Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Huh. I guess this implies that a high volume of threads on a single subject, like Alpha Centauri, justifies splitting it off from the rest of the games forums. Which means, given that NESing and IOT both have high volumes of topics on separate lines, that there's no reason to merge them based solely on any degree of similarity. You have to prove they are functionally the same -- proof which has been utterly lacking in this thread, as even posts by those supporting the merger state there is significant differences in the community and social atmosphere. Which, given their nature as social games, must necessarily mean they are significantly different products.
Alpha Centauri doesn't get its own forum because of a high volume of posts per se, but because it's in the category of Civilizational games which, on a Civilization-focused message board, merits an exceptional focus based on the nature of these boards alone. If you take a walk around and look at other message boards, you're less likely to see "Alpha Centauri" forums. On the 2K Forums, for instance, Civilization gets its own forum - as does BioShock, XCOM, and others. But there is not an Alpha Centauri forum to be found. So I don't think Alpha Centauri, being inherently different from other games, deserves its own forum on those merits alone.
Likewise, there doesn't seem to be a very well-established reason for separating NES from IOT, other than that they were founded separately and at very different times. What I'm saying is there's nothing inherent or exceptional about either that is immediately apparent when we consider, say, Mafia versus NES.