The idea is far from new and has been done before. I thought about it when I tried to link some reviews Strategy Core posted to the Gamerankings. It turned out they only value certain review sites, none of them being Strategy Core.

Now I know SC already has close contacts with Tacticular Cancer and so forth and I was just thinking if all of the "sister" sites could create one mainframe. Not to be merged (I LOVE SC and the selection of games it is involved into) but to have a joint site which would more or less only link to all the sisterhood sites and all the (p)reviews. Reviews would have to have numerical grades, though. At least the overall grade. Description isn't enough.

I don't know if that would change things much, but such a Federation of Small Gamesites could promote all the involved sites and perhaps give them all a higher "value". Hell, perhaps even value?

We could have bigger access to newer titles and at least joined together the federation could cover a lot of them. It could also help the games that are otherwise somewhat marginalized.

The Federation of Independent Gaming Sites.

I like it.

A few webcomics have raised their profile by gathering under the same banner, eg. dumbrella.com.

FA - you know that's The FIGS don't you?

The idea's an interesting one. Provided all sites involved could generate an RSS feed from their news entries (we can because our forum osftware supports it) there's no reason why the one main site couldn't even pull in ALL the news from the smaller sites and acknowledge the source automagically! Of course the webmasters could alternatively just get off their arses and post their news to that site as well as their own... I always have to go and think of a coding solution

Reviews and other things would be more difficult to handle though. If we were to do something like post full reviews on the one main site, nobody would ever visit the smaller sites A solution would be to just keep the site as a news hub so, as with reviews in the news here, post a quote, some pics and a link to the article.

There are other things that you could do to draw people to this main source as well, such as having one HUGE newsletter for all the sites each week/month where the latest news and links to reviews is emailed to the combined audience along with interesting happenings from the various sites to actually force people to visit the individual websites.

I think more folks would be inclined to sign up for a newsletter with a wider scope and volume of content.

Yes. Yes, I do. I don't expect it'll go any further than here, but it amused me. Example: www.The-FIGS.com - producing quality shit.

Because figs are roughage, you see.



There's an idea. "Tacticular Cancer gave Generic Strategy 3: The Mods of War 7/10, StrategyCore gave it 4/10." etc etc. This could actually lead to an accurate review aggregator site, where 5 is actually an average score and there are honest reviews, unlike places like Gamespot et al.

I would prefer calling such a site the FIG tree - fig trees are associated with enlightenment in Buddhism. ANd the graphics would be prettier than if we go with FA's suggestion

Since it would increase awareness of the games covered by the sites, it would give the individual sites more leaverage when it comes to things like getting the developers to agree to interviews and developing a patch for the buggy game they've just released.

Honest reviews would be an interesting novelty. A lot of 'professional' reviewers seem to be remarkably open to being bribed into giving a good review.

"The Figs - It's the Shizzle Mo Fizzle"

I see shades of brown...

Or possibly not


The review database could work well as if we're only posting an intro and a score on the hub site (maybe with a few pictures) it'll all be going into the same script so comparisons on scores can easily be made, and you can have helpful links to reviews for similar/the same games by different reviewers.

Which sites would we want to be a part of the hub though? SC and TC if they're interested (wonder if Baby Arm has seen this thread). I'm thinking TLO as well because even though it's not just game reviews it's a different style of review (and I'm completely biased in favour of the idea ).

We'd have to concede straight off that because of different writing styles and target audience age-ranges written for at SC and TC, that some mild swearing would be the norm. As long as it's not too overwhelming and it's funny in the newsletters I don't think it would be a particular problem.

All of them? Not sure if TLO can really take part, as we don't tend to do scores so it could present a problem, unless we sum it up in one word/one sentence.

I mean name some other small sites who might be interested if the deal sounds good enough

That was exactly the idea. I wouldn't want the individual sites to be merged, just to have a joint news portal or whatever that would be called. It would only have an opening sentence and a link to the original site that hosts the full article. A joint newsletter would definitely make a great addition!

EDIT: I don't know which sites would participate... Anybody who wants to I guess... And that has something to contibute. Previews, reviews, articles of the gaming/computer content.

Pete, you know I don't go anywhere else apart from here and TLO. Shame on you.

My bad

Interesting idea . We'll have to discuss it in out next meeting.

Just wondering... When is your next meeting?

When Slaughter gets a decent online connection?

It was on the 24th of September and we discussed the idea of an umbrella site quite extensively. Right now it is only in the planning stages - we want to take the time to do it properly. But rest assured, we are working on it.

- Zombie

I have complete confidence in this project.

Wondering again... Is this idea scrapped yet?

No it hasn't. In fact, we just tested out the possibility of such a site the other day and the results are promising. The catch is that all sites have to have RSS feeds and agree to participate in such a venture. That should take care of the discussion/news/chat aspect. The content aspect is another matter altogether.

- Zombie

Niiiiiiiice!!! The content? Well, my idea was to simply post the "news" sections of all participating sites into one. If there would be any more content - even better.

To continue with the wondering part; is there any way I can help with either SC or the joint site? Meaning: what knowledge should I have (obtain) to be able to help?