Well I will have to put my New York travel blog on a hold for a minute, because this acquires my immediate attention. In this blog Yoda asked for feedback about what he should do next. One of the more popular demands was a forum.

In this blog I shall try to give a detailed vision of a possible future of Insert Coin. My vision is not the end all vision I will require feedback of all of you. With your feedback my vision can hopefully become something bigger, something that encompass all of us.

The key difference between Insert Coin and all the other Internet sites like Gamespot, is that Insert Coin is ours while in Gamespot we are mere guests. So in practical terms this means that all of you guys have a say, so please use it. This is our home, so let’s make it a home we will all enjoy.

The Daily Gamer
As I explained before, my idea is the newspaper idea. Inspired by my sister’s idea to name our site like a newspaper, like the Gaming Times, Gaming Tribunal and so forth, she also mentioned that the name should be exactly the same (size, letter type, logo, ect.) as the real one. For instance the name the Gaming Time will look exactly like the New York Times.

Than it hit me like Fedor hit Timmeh, we could take the idea even further. Why stop at the name? Why not make a whole newspaper? We could just rip of the design of a newspaper and post gaming news. Which would make sense, because at Insert Coin we are posting news, and what are newspapers used for? Yep, they are used for news! It fits together like 4 dicks in Jenna Jameson’s arse.

How will it look?
Well aesthetically it will look like a common newspaper, but “gamer-ised”. It could look like a gamer version of New York Times or perhaps another newspaper. Some examples below, I decided to link them because they are huge.

paper version

web version

My personal favourite is the Daily Planet. For the people who have not been in the civilized world (in other words Australia) the Daily Planet is a fictional newspaper from the Superman comics.

The Daily Planet (We could make a sick gamer version of this)

I will take the Daily Planet as an example. First we shall change the name in Gaming Planet. The planer logo shall be changed to look more like the guy below. The contents will naturally be about gaming and not Superman, well unless it is about Superman 64 (I threw up a little just now). Of course the Gaming Planet will have multiple pages and the index at the bottom could be clickable so you can skip there on the push of the button.

Replace the planet in "Daily Planet" with this guy

We could have different kinds of pages. The front page will be about the biggest news of the day. We could make a separate Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and PC page. The sky is the limit.

The final step that we can take is editorials. We could have Punk write about why 2D is better than 3D. Vader could explain why he likes games with retarded stories (Metal Gear and Resident Evil) and GG could make a blog about movies no one cares about.

All in all we shall have an electronic newspaper about gaming.

How will the site look?
Well the homepage will be the newspaper. Pure and simple, below the newspaper will be a comment section where you are able to comment on the news. This comment section will be pretty much the same what we have now. In the newspaper and under the title there will be links to the forum, reviews and blogs. These linked places shall all have the newspaper motive. The forums can be divided by gaming and non gaming. So everything will have the newspaper motive.

How will it work?
Let me first explain to some of you guys how updating news works in the present. The news team scours the Internet to find news. When found we make a title, if needed a subtitle for more clarification and finally the html is copied. Further tasks are deciding if the news is big which will give it a yellow colour, and if it is a Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft exclusive which will give it a Red, Blue and Green frame respectively.

This is what it looks like now.

But this method will have to change significantly. Only writing a title and subtitle would make a crappy newspaper. We need to write a short paragraph or two and perhaps add a picture too. For instance after finding news we need to write a short summary what the news is about and link to the source. This way the reader knows the news and if he is interested in more he/she can click on the link that will directly take him/her to the source.

Another example is posting pictures pictures. Most sites have a huge number of screenshots. It would be pointless to post them all. A better idea is the post the more beautiful ones and maybe a short description of the game, if it is not very well known, and if the reader is interested he or she can click the link that will directly take them to the source.

The last example I want to give is a trailer and videos. Trailers and videos will be embedded (we are an electronic newspaper after all) and again some short amount of info will be given for the more unknown games.

So in short it will look like this. We have a title and some additional info that must be filled in like: platform (360, PS3, Wii, PC, DS, PSP) and perhaps release date. Than text must be written with the options of adding pictures and videos. The last part is the link to the source of the news.

How will we work together?
Making a news articles does not make a newspaper. This here shall be the most difficult part, the collaboration. All we got until this point is a bunch of individual news articles. We need some one to put them all together. What we need is an editor. The editor’s job is to structure all the articles to make it look like a newspaper. The editor decides what goes where and how. For instance the editor decides what will go on the front page.

This means that the people writing the articles will have to be on a deadline. After they are done, the editor takes all the articles and gives them a proper place. After he is done the newspaper of the day will be finished and the process starts over again for the next day. This means that we need to be able to work together effectively, here are some options.

All-by-one
Each day one guy does the news. The same guy shall act as the editor too. Advantage that it is easy to organize, but there is a big disadvantage, the newspaper will vary significantly between different editors.

All-for-one
We have several writers who look for news each day. One might do various sites of platforms. We could have an IGN dude, a GameSpot Retard etc. Or we could do like Nintendo guy, Sony Guy and so forth. Than the editor collects all the articles and produces a newspaper. Disadvantage is that all the writers have to look for news every day, but per day they have to do less work. Advantage is that the quality remains constant. The editor stays the editor, the Nintendo guy does the Nintendo news, each of our strengths will be used in making the newspaper.

Two-for-one
This is a combination of the previous two. Each day a different writer does the news, while the editor is always the same person every day. The advantages are that it is easier than the All-for-one method and the newspaper will vary less than the All-by-one method. Disadvantages are that the consistency is lower than All-for-one and it is harder than All-by-one.

We could use any of these methods of collaboration, or maybe some one has an even better idea, but nothing has to be decided yet.

Okay it admit it look cool, but are there any other advantages?
Well I am glad I asked. There are various advantages. Many people have complained that the news in Insert Coin is a bit chaotic, with a newspaper design you shall have a better oversight. Plus you can read immediately what the news is about without having to click on it, like you do now. So basically it will function like a real newspaper. Another complaint is that we have way too much news; hardly anyone read it all. In the newspaper we shall have less news than we have now, but the individual stories shall be much more detailed than just a title and sub-title. Another advantage is that it forces the newshound to read the news they are actually posting, I will admit that I self have sometimes only skimped an article. This will all lead to higher quality.

There is a disadvantage though. The newspaper will be released once a day and there shall not be updates per minute like we have now. All the news that is found after that shall be published in the next newspaper. But a small price to pay for all the other positive points.

So in short, we shall be more ordered, more pretty, easier to read for the lazy and we shall be updated once a day.

Is this not a bit too ambitious?
Well perhaps you are right, but this blog is about the long term vision and not something we have to do immediately. Maybe we shall never reach the goal, but at least we have a goal to work to. Maybe we will only get halfway or fail completely, but it is better than nothing.But remember the plan is to go slowly but surely.

Plan? What Plan?
Well it is not possible to immediately start to implement our plan, because we would fail harder than Ozzy will fail a drug test. Yoda is busy with marrying Steels sister, we have no artist to make the newspaper design and finally we have no experience running a newspaper across the net. So the best plan is to implement stuff slowly and surely. Small changes shall be made, than we test it out, and if satisfied the next change will be implemented. This is the plan

Step 1: creation of the forums and starting to write news stories.
This step has to be taken even if we decide against the newspaper idea. We need a forum for discussions and people are already drowning in the news. The schedule of news shall remain the same, but we shall make a short summery for each news story. The quantity of the news will decrease, but the quality shall increase. We shall not have any structure or newspaper yet in this step.  

Step 2: Decide about the newspaper idea and decide on the collaboration
This shall be a difficult one. We need to decide what kind of collaboration we want, who shall be the editor, who shall be the news writers and what the deadline shall be.

Step 3: Implement the plan
This shall be the test of step 2; we shall have our news ordered in importance and topic wise. Still it shall not have a newspaper look yet. First we shall test if the collaboration works, if not back to step 2. Otherwise to step 4:

Step 4: Implement the aesthetic design
We shall need to find an art editor who will make all the news aesthetically like a paper. This step is not a really big one, it just making step 3 prettier.

Step 5: Decide on editorials and implement them
If we have passed step 4, we should be pleased with our self’s, but we could take it further. Each day we could let one of us write an editorial about gaming. It could be about 2D gaming, or why you like a certain game or it could be an epic rant, Whatever.

Step 6: Be professional
After gaming companies see how awesome we are, they will want to advertise on our site. We shall sell our souls for moneybags. We could have an advertisement page for our sponsors, and we shall swim in money.

Step 7: Get trophy wife(s)
But what to do with all the money, well yes get some one to spend it. That’s why we shall each marry a model that shall spent all our money and seed! The real rich one's shall have an extra lover on the side, that will also spent you money and probably give you a STD.

Step 8: Break up
Than we will find out that we are not paid equally. Jealousy will set in causing the site to shake on its very foundations. Gamingeek will be fired like Jeff and the whole site will turn into crap. After a year everyone is left leaving the site dead.

Feedback Please!
So that’s all folks, please let me know if you agree or not, and if there are any changes you would like to make. Speak up the future of our trophy wives depends on it.

Disclaimer: Some people might think I have insulted them accidentaly. Nothing could be further from the truth, all the insults were intentional. For the guys not insulted I hereby apologize and I will do my best to insult you in the future.