I've REALLY got to stop posting silly ideas on this site - they have a habit of steamrolling
There's a couple of issues we'll need to sort out before we can embark on this kind of thing (and answering each one of these problems opens up a whole NEW list of problems!)
Disclaimer: I've managed, edited and written for several professional gaming sites over the years, and still (silently) manage one, but while it may
appear that I know what I'm talking about, please don't take my word as gospel
1) Branding rights
First and foremost we need to establish just who owns the rights to the name, logo and all other associated branding. Doing a Zzap!64 website without being able to use the logo, or gold medals, or Sizzlers, or Rockford and Thingy etc would be kind of pointless. This one needs to be cleared up before anything else can move ahead I think.
2) Website rights
We'll need to sort out who is paying for / owning what. Who is paying for hosting, will Iain continue to own the domain name etc - should be an easy one to sort out
(I'm willing to pay for it all but want to see what everyone else here thinks)
3) Style of the site
I think we're all agreed that a website done in the style of a classic-era Zzap would be awesome. It would be different from the mainstream, but still open and accessible. How exactly we're going to make that work on the web is another issue
I think above else what Zzap could offer that other gaming sites don't is the multi-person review - 90% of the pro sites farm out their reviews to freelance writers who are working in isolation, and we can work collaboratively on reviews together. We'll get more into that on the next point.
We'll need to get the 'update schedule' together pretty quickly - one review a day? One update a day which includes a review, a feature, a news item and a letters page? Just update whenever? Lots of different formats to try out. I haven't been to Rodent for ages but that updates once a month, right?
I think we should be looking at daily - its the web after all, not a magazine (sadly!) with one piece of content per day. Unless any of us feel like quitting our day jobs
I'd love to see other content besides reviews - features, interviews, news letters page etc.
And what about what kind of games we cover? Obviously there's not a lot of new C64 games and news to cover - though we should cover them whenever they pop up - but should we restrict it to just C64? How about all 'retro' formats that are still being supported non-commericially? How about we make it all modern systems and C64? How about every system we can think of and can get review copies of?
We'll also need to think about how we're going to manage the content on the site. Wordpress? Joomla? Drupal? Joomla is pretty good for multi user collaborative enviornments - I've used it a lot on my sites - but its very techy and needs a coder to personalise it. I've heard good things about Drupal - it's being sold to me as Joomla-like in functionality but Wordpress-like in approachability. Wordpress I've used only sparingly - can it handle multi-user sites?
Thoughts?
Overall, I think the site should represent a return to the 'good old days' of games journalism, where reviewers were genuinely excited about what they were talking about, could slag things off as they saw fit without fear of reprisal, and had unbiased opinions and loads of personality. Who's with me?
(While writing this I asked a friend who helps me run another site for his opinion, and he suggested we keep this mainly C64-centric and have a lot of Mr Zzapback-style 're-reviews' where we take old games and review them again today, mainly for the nostalgia factor that will draw the attention of the demographic that will make the site - 30-something guys who have day jobs and other big life commitments who fondly remember the good old days of gaming - very casual)
4) Staff
I think it's going to be a while before we can get paid staff, but we should keep that as a target for future growth. (See point 8 below)
Like #107, we need to set out roles at the start that we're all comfortable with. It's super important that you only apply for roles you know you will have the time for. I never want this project to feel like an unwanted obligation, like mowing the lawn, doing your taxes or visiting your parents.
Just thinking out loud here - We'll need a Managing Editor (to control the overall direction of the site, handle press / advertising relations etc), Content Editor (to sort out upcoming content, fix typos and work on their drinking problem), Art Editor (to make the site look great and sort out screenshots, spot illustrations etc), a litany of reviewers, artists and feature / news writers to make awesome content.
Of course these roles will double up / merge as needed but it's good to have a place to start. Maybe we can have multiple people fill the one role?
For reviews, as Craig said above, you'd need one person to do the straight description, then other guys to do the opinions.
On my 'other site' I have a small group of talented reviewers who would probably jump at the chance to be involved in this, and I'm sure everyone here knows lots of other people who they think would be a good fit. Should we have a casting call?
5) Getting review material
This is probably the easiest section! Getting review materials is pretty easy. All it requires is emails / phone calls being sent to a publisher politely introducing yourself and asking for anything we can use to talk about their game with. It's one of the roles of the Managing Editor.
They're in the business of getting their game talked about, so as long as you can prove that you're worth their trouble, they'll oblige. This means that the smaller your site is, the less the big publishers will give you the time of day, but really there are a million smaller game publishers out there who would like to get some coverage.
And the Zzap name has a lot of value - as long as we treat it with the care and respect it deserves, this will continue
And we will be free to slag things off. Publishers know it's a risk that comes with the territory. It wouldn't be Zzap otherwise.
6) Other features
We'll need news, previews, interviews, letters (LLOYD)...what else? Comics? A podcast? Video? We need to make something unique to get people's attention, but not too weird to drive them away. Like it or lump it, the reason IGN / Gamespot etc get the traffic they do is because they cover the 'big name' games that get lots of search traffic.
However, Zzap wasn't known for fawning over the big name games - it was known primarily for the personalities of the staff (something that 1up.com does well with these days - the staff get more attention than the games) and I'd like to see that continue with the site. We need to be putting ourselves on the site just as much as what we think about the latest game we're talking about.
7) Managing the site
Since this is largely a collaborative project, we'll need a quick and easy way for us all to communicate on a more frequent basis. The yahoo group worked pretty well for #107 but maybe we can move it to some IM platform like Google Chat? Of course we're all in seperate time zones so it's gotta be email / forum based so we don't need to be on at the same time.
8 ) Expectations
It takes years to be an overnight success. Anyone who is looking to do this as a way to get rich quick and make IGN-levels of money should walk away now.
That being said, I want everyone who is going to put their hard-earned time and effort into this to feel rewarded for their work. This can be in the form of blagging the occasional free game, getting a press pass to a local industry party, finding some promotional goodie in the mail etc.
Iain's idea of paying each writer based on the adviews of the particular page works only if we can find a way to track adviews on a per-page basis and we know its just one person writing each page - multi-person reviews would be tricky. And even then until we're getting tens of thousands views per page we're still talking about cents (pence?) per piece.
I would like it if we're getting tens of thousands of views per page
But it could take a long time to build enough content and following to get there.
Primarily this should be done for the fun of it, and to see what would happen if there was a site based on our beloved mag
Anyway that's all I got at the moment. Just spitballing around here. Would love to know what you think you crazy bastards who keep me up way too late thinking about this junk instead of sleeping!