Nintendo Players feedback

[Praxis]

Hey guys. I wanted to get some feedback and advice. As most of you know, I'm one of the co-founders at Nintendo Players.

There's some pretty major restructuring going on behind the scenes at Nintendo Players, but I feel the site has finally gotten in a good position. After this E3, we finally have recognition; other press know about us, the big companies know about us, etc, etc. Heck, Reggie Fils-Aime has our business card.

We get significant amount of viewers, but for all the site offers, I (we) really feel like it's growing at a much slower rate than it should. We get spikes every time we get linked to, but we can't seem to get users to stay; the active memberbase increases at a very slow rate.

Sites like Joystiq have been around for about a year longer than us and they are gigantic. And honestly, while we are only Nintendo specialized, we do have bigger features to offer than they do in many ways. Has anyone seen our database? We have a listing of every game released on every Nintendo platform, as well as the publisher, developer, release date, how many players, ESRB rating, etc, etc on every single one, as well as boxart and screenshots on a number of them and reviews.


So, why isn't our userbase expanding? Well, nobody knows about these features; not even our members. lol. More importantly, we've been failing to provide a regular stream of content; updates are sporadic, sometimes a lot in one day and other times several days can run completely dry, mostly due to staff schedules.

To improve this, I'll be taking on board several Contributors, people who would like to write articles and reviews and not be locked in to a schedule or have to do any site maintenence. Raggedjimmi is the first; if anyone else wants to, feel free to email me a writing sample/application

The second thing is that our forums suck. They're not integrated with the rest of the site and they're buggy and they seem to be automatically banning over 50% of new members (every week I see over two dozen new IPs in the ban list that nobody added).



But there's got to be more to it than that.


Everyone here, look at my site. Critique it. Look over it. What would you want out of a dedicated, specialized community? What can we do to improve?


I WANT FEEDBACK!


Thanks guys.

[atg]

As a Nintendo fan boy I've just signed up. I'll use the site for a while then let you know what I think.

A quick comment though. Do remember that a Nintendo-only site will have less of a potential audience than a site such as Joystiq that targets fans/users of all consoles/PC/Mac. So attempting to reach the member base size of a site like that may not be possible.

[Praxis]

Totally realize that. I doubt Nintendo Players alone will ever be Joystiq-sized, but I'd like to see it get even a fraction of that size. And if it gets big enough that we can afford paid writers, I'd definitely consider expanding the site and adding Sony, Microsoft, and PC sections.

Thanks, hit me with as much constructive criticism as possible


And the forum software SUCKS, just be warned ahead of time.

[Bounty]

Stuff I noticed:

The site banner at the top of each page links back to a contest, not the main page.

You're loading half-a-meg images as thumbnails. Look at the properties of the MoH image on the Wii page and try not to cry bitter tears for the thousands who ignore your site because it slows their browser to a crawl.

The colour scheme doesn't say "Nintendo", it says "1997 Angelfire fansite". Red-on-black doesn't work, especially when you've got bright-blue in the top bar and light menu backgrounds.

Navigation is OK, except for the orphaned "reviews" link at the bottom-right of the console pages.

The polls, system specs and game browser on the main page clutter up the screen. It looks too busy to be appealing.

No complaints about content so far, though.

And the forum software SUCKS, just be warned ahead of time.

It's basic, but fast, easy to use and easy to read. The ban problem needs to be fixed, but right now I like the board colour scheme better than the site's.

Just for the love of all that is sweet and true, limit signature sizes! There's one guy with a 1MB+ movie playing in his sig, for Link's sake. If that doesn't drive prospective members away, nothing will.

[Dooey Jo]

You're loading half-a-meg images as thumbnails. Look at the properties of the MoH image on the Wii page and try not to cry bitter tears for the thousands who ignore your site because it slows their browser to a crawl.

Actually, it seems like they're not thumbnails at all, but browser-resized full-res images. And that's bad bad bad! Not only for the clients, but also (and especially) for your bandwidth.

Also, I find the advertisement at the top to be a bit annoying...

Then there's the whole table-based layout thing, but most people probably don't care about that (though it can make the site less accessible, for example for people on handheld devices with very small screens).

[Bounty]

Actually, it seems like they're not thumbnails at all, but browser-resized full-res images. And that's bad bad bad! Not only for the clients, but also (and especially) for your bandwidth.

Yeah, after posting I figured only a browser could resize them that poorly.

They must be wasting over half their bandwith on those monstrosities.

ETA: it gets worse. How did they inflate that little banner atop each page to 100Kb+!?

[Elessar]

I don't mind the red and black layout (something about it screamed NES the first time I saw it), but it is quite odd due to the blue and white of your forums. The inconsistency (along witih red and blue being opposed) makes for quite a noisy, unprofessional look.

Then again, I detest IGN's look, and they're quite successful.

[Bounty]

Then again, I detest IGN's look, and they're quite successful.

IGN died the day they decided it'd be KEWL to make all their menus so choked up on flash it'd take Deep Blue to show them properly within a normal human's lifespan. I appreciate the top menubar, but I loathe the non-functional gimmicks.

Then again, they got their colour scheme right.

[Praxis]

And the forum software SUCKS, just be warned ahead of time.

It's basic, but fast, easy to use and easy to read. The ban problem needs to be fixed, but right now I like the board colour scheme better than the site's.

Good feedback for everything, but for this part I want to point out that the big problem is that there is a separate account for the actual site (comments, user reviews, etc) and the actual forums. That's unacceptable; we want universal logins and accounts.

[Bounty]

I want to point out that the big problem is that there is a separate account for the actual site (comments, user reviews, etc) and the actual forums.

Yeah, I noticed. You might want to fix your registration blurb, it still says

Join the Nintendo Players community to post your comments on articles, chat in the forums, and post on your very own blog! Registration is free and easy, so just fill out the form below and get active!

[salm]

I agree that the design of the site doesn´t say nintendo at all. Nintendo introduced such a practical mac ripoff style, so why not go with that? Personally i don´t like this white and blue wii style but it seems to be en vogue at the moment, so why not go with that?

[atg]

I'd have to say so far the biggest annoyance is the separate registration for the forums. You only need to redo the registration for the forum once, but many people will get confused by it methinks.