Thanks, a lot of good ideas.
Also, this might sound crazy and could go wrong in many ways, but what about embedding itch.io games in your posts? I think it would be pretty sweet.
Definitely want this. This is an idea I've had for a while now. How the embeds will look I have not decided yet
Other madness would be to have an on-demand private forum section for your game
I definitely also have plans for this. It will work kinda similar to how jams can have communities, but with much greater access controls.
The popup on username hover is a good idea too. There are a few other user interaction things I want to tackle first before we start doings something like that but I'll definitely keep it in mind. Right now user profiles are not very good, and really only work for developers, so a popup could be an intermediate solution.