Discussion What do you want out of a gaming website?

[Hawk]

Hey everyone, I run a gaming website and we’re working on a redesign that will launch early next year to coincide with our 15th Anniversary. I’m interested in gathering your feedback so we can build something that people actually want to visit. Now, we can’t promise to include everything or even deliver on that, but we want to make something you enjoy and will keep coming back to. (If you want me to link you to the current site, I can, but that’s not what I’m here for. )

What we do today:

• No ads, but we have a few affiliate links for potential payment
  • The site has and currently operates at a loss, but we would like find places for profit where appropriate
• No sponsored posts, reviews (see: paid), or anything where we create content in exchange for money
• Article/Words/Text content:
  • Reviews (scoring, out of 5)
  • News
    • We do not have the staff to do more than reissue press release as-written (this helps us secure codes for future coverage)
  • Editorials, guides, and anything else in this space
• Media content:
  • Videos: Either edited or unedited gameplay with narration (think Giant Bomb Quick Looks)
  • Previews: Mostly unedited gameplay with narration (think Giant Bomb Quick Looks)

What we want to do:

• That’s where you come in
• We’re not asking you to build the site, but we want to find where we can meet in the middle and provide something you want more of, or what you’re not getting today.

Starting questions and getting your thoughts:

Are you someone that hates traditional gaming sites? Tell us why, and what would make you come back

Are you someone that likes traditional gaming sites? Tell us what you like or don’t like, and how we can meet your needs.

Anything not covered here, just throw them in and give us your feelings.

Thank you!

 

[lashman]

RSS feed, with full article text and images, not just first sentence and "click to read more"

proper presence in the fediverse

(also - good to see you stop by )

 

[Hawk]

Well we have one of those two already, setting up a detailed RSS feed should be no problem.

(happy to be back!)

 

[lashman]

Well we have one of those two already, setting up a detailed RSS feed should be no problem.

(happy to be back!)

well, that's great to hear then! thank you!

 

[Nebulys]

Since you say no ads, I'd also like to think you don't indulge in clickbait.

Basically, if 'Saved you a click' is roasting you on social media, you're doing it wrong.

Also, I work in UX/content design for an extremely highly trafficked website (over 5m unique visitors a week), and while the place I work is somewhere people must interact with, I feel like making it pleasant to use is really important regardless of whether it's a utility, government or leisure site.

Some sites employ all sorts of BS designed to keep you on there (but actually just make users mad), such as scripts that hijack gestures on mobile devices and designs that are pretty counter-intuitive and user hostile. Anything that pisses you off when you browse probably pisses your users off on your site.

Articles (like opinions, previews and reviews) should be written in an interesting and engaging way, but content framing the articles should be clear and in plain English where possible. Keep navigation simple, make it really easy for your users to do things like login, get in touch, and leave comments.

In articles, summaries and ledes should be informative, not packed with keywords and phrases that most people skim read, skip over, and scroll down the page to get to the actual content (because, surprise surprise, there's an ad that sits between you and what you need to see). Every word should be valuable and not waste the reader's time.

Make a style guide. This doesn't mean writing like a drone, but your site should read in a consistent way that your users come to expect, especially in things like guides.

Think about accessibility. Games and gaming sites generally get a bad rap for having poor accessibility, but as games get more accessible then so should the sites about games. The basics should be done anyway like properly tagging images with descriptions, but also doing things like using descriptive links instead of vague one-word links will help every single person using your site. If you make your site accessible for a blind person, then 100% of the people using your site will find it easier to use. Fact.


To get into specifics:

News

• no clickbait
• no vague ledes that make you scroll further
• no hyperbole - be factual and proportionate in your headlines
• if all you're doing is copying and pasting press releases, provide bullet summaries for more complex or hyperbolic nonsense that some PR people put out and stick it as a bulleted list at the top of the page in a stand-out call to action or something

Guides

• write them in plain English
• use bullets, steps and simple sentences to describe what players must do
• provide short videos within step-by-steps to show how to complete specific actions (for example, in an escape room game like No Sleep for Kaname Date, don't just upload a 10 minute video, but break it into smaller chunks that users can find easily as they're navigating the page)
• avoid plot spoilers in both text and video - keep it strictly to the point

Reviews

• make them interesting to read (this is where the "fun" of writing should be)
• use the full score scale
• try not to be comprehensive - the best reviews capture a distinct feeling (or series of feelings) of the reviewer and bottle it up into a collection of words, rather than just having a checklist of things that need to be covered in every review - if the game made a reviewer cry, then the review should be about the emotional depth in the game that caused that (in short, it is okay to not be comprehensive in a review - just give your readers a vibe of what clicked or didn't click with the game)

A big problem with game websites (and lots of other websites) in the year 20XX is that they're not written for humans anymore. So whenever you're making a decision about something, ask yourself a very simple question: where's the value for the user?

Thank you for reading my draft TED Talk.

 

[lashman]

use the full score scale

note on this - if you do this (and you should!), you should also provide a scoring guide (preferably as a popover when someone hovers over the review score or something - so it's ALWAYS just a hover/click away) where you explain that you are actually doing this, and even maybe providing some examples of popular games that would get the same score, so there's some context

 

[Nebulys]

note on this - if you do this (and you should!), you should also provide a scoring guide (preferably as a popover when someone hovers over the review score or something - so it's ALWAYS just a hover/click away) where you explain that you are actually doing this, and even maybe providing some examples of popular games that would get the same score, so there's some context

Review scoring should be part of the style guide, in my view.

Also, as an accessibility nut, hovers are terrible for users and always break eventually when someone disables javascript or has an adblocker.

A better way would be:

Score: 5 out of 5

Read more about how we score our reviews.

 

[lashman]

Review scoring should be part of the style guide, in my view.

Also, as an accessibility nut, hovers are terrible for users and always break eventually when someone disables javascript or has an adblocker.

A better way would be:

i suppose, but you know people don't read that stuff, so i would still at the very least put a "context sheet" somewhere near the score

 

[Nebulys]

i suppose, but you know people don't read that stuff, so i would still at the very least put a "context sheet" somewhere near the score

If someone isn't interested in what you have to say, putting it in their face in an obtrusive way (or in a way that people who might actually want to read it can't access) is going to have the opposite effect.

Good design of websites/content isn't about what you want to tell someone, it's about what they're visiting your page to find out and how you make it easier for them to get that info.

If a reader doesn't care about your score system, you just have to take the L on that because they will never care.

 

[lashman]

If someone isn't interested in what you have to say, putting it in their face in an obtrusive way (or in a way that people who might actually want to read it can't access) is going to have the opposite effect.

Good design of websites/content isn't about what you want to tell someone, it's about what they're visiting your page to find out.

If a reader doesn't care about your score system, you just have to take the L on that because they will never care.

fair, i suppose

 

[Nebulys]

fair, i suppose

I had to learn this the hard way when user research and analytics on a page that got tens of thousands of views each month told me I'd gotten it wrong.

Kinda sucks, but there we go.

 

[lashman]

I had to learn this the hard way when user research and analytics on a page that got tens of thousands of views each month told me I'd gotten it wrong.

Kinda sucks, but there we go.

yeah, not gonna argue there - obviously you have hard data, haha

 

[xinek]

Hey everyone, I run a gaming website and we’re working on a redesign that will launch early next year to coincide with our 15th Anniversary. I’m interested in gathering your feedback so we can build something that people actually want to visit. Now, we can’t promise to include everything or even deliver on that, but we want to make something you enjoy and will keep coming back to. (If you want me to link you to the current site, I can, but that’s not what I’m here for. )

What we do today:

• No ads, but we have a few affiliate links for potential payment
  • The site has and currently operates at a loss, but we would like find places for profit where appropriate
• No sponsored posts, reviews (see: paid), or anything where we create content in exchange for money
• Article/Words/Text content:
  • Reviews (scoring, out of 5)
  • News
    • We do not have the staff to do more than reissue press release as-written (this helps us secure codes for future coverage)
  • Editorials, guides, and anything else in this space
• Media content:
  • Videos: Either edited or unedited gameplay with narration (think Giant Bomb Quick Looks)
  • Previews: Mostly unedited gameplay with narration (think Giant Bomb Quick Looks)

What we want to do:

• That’s where you come in
• We’re not asking you to build the site, but we want to find where we can meet in the middle and provide something you want more of, or what you’re not getting today.

Starting questions and getting your thoughts:

Are you someone that hates traditional gaming sites? Tell us why, and what would make you come back

Are you someone that likes traditional gaming sites? Tell us what you like or don’t like, and how we can meet your needs.

Anything not covered here, just throw them in and give us your feelings.

Thank you!

Personally, I don't care about ads (as long as it's not sound/video) or even sponsored posts that are up front about it. You have to make money somehow. I often watch sponsored gaming streams, if I like the streamer, because even a sponsored post or stream can have good info or be entertaining. When it comes to affiliate links, I say get your bag, because if your info is useful to me I'm happy to click on them. I have strict adblocking and usually never see an ad, but I turn it off for sites I like. What I don't like is shilling. Or opinion articles that press an opinion or take a side but aren't well researched. A good article will present all aspects of an issue or controversy and dig into stuff that others aren't. It's also boring when sites just copy stuff from reddit or social media. I can see that crap anywhere, and most of it is tbh dull and doesn't enhance my life in any way, it's just for killing time.

Reviews would be super valuable. I don't read reviews from any site right now, I only read Steam reviews. This is because pretty much every review site smells of shilling or clickbait to me. Maybe that's correct, maybe not, but either way, I don't have any interest in examining sites to try and figure out if they're honest or if the reviewer knows what they're talking about. Unfortunately, it probably takes a while to get a good reputation where people will come to your site for good, informative, unbiased reviews. But I'd love a site I could rely on for that.

I'd definitely visit for editorials and guides.

I'd say I like traditional gaming sites, but they don't seem to exist anymore. I sometimes will go look for interesting content on PC gaming, whether it's industry news, chitchat, hardware reviews, or whatever, and I always end up coming back to a site like metacouncil. There's definitely room for a good old fashioned gaming site without clickbait, SEO, AI, or shilling. Not sure if others will agree, but I'd probably recommend not including any community commenting, because in general, people are just so incredibly stupid. I've seen so much disinformation and dumb, irrelevant opinions in comment sections. I am a curmudgeon though.

 

[Panda Pedinte]

Some things that I personally dislike and makes me avoid sites

• Click bait articles
• Long articles where most of the text is just padding
• Sponsered posts not marked as such

What I like reading

• Reviews but I usually don't care about the score given
• Interviews with folks who work in the industry, and for me it doesn't matter if they work on AAA or an indie game

 

[gabbo]

What I'd like more sites to do:
-No review scale. If you can't explain in the text of a review how you feel about a game, numbers won't help. Go long form. I want to know what you got from the experience of playing. If the game tries something new/interesting with graphics/sound/input that in some way influences the experience, talk about that, but don't make them the focus. If a game is broken, that would likely colour the experience, so mention it.

-In depth articles on things going on in the industry - like what People Makes Games do on youtube- proper journalism with research etc. Harder to do if you're a small outlet I realize, but you asked.

-A play by play review of a random unknown game from steam/gog/etc. Use wheeldecide (or some other method) to determine what game to select from a list of games. RPS used to have Reviews Roulette - their team played small games for X number of minutes before moving on to the next game. Video obviously works best for this, but isn't required. MST3k with games you know nothing about before you launch them perhaps? Play with the format to make it your own. People complain about discovery, this would be a fun way to try and alleviate that.

-Interviews with small devs. The biggest games don't need more words written about them. Go interview the team whose new game just reached 100 positive reviews on Steam that someone on your team liked, who could use the coverage. I'd swear, somewhere in the annals of the internet there is an interview with Ice Pick Lodge (who were basically unknown in the west at the time) where the interviewer flew to Moscow and met the team at a bar and the interview plays out like work of existential dread about living in modern Russia as it is a talk about the game theyre working on, but I cannot seem to find it.

I think it's kind of obvious the original Rock Paper Shotgun was a gaming site that realy clicked with me. Even if I didn't always agree with them, they put it all on the page explaining why they felt that way and I could respect that. Also Idle Thumbs and the GFW Radio postcast, which were at their best when games weren't necessarily the topic at hand, but were underlining whatever they were talking about at a given time (Space Asshole, Grenades rolling down hills, Dooty Calls, etc). Basically don't let the fact that you're a games site limit what you write about or how you write about it.
If all i wanted was trash with a number attached, IGN and Gamespot exist, but I don't want that.