You tried so hard, and got so far.
I actually typed “John Davidson 1up” into Google to check the correct spelling before I posted, but apparently I just saw that others had misspelled his name too. D’oh! Fixed in my posts anyway.
I dunno about the Wii HD story being suspect Dave. It sounds to me like they were ruminating on that story for awhile and that it was written after they had noticed over a long period of time that many unrelated people were commenting on a Wii HD. They did the requisite digging and wrote a story. It doesn’t sound suspect to me.
And at the risk of Rock8 accusing me of trying recruit more podcast listeners, Davison does discuss the process of arriving at that story on last week’s 1upFM. Definitely worth a listen.
But in the end…
Why should we? It’s not for us. That’s why it’s now called “What They Play”, not “What We Play”. If gamers were your core target at GamerDad.com, then it’s no wonder it failed.
I agree with this. WhatTheyPlay isn’t for gamers. It’s for parents who have no interest in games, but every interest in their kids. Reading through a few of their pages I can see the draw for many families in my neighborhood. Parents not in the know today are overwhelmed with Youtube, MySpace, TV, Movies, Video Games… They just can’t keep up with it all.
A sight like this that they can go to when little johnny asks ‘mommy, can I purchase leisure suit larry for my 2nd grade show and tell project?’ is what these kinds of parents need to answer that question. If you go to MetaCritic, and see a game has a 9/10 rating as a parent you might think ‘OK, the game is good… so its ok to buy.’ Not knowing anything else about the content. This sight makes no judgement calls, and doesn’t tell the parent wether it is right for their child or not. There are no opinions on the page. Rather, it gives the parent what they need quickly to make an informed decision, and it lets the parent make the call.
I work at a K-12 school district, and I’m going to share this with a few peers to see what they think…
We did the same things at GamerDad.com that they’re doing here. The only difference is in the amount of money they’re spending to get the site noticed. We appealed to parents and to gamers alike.
I don’t understand how these types of sites appeal to gamers at all. As a gamer I already know what games are appropriate for my kids. The only people who need their hands held are non-gamers.
The main difference between GamerDad and WhatTheyPlay is that the former was run by enthusiasts with absolutely no business plan, while the latter is run by people with much higher levels of mainstream press cred who obviously have a business plan. It’s not all about how much money you spend to get your site noticed. It’s also about the ability to raise that money, tap into an extensive network of influential press contacts, and deliver a product that looks professional.
You can argue that GamerDad’s content is superior to WhatTheyPlay’s, but don’t blame the rest of the world for the fact that GamerDad was incapable of properly marketing that content.
What Tracy said.
I honestly didn’t know that gamerdad was gone. What happened? I didn’t have much contact with the site after certain things.
After Andrew left Qt3, I didn’t spend much time over at GD, either. The content was pretty good, though (my kid’s only 2, so the content wasn’t all that relevant to us, either).