“Why should I be here—and not somewhere else?” is a question that arises in the minds of most people when they first visit a website. With the bulk of clan sites currently trying to provide the same kind of content, visitors are having an increasingly hard time finding an answer to that question. We need to rethink clan websites.
Why has it come to this? Why do so many clan websites have about as much character as industrial districts? Why has the notion of a new clan establishing its online presence outside of competitions and community sites become almost laughable to us? Answer: Because clans have stopped asking themselves why they’re creating web pages. Instead they’ve opted for imitating existing sites.
If you want people to return to your website—and if you don’t, you should probably reconsider creating one—blending with the crowd in this way is a bad idea.
In order to give people reason to visit your site, you need to break with the uniformity that’s associated with clan sites and display how you’re doing things differently.
Choosing to provide news is understandable if
That’s not to say that clans involved in established scenes should settle for static sites that merely list members and sponsors. Quite the contrary. Such sites give visitors no reason to return and only have merit as placeholders.
So, what do I suggest that clans do instead? I suggest that they start experimenting with their content strategies and tap into what makes them unique: their members.
Think about it. We’re interested in reading about what we do ourselves as competitive gamers every week. We can relate to that. And yet no one is writing about it.
At the same time, clans are full of players who know all about this stuff; players to whom spawnkilling, aiming, positioning, making tactics, and practicing is second nature. Why not encourage them to impart some of their knowledge? Surely there is a demand for it.
I think that by tapping into their members, clans can open up for a new kind of content that is more relevant to competitive gamers than what’s currently homepage material on most sites.
A recent discovery of mine is case in point. Yesterday I stumbled upon the following remark which got me thinking:
“If you have something interesting to say online today, so many people will pick it up. A lot of what online marketing is about is having a mess of stuff out there so when people are interested in the brand, there are 1,000 things they can click on.”
Do you know who said this? Jason Korman, director of a South African wine company, did. What does it have to do with clan sites? It shows that most of them are currently betting on the wrong kind of content.
You see, right now, when a player becomes interested in a clan, there’s little he can learn about it from its website. Sure, he can find out who’s part of the clan, how it ranks, and what it has achieved. But what can he learn about its members apart from what hardware and settings they use, or what competitions they’re participating in? Nothing.
Players don’t become interested in clans because of their organisational peculiarities. They become interested in clans because of their members. They want to know who they hate playing against, what they think about the EC groups, why they use a rifle in the last stage of their goldrush defence. Unlike news, writing about these things would actually supplement what clans do: compete in games.
If you don’t like the idea of blogging, however, consider publishing brief but regular interviews in which existing coverage writers or managers ask the players questions which have been submitted by the community (along the lines of SK’s “1on1” series, but in written form).
Still sounds like too much trouble? Try micro-blogging, then. Whenever you feel like sharing something, write a brief text update (140 characters or less) and publish it on your clan site. As an alternative, create a Twitter account and feed twits to the site. It’s easy and forces you to get to the point quickly in every post.
If none of these approaches appeal to you, don’t discard the idea. When all is said and done, the implementation is of second importance. Making players the underlying basis of your website is what matters.
Clan Sites Today
The other day I saw a guy getting flamed for saying that he wanted to create a website for his clan. Why? I couldn’t put the reason into words—until I began poring over some of the clan sites that I knew of and realised just how dull most of them were.Why has it come to this? Why do so many clan websites have about as much character as industrial districts? Why has the notion of a new clan establishing its online presence outside of competitions and community sites become almost laughable to us? Answer: Because clans have stopped asking themselves why they’re creating web pages. Instead they’ve opted for imitating existing sites.
Breaking news
Most clans focus on providing the same kind of content, namely news. That makes it unclear for users why they should prefer any one site over another. At the end of the day, they’re all the same beneath the visuals, right?If you want people to return to your website—and if you don’t, you should probably reconsider creating one—blending with the crowd in this way is a bad idea.
In order to give people reason to visit your site, you need to break with the uniformity that’s associated with clan sites and display how you’re doing things differently.
Supply and demand
Right now there seems to be only two kinds of clan websites. On the one hand, you have those that provide news and regular features. And on the other hand, you have static, business card-like sites, which only feature lists of members and occasional team news updates. Now, you can justify the existence of both kinds, but only to a certain extent.Choosing to provide news is understandable if
- you find that existing outlets are insufficient,
- you are convinced that you can do a better job than the current provider(s), and
- there is a demand for more news outlets.
That’s not to say that clans involved in established scenes should settle for static sites that merely list members and sponsors. Quite the contrary. Such sites give visitors no reason to return and only have merit as placeholders.
So, what do I suggest that clans do instead? I suggest that they start experimenting with their content strategies and tap into what makes them unique: their members.
Clan sites of tomorrow?
What would you rather read on the website of mamut.si, a blog post where urtier explains how to spawnkill as field ops, or a news item about aMenti joining up with TLR again? I’d choose the blog post any day, and I believe most other ET players would, too.Think about it. We’re interested in reading about what we do ourselves as competitive gamers every week. We can relate to that. And yet no one is writing about it.
At the same time, clans are full of players who know all about this stuff; players to whom spawnkilling, aiming, positioning, making tactics, and practicing is second nature. Why not encourage them to impart some of their knowledge? Surely there is a demand for it.
I think that by tapping into their members, clans can open up for a new kind of content that is more relevant to competitive gamers than what’s currently homepage material on most sites.
“A mess of stuff”
When you're rethinking clan websites, it’s worth looking beyond gaming for inspiration. Learn from other niches, take note of how they keep their corners of the internet alive and kicking. Valuable lessons can come from unexpected places.A recent discovery of mine is case in point. Yesterday I stumbled upon the following remark which got me thinking:
“If you have something interesting to say online today, so many people will pick it up. A lot of what online marketing is about is having a mess of stuff out there so when people are interested in the brand, there are 1,000 things they can click on.”
Do you know who said this? Jason Korman, director of a South African wine company, did. What does it have to do with clan sites? It shows that most of them are currently betting on the wrong kind of content.
You see, right now, when a player becomes interested in a clan, there’s little he can learn about it from its website. Sure, he can find out who’s part of the clan, how it ranks, and what it has achieved. But what can he learn about its members apart from what hardware and settings they use, or what competitions they’re participating in? Nothing.
Players don’t become interested in clans because of their organisational peculiarities. They become interested in clans because of their members. They want to know who they hate playing against, what they think about the EC groups, why they use a rifle in the last stage of their goldrush defence. Unlike news, writing about these things would actually supplement what clans do: compete in games.
Getting started
At this point you might object that most gamers don’t have time to write for the websites of their clans. This is a reasonable objection, but the kind of content I’m advocating needn’t take a long time to create. At first, writing a blog post might take an hour or so, but as it’s incorporated into the weekly routine, and as the writing becomes more spontaneous, it’ll become less time consuming.If you don’t like the idea of blogging, however, consider publishing brief but regular interviews in which existing coverage writers or managers ask the players questions which have been submitted by the community (along the lines of SK’s “1on1” series, but in written form).
Still sounds like too much trouble? Try micro-blogging, then. Whenever you feel like sharing something, write a brief text update (140 characters or less) and publish it on your clan site. As an alternative, create a Twitter account and feed twits to the site. It’s easy and forces you to get to the point quickly in every post.
If none of these approaches appeal to you, don’t discard the idea. When all is said and done, the implementation is of second importance. Making players the underlying basis of your website is what matters.
Don't forget such classics as G7 Trims Fat!!!!!!!
Prove me wrong.
Lucky me!
secondly, you know im right
x
Our clan site revolves around 2 things,
Game Server Information
Community
We have over 2,000 registered users, roughly a quarter of that are active. The ones that are active are generally the ones active on the servers.
Really the only purpose a clan site needs to be is a central communication hub for your clan, server regulars or competitors. Aside from that theres no need for anything else.
Nice informative read though :)
Nice read oBs3Rv3R
I remember spending a lot of time on the StaZi clan site, was so nicely done with flash :)
*Edit*
It's still up!: http://jotbot.dk/stazi/www/index.htm
We actually also had some pretty awesome ALIS websites back in the days, when
The best version of our website (2003 edition), in my opinion: http://www.clanalis.dk/cA_filer/
I remember i wanted to join that clan because the site was so awesome :D
Though I do remember a very, very long time ago another
The fact you can count the number of paid writers on one hand; and the fact most writers on team 'sites are fans of the team, means you're not going to see an awful lot of well written and unbiased work. You're argument is basically theory and bares no relation to the real world. An organisaion is not going to turn away people who're interested in generating their website more traffic.
You're right, most clans don't utilise their 'assets' properly. But, your example is poor. Most players have no interest or talent for writing (or any of the skills which make bad writers readable). The format is negligible as urtier has proven.
What could help is good editors (& writers). Someone who can extract the right sort of information and write on behalf of the players, or use the information to raise the quality of standard news. But, the number of writers who actually know the sort of questions you're supposed to ask; never mind knowing how to write, is dangerously low.
You've at least got some choice if you're Chinese, German or Swedish. If you're a native English speaker there's literally no choice anymore. Gotfrag barely manages one editorial piece per month nowadays. Gameriot has sunk itself into web 2.0 concepts and WoW, becoming almost unrecognisable from the Amped' site which was actually very good.
Grubby, ToD and Luppris are worth their weight in gold.
(I'll expand on my comment after the football)
Nor am I saying that established clans like fnatic, MYM, or SK shouldn't incorporate news into their portfolios.
The ideas I've presented were born of the very observation that "you're not going to see an awful lot of well written and unbiased work" from most news writers. I've acknowledged that as being the basic terms of most clan sites, and instead of trying to change that, I'm advocating a new kind of content that doesn't demand as much from writers as scene news.
Clans like fnatic have developed devoted followings and have fans who're willing to write for them. Smaller clans don't have that privilege. So instead of trying to compete with the major players on scene news, which would be hopeless, I've suggested that these clans tap into their members—but not by forcing them to write (e.g., see second paragraph in the last section).
I've yet to see a player turn down the opportunity of being interviewed. The kind of content I'm talking about needn't be more difficult to create than participating in an irc interview.
I doubt you'll ever see a player explain why he's good (most of the time they don't technically know why they're good, either). The players just aren't interested. Which leaves the job to the writers, unsurprisingly.
Second rate clans have second rate players. So, even if they were enthusiastic, why would someone be interested in the opinion of a (comparatively) mediocre player? People are only interested in reading players opinions when they're good.
I'm not against your ideas. They're just unfeasible. Your twitter idea is nice. Though, I don't believe changing the format will make it any more appealing to players. And, for any decent writer, they'll tell you straight off that writing to such a concise format is incredibly difficult.
You may get the odd decent writer in every thousandth. You might even get a decent writer who'll write for free, but they usually work so infrequently it's hard to capitalise on their 'generosity'.
There's only so much technology that can be used to help encourage people to write.
for variety? and to see/read people's different opinions (e.g. reading the same newspost on fnatic/sk/tek9 etc)
Points well made oBs - but you'll struggle to find many motivated and / or talented players. Specially in a scene as static 'n old as ET where everythings been recycled at least once.
Having said that, a 'reality approach' to lower skill clans, with lots of clan-specific updates and member opinions could attract some interest from peers.
http://www.v6b.nl/2X/
WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT!
I aint against coders making sites but coders must learn design basics to overcome their shortage in ideas of layout and aesthatics.
Still probs the best clan web page ive seen is the old stazi one (flash based)
coders must code, not design.
While I agree that coders must know design basics if they want to do front-end development, I also think that designers must understand the fundamentals of developing for the web.
I'm not against clans writing about their organisational changes, but I think their content strategies are flawed if they make that kind of content the most prominent thing on their homepages.
STAZI WEBSITE
Seeing as CB doesn't actually enforce the criterion, it's probably best to interpret it as a survival of olden times when other things were expected of eSports.