How to start your own gaming website.
May 17, 2001
Probably some of the most frequent questions I get in my hundreds of emails each week are "Why do you do this?" or "How did you get started?" This got me thinking back to November 1996 when I wrote my first online strategy guide for the original Tomb Raider. Prior to that, I had written only one other guide and that was an ASCII text walkthrough for the action game, Cyberia. I'm still not sure what prompted me to do a guide for Tomb Raider. All I do know was that it was so popular I just had to write more.
Over the course of the next two years I wrote several more guides including solves for Oddworld, Tomb Raider 2, and GEX: Enter the Gecko. At this time I didn't even have a website of my own. All of my guides were being offered at The Spoiler Center, and I didn't get around to creating my own website until late 1998 after completing some additional solves for Deathtrap Dungeon, Redjack, and Trespasser.
Even though I had designed over ten interactive websites up to this point, the first version of Sinjin Solves consisted of an 800x600 image with a giant red dragon and logos for all the games that would launch the appropriate guide. I was more concerned with designing and writing the guides than the interface to launch them.
Things started to change around November 1998. I had just finished my Tomb Raider 3 guide and had nothing to work on, so I decided to design a better homepage. About four weeks later my large image map was replaced with an ominous animated greeting that borrowed heavily from the previous images on the site. Those bold enough to click on the fire-breathing dragon were about to enter the first framed website for Sinjin's Lair.
On December 3, 1998 I got an email from Will Bryant over at MPOG.COM. They were offering to host my site and let me join their team of game reviewers. This couldn't have come at a better time. My site was currently pushing its 5mb limit and almost always exceeding my monthly bandwidth limitations with my ISP provider. I quickly transferred the site to their servers and all that remained of the original site was a forwarding banner message that still remains today.
1999 was a busy year. In addition to five new strategy guides including two Tomb Raider guides, Prince of Persia 3D, and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, I was also cranking out hardware and software reviews for MPOG, and I even got to attend the 1999 E3 trade show. As the year came to an end I decided Sinjin's Lair needed a new look, so I redesigned the site.
While the new site offered a cold metallic look it really didn't offer any new functionality. I wasn't sure what was missing or what direction to take the site and then around July things started to happen. I had just finished my Deus Ex strategy guide and that same week I also became unemployed. I decided to take this opportunity to redesign the entire site into a full-featured gaming site that offered more than just strategy guides.
Sometime near the end of August, Sinjin Solves Gold Edition debuted. This new version featured expanded sections for Gaming Tips, News, and Game Reviews as well as my first attempt at ad banners. This site was also the first to use our new slogan "Your Guide to Success". While I wasn't completely happy with the overall new look I had to crank out Sanity, Monkey Island, and Tomb Raider Chronicles guides for the next three months.
January 2001 brought even more changes. For most of the previous year Sinjin Solves was dragged along with MPOG into a new venture known as E-Front. When January rolled around the entire Internet advertising commerce collapsed and took E-Front down with it. As everyone was struggling to recover I decided to take the next step and get my own domain name. Surprising as it may seem, I had been running my own website for over five years and never bothered to register my own domain.
Naturally, the new domain prompted a completed redesign of the entire site, and for the first time in five years I dropped the dragon motif and tried something that looked dangerously professional. I also got a wake-up call when I started having to "pay" for my web hosting and realized just how much it costs to run a website.
Ad banners weren't paying the bills and with the introduction of those annoying pop-up ads I was getting more complaints than money. This prompted yet another site redesign in late February, and this design remains to this day. While the content remained the same I was able to incorporate style-sheets, java menus, and some other new design features to greatly enhance the overall site.
Now that I was no longer under the MPOG "umbrella" I was basically starting from scratch. I had to take the initiative and start contacting all of the game publishers and try to get my own review products. For those of you who want to start your own game review site be warned that getting started is a "Catch 22" fiasco. Most major publishers won't give you the time of day (let alone games) unless you are running a huge site with millions of viewers and some established credentials.
Fortunately for me I had already established several contacts in the industry while writing for MPOG and I was able to use the people I already knew, the reviews I had already written, and a nice letter of introduction to get onboard with many of the popular publishers. Once you "break in" you can start to spread through the network or PR people quite rapidly. It's amazing how much these people interact with one another, and you can often use one PR rep as a reference to get established with another firm.
Here are some basic guidelines for starting and running your own gaming website:
- Be serious! Don't approach the concept as a "scheme to get free games". You won't fool anybody; especially marketing people who are already suspicious of the smaller sites.
- Get a domain name. It's cheap and it immediately gives you an extra notch of credibility.
- Design a nice site. You don't need fancy Flash or Java; just quality writing and a pleasant looking functional site. You will want an accurate web counter to log traffic. Many publishers want verifiable traffic logs.
- WRITE! Write reviews. Write editorials. Write articles. I waited in line for a PS2 for 13 hours last October and wrote about it. Write reviews for games you are currently playing. Write reviews for games you like and games you dislike. The more you write the better you get. I'm amazed when I read my current stuff and compare it to my work from two or three years ago.
- Spell check your work. Readers lose confidence in the quality of your content if it is full of errors.
- Don't plagiarize. Cutting and pasting reviews from other sites isn't writing. People will eventually recognize what you are doing and you could even get in trouble.
- Maintain your integrity. Write honest, unbiased, and fair reviews. Just because a game isn't "your style" doesn't make it a bad game.
- Go to trade shows; E3, GenCon, etc. Have business cards ready and meet with every PR rep that will talk to you. Don't be offended if they don't remember you the following week.
Don't get discouraged. You will probably only hear back from 10% of the firms you try to contact and many of those will probably turn you down. The big publishers like SEGA, Electronic Arts, LucasArts, Sony, and Nintendo will either turn you down flat or not even respond. Remember that even if your site is getting a few thousand visitors a day that is "nothing" in the grand marketing scheme for these companies.
Make sure to keep a list of email addresses. I like to break mine up into firms I deal with regularly and firms that I keep bugging on a regular basis. PR staff changes frequently. Make sure to introduce yourself to any new PR people, especially if they are replacing your previous contact. If you want to review products for a certain publisher you may have better luck if you have already written some reviews for their products that you already own. When I was starting out many companies wanted to see existing reviews I had already written for their products.
Maintain regular communication with your PR reps but don't annoy them. They deal with hundreds of people each week. While you will probably be put on several automated mailing lists, you will still need to request almost every game you want to review. Don't assume new games will magically appear in your mailbox every week.
Don't base your reviews on what other reviewers are saying and don't give a bad game a good review just to keep the PR people happy so you can get more games. Publishers know when they release a bad game and any self-respecting PR rep won't hold a grudge for a negative review of a bad game. If you try to write a good review for a bad game you will only mislead your readers into possibly buying that game and then you just lost that reader.
When you get games to review make sure you actually review them. Even if you can't stand the game, you owe it to the publisher to play the game and write about their product. After you have written and published your review make sure to let the publisher know and provide them with the URL to the review. They may not have time to read your review, but at least they know you wrote one. Don't expect them to visit your site on a regular basis and check up on your progress. They deal with hundreds of reviewers and many are bigger than you.
If your review was positive you might want to contact the webmaster for that particular product's homepage and see if you can get them to link to your review or quote you in their "press section". They get a nice plug for their game, and you get some advertising and additional traffic for your site. Obviously, this only works for positive reviews.
Starting your own gaming site won't happen overnight. It could take several months or several years before you build up the content and credentials necessary. Make sure to approach the venture as a hobby. Unless you have some grand business plan or innovative marketing strategy (other than ad banners) you won't be making a living off of your site. You will be lucky to break even with your expenses. Web hosting fees and bandwidth charges get more expensive as your site becomes larger and more popular.
Most of all; have FUN. If you enjoy your work it shows in your writing. If you don't then you need to be doing something else.
Sinjin