Great threads, I was going to bring this subject up myself after the arbiter election too hehe
I think a lot of the time we have found ourselves "waiting for X MMO to come along" before trying to set something up together, which is fine at the end of the day but we often miss out on other opportunities to play stuff together in smaller groups inbetween I think. Plenty of the games we play for their single player campaigns come with some kind of co-op and/or multiplayer mode on top of that. A mode which (for some of us) would probably go ignored for the most part. They don't need to be and we could be making use of those as a group, even if it's just a bunch of us playing 2 player co-op of something and then posting about it later, any activity is good activity.
Battlefield 4 is a good example I think. Besides buying the game itself (and the extra map packs with premium if one wants) there's no subscription fees involved, no steep learning curves, no gameplay restrictions preventing us from playing together (like player levels or gear in an MMO, or rating brackets etc), no server restrictions (though ping is still something to be aware of ofc) and really just the type of game that is both quick and easy to jump in and out of. Sure it's not really a game you'd go around recruiting people in as matches aren't very long and you don't get to know people the same way as you do in an MMO for example but it's still something we could have been playing together in smaller groups on the side, whilst visibly flying the SSX tag infront of our names.
I don't tend to play BF4 (PC) now as much as I did on release but I still have it installed and jump back in for a few matches every now and then. Some of the upcoming games I'm getting which have co-op/multi in too are:
Driveclub (PS4),
Assassin's Creed Unity (PC),
CoD: AW (PS4 or PC),
Far Cry 4 (PC) &
GTA V (PC). I may get
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (PC) and
Project CARS (PC) at the end of the year as well but I haven't decided yet.
Another game I thought of just recently is FIFA. I can't stand it myself (football that is) but I know there's a few of you here who can't get enough of the stuff. Might be a potential game for you footie lovers to think about playing together casually sometime?. Just a thought
Anyway, playing some of these smaller MP/co-op games together will be good I think. Whilst increasing our group gaming activity it will also help fuel the forums with discussion and our sites with new content. If people then discover us through one of our other sites like Facebook, Twitter & YouTube we'll have something to show for it when they come back here (not just our history, but the present too).
Will check the schedule though!