Game Review Site Need Suggestions and Advice Please

[Elegost 0]

For a while now i have been working on my own game review website. This is not my Xisto website, its another one. Right now i have only made one review my self, but im trying to get it all set up so that people can post their own reviews. Now heres my problem: I doubt people will just go to my site and post reviews and get nothing back from it. Heres where I need some suggestions. I have thought of kind of making a file hosting thing, where people can upload different files and stuff. People post a review, and they get so much room for free where they can upload files and stuff. I could set it up so the more revies they post, the more room they get. It wouldnt be that hard for me to set up. But then that would lead to another problem. Theres tonnes of different websites that offer this kind of thing, but most you dont have to do any thing, its totally free, and I only have so much room I can give away. And also, there is really only so many games out there (I would be doing PC and Consoles) that can be reviewed. I know games are comming out all the time, but still. I was thinking of comming here and offering hosting credits for every review some one posts from Xisto, but im new here and I really dont have that many hosting credits I can give away, and I dont know if that kind of thing is allowed here. Really I just need feed back for what you guys think I should do here. Any suggestions or ideas are welcome!!Thanks

[Plenoptic 0]

I wouldn't do the whole review and get free space. That would take up way to much bandwidth. If you were to give away hosting credits the people who make a review and aren't from Xisto wouldn't bother making the review because they wouldn't get anything from it. Maybe make a user system and have a part of the site that is blocked off to those that do not make a review. Have them post a certain number of reviews and they can have access to that site or forum or whatever you would like it to be.

[lecius 0]

this is a cool idea. I mean there are many of them like http://www.onrpg.com/ and http://www.mmorpg.com/ but if you can make another one you might get a lot of people to view your site. I mean onrpg has over 200 people making games and posting about it and you can advertise there and you would get a lot of hits. This is a great idea you have but it would take a lot of work to get though. If you pull this off by yourself you are a god!!!!

[Elegost 0]

Thanks guys! I really apreciate your feedback. Ok well let me clarify my idea here. LDU, my website engine, has a thing called Personal File Space (PFS), where people can upload files and stuff (mostly for avatars and stuff), and with a few simple modifications, I wolud be able to change the size they are allowed to have acording to the number of posts in the forums, or the review. I could make it so that you need to have a review to get you started. Then the more posts you have in the forums, the more it grows. I was already planning on setting my self up a forum, and this would help nicely. Im going to do a bit of rescearch and see how much space other file hosting websites allow you to have, and hopefully I will be able to go over that ammount, then people wount have to have so many acounts. I know here that some people have 4 photobucket sites, im going to try to elliminate the need for this, and allow users to expand the ammount of space they have. Let me know what you think!

[switch 0]

i don't think that people will post reviews for hosting/storage space, as it's readily and freely available at multiple places on the net.maybe a reputation system would work? that could provide people with some incentive to post.and some people just like to be heard! some people will just post because they want their opinion to get out there.maybe you could allow comments to be added after a review... i think you're biggest playing card in the end is going to be the same as Xisto's (for example)- community. People enjoy the community on sites like that.good luck Elegost, all the best.

[Elegost 0]

Hey guys,I wasnt able to come on yesterday (went to my unlces house for dinner) but Ive thought it out a bit more, and Ive changed my idea a bit. At first I was thinking about doing what Xisto is doing here, the hosting credits. People post in the forums, and get credits for it. 1 credit equals one day... That same sort of stuff. But them I thought, no thats way to complicated for what im trying to do. So heres what I think ive decided. Im going to set up my forums tonite hopefully. Then im going to go by posts in the forums. Hers what I was thinking: 20 posts gets you to the first level, then 50 posts to the next, 100, and then going up by 50 each time. Im going to do a few more modifications, so that one review successfully posted and valadated by me, then 20 posts will be added onto their total posts in the forums. The only thing I need to decide is the ammount of space for each level. Heres where I need your advice, since people like you guys will be using this. I want to have 6 different levels. How much space should each level get? I researched a bit, and most file hosting websites offer unlimited space, but only a certain upload size. I would how ever rather offer so much space. Now, what do you think?Thanks for the feedback!Elegost

[Zorkaplex 0]

Elegost, my friend once owned a fairly popular gaming review site. He looked at several other popular gaming review sites and he looked at things they had(cheats, guides/walkthroughs, feedback, forums, and misc articles). He also had something that no one else had that made his site stand out.Also consider what is the gamer going to want from your reviews or what information will they wnt to see.You can also advertise to get more members.Goodluck!

[Earths Daughter 0]

How about you make up sort of an imaginary game to go along with forum status? Many games have stat pages, especially the FPS games like America's Army. Some games also give Military ranks to frequent good players. So have some titles or ranks based on the number of reviews they have done, but also allow teams or clans to "share" their rank points for team ranking purposes. So you can have a page with the highest ranked reviewers, and the highest ranked reviewing clans. Nothing like inter-clan competition to get them coming back and being active. You could also award Medals, Ribbons, Citations, Commendations, etc. for individuals and teams. Set up a forum area where clans from different games can post recruitment requirements, so they can look for new members. You could even have a page for each clan linked to that thread that showed their awards and achievements. Make them do the page themselves, but check it for accuracy before putting it up. They could also list their clan servers addys on the page. Also post some member news on your front page somewhere. Like if somebody sets up a new server or is looking for people for a LAN somewhere. Or if a clan does well in competition and wants to brag a little. Offer to host a new mod or map or whatever for a game that one of your members has done for others to download. Just a few ideas off the top of my head. You definitely need a good forum with good mods though. If your site has a bunch of flame wars, everybody will leave, so you need mature, diplomatic people to mod at your forum.