brand new irish games website: game.ie

Helix

http://www.game.ie

Hi guys,

Just a quick message to let you know about a brand new Irish gaming
website launched this week. We're currently in beta mode, but things
are coming together extremely quickly.

We feature news, reviews, previews, features and charts for the main
gaming platforms (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PSP, DS, PC and Mobile), and
what we hope can become a thriving Irish video game community centered
around out forums.

Right now we need feedback on what you like and don't like about the
site, and any ideas about things we should add, or stuff you'd like to
see done better.

If you'd like to get involved and become part of the writing team, you
can drop me a line at peter@game.ie.

Our aim is to make this the main hub of Irish gaming, so your help is needed!

Hope to hear from you soon
Pete
Game.ie

http://www.game.ie

(im aware of crossposting rules here, so ill leave it a few days between posting in each section if thats ok?)

Mr E

Good luck with that, Pete... nice looking site. Any plans for an RSS feed?

Ironic ad alert - For those who are getting served with the iTunes/Coldplay banner at the bottom, anyone think Will Champion is the spitting image of Gordon Freeman?

StickyMcGinty

nice one Pete, will check this out

Kinetic^

I'd love to be able to support you site but the management team behind the scenes in the company you work for were extremely unprofessional in their treatment of staff when the Xbox Live Cafe was shut down.

Helix

Kinetic^ wrote: »

I'd love to be able to support you site but the management team behind the scenes in the company you work for were extremely unprofessional in their treatment of staff when the Xbox Live Cafe was shut down.

erm

what company is that?

the site is nothing to do with game the stores if thats what youre getting at, and i dont work for anyone who (to the best of my knowledge) had anything to do with the xbox live cafe

i suspect you may have your wires crossed here

Kinetic^

Helix wrote: »

erm

what company is that?

the site is nothing to do with game the stores if thats what youre getting at, and i dont work for anyone who (to the best of my knowledge) had anything to do with the xbox live cafe

i suspect you may have your wires crossed here

No sorry, I'm right. I see the links on your website in relation to the same company as well as the address. I wouldn't make such an accusation if I didn't have the facts right.

D3UC3 J3

2nd to that Mark.

Best of luck peter you'll need it.

Riesen_Meal

Nerdfight round 1.....

:P

D3UC3 J3

It's not a nerd fight man.

We're just saying that unfortunately we'll not be supporting Peter.

The management company behind his website we're highly involved in the company we used to work for. They treated us all so badly we left the company.

Would you support a company that did that to you.

I think not.

In any case i have a much better job now working in the same industry and laughing all the way home!!!

DisasterIRL

I have to agree completely with D3UC3 J3 and Kinetic

I was also involved for quite some time with this company

Riesen_Meal

I see,

I doubt knowingly pete here would have gotten involved had he known your grievances or whatever with the company in question unless it related to him, which I doubt it did!

I do not know the company or you guys' private matter, so i'll leave it at that, at least its a new venture he's only started trying to do and giving up his own free time and whatever else to do this.....

Im sure you guys can talk bout this over PM anyway.....


If this is unrelated to the subject you are talking about, what happened the xbox centres?

Down the swanney fairly quick?

Was there one in swords?

nevaeh-2die-4

fair play man



"We Couldnt Run An Add That Said No Portuguese
But Yea No Portuguese"

D3UC3 J3

Fieldog wrote: »

I see,

I doubt knowingly pete here would have gotten involved had he known your grievances or whatever with the company in question unless it related to him, which I doubt it did!

I do not know the company or you guys' private matter, so i'll leave it at that, at least its a new venture he's only started trying to do and giving up his own free time and whatever else to do this.....

Im sure you guys can talk bout this over PM anyway.....

Well Peter knows what we think from PMs and can ask us whatever he likes if needs be.

LIke i said though best of luck to him the site looks really good. I would have actually taken him up on the offer to help out only now knowing what i know i wouldn't go near it with a barge pole extension.

Fieldog wrote: »

If this is unrelated to the subject you are talking about, what happened the xbox centres?

Down the swanney fairly quick?

Was there one in swords?

Xbox Live Gaming Centre (aka Xbox Live Cafe) was run by the same directors as this company. The management team, myself included left the company due to lack of support and resources.

It was a pity as it was a really good idea, just implemented wrong.

Nothing to do with the one in Swords.

DeVore

Plus this is Spam. I'll leave it open because its Irish but dont push your luck....

DeV.

quarryman

NERD FIGHT!!!

D3UC3 J3

LOL!!!

Helix

DeVore wrote: »

Plus this is Spam. I'll leave it open because its Irish but dont push your luck....

DeV.

i thought it was fair enough coz its an irish site for irish gamers, so kinda had relevance to the forum nein?

not being mouthy, just curious

zAbbo

Anyone want to fill in the blanks on what the beef is here?

I just don't think there's a market for an Irish games website which has very little or no content which relates to Ireland...

The site is a little buggy, the only thing that works is the ads

Helix

thats the point of the beta

let me know the bugs so i can pass it on to the lads. whats not working for you (apart from the images, thats being worked on)

zAbbo

That's not real the point of a beta, You'd expect stuff like images not working to be ironed out at alpha stage

Helix

it only manifested itself recently

what are the other issues that make nothing on the site work apart from the ads for you?

zAbbo

In fairness I'm not going to QA a site for you, I've enough of that in my day job

Helix

yet you find the time to critisize

nice one

zAbbo

Ok, if I may critisise it, here goes.

It looks crap, yup - aesthetically, the first impressions is that the site width is tiny with a jagged header image, as well as the whole site centred in a grey gradient with horizontal lines, everything is a mixmash of gradients and patterns with insconsistent inputs.

It looks amatuer and unprofessional, it's neither valid HTML or CSS, and appears that zero usability testing has taken place.

It's a mix of table based layout and badly written code, I could go on about the lack of semantic structure and SEO elements, no Syndication Services - but they all point to the same development failings.

The images are incorrectly sized for the bordered placeholders!

The featured article has a 'read more' call to action which doesn't work!

The navigational layout on some pages is 3 horizontal sections, with no mouse over feedback to indicate if they are selectable or not. I'm just looking at a bunch of links.


It looks like a templated CMS with a tacked on forum...

A lof of the things I've highlighted can be fixed retrospectively, but alarm bells would be going off with me if these weren't in place at alpha stage.

I could go on, but like I said - I save that for my day job.

Apologies if I've just rained on your parade, but I've seen a few Irish gaming websites come in and proclaim to making their site an irish gaming mecca, without fully understanding how to develop websites or communities.

Hopefully you can pump back my critique and that from places like the webmaster forum here and iwf.ie into creating your field of dreams

Also I'd be weary of spamming it around different forums on boards, as 1. The site isn't ready and 2. You could speak to Vexorg about advertising if it's a commercial venture.

DeVore

Helix wrote: »

i thought it was fair enough coz its an irish site for irish gamers, so kinda had relevance to the forum nein?

not being mouthy, just curious

Which is why you are still able to post to it, ja?

The line is drawn at whether the site is commercial or amateur. I'll look the other way, so long as you dont force me to see this by spamming...

DeV.

quarryman

zAbbo wrote: »

I just don't think there's a market for an Irish games website which has very little or no content which relates to Ireland...

I think this is the big problem. There isn't a single site I visit that has a general topic (movies/films/books) with a localized domain.

Good luck with it but wouldn't expect to see it in a year.

thebman

There isn't that much localized Irish gaming news that it deserves its own website IMO.

It isn't a viable business idea.

The Irish gaming industry is so small there is little news and the best you can really hope for is a nice little community site, even then usually quite small since boards.ie has this market cornered.

D3UC3 J3

brim4brim wrote: »

the best you can really hope for is a nice little community site, even then usually quite small since boards.ie has this market cornered.

Kinda like www.celticsnipers.com!!!