Hi everyone. I'm new to this forum/the whole videogame journalism beat. I've just started up a website at www.vigigames.com. First, I'd like to hear some of your opinions on what we're doing/what we're doing wrong (ha ha).

My question is, I suppose, how did you get people other than your friends to start reading your website? We've been putting out a good deal of content for the past two months now, and I'm not very good at self-promotion.

(Also, if any of your sites have a sort of similar focus and you want to be internet pals, we'd totally be down with that.)

Matthew.

First impression is really good - clean design, great tag-line. I also dig the "Playing this week" section; simple but effective.

As for how getting people other than your friends to start reading, the number one priority is always the quality of the content. No matter how many people you can attract, they will only stay and come back if the content is good.

You may want to try N4G, using Twitterfeed to feed your Twitter, organize contests, ...

Hey, thanks so much! I hadn't actually heard of N4G before, I'm going to check it out now.

I appreciate your goals. I'd love to be doing something closer to real criticism myself. Instead, I'm working for a site that shamelessly follows the old buyer's guide print model, and is platform-specific to boot.

It's a nice site. It looks sharp, and the articles aren't the usual crap; it makes me very happy.

I wish I had some advice for you, but I can say that you have one more feed subscriber, and I'll certainly be sharing items in Google Reader and Buzz!

Thanks for the compliments! If it's not too impertinent to ask/if it won't get you in any trouble, what site do you write for?

The site is TotalPlaystation.com

If you check it out, you'll see what I mean; it's very much in the mode of the publications of yesteryear that focus on previews and reviews. But hey, reviews get you a shitload of traffic from Metacritic and Gamerankings.

I have fun writing for them, and it's a nice bunch of guys, but it feels obsolete. I'd love to see a study about how people use reviews, because I suspect very few of the people who read them actually use them to inform purchasing decisions. But that's a discussion for another thread, I think.

Hello!

Okay! Firstly, I love that WP theme, and you're literally the first site I've seen use it. Resolution tried to use a variation of that when it first launched, but we couldn't get it looking quite right.

I think the approach you're going for is great. The writing's very solid, though not hugely striking. That's fine, though. That'll come. What I do think from having a quick look around, though, is that while the topics you're hitting are interesting, they're certainly the trendy topics to discuss in the more thoughtful gaming circles.

Oh look, another article about whether games have their Citizen Kane. Ah, another one about the relationship between games and films. I must be going blind - I can't find the "Are Games Art?" feature...

I'm being facetious, of course, but I think there's potential here for you to do something really interesting, but you're being held back by the apparent restraints of what there is to intelligently discuss about "games in context". Think outside the box, and you might well be onto something.

A couple of minor points: make your logo a link to the homepage. It's a natural instinct to click a logo to do that, so make sure it's functioning in that way. I'd also put the word 'Search' somewhere in that search box, but I'm sure most people will figure it out. Oh, and you've no favicon. I'd get one of those.

What I'd do, more than anything, is make sure you have a predefined regular output of content. Your schedule seems to be a bit haphazard at the moment - two things in two days, then a six day gap, then three things a week, etc. Work out how often you can update, set days / times of day, and stick to it. People will get into the habit, then, of checking back at those times. If they check back and there's nothing new on a few occasions, they'll probably get out of the habit of checking at all.

Thanks for the advice. I realize that these are topics of discussion that have been popping up a lot lately, but maybe it's because it's a new site... I guess we sort of have a backlog of these ideas that have been swimming around in our heads for a long time. I imagine that once we have it out of our systems, we'll move onto less standard fare - for instance, I'm writing an article on the application of social and developmental psychology to video gaming later today.

And as for the predefined regular output of content, unfortunately that's not really too feasible at the moment. I update whenever I have time (I'm actually a full-time high school English teacher, so I can only update during breaks or when I'm at home) and the other two writers are well into their honours English programs at University, so they have the ability to write even less frequently. I am looking for contributors, but it's tough to find someone that I know will represent the site in the way that I want who's not incredibly busy at the moment. Of course, I would love to make the site my full-time commitment, but that's not possible right now.

And I'll definitely look into making the logo a link, thanks!