For a background, there’s another community that I’m a part of that has rather similar rules. The thing about it is that, rather than games, that site focuses on psychology.
Anyways, random banter and chit-chat wasn’t allowed, because... well... it was random. Threads would be locked, comments hidden,, that sort of thing. Eventually, a new moderator came in and made a “MegaThread” that was specifically designed for the random banter and chit-chat.
Every now and then the thread would have to be locked because it was simply so big that the site couldn’t handle it, so they made a new “generation” of the MegaThread.

Long story short, I think that there should be a place for that, similar to the MegaThread. It works, it’s brilliant, and everyone on that site is all for it. Please consider the request, make one of these. Thanks :)