OpenlyCurious.Co - Games articles?

CharlieAckAckAck

Dear game lovers and game makers.

I have just started a fledgling online magazine. It is self funded by two working class journalists. Myself and Jon Pienaar, formerly with Carte Blanche and of Brainstorm, Finweek et al.

Under the section 'Play' we hope to be writing a lot about games and gaming and game makers.

I would love to know:
1. What would you love to read about on the local scene? Profiles? Game reviews? Insights? What kind of articles would you enjoy.
2. What would you like to read about that relates to international games and game devs, game makers, the offshore industry.

We would love to create world-class journalism that everyone here would enjoy reading [and soon listening to and viewing], so I would welcome thoughts on this.

Please feel free to let rip about pet peeves about game journalism that annoys or grates or that just is wallpaper to you, and that which you love.

The games section would be here: http://www.openlycurious.co/category/play/

[The site is only a week old - so please forgive how messy and buggy and uncomplete it is, but we're cobbling everything together ourselves, and then trying to make money, and then write for the site. But we're really committed to doing good work there.]

Thank you very much. MdW aka Charlie

dammit

A quick question - who are the audience or target market for the magazine? I would much rather see a play section of a magazine target people who aren't reading the local games sites or the indie dev community. There's a bunch of sites that do the latter really well, with great content, and I almost feel we have too many local game pages that don't add much.

What I think a lot of the devs here might need (if I'm speaking out of turn, shout!) is access to a target audience we haven't had access to otherwise (many local magazines don't want to write about our products etc even if we target the same audience).

Have I made sense here?

Pierre

I reckon good writing will attract a following, and I enjoy various sites for the "character" of the writing and the people working there. So even if there may be multiple sites already reporting on local games... it's not a bad idea to have your own.
I think it's cool. I like a fresh perspective.

As for Pet Peeves about other sites... (Please take this as my opinion on other sites and that I am not implying any criticism on your new venture. You may regard these opinions at your own leisure.)

Journalism
Sometimes I avoid a game site entirely if I find that the journalism is too biased and personal... (one way or the other)
I personally prefer to read neutral non-partisan journalism. It strikes me as more professional.

Critics
Of course, the above is not quite the same for people who write as Critics...
I enjoy some critics and some I don't. This is often a factored by my own confirmation bias as a reader.
That said, I am annoyed with critics that state their personal beliefs as a given fact.
Of course they're free to do what they want, but I tend to regard their opinion as a lot less valid.
As long as Criticism is "justified criticism", I enjoy their reviews.

Types of articles
I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with.
I'd love to read more about the exploratory and experimental stuff people are working on. For instance... @Tbulford is working on something very technical and amazing. I would never have known about it if he hadn't discussed it with me at the Community meetup. It's not related to a currently published game, but it's interesting stuff. I won't share any details though; That's up to him, but I would enjoy reading about that sort of stuff. R&D type of stuff.

rustybroomhandle

Pierre said:

Sometimes I avoid a game site entirely if I find that the journalism is too biased and personal... (one way or the other)
I personally prefer to read neutral non-partisan journalism. It strikes me as more professional.

a) There's no such thing
b) We both know this is not what you are really saying

Pierre

@rustybroomhandle
A. I'm not going to argue with you. There IS such a thing. Google journalistic objectivity.
B. What I've written is in English and it says exactly what I'm saying. We both know you're just baiting for an argument, but I'm not interested in arguing.

If you have a peeve as mentioned in the op, then please present it to the op. I'm not interested in fighting.

CharlieAckAckAck

@rustybroomhandle @Pierre

Please give me advance warning if I need to go and get a slushy and some popcorn. ;)

rustybroomhandle

Naw, it'd just end up being a bad sequel to a cliche' of a movie. :)

Pierre

No worries. Hopefully this was a trailer for a show that never happens. :)

Pierre

How often will this site be updating with articles?

0bl1v1on

To return to the question at hand, I think that what Pierre said regarding technical experiments is a fantastic idea. Random things like the iforce2d channel on YouTube (the crazy man built a working Box2D 4-stroke engine!) would be very interesting, although possibly hard to come by.

Game prototypes would also be an interesting topic - the purpose of them, their implementation, and the results. Sort of a post-mortem of concepts and experiments with the purpose of developing games. I'm sure you would receive oodles worthy content from game-jams and the like.

I'm not sure if they are around, but inside-scoops on local indie games would also be fantastic. The technicality is what really interests me, so they can be broken down into things like:
- Inspiration
- Core concept
- Implementation details (design patterns, logic systems, ... )
- Technical challenges
- And the actual tech used to develop it (e.g. Unity, libGDX, UDK, InkScape for art, ... Whatever made it come together.)


I personally love reading about the inner workings of digital worlds - that seems to be my cocaine.
All the best for the site though! I'll definitely be keeping a beady eye on it :)

CharlieAckAckAck

@0bl1v1on Thanks for this. This is particularly useful. I appreciate the time and effort spent here.

If you do keep an eye on the site I'd really appreciate your thoughts and feedback as we go along.

CharlieAckAckAck

@Pierre We want to try and update Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and hopefully Friday. However quality journalism takes time an effort and we'd rather go for quality than quantity.

We don't have funding - we are completely self funded so basically we're doing this without pay at the moment to try and get traction. But I am sure a lot of people around these parts can relate to that. :)

Earlier in the week more thinking and feature pieces. Later in the week more lifestyle and play pieces.

Pierre

@CharlieAckAckAck Five days a week? That's pretty heavy and awesome. I was only expecting once a week.
I also prefer quality. :)

CharlieAckAckAck

@Pierre Unless we die. In which case it will be no articles a week. ;)

CharlieAckAckAck

Our first games feature on OpenlyCurious:

DOOM 4 [AND AN ODE TO DOOM]
http://www.openlycurious.co/2015/07/09/doom-4-and-an-ode-to-doom/

I'd appreciate your comments. We have heard the comments here and will try and do loads of local stuff as well. But just as a preview of the writing we'll be doing. [And now, let's hope there's no tears at bed time for the writers at The OC.]

CharlieAckAckAck

PS - If anyone has pitches or story ideas, or thinks we should be writing to us, please mail.

MandyLdewaal@gmail.com or
JonPienaar@Gmail.com or
openlycurious.co@gmail.com

Thanks muchly.