I've been thinking about this ever since the VGC subscription model was announced. I think it's absolutely awesome that VGC is doing this, and I think it will work wonders towards speeding up the pace of progress for the site. But that begs the question.
What kind of progress? Look, I love VGC. Many of us do, but I'm definitely not alone in the feeling that the website has places it can improve. A lot of them. And that's fine! Everything has to start from somewhere, and everything good had to rise from something not as good, but what does all this mean for VGC? Where is this website going, ultimately? What is the endgoal? What is all that money going to? Not specifically, but ultimately.
What do the site admins and people in charge ultimately see VGC changing into? I love VGC, but like with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, I just can't see myself putting money into something I don't believe in. This sitution is even more complicated, because it's less that I don't believe in it and more that I don't quite understand what I'm expected to believe in.
I've probably been way too vague, so I'll specify. Is the intent to keep VGC pretty much the same? Because right now it feels like a sort of sales-focused Neogaf. It feels like the primary source of engagement with the site somes from the forums. The tracked sales are therefore there as a pillar of sales information, by which the forums can then discuss and scrutinize the various conclusions that can be drawn from these numbers. The news articles, frankly, feel kind of like an after thought. That's not because of the content provided at all, but it's 99% due to the way the website is layed out.
If this is the ultimate intent, to keep the site the same but in that regard but just make it better by hiring more writers and having all the sales be updated regularly again and that's it, then I probably wouldn't feel comfortable contributing to the website because I wouldn't agree with that direction. I think we have a lot of great writers and articles that don't get even close to enough front page real estate, focus, and attention on the site that they deserve, and I feel like the actual sales numbers have always been secondary to the sales discussions that form as a result of the sales in the forums. And honestly, contrary to my posts in other threads here, I don't think the forums themselves should receive nearly the amount of focus on this site as they do. This isn't to say that I think the forums are aren't important or even vital to VGC. It's just to say that I don't think that translates to forums taking 40% of the front page real estate, especially when anyone who enjoys the forums here should have no problem with clicking a forum tab to access the forums instead.
Now I'm not going to necessarily detail my opinion of where the site should ultimately strive towards heading to here, because that isn't really the point of this post. My point is that I just don't know where VGC is heading, a lot of people here just don't know, and I think it is worth it to clarify at least a little bit where the future if VGC lies so that we can decide for ourselves if we fit in that future or not.
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Here are Machina's thoughts on the matter:
"OK so this is going to be quite a long post but I want to fully set out how things stand and work on VGC and to answer the key question as well as I possibly can.
The short answer is there isn't one. There is no grand plan. But I do think there's a good future for the site for the first time in years. I'm going to try and explain why, being as transparent as possible, but it's late and I'm tired so this stream of consciousness might come off as a bit of ramble.
Anyway to explain why I think I need to detail some of VGC's history. Note that this is all just how I saw things from my point of view, having been involved in the staff of the site almost since the site (or at least just as things were really starting to take off).
- VGChartz's heyday was 2009/2010. The site was booming, both in terms of traffic and revenue. There was a tonne of interest in sales figures at the time and this coincided with a boom in ad-based revenue for gaming sites on the net. It was a perfect storm. Brett recruited a large number of staff, we had huge groups of staff attending E3 - heck we even hosted our own stall and party at E3. We had a couple of full time and some part time staff in management and there was enough money to maintain a sizeable staff.
- Amibitious plans were made for the site. We had already started developing our own distinct sections on the site driven by the passion of people like Naz, myself, Source, Karl, TalonMan, DK, Brett and oliist (apologies to anyone I've overlooked) - a news group, a review group, a game database group, a mod group, and a sales group - but now it was full steam ahead. We had a lot of content, Brett was still really passionate about the site, and there were a large number of volunteers from the community that helped out with all aspects of the site. The site grew so quickly we revamped the site pretty much once a year - from the plain white site to the blue site (early growth), to the black site (boom and peak).
- Anyway since then - with one exception, which was actually when the site split (as much as regulars here hated it - including myself - it was great for the site in terms of hits), the trend has been one of continuous but slow decline. Both in terms of ad revenue that gaming websites generate (which is why so many big sites have gone under and why others have had to cut back) and in terms of traffic for VGC.
- Why was that? Man there are so many reasons. The big ones are probably, in no particular order:
1. Less interesting sales battles.
2. The site split fracturing the community (and the staff).
3. The loss of a lot of the more dedicated, largely volunteer staff as they grew older and real life came knocking.
4. Massive decrease in general ad rates for sites like VGC.
5. Brett's own decreased enthusiasm for, and interest in the site.
6. Some huge PR blunders giving the site a bad image.
7. Having no sales back-up for Brett.
8. Hangover problems from the site split not being remedied.
- Brett developed most of the site himself and was a key driver for changes. Unfortunately this means we never actually had a proper site dev on VGC. Three key people helped out over the years - TalonMan during the early years, Brett's own brother during the boom years, and now Trucks in the post-split years - but they were all essentially volunteers (at least Talon and Trucks). They did what they did because they were part of the community and had a passion for the site. Anyway, why is this a big deal? Well because as Brett has become less and less invested in the site there hasn't been anyone to step in to that role. It really is a full time job and there's only so much volunteers like Trucks can do, especially when they don't have full access. The supporter program will help justify Trucks doing more to fix and improve the site but it's still a labour of love not his job.
- Brett also handled the sales figures all by himself. As his interest waned and he became distracted by other projects the sales started to fall behind. It was really, really bad last year. I can't remember how many e-mails Will and myself sent him basically begging for him to either get back on track or hand the responsibilities over to us, but it was a lot. Eventually we managed to convince him to teach us but the site had already, I feel, been damaged quite badly by that. Even now that Will and myself do the SW charts there are still problems which makes them somewhat inconsistent (will explain why in a bit), and the HW has remained Brett's thing, so we've never really got fully back on track.
- So there's a still outstanding problem with the HW but we're generally back on track, especially with SW, so it's all good right? Well, no not really. The system for uploading the finalised figures to VGC is an absolute mess. It was built by the guy who was doing all the sales stuff anyway, so the bugs that are evident in the system were never fixed because if he encountered them he could bypass them. That's not possible for me to do - I'm no web developer. When I encounter a bug it halts my progress and I have to wait on Brett again before I can get back on track. Or I can no wait for Brett and just carry on, but that results in missing games from the charts.
- Maybe I'm focussing too much on the problems with the numbers. I could go on but those examples paint a picture so I'll not bore you with more details. That's only a small part of the sales problems, some others being my current ability to make software adjustments that I know need making, the fact that the game db was broken by the site split and never fixed, etc. etc.
- As Brett became less and less involved with the site I've kinda done the opposite and tried to pick up slack. Brett wants the site to continue, I know that for sure, but I honestly don't see him ever being heavily involved in pushing through changes again. So it falls to people like myself and Trucks to do this. We have almost free reign - Brett's a very hands-off boss and if someone has a passion to do something to the site then he'll usually be fine with it; you just need to present the idea to him and ask for permission. But we are limited in other ways - Trucks doesn't have full access to whatever it is that would allow him to fix the chart bugs I come across or the game database, for example.
So I guess the question becomes where do I see the site headed? Realistically, my goals for the site are the following:
- To get fully up-to-date with HW again. The only way I can guarantee this would be for Brett to hand over the responsibilities for HW to me, like he did with the SW. Until that happens I expect we'll get sudden, burst updates where lots of weeks get added, followed by weeks of nothing until he can find the time and desire to update them.
- To get fully up-to-date with SW and never fall behind. More easily accomplished this one. The only thing that holds me back is when I come across a game db bug, which is serious will halt my progress until Brett fixes it, or if less serious just means slightly incomplete initial charts (again until Brett fixes them). So there's still some reliance on Brett for this one but on the whole I'm able to keep us up-to-date I think.
- To be active in making adjustments to SW when there's evidence of over/undertracking. I can literally do nothing about this at present. I'm waiting on Brett to build a tool that will allow me to make these adjustments. Once that's done I intend to be very pro-active about it tho and this is one of the things I'm most excited about improving on the site.
- To continue to output written content on the front page. News, reviews, articles, and sales pieces. I don't expect much change here unless we were to lose Will (guy who does most of the news posts and all of the sales articles). The Supporter Program will hopefully allow him to continue doing a great job on this front. He spends an ungodly amount of time doing those posts.
- The mod team is great as is. Nothing needs changing here, we just need to continue to have a team of active mods drawn from the community to replace those that decide to step down.
- To gradually fix bugs/problems with the site and add new features. This is all Truck. My website development skills amount to the ability to italicise or bold words in a forum post. He's done a fantastic job and the site really would be in a dire place without him. The Supporter Program will allow him to justify devoting more of his free time to improving the site, be it fixing bugs or adding new features, and as a way to thank people who subscribe to the Supporter Program and make it more attractive many of the things he'll add will feature added stuff for Supporters (or will be exclusive to Supporters).
So my answer to the main thrust of the OP is - gradual improvements to the site and a return to consistent sales publication. It's not a hugely ambitious grand plan, but it's realistic and achievable so long as we're given the required functionality by Brett. There honestly aren't enough hours in the day for the three of us that do the majority of the work on the site to do much more than that."
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