Hey why is there only one premium colour? Now I am not tan and I do not reflect my true feelings

Sorry if this has been brought up elsewhere,
Kaempfer

things

i thought you had written this place off

My thoughts exactly.  Panda and I spent many a night pondering over what could be done to breathe new life into the mainpage but nothing ever really came to fruition.  I'll admit I was kinda bothered by the fact that I worked on the new design for weeks and nothing ever got implemented because apparently there is one other site in the internet that does what we were planning to do, but this new shit does seem to be a step in the right direction.

the choice to not implement it wasn't mine.  i said gz and i wouldn't do it anymore because given the circumstances, we were less than sure we could make it how we wanted to, and putting so much effort into a community you don't care about is kind of silly anyway.  but everything we came up with was still theoretically sound and could've been made by anyone who felt like it.  nothing was stopping them aside from the fact, despite expecting other people to do shit, they did not really feel the same applied to themselves

hundley has a point in that this topic is a very dumb idea and only really serves as a platform for general frustration and for drule to be vaguely obnoxious in that way drule always is, though.  i don't know what kind of reaction you expected but i wouldn't put up some half-assed wordpress blog and then call it "complaining" when people seek explanations or just an idea of what you're doing.  you really should've waited until you had something concrete to show instead of putting up what amounts to an UNDER CONSTRUCTION sign and acting like no one should be confused.  this in itself is just kind of funny but combined with things like archives not being accessible for whatever reason, it just amounts to a series of puzzling decisions that do not seem to come together into a cohesive idea.  for all i know the lack of access to archives could be based on some type of server shit you're sorting out with the blog or whatever, but this doesn't mean people shouldn't be asking questions about what the hell's going on.  this was really your own fault for telling them there was anything going on to begin with before it was ready to be implemented.  people like uprc are asking questions because they're confused and you're handling it all pretty badly.  maybe if you didn't want to answer so many questions you shouldn't have made so many weird changes so suddenly and then made a stupid topic about all of it???  this is why you do not tell people about this kind of thing halfway through.  it's just a waste of time.

with all of that said i wouldn't have consulted with gw either.  gw doesn't know what the fuck it wants.  it is just the same tired argument about being GENERAL COMEDY SITE//INDIE GAME SITE//WHAT ABOUT RM2K??  you could have a ten page topic filled with ambitious long posts by people who don't know what they're talking about and who won't do shit when CRUNCH TIME rolls around.  if this was a worthwhile community, having a topic about the direction for gw might make sense, but it's not, so it is better just to do things yourself.  the odd thing about what you're saying, hundley, is that i'm kind of surprised you're reacting to the way he's handling this so violently when you've said numerous times recently that the community is worthless.  if you actually think this then it should be easy to understand why there aren't BRAINSTORMING TOPICS.  nothing would ever happen if you relied on those kind of topics.  the only way anything actually gets done is if a few people decide to just do it.

i don't really care what you do with the website, but this was a less than ideal way to go about doing it and dealing with the people.  there's an interesting contrast here between the contrived GW ADMIN personality you seem to have constructed with all they Hey folks, Drule here! Peace. nonsense and the GOD STOP WHINING.....ITLL ALL BE CLEAR IN DUE TIME approach you seem to be taking with people asking questions in your own topic.  it's also sort of weird that the grand plan is GW7: THE ASTROJONE.  DOING SHIT yeah whatever but i don't know what would compel you to just make GW into a carbon copy of your own site.  gz told me you said the two were identical and then gave some spiel about how there would be abstract philosophical differences between the two.  what's the point?  generic crossposting indie games blog isn't going to bring in new members, and having a mainsite for the sake of having a mainsite is kind of absurd.  maybe you should've just put a redirect up to the astrojone and saved everyone some time

I forgot we had a mainsite and I just checked it and yeah it's exactly the same as AstroJone

Drule's takin' over

i don't really think i speak merely for myself here. the mainsite was too gw-centric, and what gw was is completely irrelevant and outdated. gw is the community and everybody knows it.

to some extent, i would say i agree with this, and that it was a bit misguided to expect that of gw.  but at the time i thought, and still think, that gw as a general website that reflects the interests of the community would be little more attractive than it would be as a gaming-centric website.  there were a lot of token random guys chiming in with "let's make gw a comedy site  ​", but how many people on gw are genuinely funny, or genuinely interesting?  i don't think this is anything we could support.  regardless, yes, i agree that a game dev site is outside the scope of the community's interest, but the problem with this is that the mistake is just being repeated again.  how many people give a shit about indie games?  probably only slightly more than the amount that give a shit about indie game development.  it's not an accurate reflection of the community, and i was guilty of this as well, but at the time a lot of us really thought if we got a mainsite up again for the first time in years, people really would have an interest, plus it just seemed like the only realistic option.  i'm not sure why anyone is going ahead with INDIE GAMES BLOG instead of learning from the error in judgment gz and i made when appraising what type of website gw would respond to.  in any event, i would say history has shown large, meandering topics are an awful way to form a decisive opinion about what needs done.  making a site based on a community's interest, and letting a community decide for itself, are two very different things!  gw just about tears itself apart trying to decide which pips to use; i would say consulting it as a whole as little as possible is the best route.  you don't need more than a few intelligent people who understand the community to do things well.

what you're saying is fine, and probably the most appropriate site for a place like gw, but what does this community really produce anymore?  you mentioned jamie.  alright, jamie's a creative guy in a lot of ways.  if this was a community of jamies, this would be a grand idea.  but the lit forum's dead, music creation is mostly just people shooting the shit about guitar stuff, and the art forum's activity has gone into a nosedive.  plus, we've never produced a notable amount of worthwhile games.  gw is a creative vacuum; i don't need more than two hands to count the amount of people who are regularly doing interesting creative things.  i don't think you can base a site on this!  i would've really liked to see a site like this when a lot of people were composing and drawing, and there were a lot of huge discussion topics on gw about video games and interesting shit in general, but i don't know... i probably feel how you felt months ago, but i don't see it going away for me.  that is to say, i don't feel like there's much going on here that's really interesting or thought-provoking anymore.  what you're suggesting is only fitting for a site that is intellectually and creatively prolific.  i wouldn't describe gw as either of these things anymore.  it's possible we simply disagree on the matter, and if that's the case, then i can see why you'd think this would be the best course of action instead of CROSSPOSTING INDIE GAMES BLOG.  but be honest, do you really care about what any more than a handful of people on gw are thinking or doing at this point?

think with a mainsite that doesn't have any sort of distinct focus you would start seeing people utilize it, not necessarily because it would be FOR GW, but because it would naturally coincide with what they're doing anyway, and gw would simply be an outlet for it.

gw6 was an indie game dev site, but really, the community section was a huge part of it, and people still didn't utilize that despite having freedom to post about their interests and whatever else.  what's more, the original gw blog was, if i understand you, almost precisely what you're suggesting, and it was plagued with inactivity from its inception.  we vocally encouraged them to write about ANYTHING AT ALL, to no avail.  regardless of whether or not they're given an outlet to discuss whatever is on their mind, it seems no one on gw really gives enough of a shit to bother.  keep in mind this was roughly a year ago, when gw was substantially more active.  subtract steel, bm, hl, and a few other notable contributors, and there is literally no one i would say could be relied for something like that.

it's easy to get stuck in the mentality that the community needs to be preserved or revived or whatever, but honestly, after giving it some real thought, i would say i disagree.  i would not have a problem if it ceased to exist and i think KEEPING ON for the sake of KEEPING ON is what drives a lot of people not to admit that there's nothing wrong with a site slowly dwindling away to nothing.  i think i told ase that i felt a lot of people had an interest in revitalizing gw more for what it used to be than what it is now, and i don't think that's a point the site is ever going to get back to.  i would say it is past the point where anything significant can be done, but if it isn't, or if you still care enough to try, a faceless indie gaming blog isn't going to do anything, and i'm not sure how people have managed to buy into any illusion that it would.  i was keeping track of that PLAN topic and was really astounded to see so many people so gung ho about CROSSPOSTING INDIE GAME BLOG as if this would legitimately fix anything at all.

can you just tell us drule is it going to be crossposting indie game blogs as panda said or will it also have stuff about music and such? i mean not just content by our own members but music, movies etc. in general? give us something.

also i do think panda is making a lot of sense and i agree with him about many things, he just said it better than i ever could. i have felt many times that gw's gotten to the point that it can't be revived anymore, art, lit and music forum are way too inactive and i'm not sure how exactly we are going to attract new members with that. like panda said, faceless gaming blog isn't going to do the trick and that's why i think that emphasis on community is the only way to go. even though gw would make a bad comedy site, it's still a very nice community with intelligent people and sometimes some really hilarious topics! the blog really needs to show the best of our community and i think that's our only hope to ever become bigger again. just more actually focusing on the community and less topics about pirates and whatnot.

but panda, games and probably indie games as well still interest most of the people here. out of everything, it's definitely the biggest thing here. but i agree that if the blog is just another faceless gaming blog on the internet, it won't do much good.

i don't disagree and i feel like a jerk for raining on your parade!  i was legitimately hoping you'd reply with a rebuttal about how you found a lot of people in the community funny/interesting/intelligent/whatever else.  i kind of regret that we didn't realize it was time for a change of direction years ago when anyone still gave a shit, but what can you do?

The site will be focused on news, resources and creative input from the members. Users will be able to have all creative effort featured.

yeah, the problem with that is that it's been said several dozen times by many different people that the goal of this is to have an incredibly low-maintenance metablog that can be sustained by one or two people.  translation: not a whole lot of original content. 

you can SUGARCOAT this if you like but this is kind of a flawed way to approach making a new site.  NEWS isn't anything but a way to pad entries and make updates seem more frequent.  specifically: 1) nobody cares about news from a site that isn't on the inside or otherwise close to the industry.  the news would just come from OTHER SITES that people could just as easily read themselves.  it's a bullet point on a feature list.  2) original content is actually the complete opposite of what everyone seems to agree is a good idea to build the site around.  if it's run by a couple people as you say it will be, there will not be a whole lot of original content being generated, and if you are planning on looking towards gw at large to generate original content to post on an indie gaming blog, then i would suggest you look at the previous two front pages we've had and seriously reconsider.  3) what creative input from what members?  again, can't emphasize this enough, for the past year and a half we've had two iterations of a website that provided an avenue for this and the entire time it was an uphill battle to find anyone who wanted to say anything, more so in the past six months.  4) what creative effort?  how many creative efforts is gw producing these days?

you cannot consistently rely on three of those at all, yet you seem to be banking on them.  who's going to produce all this original content and give all this creative input?  the ONE OR TWO people who would run the site?  that's a heavy workload!  or is it the highly apathetic, unmotivated userbase who has consistently proven they don't want to generate either of those things?  the only thing you can actually rely on is NEWS POSTS about indie gaming, and that is a really worthless idea to build ANY site on, let alone an obscure, dying site that nobody visits whose community is disinterested in indie gaming news.

i'm not really sure how this will "cater to all members" at all.  isn't it supposed to be an indie gaming blog?  this is what you have said.  unlike ds i do not really think most people on gw even play indie games on a regular basis.  how is a blog that is quite deliberately focused on indie games (as in, in contrast to gw6 which was related to indie games in name only and most frequently was about IRANIAN PIRATES and facebook) and not general content going to cater to all members when very few care at all about indie games?

you should probably stop trying to be all things to all people because none of what you are saying is very realistic.  it'll be a blog focused on indie gaming without all the more general shit of previous blogs, but at the same time it'll appeal to the broad interests of the userbase and feature all creative content regardless of whether it relates to indie gaming?  it'll be low maintenance and will only need one or two people to sustain it, but it'll also have lots of original content and creative input from a variety of members?  this is sounding more and more like a pipedream or something that will be severely underwhelming with every vague assurance you give.  or, option c: you are just kind of blowing smoke to get people to shut up.

I've got my faith in this. Sugar coating eventually seeps down to the center if done long enough.

Hello again sirs, Kaempfer here

Why is premium colour back to just orange like it was before? I thought the multiple premium colours were pretty neat. It made for a very colourful forum. Is it that hard to implement? I don't know anything about forums or php or junk so maybe? If not please bring it back it was great.