LUE - Definition and Overview

GameFAQs, thanks to its large population, has a wide range of communities at its message boards. LUE, in particular, is extremely controversial and has led to many rule changes in the ToS (Terms of Service).

Most well-known social boards

• Another Place (AP) is a GameFAQs Social Board created when LUE's user level requirement went up to 31. AP is definitely not a part of LUE anymore, and has somewhat of a tightly-knit community. There are many social topics around and is known by its inhabitants as "Your GameFAQs home for polygamy and wit." Some of AP's residents have made their first names known to the board and ask to be addressed by them. AP also has its own, semi-official website containing a set of guidelines, quotes, and a member list, or APe list.
• Current Events (CE) is the oldest social board on GameFAQs. It is usually the second most popular social board on GameFAQs. It is frequented by many of the moderators, and even CJayC from time to time.
• Life, the Universe, and Everything (LUE) is the most popular GameFAQs social board with usually well over 50,000 posts at any time, quite a remarkable number given the frequent purging of old posts. The name was derived from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. It was originally created to provide a place to discuss such things as religion and existence. Discussion today is often sex-related and has been for years.
  • LUE is also home to many fads, including the infamous LUEshi (an ASCII image of Mario riding Yoshi created by the user Patamon. Posting it is now grounds for suspension.), and the phrase "y helo thar", which was said on a live broadcast of Conan O'Brien. The phrase 'Y helo thar' originated in a flash video called "The Attention Whore", which mocks the appearance of women on message boards.
  • Though the board used to be open to all members with 30 Karma, it was raised to 75 Karma following the "Scum Wars" (http://www.firefusion.org/lue) around November 2002. A 150 Karma requirement was implemented after the "RevoLUEtion" (http://www.firefusion.org/lue/Events/RevoLUEtion.htm) on May 7th, 2003, and soon after the board was removed from all board listings. To get to it, one has to manually type in the URL and/or add it to one's favorite board list.
  • On November 15 2003, following a massive LiveJournal invasion by LUE, CJayC "sterilized" (http://www.firefusion.org/lue/56k/Chapter9.htm) LUE by forbidding any user with a user ID greater than 888113 from ever reaching LUE. The last person to ever get into LUE, Lunarhawk99, was hailed as "The One" and regarded as a celebrity, although this perceived status was lost soon after he gained access. Soon after, from January 4th to January 15th, CJayC ran a sign-up for LUE; people that haven't signed up aren't allowed to visit the board. This was done to prevent any new members from visiting and to permanently remove banned users. In exchange, LUE was granted slightly more leeway when it comes to controversial topics.
  • The LUE Trinity (sometimes referred to as the "Unholy Trinity") is the term for the three most commonly posted shock sites on GameFAQs - Goatse, Tubgirl, and the Harlequin Fetus. "Goatse" and "Tubgirl" are autoflagged words, and it is now a major offense to provide links to the sites.
• Random Insanity (RI) was originally created to shunt the less-serious users off of CE. It quickly became host to text-based roleplaying and "social topics" where people could come in and talk about nothing in particular. One of the most popular of these is Pikadeth's Playhouse, which spawned many imitators. Originally RI was slightly hostile towards CE (the origin of "board invasion" being a ToS violation), with the RICE wars being remembered by the "old RIers". RI also has a history of being competitive with LUE; in the early days, users would perform "raids" on LUE in the PM hours. Before the RI Refugee Crisis (http://www.firefusion.org/lue/56k/Chapter4.htm) it usually had twice the number of posts on CE and LUE combined. However, after the incident most of them migrated to LUE.
  • RI had many dramas and traditions of its own, including roleplaying, which started on the board and later moved to the board Role-Playing/Fan-Fiction. Gaw's Laws, a set of rules for roleplaying popularly used at the site, originated at RI. Today, roleplaying is somewhat of a niche, with social topics and one-liners dominating instead. RI has often had problems accepting new users, with resistance coming from "veterans" -- users who, while not necessarily there for very long, tried to establish standards on the "randomly insane" board. One event that still resonates with even the newest users is the Gamequeen incident (http://www.firefusion.org/lue/56k/Chapter4.htm).

Less well-known boards

• The beta boards were created when the message boards of GameFAQs and GameSpot were merged and GameFAQs was switched to PHP from ASP. They include three boards: GameFaqs Forums Beta Discussion, GameFaqs Forums Beta Bug Reports, and GS-GFQs Sharing Test Board. Although they are no longer needed, they have not been removed and some people still post on them.

• The Couch, The Hallway, The Porch, and The Forum are "forum" message boards for general chitchat, with The Couch being the largest among them.

• Game Design and Programming is a board where people can discuss programming concepts and code. The veterans at this board usually look down on "Game Makers", especially the illegal English version of RPG Maker, focusing instead on making the games using OpenGL and SDL. There are even a couple of professional video game programmers who hang out at this board.

• Message Board Help is the unofficial complaint forum of the boards. If a user feels something is wrong with the moderation system or staff, or possibly a board error, it is usually reported here. It is also used to ask questions about board features. This board was named Questions and Suggestions until the Karma system was introduced. After that, all suggestions and petitions have gone to Site Suggestions.

• Poll of the Day (PotD) is another social board, similar to LUE, although the topics there are not usually as bad. PotD has nothing particular in common with the Poll of the Day on the main page, and is usually used to discuss women, love, etc.

• Review Contributors is the board for all the review writers to talk about common interests. This board has been split to better categorize the discussions on it. It is now composed out of three boards: General, Help and Critiques, and Social.

• Regional boards are boards where gamers can chat to people in their own region as well as the world. Most are generic social boards while boards like the Australia & New Zealand board have special events like the noteworthy Battle Royale by Jerec.

• Special Boards are hard to find because one has to type their board numbers (found in parentheses) manually in the address bar. The boards are: Spatula (622), Board 250 (250), Brilliant (-1), Spork (542), Eggbeater (486), Semprini (709), Jenny (8675309), Pie (314159265), Rnd() (123456789), Nine (9), Lame (20040401), Toaster Oven (909090909), and Angela (8535937). In all of these boards one can usually find topics that are used for karma raising by many users, even though such topics are no longer necessary. Toaster Oven in particular had been rumored to exist for years, and was finally created by CJayC along with Rnd(), Nine, and Lame as the April Fool's Joke for 2004. Angela was created along with Jenny several years ago, but very few knew about it until late in 2004.

• Site Suggestions is the official petitioning board, though very few ever pass. Usually passed petitions are a new special interest or social board, though very occasionally a new feature might be added.

• Special Interest Boards are boards that, while not related to gaming, are proof that petitions on Site Suggestions do pass. Special Interest boards include Anime, Music, Graphics, Television, Web Design, Pro Wrestling, RPGs (including paper and Square Enix), Sports, Movies, Web Cartoons and Design, Card Games, Martial Arts, Books, Classic Gamming, Paranormal & Conspiracy, Next Generation Gaming discussion, Adult Swim, and Poetry. Even popular things like The Simpsons, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Pokémon, Star Wars, Dragon Ball, and James Bond have their own boards.

• Summer Contest is the board where people talk about the Summer Character Contest, a huge event at GameFAQs, where the Poll of the Day is replaced by a video game character tournament. Previous winners were Link from The Legend of Zelda, Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII, and Link again in 2004. This board has evolved since 2002 for the most part independently from the other boards mentioned. One well-known event on these boards has happened 2 years in a row, directly after Crono's loss to Mario in both tournaments, each by around 100 votes. Mass account suicides, flaming/trolling, and even accusations of CJayC cheating ensued for days after both times. This board is also known for the constant flame wars between certain groups of users, and the word "fanboy" is horribly overused. During the Spring of 2004, the board name changed to represent the Spring Best Game Ever contest (which was eventually won by Final Fantasy VII, but it is normally under its Summer Contest moniker.

• War on Terrorism was created soon after September 11th to discuss the War on Terrorism and related conflicts like the Middle East. However, it has quickly evolved into a massive political debate forum full of topics ranging from gay marriage to topics bashing organized religion.

• 810-820 Boards were created a few days after April Fool's Day. Originally, CJayC posted on the Icon board (1000 karma requirement) on April Fools Day about making private boards for the first few icons that signed up. Many thought it an April Fool's joke until these boards were actually created. The few people that received these boards also are allowed to name them. So far, the ones that have been named are: 810 (Mostly Harmless), 813 (Unnatural Selection), 814 (The Upper Room), 816 (#showarr), 818 (KGB), 819 (CE Reloaded), and 820 (Hacked). In order to access these boards, the founders must send an invite.

• Secret Boards are game boards where off-topic posting is allowed. This is generally because the systems the games belong to have become so antiquated and obsolete that very little genuine discussion would otherwise take place on them. Many GameFAQsers have adopted some of these boards for their own use. The systems whose game boards are secret boards are found in the KSOT FAQ (http://www.ksot.com/BoardsFAQ.html#secret).

External links

• GameFAQ boards (http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/)

GameFAQs board histories

• Another Place (http://www.geocities.com/headdopus/index.html) is an un-offical fansite.
• History of LUE (http://www.FireFusion.org/lue) - A site that has an accurate recollection of what has happened on LUE from the beginning to the ExcLUEsion.
• First Person Accounts of RI History (http://idea.yoll.net/other/rihistory/index.html). A bit like the History of LUE, but this focuses on what happened in the early days of Random Insanity, including the Gamequeen incident.
• Toaster Oven's History (http://www.freewebs.com/toven/index2.htm)
• USL's History (http://www.redmonkey7.com/usl).