AllRPG - A Discussed Change

[Hyde]

So I have been turning an idea over in my head and want to run it by you all to see what you think.

The way we're doing the site right now is difficult. It's time consuming. Alot of people say they want to help, want to contribute and that's great and we appreciate it but in general, alot of help would require a nearly every day commitment and not even all of the site staff can maintain that constantly. In fact, most can't. So while talking things over with some media friends of mine today while picking up my son, one friend of mine was talking about how she brought her alt-culture mag, Coilhouse, from an online blog to something more complete. More fun. More tactile.

What if, instead of doing the site the way we always did, we changed the concept to something where everyone could contribute as much or as little as they wanted....with a much wider timeframe?

What if we made AllRPG a magazine-style format?

What does that mean? It means we keep the site to show things like preview articles, important news, and multimedia things we can't put in a static document....but the main content, the real MEAT of the work...would become a magazine, both available for free download as a PDF or to be purchased in print format. Yes. PRINT AllRPG.

The difference lies in the timing: Right now, AllRPG is hard to keep up with. We don't have a paid staff like many sites out there and probably not enough free time to keep up with half of everything we should. Instead...contributers and staffers would be able to put their stuff together online, it'd be up for editing, and in the end, would be layed out in a REAL Magazine style.

Less news, more content. Editorials, New and Classic Reviews, Previews into upcoming games, Forum and community hype, these are the kinds of things that would change what we've been doing into something more tangible...more fun.

What do you think?

[Elon]

The key is to get people interested in Allrpg. The more traffic you bring in the more interest will be in running the site. I'm very impressed with what you have going on at the moment. A major revamp would be interesting to watch. I would happily go to fedex and print out copies to drop off at my local game shop and to distribute through my friends if the quality was high enough. Litter the streets in ALLRPG e-zines!

[Devil King]

Fuck, yeah.

[CoolOtaku]

This sounds like an incredible amount of work... o_o

If this is something we decide to start, the consequences of pulling out of a project like this are going to be greater than they would be for those of a simple website. The implications of this project are so tremendous, I don't even know where to start. I should note, I'm not trying to be a killjoy. I just don't want us running down the wrong road at such a fragile time in AllRPG's life.

I will say this much though, I certainly support talking about it at this point to see if it's viable or not because it is a very interesting idea.

[Hewitt]

I like this idea but like CoolOtaku has said, it seems like it would be at least more time consuming. The end result I think would be really fantastic if done right. The main problem in my mind would be the possible time/efforted needed to pull it off, and being able to have enough site posted on the site between "issues" to keep newcomers coming back and interested. Either way I look forward to contributing as much as I'll be able to.

[twerp]

Look there's a million different news/reviews sites out there. I'm all for being different. I just need guidelines to write by.

[Hyde]

I'm not sure how it's necessarily MORE work/harder to accomplish.

[twerp]

It's not if you want to do it, you'll do it.

[CoolOtaku]

Huh... I feel like I'm just not understanding the situation if people don't think it's more work o_o

Maybe I should just let this play out a bit and see where it starts going

[Aquasol]

It's an interesting idea, but for the love of god have at least two really good editors to look things over-- proofread, doublecheck sources if possible, leave cute little notes.

[Jun]

Aqua is the least cute.

[Hewitt]

It just seems like more work to me since you'd be putting in effort to compile issues in a magazine format as opposed to just posting them on the site. But I've never done anything like that so I could be wrong. I say if you don't feel that way we should just go for it. One plus is that it would give more people time to submit material instead of on a constant daily basis.

[Hyde]

Blue: I'm giving it a few more days of rehashing to see what people think but yeah, I figure we probably will move in this direction and be different. I think this can be a really good thing if people want to stick with it. If no one does...well....then that's unfortunate.

Also, many people likely haven't even seen the thread yet. Perhaps a global message with a link here to tell them?

[CoolOtaku]

I think my main issue with this right now is that we basically just got the site going again and we're already trying to move on to something else. If we have a goal for the site, I say we make sure we follow it and do our best to meet it, putting out as much content as possible that relates.

Has the site just been an overall disappointment in your opinions?

[Hyde]

[QUOTE=CoolOtaku;48261]I think my main issue with this right now is that we basically just got the site going again and we're already trying to move on to something else. If we have a goal for the site, I say we make sure we follow it and do our best to meet it, putting out as much content as possible that relates.

Has the site just been an overall disappointment in your opinions?[/QUOTE]

It's not so much that it's a disappointment. It's the fact that it's hard to keep people motivated to do work *every* day...people don't have the time, myself included. Things happen. Games need playing. Life and Kids and Girls and Guys and all that stuff.

I think if we move to a magazine format, having people contribute over the course of a month in preparation for the next issue, and then just assemble it, that we'll get more and better participation. I can make a base template for the magazine format and then just change the content on a month-to-month basis with updated graphics and layouts in certain parts. That type of stuff is easy for me.

The main thing is that what the site was about just isn't as relevant as it used to be, and moving to an all-genre format is a good thing, but hard to keep up without highly dedicated staffers around to work all the time. Other sites do it better. However, with a monthly magazine format, we're offering something a bit different. Plus it's free unless people want a hardcopy. We would start using the site to talk about and post important news stories, features(Like maybe some of Trillian's vids? and twerp said he'd be up for making vids too).....

I think something we need to do and need to think about is how we're approaching things. Yeah, we can do what we've been doing and be irrelevant in a world of 1ups, Kotakus and gamasutras, or we can do something different and make a perspective based magazine with a bit of attitude.