ioi said:
I still don't really know what people mean by "disconnect vgchartz from the db". VGChartz still has a game database, you can still view any game page and see the top-level information such as developer, publisher, genre, release dates, and the important stuff - the sales data. You can still add sales-related comments and discuss the performance of the title - how has the database been "disconnected"? Gamewise is a new site that has duplicated the VGChartz database and built on top of it. Gamewise has characters, franchises, game credits and detailed pages on a game including plot, levels, tracks, vehicles, weapons etc. Gamewise goes far beyond the amount of information we ever had on VGChartz - it has added, not taken away! Every game page on VGChartz is linked to the Gamewise page to go and find out more general information about the game. It would have never worked trying to combine what we are doing with Gamewise with the old VGChartz system - the database structure was too outdated, the VGChartz brand wouldn't have fit the brand / message that Gamewise is providing and the site would have been a mess trying to combine all of these things (sales, charts, forums, industry info, news, reviews, articles, games, characters, people, franchises, platforms, levels, weapons, items, vehicles, tracks, galleries, user reviews, cheats, achievements, walkthroughs) into one site. VGChartz is about sales and industry stuff, Gamewise is a reference site / social network for general users documenting all aspects of the videogame universe. Two totally different purposes. Gamewise has been built from scratch on a totally new platform that allows us to take user-controlled-content to a whole new level and create complex relationships between gaming entities - it goes far beyond anything we have ever done with VGChartz. Finally, Gamewise is built in a game-base rather than a game-platform-base (or sku base), so has one entry for Black Ops 2 (that covers everything relating to that game) rather than 4-5 for different platforms which is another reason why it wouldn't have worked on top of the existing VGChartz platform. All that has really been lost on the VGChartz is general news / reviews (which now resides on gamrReview) and the ability to create a game collection (which is done far better on Gamewise) - it hasn't been "disconnected from the db"... |
I get this, I get the new platform gamewize brings, the fact that it's on a game basis and not on an sku basis. I used the word disconnected to mean that they are not seamlessly integrated into one database, whereby adding a game in one db affects the other and vice-versa. I understand the constraints but I think it would have been an important part of your design to make integration of the two dbs a reality, since you could leverage this community to push the gamewise content. The issues I'm getting with this disconnect for example is that I'm finding it difficult to add games to my vgchartz collection to brag about the latest games I'm playing or I bought. It is a feature of this site I really like (the game I can add to topics and to my profile). Since the dbs branched out at gamewise and the "service" was migrated to gamewise, the games here might not exist, or they might not have any box art, and things like that.
I've suggested this before, but there should be some sales power tools that you develop for us that we should be able to pay per widget. It's a no-brainer strategy much better than "pro" and I personally think it would rock. I offered you a slew of suggestions that you could implement into vgchartz, and while so doing possibly integrate the vgchartz db back into gamewise and make it all seemless.(since the new tools might require some re-engineering)
For example, where a game is in two skus, you could group them under a parent "game" entity which it would then be linked to the gamewise entity. Or, you could add a sub-entity to gamewise that's "sku" which, for a given "game", would specify what are the various existing skus available for that game, and link that back to vgchartz. Either or would be good.
I understand it would be a lot of work, but in terms of the most successful approach I think it's a no-brainer. Am I wrong when I say the community is here, on vgchartz? On this end I'm asking because though I helped with Gamewise when it first started, I haven't been on much.
ioi, to get practical, here's an example of what would be cool. In vgchartz, when you click on a game, you get the gamewise info in a vgchartz page. It would be like looking at gamewize but from vgchartz. Clicking on certain elements would lead you to Gamewise, it would just be a snapshot of what Gamewize offers and would encourage some of us to navigate to there every now and then. The links in the current design are good but in terms of branding I don't think it's totally working. Having the gamewise logos and graphics in the vchartz page would be cool, would increase awareness of the Gamewise brand and would make the game info page much more interesting. Right now the vgchartz info page is really bland. Putting some Gamewise graphics would re-envigorate it and increase awareness of your new brand.
