What's up with MyGaming lately?

Graal

Graal

New member
I've been noticing more and more, and judging from what other people have been saying here and privately I'm not the only one, but MyGaming's standards seem to have been slipping lately. A lot.

The quality and quantity of news has been dropping steadily over the past few month and the news that does trickle in is often days late. The same goes for reviews. Look at your Tomb Raider review. It was only put up two weeks after release day. The Dead Space 3 review was only put up on the 16th of March, and the game released on the 8th of February. That's more than a month late. Seeing as most of us use reviews as decisions on whether or not to purchase games, that renders these reviews nearly useless as we would likely have gotten reviews elsewhere as well as completed the game long before MyGaming has their review up.

What's up? MyGaming as a gaming newsfeed has become almost useless lately. This site used to be pretty good and up-to-date so we didn't have to go to international websites to get news and reviews.
 
If I must be honest, I only come here for the forums, I rarely look at the main news page anymore. I get most of my news from forum posters, and other sources.
 
Thanks for the feedback. It comes down to a few issues, and I dispute the point that news is often "days late".

MyGaming consists of Jeremy full-time and myself as editor with my work split between MyBroadband as well. Between us we work extended hours hours during the week and I pull time over the weekend. I'm often writing up breaking news as I see it in the evenings, technically 'after hours'; that's because America wakes up and in comes the gaming news. During the day we also remain on top of breaking news and consistently have the latest stories up as they happen. However, we cannot compete with the likes of large international websites (it should be obvious why but I'll unpack that if someone is interested).

We publish big news stories we know will get read. Previously when we published every bit of news or press releases that came along it has two effects; pushing big stories off the front page and wasting our time (simply because the articles aren't read, and therefore our time could have been better spent on something that drives more traffic).

As for reviews, those also do not drive traffic. Jeremy and I rarely have time to do reviews and so I rely on freelancers; freelancers who also have day-jobs and play in their free time. Another contributing factor is the local PR industry - we rarely get access to games pre-launch as do our international counter-parts and therefore we can never compete to have reviews ready for launch. I'd rather publish a well-considered review 2 weeks after launch than have something hacked out within a few days to meet an externally imposed competitive deadline. And again, reviews don't drive traffic for us, so I'm not personally going to put in the after-hours time or demand that Jeremy does it either.

We are constantly generating unique locally relevant content, features and news.

As Eugene pointed out, many forum users get their news from the forum itself because there are a lot more people here constantly posting updates about games than Jeremy and I can keep track of (although we are often alerted to a story thanks to the forum). This is a good thing because it means we have a community and people can discuss news as it breaks.

Please consider your perspective as an internet power-user; you will probably spend a significant portion of your day interacting with news sources and communities and feel very much on the pulse of things. However, you are only one type of user, and we cater to a broader audience with the news page.

Both the news site and the forum are the strongest they have ever been and I have the stats to reflect that.
 
Lyt said:
I blame the firing of Tarryn. She was awesome.
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Tarryn wasn't "fired". She worked on a freelance basis and we didn't renew her contract going into 2013.

I loved working with Tarryn and she produced great content. However, the responsibility of MyGaming as a business is to full-time employees first.
 
Graal said:
I've been noticing more and more, and judging from what other people have been saying here and privately I'm not the only one, but MyGaming's standards seem to have been slipping lately. A lot.

The quality and quantity of news has been dropping steadily over the past few month and the news that does trickle in is often days late. The same goes for reviews. Look at your Tomb Raider review. It was only put up two weeks after release day. The Dead Space 3 review was only put up on the 16th of March, and the game released on the 8th of February. That's more than a month late. Seeing as most of us use reviews as decisions on whether or not to purchase games, that renders these reviews nearly useless as we would likely have gotten reviews elsewhere as well as completed the game long before MyGaming has their review up.

What's up? MyGaming as a gaming newsfeed has become almost useless lately. This site used to be pretty good and up-to-date so we didn't have to go to international websites to get news and reviews.
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I get what you're saying, but I think you should change your expectations. myGaming feels more like a subpage for myBroadband. The strategic focus of the site isn't to compete with the likes of IGN or Destructiod or places like that. It's just to expand myBroadband's portfolio of news offerings. The focus is to attract as much traffic as possible, as James said.

Personally I think the reason reviews don't drive traffic is because they're 1) late and 2) sometimes very late, and 3) not really all that good. I doubt many people post a link to a myGaming review for their friends in other communities to read when there's 100 other, better, older reviews to be had instead.

myBroadband is doing well it seems, and is often in the top 10 biggest SA sites list. And I think it's thanks to the initiatives of their sister sites in addition to the main site.
 
Believe me, I'd love to be able to pay a full-time reviewer and get reviews written and published in time for the game's launch day or soon after, but it's not feasible at this point. The strategy is to grow MyGaming, and with growth comes the ability to do more cool things, but it's one step at a time :)
 
Why don't you open up reviews to some members with a minimum length requirement and some other basic pointers, plenty of guys here get day one releases
 
Ike_009 said:
Why don't you open up reviews to some members with a minimum length requirement and some other basic pointers, plenty of guys here get day one releases
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We have discussed this before and personally I don't think it's going to work.

My view:

The international big sites (Kotaku, Polygon etc.) and also the review sites (IGN, Gamespot) are always going to get pre release games and have the time and resources to cover things in more depth and much faster.

It's very hard if not impossible in SA to cover things first like the US and UK based places as they have access to all the big gaming events and companies who give them info.

I don't blame MyGaming when they are late with stories because you would either have to go directly to the source (not viable in SA) or literally be trawling the big news sites and refreshing every minute for latest news.

Personally I think MyGaming would be a good platform to do stuff like I saw with that developer who started the thread about their game. I'm actually happy with MyGaming just being a forum about gaming etc.
 
The thing is, Lazygamer seems to manage it and I'm pretty sure MyGaming has managed it in the past. MyGaming used to be much bigger than LG and it is still my opinion that you are much better than them, partly because they use really shady tactics to draw in readers and their staff come across as a bit... crummy.

Yet,as of the 14th of February, Lazygamer is the first South African media outlet that is affiliated with Metacritic. I really just can't help but think that that really should have been MyGaming.
 
We once looked at getting listed on metacritic. They require that a certain number of reviews are published each month and within a very short window of launch. Basically, it's a lot of work and the reward is questionable. They only revise their listed sites once a year. its not part of our growth strategy but we will keep an eye on it. There are other talking points on this but I don't like typing lengthy things on my tablet.

As for saying that mygaming used to be bigger than Lazygamer, I wonder what you base that statement on. I have the stats (yes I love going back to stats) and I can tell you that lazygamer and mygaming are very close in terms of local unique users each month. Doing a cross section of the audience also shows very little overlap between local visitors.
 
Pooky said:
The international big sites (Kotaku, Polygon etc.) and also the review sites (IGN, Gamespot) are always going to get pre release games and have the time and resources to cover things in more depth and much faster.

Personally I think MyGaming would be a good platform to do stuff like I saw with that developer who started the thread about their game. I'm actually happy with MyGaming just being a forum about gaming etc.
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I'm fairly new to all of this and most definite just a casual gamer (very casual actually) but if I am interested in buying a game, usually when it is on special so very rarely new releases, I will always refer to IGN, Gamespot and then get an overview at Metacritic. I have never thought of using MyGaming.

What I do refer to MyGaming for is the South African angle on gaming. What specials are available locally, what's happening locally etc. Talk on how to get UK/UK live accounts set up in SA as well as the use of VPNs to enable you to use foreign services on your local console also interest me. So yeah, pretty much, as stated, the SA angle to gaming.

PS Just out of interest, I didn't even know about Lazygamer until reading about it above. I found this forum via Taptalk.
 
Clint_ZA said:
I'm fairly new to all of this and most definite just a casual gamer (very casual actually) but if I am interested in buying a game, usually when it is on special so very rarely new releases, I will always refer to IGN, Gamespot and then get an overview at Metacritic. I have never thought of using MyGaming.

What I do refer to MyGaming for is the South African angle on gaming. What specials are available locally, what's happening locally etc. Talk on how to get UK/UK live accounts set up in SA as well as the use of VPNs to enable you to use foreign services on your local console also interest me. So yeah, pretty much, as stated, the SA angle to gaming.

PS Just out of interest, I didn't even know about Lazygamer until reading about it above. I found this forum via Taptalk.
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Yep I love watching YouTube videos of games from people like TotalBiscuit as they really get in depth and you actually get to see the gameplay of the game whilst hearing an opinion.

I think the 'South African angle on gaming' is perfect (although I don't think much happens with regards to development etc. locally.

Honestly I know about lazygamer but I don't go there when looking for reviews etc...
 
Because I almost never read gaming news elsewhere than MyGaming, I am most definitely happy with the content, reviews and articles published. I seldom look for reviews the day games are launched locally. My humble expectation is usually a week or two afterwards, as I would hope for a comprehensive review rather than a rush job.

Now that I appreciate the limitations and knowing the hours that James and Jeremy put in, I have even more respect and appreciation. This remains a top site. To be honest, most games have there own threads open in the forums, and if I cannot find news I am looking for on the news page, the forums usually have it.

SC2 for example, members are often posting links to breaking news, game footage, strategies and all sorts of interesting things. The front page is great, but it is more than adequately backed up by the content in the forum.
 
MyGaming is usually my go to site throughout the day. I usually check international sites sometime in the evening when I have more time.

For me, the sites push for only really relevant news allows me to quickly check what is happening in the gaming world without getting bogged down with unnecessary information. So I'm liking how things are at the moment.

As an aside, I appreciate that James took the time to respond to this thread. This is an awesome benefit of the site not being too big in that we can engage with the guys behind the site. Keep it up!
 
seeing that i dont care for reviews that much anymore, when i do read them i dont mind on time. I can understand that people want the latest and greatest news when it hits but this is alot of work, when there is alot more on the plate.

I dont play as much games im more into SC2 due to time i dont get alot. I dont expect any website to be on every game 24/7 and then have posts on ever game thats out if there are reviews on big games that make the news EG simscity, Starcraft 2 mygaming is doing well.

I guess its a personal thing to want to read on games when they are out but if im really interested, or pumped for a game i look all over and get it to review it my self.
 
Pretty much what McT said.
The forums are the more important part for me and as long as there are enough active members, I'm not really complaining. With regards to news and reviews, most of the time I can wait. The only thing that I usually want to know asap is the release date of a specific game but Google usually answers that.
 
McT said:
Because I almost never read gaming news elsewhere than MyGaming, I am most definitely happy with the content, reviews and articles published. I seldom look for reviews the day games are launched locally. My humble expectation is usually a week or two afterwards, as I would hope for a comprehensive review rather than a rush job.
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+1, I'm also very happy with the content that I find here, and if I can't find it I will search for it elsewhere. It really isn't a requirement for me that MyGaming personally review all released games as well because there are sufficient international reviews out there. I understand that there are limitations to what you can do with limited staff and in my opinion MyGaming does exceptionally well with what they have.
 
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