want to blog?

[DrWilloughby]

I occassionally post a blog on the GarageGames website. It's a great place to blog since they get such high traffic. But I've been itching to get my own space, one that was compatible with the rest of the blogosphere.

Problem is, I don't think I can draw enough traffic to a site just by myself to make it worth it. I have a feeling there's a lot of people in the same boat.

So I'm working on a little project, not yet ready for the public, that would be a blogging community for game developers. If you are interested in taking part, even if it's just to try it out, please respond to this post.

The other cool thing about the site that I'm developing is that it allows for user ratings for posts, and the top rated/recent blogs get promoted to headline status on the front page. This is cool for two reasons: it gives incentive to bloggers not to write crap, and it filters blogs for the readers so they don't have to wade through tons of uninteresting material to get to the good stuff. It's similar to Digg, but with blogs instead of news stories.

I don't want to publicly share a link yet since it's not ready to go public, but if you respond here I'll PM you a link where you can see a demo of the work in progress, and so I can get some early feedback on the structure of the site.

[Stefan Maton]

Hi,

sounds interesting. But I think there is already something similar on GameDev.net (the journals). But anyways, I'ld be happy if something new for indie developers would come up.

Have fun,
Stefan

PS: I'ld like to have the link...

[Tom Gilleland]

How about filtering thru some of the best posts here and putting them on your blog?

Tom

[Phil Steinmeyer]

There's also a few aggregation sites, that automatically collect blog posts from different sets of indie/casual blogs. Mine is www.casualgameblogs.com, and there's also www.gameblogs.org and www.casualgamedev.com.

If you have a casual/indie game blog that stays mostly on topic (i.e. not too much stuff about what you had for dinner last night), drop me a line. I don't add blogs to the site til they've been up for a month or so ('cause so many blogs die out after 2 weeks, and to be able to judge what type of content they have).

[DrWilloughby]

Hi guys- thanks for the input. The problem that I have with most blog sites is they are - in general - large blocks of text with no good filtering system. There may be plenty of interesting content, but the site designs are intimidating.

The journals of gamedev.net have no way of telling me what's good and what's not. I'm not going to spend my time reading through a tons of crappy journals to find ones I find interesting.

Phil, I wasn't aware of yours. Looks like you've got tons of interesting content, but again, the problem of filtering still exists. There's an encyclopedia worth of text on these sites. I don't have time to read through all of it. (sorry to criticize, it's just that I have this problem with pretty much ALL blogs).

So I've built a ratings system similar to Digg that pushes the good posts to the front page. I'm also going for something that has a feel similar to CNN.com, rather the typical blog look of a large column of text.

Anywas, perhaps this thread will be more useful when I'm comfortable posting a link. Thanks for the input, though.

*EDIT* I do like that Gamezebo site. That makes things a bit easier to palate.

[PoV]

Hey Doc,

I'd like to hear and see more of what you're plotting, but I'd also like to digg for a few more details.

I guess I'm not too clear what you're implying by "filtered". Are you meaning filtering down to summarys of posts, or simply eliminating the "I fed my cat" type posts?

That, and are you going for more of a collection of useful advice ("5 diet tips for python code"), or development blog tracking ("I made tree go boom")?

[DrWilloughby]

Both filtering out the bad posts and also presenting the reader with an easier to digest front page. I'll PM you the link, let me know what you think.