Something I'd love to see on Tek Syndicate is roundtable discussions, specifically for games, as personally I find having several oppinions contrasted together in the one article gives the reader a lot more to mull over. Basically roundtable discussions just allow several authors to share their opinions on a specific item in an informal way.
So if any of you are interested in doing so, (I'd say 3 to 5 people would work well), what games would you be interested in discussing? Purchases from the steam summer sale would be quite timely, but of course it depends on what we've purchased.
For the actual discussion, it could take place in a forum thread here, which will then be compiled and edited once we've said all that needs to be said. Skype is another option, but I think would be too much hassle considering time zones.So if you're interested, let me know and we'll work something out.
I'll leave you with a link to my steam account so you can see my games list (assuming I haven't set it to private) and the three games I purchased during the sales, as possible candidates for discussion: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Bek_Ohmsford
I think this is a great idea. We should do some "big hit" topics first... like "best game ever and why"... or maybe "best old school game"... or even... "best games from the steam summer sale"... maybe that one first.
Also, for the forum... I haven't told any of the other writers about it yet. It's live and well. I will be adding several new contributors soon... I was waiting for the private forums.
Lastly, I will probably be a little slopier with my writing here since the rest of the site can not see it, lol. I'll also get some guides up for us all soon.
Yeah, steam summer sale roundup seems good because not only will we have LOTS to talk about, the community will easily relate to our experiences, as purchases will overlap etc, which should (hopefully) promote discussion.
I've just read the review guidelines, what are everyones thoughts on upcoming releases and how to tackle them? For instance, Dishonored is coming out in october - would it be wise for us to plan ahead, see who is planning on purchasing the game, who wants to review it, if enough people are buying it should it be a co-authored post (roundtable or more formal review, or even both).. etc. Just so we don't end up with one person posting a review after one day playing, then someone posting a new article a week after playing.
Personally I'm pretty keen on discussing EYE, really important indie game imo.
This is a cool idea... Roundtables would be quite interesting... If we would do an actual audio recording my choice for talking would be mumble its super high quality can host as many people as you want and all you have to do is press record which is built into the program and records everyones voice into a nice audio file.
I round table for best summer sale games would be cool.
I'm all for doing a roundtable discussion. Doesn't matter to me whether we do in the private forums or with Skype/Mumble/whatever the hell else. Best summer sale deals would be a good one, I know I bought too much stuff. I agree that for major releases we should see if we can do some forward planning so 2 people aren't working on a review of the same game.
This sounds like an awesome idea. We could do a co-authored written review, but I personally think videos would be a lot more fun and engaging to the audience, especially because they'd get to hear all of the tones and inflections in our voices when they hear us disagreeing and agreeing about opinions based on certain aspects of the game. I'm not exactly sure how a video would work though. I don't know if we can do a skype conference call and record it somehow. If not, we can always just fraps some gameplay footage and put our voice recording over it, espeicailly if it's so easy to do with mumble.
I'm definitely planning on getting dishonored when it comes out, so if you guys want to do a roundtable for that, I'd definitely be up for it.
This also gives me another idea. Maybe we could do a weekly or monthly staff podcast or something. We'd have to differentiate it from Logan's videos somehow though.
Well, our monthly podcast could be a roundtable. It would set the videos apart from Logan's, because there will be more discussion and less news esque talking, and there would be more than just Logan and Wendell, but a group of people. I think we could pull off at least monthly. Maybe even Bi-weekly, or weekly if the planning works well.
These are all excellent ideas. I too am DEFINITELY getting Dishonored, although probably not via steam, since greenmangaming has it for half price, and I'm a poor uni student. Depending on their delivery times it might exclude me from the one for that, which is a shame since I'll certainly have a lot to say about dishonored.
I think the roundtables should be used in specific circumstances and not released on a schedule - only use them when we have something special to discuss. The monthly/bi-weekly podcast could be something else, although exactly what I'm not sure. Maybe recap that month in gaming, talk about what we've been playing, general stuff about the industry / upcoming stuff. Depends how informal we're allowed to be I suppose. Perhaps we could even go over articles we've previously posted and give recaps, ie what happened after x sued y for using the name scrolololols, what this company is up to now that they've released face shooting simulator 12, and so on.
If we wanted to do a roundtable soon (I think voice + video footage of the game or plain text would be best), what games can we do? I've posted mine above/ do we all overlap? Any other suggestions? Let's get this rolling.
Unfortunately I'm not getting any of those games D:
We need to make a decision - what game are we going to discuss? Can we do EYE? If not, someone suggest something we all boght, or at least post what you did get in the steam sales so we can compare what we have.
I've got all of those except for Jade Empire, Shoot Many Robots, and The Witcher.
I would love to do a roundtable for Guild Wars 2 if that's at all possible, because I think it would be hard for a single person to do a review of an MMORPG when there are so many different aspects of the game concerning race, class, story, guilds, and pvp.
Actually, since Black Mesa source is coming out in three days, I am sure we call all do that. I haven't played hl1 (Have played hl2 + episodes though) so my perspective will be a fresh one on the game. Sound good? Yes/No? If we get 3 people willing to do it, I say let's do it. Timely, free, and a high interest surrounding it..
Alright - as we play we can post our initial thoughts here, to get a general idea of how we're proressing and what we make of the mod so far. Then we'll need to compile our thoughts and have a discussion about the game, going through the important bits. Voice or text, as long as we record it then edit into a coherent document to post.