Part of what I’ve wanted to do all along with the front page of Qt3 is open it up as a place that acknowledges you guys’ contributions to the forum. For instance, linking to Angie Gallant’s weird dating sim AAR, Ben Sones’ comments on Bulletstorm, or Wendelius’ discovery of the Battlestar Galactica MMO. In that vein, I’m looking for people who might be interested in writing game diaries for stuff they’re playing.
If you’re not familiar with the game diary format, it’s basically a series of entries about your experience with a game. A given entry might talk about the graphics, or about the comparison to another game, or about something that pissed you off. It can be a tangent to something entirely unrelated. These aren’t reviews, necessarily, or AARs. Instead, they’re what you want them to be. I realize that’s kind of vague. But ultimately, a game diary is about you, with the game as a sort of lens.
A series runs one or two weeks, which means either five or ten entries, and they can be written up in advance or doled out over the course of the run. Entries should be short-ish. They need some sort of screenshot or picture as a visual hook. They also need a headline. But beyond that, it’s completely and totally up to you. I’m happy to work with you if you want help, or editing, or suggestions. Alternatively, I’m happy to just run verbatim what you submit. This will be your space for the run of the series, and I don’t want to get in the way. I’m also happy to handle all the Word Press stuff for you, so as long as you can work a word processor, you’re qualified.
I intend to run a few of these concurrently. Right now, I’m specifically interested in someone writing up his or her experience with Dragon Age 2 and DCS’ A-10 sim. Down the road, I’m open to doing this for any game, new, old, obscure, high-profile. If you’re interested, send me a PM, whether it’s for one of these two games or something else entirely.
A couple of caveats:
This doesn’t pay yet. Unfortunately, Qt3 hasn’t seen any appreciable increase in traffic from the front page yet, which isn’t surprising. Our traffic comes mainly from you fine folks hanging out with each other on the forum. If that changes, I’ll be happy to share the front page’s filthy lucre with you. But for now, this is more about a place where I can show you guys off. Kind of like the podcast, which is restarting this week.
I’m not sure what sort of interest there will be in this. If there are multiple offers – I have no sense for how many people are willing to write for free, even though I’ve been doing a lot of that myself lately – I’ll have to pick one person. If I don’t “know” you, I might ask for a writing sample. But assuming there’s enough interest, this is something I’d like to do regularly, so you’ll get a chance.
And just a quick follow-up to say that I’m tickled pink with the folks who are going to be doing the Dragon Age and A-10 game diaries, so those slots are filled. If, however, you’re interested in doing other games at a later time, please still PM me. I’d like for this to be an ongoing thing.
If you guys can achieve even just 10% of what Angie managed to do with that Japanese dating sim, I would be honored to run it on the front page. Seriously, drop me a PM with whatever pitch you like.
Also, I’m delighted with the response to this! We’ve got four (4!) new game diaries starting this week and plenty of interest for more down the line. Keep the PMs coming. I’ll be responding to each and every one.
I love seeing all this stuff on the front page. These diaries and Geryk talking about wargames I’ve never heard of is going to make me spend a lot more time there.
Screenshots can be taken by the writer or dug up using Google image search. Mr. Gopher, I’d rather we didn’t double up on game diaries just yet. There are plenty of games for everyone! :)
^ That totally answered my question.
Would love to see one on Pikmin, with it’s sheer amount of violence and mature content disguised in cute and cuddly.
I’m loving the new front page and the game diaries. I read primarily through RSS, and I noticed that although the stories have a “jump” barrier, that is not carried through into the RSS. If one of the goals of the jump is to get RSS readers to follow the link to the full site, then that needs fixing because right now the whole article is in the RSS. I believe at Fidgit the RSS entries did indeed stop at “after the jump…” I say all this even though it’s easier for me to read the whole thing right in Google reader, but on the internet, what’s best for the reader is never what’s best for the publisher, is it?
I need more game diaries. Since Tom’s on the west coast, most of them get posted in the late afternoon and evening for me. That’s too long to wait for the next installment!
I’ll second this. I and a lot of the people I know find new content on their favorite sites through RSS, and you’ll want to make sure that everything “after the jump” doesn’t automatically get pulled into the feed. It’s one thing if they’re using some fancy RSS reader with Readability support or some such - no need to go bonkers trying to prevent that.
I think you’re on wordpress, right? The “more” in RSS is something they removed in 2.5 or something, I think. There’s probably an option buried somewhere, or at least a plugin to handle it.
In the latest public version of Wordpress (the version hosted on Wordpress.com), you go Settings > Reading and then change the option under “For each article in a feed, show” from “Full text” to “Summary”
