Kotaku Meeting Minutes

Last week, you had your say on the future of Kotaku – and while I’ll only be here for a few weeks, I vowed to try out new things based on your suggestions. The beauty of it is, if it’s successful, it can stay. If it’s not, you can just blame it on the ol’ Jungster.

So, what sort of new things can you expect?

Well, here’s a few. And this is just the start – don’t feel that discussion was limited to that post only – if you ever want to give similar feedback, we’ll be listening via comments, email, or just plain weird stalking. I, for one, welcome the stalking. Because I’m lonely. So lonely…

[imgclear] *ahem* First off, by far the strongest sentiment was that of retro love. The idea of retro game reviews was given, as well as reviews of patches, updates, and expansions. It’s a very valid point that Team Fortress 2 is very different to how it was when it was released. MMOs sometimes do special events. Games like League of Legends have seasons, and bring in new heroes. There’s no reason we should miss out on that action due to the 24 hours news cycle.

So this is happening. In addition to recent games, feel free to send in your reader reviews of said updates. Please don’t be offended if yours doesn’t get published – we expect to receive more now, and will want to publish the best of them.

Other suggestions revolved around a “What did Jung have for breakfast?” segment, or the possibility of a regular “Morning pr0nz”. Little did you know these are already morning regulars. I just don’t publish them.

The Kotaku LAN suggestion received a fair bit of support, and hiring a small hall for such a thing would be a possibility, although I wouldn’t be able to organise/attend much outside of Sydney. How would people feel about invading one of the larger LANs, such as SGL? I’m sure it’d be possible to reserve a large section for ourselves.

Competitions got a lot of love, and they’ll stay of course. Photoshop was mentioned, I’ll try to work that in somehow.

The LunchTimeWaster conversation was a bit back and forth, but in the end seemed to gravitate towards less quantity and more quality. Am I right in that summation? I’ve already started implementing that – so I’ll continue to post only the good ones as they come along. Feel free to shoot us a link if you think a game is worthy.

GFK no longer gets video game figures from retailers, for those who asked, making sales charts a bit tricky. But special guests for the Ask Me Stuff is a fantastic idea, and I’ll try to get onto that starting this week.

Another good point was that of a more involved community event, and I’m happy to kick that off this week as well. One idea we had was that of a Kotaku Retro Gaming Club – picking a game that may have something to do with a game coming out, playing it over the weekend, and talking about it the following week. For example, we might play some Super Metroid before the release of Other M.

It wouldn’t necessarily have to be retro. It could even be something in the last few years. Another idea is something competition related, like a 16, or 32 (depending on interest) player bracket for something like Starcraft 2, or perhaps just some Gungame in Counter-Strike Source. Very open to ideas there, and I’m happy to join in on the action.

Regarding site functionality, I’ve heard whispered rumours of some cool new things that are a ways away – but it looks like straight up forums aren’t going to happen. But don’t be a sadpanda, the Talk Amongst Yourselves will continue.

I imagine it’ll be hard to pick games to play on the weekend we’re all happy with, but the true spirit of such a club is to try out some classics you haven’t had the chance to. Again, feel free to continue that discussion here.

Comments


17 responses to “Kotaku Meeting Minutes”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *