Chat game rooms

Question

We've now got two rooms for games on chat: Codenames and Contact.

I'm excited that these chat rooms have formed. But I'm wondering, should they be separate?

A reason, perhaps, that they should be seperate, is that they could interfere with each other when playing. However, in the near future, I don't think there'll be enough traffic that two fully functioning games would run at least the same time.

Another reason is that the starboard could be clogged with material from both games. But if we just have one main rules post for the two games, along with possibly a link for the Codenames website, there is still quite a bit of space left.

On the other hand, having two chat rooms is inconvenient for switching between games (this UTC morning Contact was played and then we switched to Codenames.

Having a single chat room would also result in more active people in the one place, making it easier to start a game and also meaning that people wouldn't miss a game going on in the other chat room.

What does the community think?

Answer 1

Oh God, please don't combine them.

Can you imagine how confusing it would be to have both games going on at the same time? You say that's unlikely to happen, but many people in chat have roughly similar daily activity patterns, so at peak time there could well be enough people for both games to be played. Why should they have to take turns? It seems silly to make the Codenames people wait until the Contact people have finished.

The chat.SE server isn't under so much strain that we need to carefully conserve chatrooms. And most people who are active in one of the game rooms are probably also pingable in the Sphinx's Lair, so that can serve as a place to gather participants for one game or the other.

Once again, just imagine how confusing it would be. Even if both games weren't being played at the same time, someone might drop in to a shared room and be unsure which game was being played. It's better for each room to have a single clear and unambiguous purpose.