The First Step
Hey all,
So it’s been a little while since my last update. It’s mostly because we’re still hard at work figuring out the big picture for HeavenGames’ future; it’s a daunting job but I like what’s being hammered out. Anyway, in this article I’m going to discuss the two biggest problems that I’d like to get fixed before any grand scheming…and their solutions. Solutions are good.
Problem 1: HeavenGames current staff system is not what HeavenGames needs
While everyone works as hard as possible, the current staff system is simply not enough for what HeavenGames needs. Becoming staff is a big ordeal at HeavenGames, largely because of the daunting committment on both sides. A prospective staffer may be discouraged because of the considerable time commitment that is often necessary to be staff, while the Seraphs are discouraged by the lack of guarantee that the new staff member won’t act in a manner that could bring many problems to HeavenGames, including legal trouble.
Solution: Reorganize the staff system
Reorganizing the staff system will help our current staff operate more efficiently. First, we will make sure that all of the owners are active at HeavenGames and aware of everything that’s going on. To supplement this, we will create an anonymous complaint/suggestion email for staff. Next, we will create a list of jobs for ever site; Seraphs will be required to heavily advertise job openings to ensure consistent service and organization across the network. Finally, we will work to make a job at HeavenGames more attractive by giving benefits such as possible college credit and aid in getting a job in the gaming industry (Read more).
Solution: Automate HeavenGames’ content contribution
Fully automating HeavenGames’ content contribution will allow everyone to contribute to the community and make sure HeavenGames is the best strategy network online. It will take the load off of the current staff and allow our sites to grow only at the limit of our massive user base’s want to contribute. Under an undefined system, any user would be able to contribute to any aspect of the site: news, articles, screenshots, anything.
Problem 2: No one knows about HeavenGames
Okay, maybe not no one…you’re reading this, right? In HeavenGames’ specific niche we are well known but the rest of the gaming community tends to have no idea what we are. We are simply not able to provide our great services to nearly as many people as we could.
Solution: An aggressive marketing campaign
We need to adopt an aggressive marketing campaign to get HG’s name out into the gaming community. This will include working to get HeavenGames mentioned in press more often (not difficult as that’s already happened). It will also involve guerilla marketing such as popularizing our Facebook group and making our articles Digg-able. Eventually, we even would like to purchase Google adsense space and target our advertisements on gaming websites.
What do you think? If you have any further questions, comments, suggestions or concerns, please email me and let me know. I genuinely mean that, any thoughts would be appreciated and considered.
What’s coming next? Hopefully, a writeup of a cohesive plan for the future of HG. Keep your eyes peeled!
August 14th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Sounds good, Soccy.
I hope the suggestion box worked. One of the factors of my resignation was that almost all of my suggestions were ignored.
You guys should work on getting back into the game with the design industry. Perhaps take the time to look for the various community relations manager and request additional beta tests, prizes, and interviews. Reviews and previews are always great too.
August 14th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I’ll trade ya ad space on Sea Powers for ad space on HG, if ya want adverts that badly. :p
August 14th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I agree with your thoughts Soccy. I think there needs to be a bit more staff organization and incentives.
I think something also needs to be done about inactive staffers. I’m personally guilty of slacking off far more than I should, but I notice that when staffers get bogged down with RL to the point where they’re ineffective, our solution seems to be to simply recruit more staff members to throw at the problem instead of ensuring that all of our staffers are actively contributing on a regular basis. That’s my observation anyway.
People are going to unavoidably run into patches of time where they can’t contribute how they would like, but I think there needs to be some sort of standard for the minimum amount of contributions staffers should have to make, be it the number of times they moderate their forum a week to how many articles and news stories they post. Automated content contribution is definitely the way to go and will take a lot of pressure off of us, but I think a set of activity guidlines taylored to each kind of staff position would go a long way to keep our ranks from becoming bloated with inactives.
It’s my opinion that we shouldn’t have 3 part-time staffers doing the work of 1 dedicated staffer. I see barely active discussion forums moderated by 5 people and sites with 3 newsies on sites that barely even get a trickle of development or game news. So yeah, we could be structured much more efficiently.
August 14th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Staff do need to be managed more effectively. I can’t speak for the situation right now, but in the past, staff have retained their jobs for an insane amount of time whilst being unable to contribute to it. We’re not talking on the order of a month or so due to say, exams, but a large period of 6-12 months+.
Nowhere can afford that
If you want HeavenGames to be notable though, you need to get exclusives. Exclusive interviews, screenshots, trailers, whatever, you need ‘em. You also need other unique selling points in addition to the above, and you need standard features from elsewhere. Outstanding content will allow some to overlook flaws in the site’s systems, but if you many other flaws, it’s not going to work. Content is the key though, and indeed this is why some of HG’s sites have done as well as they have (AoMH being an excellent example).
Another thing that needs to be changed is a better way of achieving technological improvements. At the moment, it’s almost like reinventing the wheel. I have no doubt that Zen et al work very hard at this, but when the work is unpaid and you’re busy with a career to pay the bills, or whatever you don’t have the time to reinvent the wheel (for instance, coding in a new search feature into the forums).
It would also be prudent not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Staffers need to come up with more ideas, but also these ideas need to be discussed (e.g. HG-EXPO). There is nothing wrong with coming up with an idea. There is nothing wrong with discussing it, and ideas should be discussed. What is wrong however is when feedback on an idea of not listened to
Obviously when I last worked here, I kind of burnt the bridge I just crossed, called in an air strike, and then had someone nuke it for good measure (and so there is no chance of me ever coming back), but I am prepared to give feedback on things, and talk other things over with people if anyone actually cares (email is in my profile, and my MSN = my email).
August 15th, 2007 at 12:41 am
I do some advertising at school like to the people who are really intrested in computer games so I tell them about Heavengames and say that they should join! I totally agree with you Soccy!
August 15th, 2007 at 3:09 am
I got an idea you should make a little HTML thing which has the HG logo and says something like “Join Today” and have an actual HTML so I could put it on my websites.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
I agree with the people who have mentioned that our disconnection with Devs in getting more exclusive content is a huge downside as of lately. I remember back in the day HG would get a lot of great deals from ES, now they made their own site and barely look at us for anything, together with the experts only going to expert sites that kinda irked me.
Good luck with HG :).
August 18th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Hey Soccy great idea Nanodude and me advertise this place at school getting people to join a old logo with new touches like come joing today nanDodude
August 18th, 2007 at 6:36 am
i wa searching wikipedia and ii saw we had no info on hg to get more mebers someone with a wiki acount could make a page up
August 21st, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Hey Socs, great ideas, but maybe I’ve become pessimistic after all these years of discussion this, discussion that, and in the end nothing getting done. I’ll even contribute some ideas/thoughts, perhaps if anything DOES get done this time (well, it is YOU, and if anyone ever gets stuff done, it’s you) I’ll have helped with whatever experience I acquired over the 4 years of working at HG.
To me you guys are making yourselves do more work than you should. HG isn’t a single game type site anymore, you guys don’t play most of the games on it anymore, why is it that I find the Exco making 80% of site-wide decisions? The Exco should focus on saving and investing HG’s resources so we can build more sites, improve the ones we already have (not manage it directly!!) and have a sustainable growth. You guys already did what you should have done, you guys hired webmasters to care for the site, you’ve (hopefully) given him good training and resources to START with, let him/her take care of his/her community now!
It’s really my major complaint - Seraphs are working as lead content managers now, nothing else (course there are exceptions). Remember the time where the Seraph did the site’s coding, layout, features, etc? Nowadays it’s all in Zen’s queue of to-dos, why is that so? Train/hire Seraphs to act like it’s THEIR site, THEIR responsibility, THEIR community to lead! To me, there are two things Seraphs have to depend on Zen for, and that’s forum updates and the Downloads Section (that last one not too much though).
Seraphs don’t go looking for staff, don’t look into learning web-languages to try and program their community wants, don’t try to improve their layout without Zen doing it, some never even post outside of HG to “advertise” their site, they just mod the forums, manage content and post news that were most likely already posted on some big site.
What happened to the days where Seraphs would have direct contact with community managers/playtesters/programmers/designers of their games? Where we would be the ones breaking the news and not just copying some IGN article. What happened to the time where if the editor wasn’t good enough, the Seraph would find someone to fix it so the community would be able to use it? There are tons of things I pain myself watching go by the Seraph’s eyes and all they can do is blame the Exco for not improving this software, that section, this other crap. Can you start to emphasize that it’s THEIR site and THEY are responsible for it?
I’m not saying I was a great Seraph when I was, but honest to you I tried my best to do 100% for the site, with as much internet access as I could get. When I realized I couldn’t do 100%, I stepped down and gave it to someone who I was most confident could.
Now of course a lot of Seraphs don’t fit into the above set, when they are TRULY not at fault for their site’s shortcomings (forums, downloads). Some even try to do the above, but stuff when the rec sections at Age3H was going to be done, we (Stoney and myself) went out, got ourselves a lot of the hard code required to have it in our downloads section. We tempted the community about it, we hired new staff to take care of it and help make it grow, and then since we can’t modify our Downloads Section ourselves, it got added into Zen’s to-do list. We all know how long that list is, I don’t think I need to say how that’s going
And that’s where I think the Exco should REALLY come in - managing the resources better. That’s ALL you should do for these current sites IMO, is HELP the Seraphs get their sites improved to their needs by managing the tech staff, HG’s money, etc. So that when a Seraph needs an improvement to the Downloads Section, you guys can find someone cheap to do it (but do it good of course), or if Zen is not busy, get him to do it.
I heard some talks (people were asking my opinion about these) only focusing on Scenario Design. Well, if you want to turn into fileplanet, sure? But there are 1000 “temporary” online players that go away in a month to 10 designers, in which 2 finish projects. So if you want to go for that path, go ahead, but to me you guys aren’t investing on growing the site that way, you’re investing to settle down and die slowly while the internet whizzes by you. The biggest HG site (Age3H) is losing a lot of traffic due to the opening of AgeCommunity. If ES keeps up opening community sites themselves, in the end expert focusing sites will offer many tools and services, while ES provides forums, we’re off with being the fileplanet of them all. Why not just delete the rest of the site?
I hope you can use my ideas/opinions for any good, if not, at least I tried.
August 21st, 2007 at 12:44 pm
I used “we” a lot, I keep thinking I’m still part of HG :p.
August 24th, 2007 at 3:34 am
I agree with alot of the stuff you said Luciano we have to start tellimg people about HG but I’m only 13 so there isn’t much I can do.
August 24th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Those are some good and very much needed ideas! An other way to advertise is to ask members to link to HG in their websites and places.
September 5th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Random opinion from a guy who has loved HG for years and still watches from the sidelines.
Your solution for problem number 2 is what in my opinion needs to be done!