Hello, GameCola Faithful! A bit of housekeeping today—and not the fun kind where Matt Jonas sings about our Facebook page (sadly); rather, the kind where I talk about changes to the website. Buckle in for administration!
For years, we’ve been referring to ourselves as a “videogame humor” website, for a couple of reasons:
1) We’re a team of funny writers who enjoy writing funny things, and
2) At the time, no one else in the world was funny.
Things have changed since then. Sites like Joystiq and Destructoid have increasingly incorporated humor into their content, to great effect; not only are they “videogame humor” websites, but they’re also just great videogame websites, period. They’re doing what we claim to do—and they’re doing it better.
So it’s time for us to re-focus.
When we made the shift from “a site about videogames” to “a videogame-comedy website,” we did so because, well, that’s what we already were. Our new direction is similarly rooted; content-wise, we’ll still be the same ol’ GameCola you’ve known and loved for the past decade. Our new focus is going to be our current focus, made explicit.
Without further ado, as your Editor-in-Chief, I’m delighted to announce that from now on, GameCola will be a website EXCLUSIVELY about Phoenix Wright.
…
…
Hah-hah! Totally got you, didn’t I. I couldn’t resist.
Actually, we’re going to be a site about: weird games. Obscure games. The underappreciated, the appallingly bad, and the independent. The games, in other words, that don’t get talked about as much on other sites. Our new thing—and our new slogan—is “Gaming Outside the Mainstream.”
*ahem*. Drumroll please!
TA-DA! (Banner courtesy of our friends at BannersOnTheCheap.com—your number one source for giant ridiculous things like this.)
You can find out more about this in our updated About section; but while I have you, there’s a few other new things to check out on GameCola:
- By popular demand, a brand-new READER SUBMISSIONS section! Yes, we’re putting YOU in the spotlight—mostly since, after Diana’s fantastic crossover fanfiction, you just won’t stop asking us for it. Want to send us a guest review, a top-10 list, a random opinion piece, photography, artwork, or just about anything else, so long as it meets our strict standards of not being terrible? Get in touch with pfranzen AT gamecola DOT net, and we just might make you Internet-famous. We’ll be posting fan content once a week every Saturday morning (the time established by TurnaboutCola), unless we’re just so overwhelmed with great content that you cannot be contained. …Or, unless nobody sends anything in.
- A CHAT WIDGET! Why wait until our next live podcast recording to get together with the rest of the GameCola Faithful and talk about breakfast foods? You can do so right here, right now, with anyone else who’s currently visiting this site. Just click this thing on the bottom of the page:
- UPDATED GRAPHICS like we think we’re Madden or something! Much thanks to Colin Greenhalgh for that; GameCola’s never looked quite so fisty.
- A new SUGGESTION BOX! …Because we’ve finally just about cleared out the backlog from the old suggestion box.
- ENHANCED ARTICLE RATINGS! I bet you didn’t even realize you could rate our articles, did you. Well…you can! Why would you want to? It makes our writers feel very special when you give them this simple e-pat-on-the-back. Also it helps us to weed out content that nobody likes. The new update enhances both the visibility and the accuracy of the ratings by extending the rating range from 5 to 10, and also makes them more noticeable, because the stars are now beards. Also we tweaked the Top Articles section—now, instead of just displaying the top 15 articles of all time, it also showcases the top 10 articles from the past month.
That’s about it! Enjoy the “new” GameCola, everyone. We’re all hoping this upgrade brings GameCola to the next level so that we can finally sell out to IGN, and we won’t get there without your support. Tweet about us, share your favorite posts on Facebook, rate articles and post comments when you have something to say, and most importantly—keep being fans.
Affectionately yours,
Paul Franzen
Editor-in-Chief
Booo I can’t review all the mainstream games anymore. We’ll just have to make do with adult arcade games from the early ’90s… Actually, not a bad idea at all! Who’s with me?
Fantasia 2 here I come.
Come being the figurative word here.
Glad this update didn’t take months as the last one.
(I am going to get soooo much crap for that.)
GameCola will also be changing its name to “Gamera Obscura: The Website”.
It might be the end of Gamera Obscura. :/ I really hope not, because my good friend Ominous Voice would be out of a job.
As you can see, it IS the end of Gamera Obscura.
Yep. You’ll have to share your crappy games from now on…
Cool! That’s quite ambitious and should help build the GameCola community!
If I could offer one critical piece of advice, it’s that the article rating change from a “5” scale to a “10” scale actually makes the reader experience more complex. Look at YouTube: after they were acquired by Google, they simplified their rating system (going from a 5-star scale to a simple thumb up/down system).
Keep up the great work!
I agree about the article rating–especially buried under the “YOU MAY ALSO LIKE section, and with the darker color of the beards blending in more with the background, it’s a little more confusing. And I’m easily confused.
On the other hand, it’s amusing that this article has a rating of approximately 7.71 beards. I’m not sure how to measure 771 centibeards.
It’s a lot simpler than the Imperial system, though. I can never remember how many mustaches there are in a goatee or whatever.
But after a while the Imperial system grows on you and you get used to it.
Drat, there’s no “preview” button to see what I’m replying to. Oh well.
i can only think of two things to comment on so here it goes.
first, the new logo looks more like the original concept i saw back in ’09, although to clarify i found that while browsing the archives and didn’t actually read gamecola at the time.
and second, the only thing i’ll miss from the home pages constantly changing banners, ” we actually made all the way to Oregon” etc.
but a great change over all, keep up the good work guys.
I’ll miss the slogans, too! I think we’ll probably bring them back at some point in the future, after we’ve more firmly established the site’s new direction.
For some reason I don’t think I’m going have a hard time with this new direction.
Ah, so this was the official announcement of the major turn to what GameCola was when I actually became aware and interested in what was happening.
These major “earth-shaker, world-changer” posts are very interesting to reflect on from a “I’ve only been here a little over a year but it has over a decade of history” perspective.
It’s comments like your that validate my ill-fated Archive Dive column and my ongoing efforts to bring the archives up to current style and proofing standards. Thank you for encouraging me to continue to ignore almost everything going on with the site today so that I can fix ancient things that only one person might see!