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2018 Brings Changes to RPGamer

Alex FullerAlex Fuller Managing EditorRPGamer Staff
in Latest Updates
RPGamer's twentieth anniversary is this year. Our first step in marking the occasion is to announce some big changes coming to the site soon.

[ Story ]
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
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Comments

  • Scott WachterScott Wachter Dread News Editor RPGamer Staff
    and good riddance.
    Opinionated nerdy podcast goodness; every other week.
  • DarkRPGMasterDarkRPGMaster A Witness to Destruction Moderators
    Out with the old, in with the new!
    "Yes, because apparently blindly jumping headfirst into a firefight without a grasp on the situation or any combat experience is a sign of genius these days."
  • taliefertaliefer New Member Full Members
    for what its worth, i like the webpage layout, much more than other "modern" sites. nothing wrong with being old if its still functional. that could be a reflection of myself tho!
  • Scott WachterScott Wachter Dread News Editor RPGamer Staff
    If you worked here, you wouldn't call it functional.
    Opinionated nerdy podcast goodness; every other week.
  • MacstormMacstorm Ysy St. Administrators
    The biggest changes will be for staff working on the backend.
    "The universe is already mad. Anything else would be redundant."
    Twitter @FinalMacstorm
  • ClixClix Former Listmaster Full Members
    I totally understand from a content-uploading perspective as ex-staff. It wasn't very intuitive, and if quizzed on how to do so, I would so fail. Hell, after moving from reviewer to forum administrator, I legitimately forgot how towards the end of my relatively short volunteer tenure.
  • VictarVictar Member Full Members
    As long as I can easily find podcast episodes and post on their discussion threads, I'll be happy with the new site.
  • MacstormMacstorm Ysy St. Administrators
    We might as well bring this up now. One thing that is still in discussion is the forums. There will still be podcasts and discussions about them, but new posts like podcasts, reviews, and news stories will likely no longer have their discussions through the forums and will instead be posted directly on the site directly like many other sites do. This basically means that the Latest Updates forum will be redundant. As such, having forums separate from this system will mean that posting on those stories will be a separate system than the forums meaning that there will likely be two different logins in order to keep the forums (minus the Latest Updates subforum). This means that the future of the rest of the forums will be dependent on the activity of the other subforums. This debate is still ongoing internally, but there will be changes coming down the line.
    "The universe is already mad. Anything else would be redundant."
    Twitter @FinalMacstorm
  • LordGolbezLordGolbez Member Full Members
    I only post in the latest update forums though. :(
    The Tea and Biscuits Brigade offers you tea and biscuits.
  • PowerlordPowerlord Spy, gentlemen! Full Members
    Congratulations on finally updating the website.

    I'd had a thought about this in the past... it's likely a lot easier to leave the old content alone rather than porting it to a new system. I made this mistake before thinking that I needed to convert everything for a site and what ended up happening was that we never launched the new system.

    (People who know me know exactly which site that is, I'm sure.)
  • PowerlordPowerlord Spy, gentlemen! Full Members
    Macstorm wrote: »
    The biggest changes will be for staff working on the backend.

    Is it sad that I remember working on pieces of the site's backend... 14 years or so ago?
  • MacstormMacstorm Ysy St. Administrators
    Nothing has been finalized about the forums yet, but new updates will still be available to comment on.
    "The universe is already mad. Anything else would be redundant."
    Twitter @FinalMacstorm
  • Scott WachterScott Wachter Dread News Editor RPGamer Staff
    In terms of 'old site' stuff conversions there may be some sort of recurring column/feature-y thing that revives the good stuff from back when. it's half a plan in the back of my brain.
    Opinionated nerdy podcast goodness; every other week.
  • swangtalswangtal Full Members
    Looking forward to the new design. I’ll miss this old hunkanjunk-it has served me well for many years. Thanks for all the hard work, and happy new year!
  • Charalampos PapadimitriouCharalampos Papadimitriou Administrators, RPGamer Staff
    Powerlord wrote: »
    Congratulations on finally updating the website.

    I'd had a thought about this in the past... it's likely a lot easier to leave the old content alone rather than porting it to a new system. I made this mistake before thinking that I needed to convert everything for a site and what ended up happening was that we never launched the new system.

    (People who know me know exactly which site that is, I'm sure.)

    We've been pretty organized about this. We have our V1 features generally locked and frozen (minus the ongoing forum and discussion tools) so that there isn't an infinitely moving goal post for launch. Anything else we think of and might want will be part of future updates. The only thing we ported over regarding old content was the game data (game name, release dates, region, etc). I wrote a script to scrape our old site and programmatically insert it into our new database so it wasn't too much of a hassle. It's also good to not aim for 100% coverage. E.g. if my script is only reliably grabbing 85% of the things it tries to grab, that's good enough.

    If we want to for any reason I can use a similar approach for older content like reviews, but this is not part of our launch plan or near future plans, for exactly the reasons you state. And probably never :) When developing things it's always good to lock down and freeze a minimum viable product and then just build that, and save any bells and whistles for the future, and we've been pretty disciplined about doing this (*cracks whip*).
  • NimNim _ Full Members
    I'm not all that active anymore, but I welcome the change!
  • GwelenguGwelengu New Member Full Members
    I've been checking the site regularly for over 15 years, i grew up with it. I remember some of the early changes, really loved Q&A with googlshng and Andrew Long and wheels and paws and many others. I still come here to look for reviews for RPGs new and old and to get updates on news and new releases.

    Rpgs get lost in gaming news because there are so many other more popular games (outside of a few popular titles like the witcher). But there are so many interesting obscure rpgs few people have heard of, but i find people have reviewed here. I play almost entirely Rpgs since I was a little kid, alongside websites like rpgamer and gamefaqs, and i discover games from 10+, 20+ years ago for the first time, all the time... games I never knew existed with weird and interesting mechanics. It's such a rich genre with many different flavors.

    So basically I'm saying I love this site and i wish you luck in your transition. I'm excited to see what is planned for the future.
  • OrophinOrophin New Member Full Members
    Sometimes simplicity is good, but webpages have evolved so much over time that it's natural to want to update things to be able to incorporate more modern functionality.

    Just as long as it doesn't plaster auto-play Google ads all over the place.
  • LordGolbezLordGolbez Member Full Members
    Powerlord wrote: »
    Macstorm wrote: »
    The biggest changes will be for staff working on the backend.

    Is it sad that I remember working on pieces of the site's backend... 14 years or so ago?

    Are you Googleshng? :p

    The Tea and Biscuits Brigade offers you tea and biscuits.
  • PowerlordPowerlord Spy, gentlemen! Full Members
    edited January 2018
    Lord Golbez wrote: »
    Powerlord wrote: »
    Macstorm wrote: »
    The biggest changes will be for staff working on the backend.

    Is it sad that I remember working on pieces of the site's backend... 14 years or so ago?

    Are you Googleshng? :p

    No, I've always been known as Powerlord; my staff biography page still exists.

    I was staff on two different occasions (once as Music Curator, once as the MMORPGamer Curator). During one of those tenures, I also did some work on the backend. I distinctly remember working on some of the code that generated image gallery pages when FireMyst was still in charge.
  • Phillip WillisPhillip Willis Certified Polygameist RPGamer Staff
    As a gamer who tends to gravitate towards older things myself, I'm very excited about RPGamer v.3.0. Or is it 4.0? 5? Anywho, given some of the new direction of the update, I may start writing here again on top of the podcasting. I mean, after all, with all of the old reviews gone, that just means we have a lot of work to do to get content up about the awesome games of the way back when right up through yesteryear! See what I did there? Yeah.....I went there. #shamelessplug #rpgbacktrackrocks
    Co-Host on RPGBacktrack. Follow me on Twitter and sub to my blog if you would like!
  • MacstormMacstorm Ysy St. Administrators
    Just to be clear, all the old content, especially reviews, will still be around and accessible.
    "The universe is already mad. Anything else would be redundant."
    Twitter @FinalMacstorm
  • MatejaMateja Full Members
    edited January 2018
    awesome! glad to hear about the refresh :) here is my wish list lol (in order of importance)

    - keep everything fast / no shady spam that freezes a basic page load on even an 8+ core PC by 2-3 minutes like some salon article lol
    - keep design minimal / everything as visible and open as possible
    - keep a compendium of every single RPG that ever existed by franchise, and by platform as you have currently (maybe even specify every port/reincarnation of that game also as Wiki does)
    - keep the 'upcoming' and 'released' games section. I have relied on this since I was about 12 years old (I am now 34 and have yet to find a faster and more reliable list of interesting RPG games)
    - reviews are cool too
    - PLEASE keep comments. I know it's hard to moderate and whatever but I assure you everyone on the internet is jaded from even basic news we NEED a sanctuary for meaningful public discourse like RPGs
    - maybe keep a list of interviews and or future information by production company / game? I am always impressed with the contacts you folks make and also informed. I often take knowledge I've learned here and share it w/ friends in mmo's like ffxi and ffxiv. would be sweet to have them all in one place to keep track easily
    - a (smoothly animated) slideshow feature for screenshots of games (even though I've gotten REALLY goot at pressing Alt+left key to go back a page lol--its a bit jaunting)
    - KEEP the kitschy captions on every single screenshot. it's a good 50% of your charm :D
    - only make changes to the dragon and swords logos if it maintains its original spirit if in doubt just leave it as is
    - the grainy background is cool too. always reminded me of ff tactics text boxes. maybe just sample that lol
    - darker theme maybe? dark fields with white words are easy on the eyes imo

    love you all thank you for providing this venue for such a long time. this website has given me a glimmer of light during the darkest of times. keep up the good work! :)
  • MatejaMateja Full Members
    swangtal wrote: »
    Looking forward to the new design. I’ll miss this old hunkanjunk-it has served me well for many years. Thanks for all the hard work, and happy new year!

    lol yeah :)
  • VictarVictar Member Full Members
    Macstorm wrote: »
    We might as well bring this up now. One thing that is still in discussion is the forums. There will still be podcasts and discussions about them, but new posts like podcasts, reviews, and news stories will likely no longer have their discussions through the forums and will instead be posted directly on the site directly like many other sites do. This basically means that the Latest Updates forum will be redundant. As such, having forums separate from this system will mean that posting on those stories will be a separate system than the forums meaning that there will likely be two different logins in order to keep the forums (minus the Latest Updates subforum). This means that the future of the rest of the forums will be dependent on the activity of the other subforums. This debate is still ongoing internally, but there will be changes coming down the line.

    Two different logins? That doesn't sound promising.

    I supposed I'll give this new site design a chance. If it's terrible, I'll make a second login specifically to complain.
  • Charalampos PapadimitriouCharalampos Papadimitriou Administrators, RPGamer Staff
    Probably what will instead happen is that once we decide what we want, and if we decide to keep the forums around, I will use some sort of SSO functionality so that there is one login :D
  • WheelsWheels RPGamer Staff RPGamer Staff
    taliefer wrote: »
    I supposed I'll give this new site design a chance. If it's terrible, I'll make a second login specifically to complain.

    No need, remember all complaints can be directed via e-mail to wheels@rpgamer.com
    Ask Wheels- This Week's Episode
    sig.gif
  • Phillip WillisPhillip Willis Certified Polygameist RPGamer Staff
    Wheels wrote: »
    taliefer wrote: »
    I supposed I'll give this new site design a chance. If it's terrible, I'll make a second login specifically to complain.

    No need, remember all complaints can be directed via e-mail to wheels@rpgamer.com

    And, as a public service reminder, any complaints about our shenanigans on RPGBacktrack should be addressed to our general complaint mailbox...which, as PURE coincidence, is also wheels@rpgamer.com . Funny how life works out like that sometimes. Such a small world after all!!
    Co-Host on RPGBacktrack. Follow me on Twitter and sub to my blog if you would like!
  • Cassandra RamosCassandra Ramos Eternal Kyoshi Administrators
    This not-quite-as-active staffer is certainly looking forward to the new site. :)
    Bravely second...
    The courage to try again...

    Twitter: BerryEggs

  • NefarioCallNefarioCall Member Full Members
    Very much needed. I will also take a look at the mentioned volunteer opportunities, given I presently have all the time in the world.
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