could only create five multi-file games. If one was closed, that user could then create another game.

Suggestions Regarding MFGs

On November 4, 2011, the user SJRCS_011 suggested that there be a separate forum for multi-file games. His reasoning was that if everyone was allowed five MFGs with eight files each, the RPG forum could get clogged up with MFG threads. A discussion then ensued, with the result being that the moderators would then talk it over.

New TBGers

Main article: New Scratcher Status#New TBGers

When a user joined the Text Based Games Forums for the first time, they obtained New TBGer status. They became TBGers in the same way as Scratchers on the Main Forums, although status in the Scratch Forums and Text Based Games Forums was unrelated.