Weekly Retrospective: 28/03/10

It’s the last Weekly Retrospective of March, so let’s see what’s been going on.

I’ll start off with the most important news of this week for the site, which is the addition of Dexter17 to the team. We’re always looking for talented individuals to join us and help us bring you awesome content, so when Dexter contacted me I was more than happy to take him on board – but that’s enough from me, so let’s hear from the man himself.

So, where do I start? After much deliberation, I have finally made the decision to get involved with StartGame, and I am already loving it! StartGame has some serious potential, and I extremely pleased to be able to do my bit to fulfill it. You should see me around here quite a bit, and I am hoping to kick things off with a “Pessimist” article, which is centered around one question - what makes great games bad? Anyway, this has gone on for longer than I originally intended, so I’ll see you all around!

I’m really looking forward to the awesome features and pieces that he’ll be creating, and so should you. I heartily welcome him to the team.

Moving onto the content of the site: now that we’re bringing you more video content, you may have noticed the lack of text in our video posts. This isn’t because we’re lazy, it’s down to the fact that we’re trying to build up a mini video library on the site. If someone is interested in watching a release trailer, developer diary or gameplay montage, we’d rather just give you a brief introduction and let you jump straight into the video itself, rather than sticking the video under a load of waffle.  All our videos can be viewed using the link at the top – just hit the main button to show everything or hover over it to choose exactly which type you’d like to see. If you can’t see what you’re looking for, you can always use the site’s search box to see if we have what you’re looking for.

Once again, I’d like to remind everyone of a couple of new additions to the site which were introduced last week: the forums and the affiliate links. If you want to have a discussion or get in touch with us in a more personal way than the contact form then don’t hesitate to jump into the forums and get chatting. As for the affiliate links, they’re a way for you to help us out when making your normal purchases. This will probably be the last time I mention them like this; there’s a big button at the side and I don’t want to keep putting them in everyone’s face all the time, so you know where they are if you want to use them. Massive thanks to anyone that does.

We’re really trying to shake up what we do at the moment, to give us more focus on bringing you great content. This may mean a few changes in the future, but don’t worry, we’re not losing any of our signature features. It’s going to tighten up what we do, how we do it and how we put it out to our readers. You won’t notice any huge changes in the short term but it will set us up greater in the long run. As you can imagine, setting up a site like this in an industry flooded with sites like this is a bit of a challenge. To paraphrase what a great man once said: “It’s like throwing messages in bottles into a sea made up entirely of messages in bottles”. We’re working hard on giving everyone unique, original content to read and watch that sets us apart from the rest, and which people love to return for.

Remember to check in this week for the usual dose of features, with an emphasis on tomorrow where we have a brutal, head-rippingly epic game review going out. I’ve also locked the StartGame drinks cabinet back up and banned Blair from the mini bar, so hopefully I won’t catch him drinking on the job again…