Stitch on 10/5/2007 at 00:06
My first suggestion would be to take excerpts from that post and create a stickied announcement thread in all forums but this one to direct community members towards this topic.
On topic, however, I think GBM's analysis of what is needed is spot on. We need a front page with a clear purpose that is supported by the forums. Throwing together the inverse--a front page that is only an extension of the forums--would quickly fail, as Monkeysee's Science Fridays and Lunchtime in the Jungle with GBM wouldn't really function as anything other than jumped-up threads (unless they were just pieces of the larger appealing vision).
GBM's suggestion of a software/hardware review/info site with a well written, humorous angle works for me. I'd also like to add a "no bullshit" clause in there so reviews are as untainted by hype as possible. Also welcome would be articles that cover the games that you can't necessarily find at Best Buy--independent gems, cool flash games, and certainly ancient classics.
I'm willing to write as well as contribute illustrations, depending on what is decided.
Scots Taffer on 10/5/2007 at 00:09
It's an intriguing problem, I must admit. I myself only end up on TTLG.com if I somehow manage to misclick.
If TTLG is looking to reposition itself as not only the graveyard of all things LGS but in those games that recapture their spirit, then perhaps that's exactly the way to go - classify the games by what they seek to create rather than just their genres (otherwise we'd need a seperate subforum for every bloody Splinter Cell game because OMG STELTH), so for Thief games it was atmospheric first person experience which has been captured in a recent game such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (which also grabs role-playing ingredients, which I understand were a part of the Underworld series), which we now have a forum for, and the Underworld series itself spawned the Oblivion and Elder Scrolls forums as they are games of a similar breed but are they of a similar nature in their overall design concepts? If not, then perhaps that's where the reimagining has to happen, attempting to define exactly what it is that LGS did that we can see happening in other game studios out there.
If some consensus on that could be reached, then stories on TTLG.com could gravitate around these "similar" games and developments of studios carrying the LGS torch so to speak.
Edit: Seeing Stitch's post above, I can also agree with well written editorials on say hardware and legacy gaming etc could work well, given the community's predeliction towards these areas.
Edit edit: My 9000th post is honouring the future of TTLG :cool:
Stitch on 10/5/2007 at 00:17
Quote Posted by Scots_Taffer
Edit: Seeing Stitch's post above, I can also agree with well written editorials on say hardware and legacy gaming etc could work well, given the community's predeliction towards these areas.
Maybe I'm thinking a bit too big here, but from a brainstorming angle I'd rather us ask "what kind of site would I seek out to read?" as opposed to "what kind of site would our members be most qualified to create?"
Scots Taffer on 10/5/2007 at 00:30
That's an insanely huge question though, and when you consider that from all angles of our readership then you have a massive problem jelling that all together without becoming a digg or something retarded.
Stitch on 10/5/2007 at 00:37
Quote Posted by Scots_Taffer
when you consider that from all angles of our readership
Why would we need to do this?
Scots Taffer on 10/5/2007 at 00:41
Well, how niche is niche here?
Gingerbread Man on 10/5/2007 at 01:09
We aren't interested in overstepping the current "PC Gaming News and Discussion" niche, if that's what you're getting at. Fortunately, there's plenty of room in there for a wide variety of subtopics from the obvious "news, previews, reviews" thing to the wider and more vaguely-defined "gaming culture" or whatever not-that-faggy name we can give to it.
That said, there's definitely a place for off-topic features that are interesting to the community. But certainly we'd want to keep the Gaming end of things up around 90% of the content. Sometimes I wonder if that's doable, though. And then I wonder if maybe we do want to stray a bit further afield in that regard, to make things reflect the community more than the industry.
Thing is, as Scots has pointed out, that direction is even more fraught with the perils of incoherence.
Like I say, this has been a topic of discussion (primarily between Saam, David, scumble, and myself) for a very long time. We've wrestled with all kinds of ideas, but nothing has really managed to pop out as a Bloody Good Plan.
(edit: I'd really like to see some humour involved, too. There's so much about gaming and gamer culture that is ripe for satire, from Derek Smart and DNF to more sophisticated things like that Concerned comic)
Scots Taffer on 10/5/2007 at 01:20
The point of my response to Stitch was to say, we can either open TTLG's main essence open to the ideas of the entire readership (which I think is a mistake) or we can allow it to be shaped by a key few readers (which is probably also a mistake), and that's what I meant by "how niche is niche", do we want to only make the main page relevant to a few people or everyone? How will we grow the readership in that case, etc.
Or, more sensibly, are we doing it to keep in line with some sort of overarcing vision of what TTLG stands for? And that's the understandably difficult part, defining what TTLG actually is about these days; I'm more than willing to take a stab at participating in forming an impression of the place though.
Gingerbread Man on 10/5/2007 at 03:01
Well, let's try to start with that, then. Because honestly, that's a big and fundamental question.
TTLG started as Saam's System Shock fansite. It grew to include Thief, SS2, Deus Ex, and most recently things like Morrowind, BioShock, and Arx Fatalis. The relative success or failure of the daughter sites is immaterial at this point -- suffice it to say that only one of them is actually breathing on its own and another one alternates between limping and sprinting depending on whether it's got any staff.
The forums are, without a doubt, the core of TTLG.
The main hub is in a difficult position, though. It has so far functioned as a portal to the rest of TTLG, and as such it tends to be ignored after the daughter sites and their interesting content have been bookmarked. As a portal the main site really only serves as an additional hoop to jump through on your way to what you're after, instead of the concentrated and distilled news feed it was presumably meant to be. Nowadays we have RSS, and portal sites are pretty much useless for that purpose. So much more power has been shifted to the client / browser side.
The hub needs to have an identity and a purpose above and beyond a "front room" for the rest of the sites / forums. It's always seemed like a half-hearted attempt to umbrella a bunch of disparate news sites to me, and I know that wasn't what Dan and Saam intended. But it's not a long trip down the hill from "stab at copying Gamespy in 1997" to "utterly derelict because it doesn't actually
do anything".
Perhaps that sounds harsh, but perhaps it also sounds true.
But all of this begs the question. Does TTLG actually have a coherent and identifiable niche? What do we think it should be? What do we think it is? What do we
want it to be?
Can we even find a common thread that links the games we find interesting? Are there games you think fit whatever image TTLG tries to maintain that we DON'T cover or showcase?
Imagine that everything works out just the way you want it to... What kind of site are you seeing at (
www.ttlg.com) in a year? Why have you bookmarked it (not the forums, but the hub itself), and what keeps you coming back? In an ideal scenario.
Opening it up to everyone's ideas is the one thing we haven't been doing in all of our backstage discussions. And it's the one thing I think we all realise now we SHOULD have done from the start. There are no wrong answers, not yet. Soon there will be, but right now what we need is for people who genuinely like the place and want to see it thrive to pipe up and say what they'd do if they were in charge of the central site of what seems to have become a wheel made only of spokes.
Stitch on 10/5/2007 at 03:14
Quote Posted by Scots_Taffer
Or, more sensibly, are we doing it to keep in line with some sort of overarcing vision of what TTLG stands for?
I'd say "hell no," because (a) that would only appeal to members of TTLG and (b) just what exactly is the overarcing vision of TTLG anyway?
The only way this would be successful is if we create a unique site that intersects some interests of the community but is not defined by them.
Were I to design a gaming website, it would probably be pitched at the 20-30 something gamer whose life is not defined by gaming. The casual, no-bullshit gamer who has a job, gets laid, and is savvy enough to know that their hobby is a nerdy one but independent enough to not give a shit. The tone would be mostly humorous but the articles would have decent depth. The humor itself would be caustic but not mean-spirited.
I'm thinking writers would also be encouraged to let themselves be part of the story as well, a la GBM's recipes. If the writer is visiting with a development house and things are awkward because he/she has to visit the bathroom every fifteen minutes to piss out the Big Gulp sucked down on the car ride over, that damn well better make the final cut.
