One way to facilitate both players and devs feeling comfortable and connecting is maybe to allow games to have a subforum? If my games had a forum where I could connect with the players of my games, I would certainly be using those and I'd probably stray outside them as well. It also gives both players and devs a reason to be here; meaningful interaction between developer and audience for specific games. Hopefully some of that would spill over into other parts of the forum? It'd also keep most of the shameless plugging isolated.