The HG Blog

Monday morning, September 24th. A hand reaches up and claws at a radio alarm that just continues wailing Fergie’s introspective, deeply philosophical song: Fergilicious. I force myself awake, and by force myself awake I mean I swear in multiple languages because I have to go to a professor’s office hours at the ungodly hour of 7:30 am. I don’t even know Romanian. Eventually, I stumble out of my residential house and head on up to the science center, passing through Harvard Yard. I look around and see the same things that have been around: the Freshman dorms, University Hall, Romance Languages department, the statue of the Master Chief…wait, what?

The statue of John Harvard, my University’s very Puritan namesake, was turned into the Master Freaking Chief. By MIT.

Brilliant.

After considerable deliberation, the owners have decided that one major inhibiting factor for HeavenGames’ prosperity is the simple fact that it doesn’t have a clearly defined identity. It has always been a site about games, but that is far too vague for the development of any clear goals and the effective marketing of the site.

We have thus discussed the issue with our staff and decided that we should make HeavenGames a site entirely geared towards community. At its core, HeavenGames always has been about building the best communities possible, so it only makes sense that we devote all of our resources to that service.

Fully Developing HeavenGames’ Community
We plan to make HeavenGames the premiere gaming community network online by making all of HeavenGames - and not just its forums - a tool for developing community. This will be accomplished primarily by giving many of the tools that our staff members have had for years to every single visitor of the network. Under this new system, every visitor will be able to make news posts, add strategy articles, or host their own site events.

The community will be built from critiques and discourse through this system’s ratings and pageviews feature. Every contribution will be able to be rated by all visitors, which will be displayed with the total pageviews. Visitors will also be able to respond to any contribution with their specific thoughts on it. As a result, all contributors will be able to become a better community member by looking at the ratings and feedback and HeavenGames’ most valuable contributors will be rewarded through the prominent display of their ratings and pageviews.

The user profile will be what will link all of a user’s contributions across the network and will give a face to the HG devotee. It will display the user’s photo and basic information, but most importantly it will display an average ratings score and total pageviews figure for all of their contributions. Additionally, it will list all of the user’s recent contributions.

A Couple Questions
What will happen to the current HG staff under this new system? Absolutely nothing, our staff has been the backbone of the network since its birth and we have no plans of getting rid of our current staff members. They will be doing essentially the same jobs as what they’ve always been doing, only with a little more help from our visitors.

When will this transition be complete? Given that it is a considerable undertaking, I will not make any promises for an ETA that I can’t keep. The project will be our priority until it is done, so the only thing I can say is it will be done as soon as we can get it done.

That’s the basic idea of the direction we’d like to put HeavenGames in. At HeavenGames, it will be our goal that every visitor has the best possible experience as they exchange information on the site portals, engage in discourse on the forums, and enjoy the company of friends at site events. If you have any questions, critiques, or suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact me at socvazius@heavengames.com.

What’s coming next? A more thorough staff revamp, should be out in the next week or so.

One of our most veteran staff members, Francis “Draco” Cermak, has decided to step down from his position as a HeavenGames owner due to offline responsibilities. He still will remain a staff member as he has been a valued member of HeavenGames for many years and still will provide HG with assistance whenever possible. I’d like to thank Draco for all of his work on the network and wish him the best of luck in is offline pursuits.

You might have noticed that my blog posting has been a bit delayed recently. I do apologize for that, I’ve been on thesis research/vacation in Greece for the past month or so, so I’ve had somewhat limited internet access. My travels were action packed though, I had a great time on my Herculean journey through the land of Hydrae, Titans, and Nymphs.

It actually started in Amsterdam, with a day layover. I met up with HeavenGames Chief Operations Officer - Jayhawk - and we drank many beers and ate many stroopwafels. At the end of the day, I bid Jay farewell and made my way to Athens. Athens was a grand olde tyme, checked out the Acropolis, Archaeological Museum, and Socrates’ prison. Ballin.

Off to Corfu, where there was beach, kayaking, and some good old-fashioned partying. I followed Corfu with up with a retreat to the mountains of Delphi. Hanging out with the gods for a couple days was pretty cool; I had a great time checking out all of the ruins hiking around. Afterwards, I met up with a Scottish mate in Athens and we went on to the Cyclades.

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