I work in the PR department for the Universal Gaming Database, UGDB.com is what you can easily say as the Internet Movie Database for gaming information.

The site is still in BETA but has progressed immensely in the recent months, but to little avail for public view. The infrastructure is there as well as most of the features, but the views are just not coming in as hoped.

Currently the site operates with some of the main features similar to the popular user powered news site N4G.com as well as what you would see on IMDB.

We are operating with a zero budget for marketing, advertising, and public relations campaigns so all my work must be done under the most difficult and stressful operations.

Currently we have a large social media involvement on the site features to integrate the popular social media sites of Facebook and Twitter.

To get straight down to the point, what is it I can do more of or better of to increase our public view and user retention?

There is so much more I have yet to explain about the site so if you need any more info to provide a suggestion, do not hesitate to ask.

The website again is http://www.UGDB.com

Funny, I was thinking how handy it would be if there were a videogame version of IMDb just the other day. What I'd want from one is stuff like easy access to a game's credits: who wrote it, what else they've written, who did the voices, music, character animation, little nerdy details like that which isn't easy to find out about right now. Had a quick look at your main page and didn't see anything like this on there - it seems more like N4G than IMDb, mainly news and features written on other sites. Do you have any plans to add nerdy trainspotter info at all? Because I'll wager your site will become invaluable to many if these nuggets of info are within easy access...

I have been on and submitted some articles after I got an email this morning. Only criticism is that you can't edit them once you have posted. Also the submission screen needs to be more user friendly.

When we first started TIMJ one of the first things we did was to write to all major newspapers. Some reviewed us which was nice of them. If you ask they may give you some notoriety, which would be a start. Places like web-user magazine and the guardian were really helpful but you will have to think on a global scale. What's the price of an email?! Time that's all. Worth a shot at least. 

There is an edit window of I believe 5 minutes for news and 15 for articles.

If there is an edit window, I have no clue where it is. When I realised what the link button was for I tried to go back in and edit my submission with no avail, not less than 30 seconds after posting.

The posting screen isn't user friendly because the pic and link functions are hidden. The link button is meta data related it should either be named meta data or tag, anything else will just confuse the people using it. Once people have selected the platform that they are wanting to link to you have people manually type stuff in, this really should be another tick box like with the platform select, with an option to add something that isn't there. Also it should always be open and be a function that wont allow the user to post the article before it has had categories selected.

The picture function should have a get picture from link as well as upload function, also making it more user friendly. 

Another thing I noticed is that all news posts are not really monitored. N4G works well because every single article (good and bad) gets checked over by the users who are also able to submit. All articles need approving and because of that-there is little mistakes or error. People get advice on posting and all articles can have stuff added to by the poster (i.e missing meta data) before it goes live.

I noticed is that you said you had no PR budget. This is bad because the whole idea of people posting on your site is for people to get more exposure to their articles. If you have no PR/advertising budget, how can you attract users thus increasing the site audience. If you have no audience how can you monetise your site? Simple answer is that you can't. 

N4G use a unique way to show popular articles, because the heat rating is the hit counter people don't need to click a button to make an article more popular. They also allow the most popular articles to gain more exposure at the top of the page for a period of 24hrs or so. Your site doesn't have anything  like that so the popular articles are not getting the exposure they deserve. Users are lazy they don't rate articles like you think they would they just read it, comment if applicable and move on. Its also not streamlined in looks either and it reminds me of digg more than N4G. If it was my site I would redesign the whole thing and make it more unique.

Sorry, I don't want you to think I'm busting your balls or anything cause I really ain't. I wanted to be honest with you and provide you some feedback and Its just my opinion. I would have added this sooner but I had to post fast yesterday as I was quite busy. 

When I said review, they actually did an article on us
http://www.webuser.co.uk/websites/website-reviews/entertainment/gaming/26694/1/this-is-my-joystick

You can find their contact details on there too. We were also featured in their paper magazine and they have a lot of readers. 

We were also featured in The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/08/this-is-my-joystick and in the actual publication there were a quite a few more places that picked up on us too. Start with your national newspapers and magazines then work further afield. 

I'll take these suggestions to the programming department. I do agree that the image and link area should be visible by default. We cannot have every game in a list to select from because of the MASSIVE size of the games list, remember every game ever made* is in the database so searching is needed. Tagging would mean that anyone can add a "new tag" but this is not what the user are doing, they are "linking" a company or game to the news or other submission.

I will look into those two sites about reviewing, if you have anymore please let me know.

That's good to know, but from glancing at the site it isn't clear that this info is available. I'm thinking about it purely from a writer's research angle - if I can't find it easily I'm not going to stick around wading through other stuff to find it, I'm going to look elsewhere. Fickle? Indeed. Much like the world of cyberspace...

Oh, just had another thought. Like to see that you can grab screens from here but could you increase the size of the box art? Having to track down box art of a large enough size for editors to accept can be a right pain when you're working on a title that isn't a major release...

At the top of the page in the search area if you click the icon you can select what you are searching for. If you go to any game profile you will also see the developer and publisher listed for each game. When users properly add news they link companies to the news as well.

As far as larger box art I do not see that happening right away.