Editor’s Choice: Ch-ch-ch-Changes

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m running Nukezilla. It seems like I pour a lot of my free time into it without it generating a ton of good articles (or videos, or whatever). Something needs to change.

As I sit here, trying to decide what direction to go with the site, I realize I’ve kind of just been winging it. After all, I’ve joked around that my two guiding principles on Nukezilla are:

1. Follow the Big Beat Manifesto
2. Fuck Kotaku

And that’s really not far from the truth. It’s fun to just dick around on the internet, but without any sort of guiding principle, I’ve been all over the place.

Do I want a million news posts, and hope the SEO gods shine kindly enough on us to make the site successful? Do I want to be irreverent and post pictures of dogs and screen grabs from ’80s cartoons over snarky remarks on press releases? Do I want a bunch of articles so far up their own ass no one but the writer has any clue what’s going on insightful social commentary through the prism of the videogame medium?

I need to come up with an outline for where I want Nukezilla to go from here, and I’d like your feedback on what I’ve come up with.

Here we go:

• News posts when something major happens, a writer really wants to bring attention to something, or nothing has gone up on the site that day. We’re too small of a site to compete on the news front (unless we stumble onto something first), so why put so much of our limited resources toward these posts, unless it’s something truly interesting to either the writer or a major announcement everyone is talking about (E3, Gamescom, etc.). As for the one post a day part, I’m not a fan of post counts, but if we can’t at least get one thing writen each day, what are we doing here?
• More feature articles. Whether they be career retrospectives, nostalgic looks back at a game or franchise, or a Top 10 list (yes, I’m fine with Top 10 lists if they’re done right), I want interesting, discussion generating posts to hit the front page on a regular basis.
• Stop saying IP so much. We’re not EA’s fucking accountants, so why should we care about the potential market value of Mirror’s Edge? Focus more on new ideas, new gameplay mechanics, or simply strong execution of established norms in a new or interesting way. Write about why a game is new and interesting, not simply how “bold” it is to release a game without a 2 or 3 at the end of it’s title.
• Keeps the columns we have, and maybe add a few more. I want to make sure Music Monday and the deals column keep running, and maybe find a few other topics, even if they have to run just every other week or on some other less consistent schedule.
• Get a podcast going again. They aren’t even that hard to edit and post, so I don’t know why I keep putting off a reboot.
• Foster the forums. If we aren’t going to sweat it over getting every news story posted, why not make more discussion topics in the forums? Heck, if something turns into a heated debate it’s probably worth a longer feature post, or even a revival of the old Player Select articles.
• Fuck Kotaku.

Hmm… it’s a start anyway.

And I really would like to hear your thoughts on these ideas. After all, if I go with these changes and everyone stops reading as a result, it kind of defeats their purpose.