I think the most important thing here is the players vs devs using the forum. Perhaps giving devs the capacity to use a part of the forum to support their game exclusively but I can't currently think of a way to do this without it getting messy. Then also places that are already there to support a dev community.
Personally I don't like the gamifying parts of forums like post counts etc. partly cause it makes all other forums look really ugly and distracts from conversation somewhat but on the other hand if there's something you can track to give a sense of belonging, that would be cool. The reddit function of being able to customise a little coloured box after your name is really useful.