Ah, I couldn't remember where this thread was. I read it on my cellphone, but well, I didn't remember the location. Thought it was pretty interesting though. Well not really your experiences, but the fact that you think about what happens in the community seeing it as a whole.
I myself don't have any experience with other communities, and I'm staff of this one, so I'm probably biased. However, I like to think that this is a relatively okay community. We have some pretty talented people here, and pretty things get made (not only graphically). It is a fact however, that up until recently we were steering a bit away from gamemaking. This wasn't intentionally though, the focus was more at the community. The output of games and game-related things started to decrease, and that wasn't a good thing. It's good to see that we're getting back on track though.
I've seen a couple of game development related forums though. The most close to us being RRR. Also a dutch RPG maker board, and I have some vague memories of other development communities. I must say that in the RPG maker branch, we're by far the most talented and advanced, yet we don't really have a name as being a great site. I don't know why that is, but maybe the typical crowd is just a bit pretentious, and dislikes our ways.
About the vague memories, the only thing I can say is that the focus of that board was less aimed at the community, and more at game making. No 'general discussion', no 'rec room', just technical posts. I've been getting into Unity, and checking out the official Unity forums; they're just technical questions and stuff, nothing social.
This has pros and cons. The pros being that your (forum's) output is much likely to have a greater quality than when your community spends their time talking about whatever they did today, and how it affected their life. The cons are that it's very 'sterile', in a sense that people don't get to know each other, and will just ask questions, get answers, and continue with what they're doing. This doesn't really help in maintaining a community, but it is very professional.
As a development forum/community, I think we're still not focusing enough on the display and treatment of finished games, but that's another story.
Now what you say about graphics is an argument that has been around for nearly as long as game-making existed.
(although you have to admit that peri's graphic mockup was really gorgeous, I
would play that game just for the graphics)
THE BATTLE BETWEEN GRAPHICS AND GAMEPLAYSome people say graphics are the most important part of a game, some people say it's all about gameplay. I think it's all about what you're looking for yourself. For me though, it's about both. I'll only play a game if it excels in both graphics and gameplay, and an x number of people have been confirming that.
I'm a huge graphic junk though, and I think that you could pull off a good game without good gameplay, but then the graphics would have to be near-perfect, and it would be like playing a movie (much like Heart of Darkness, for the PS1).
Anyway, a good example of a game that excels in both would be Limbo. If you don't know it, I suggest you check it out. If you know about it already, I needn't say more. I was so inspired by this that I have decided (together with a good and skilled partner, of course) to make a game that relies heavily on the Limbo gameplay (let's see how far we'll get). The game will have a totally different look though:
http://tomasknipscheer.nl/stuff/brim/brim.jpg (much brighter, and more color) (we'll keep the silhouettes for the environment though, because I'm not going to model/texturize/shade everything, that's too much of a hassle)
Anyway, this brings me to another one of your points. With the renaming to HBgames, we were hoping to steer away from the RPG Maker crowd/stamp a bit. I guess since you label us as such proves that we're not there yet. I'm sure hoping for some good reception on what I'm about to create though, and I hope it will inspire others to go beyond RPG Maker, and make something good.
There's not really a closure to my story, but I think this is enough opinion to fuel some discussion..