RewiredMind.com used to be like your traditional game site. We’d publish the same news as everyone else every day, sweat our behinds off trying to get our exclusive reviews written, uploaded and promoted before the “big boys” managed to even put the disc in their console and start playing, and we’d kiss the same PR arses every day, trying to get snippets of information, screenshots, trailers and competition prizes to share with our readers. It was fun. But then we noticed a problem. We wanted to keep the staff levels small so that our readership had some idea of who was authoring the news and reviews on site. We said that although we didn’t have the manpower that the likes of IGN and Gamespot had, we could still provide the same amounts of coverage as them, and with the same level of quality - if not better. But, I concede. My white flag is up. It cannot be done. If you want to provide high-quality content on an almost hourly basis with a small team, you start to realise that it just isn’t any fun. You play games and tell people about how much fun they are, but then you’re actually depressed when you have to load up Devil Monkey Space Hoppers Xtreme 3 for the PS2 and have to force yourself to play so that you can write a solid and cohesive review. You’d much rather be playing Call of Duty 3, PES6 or a little bit of Metal Slug, but you actually don’t have time because once that review is written, there are twenty news stories to be written up. Everything from the announcement of StarCraft 2 to the fact that some pathetic analyst thinks that the PS3 should be cheaper (well, duh) has to be reported on, and with little reward. But the real kicker is when you realise that there are stacks of people who are actually doing the job for a living, who aren’t doing it as well as you. When you notice that you’ve had a story up for six hours and have been too busy putting the finishing touches to one of their pathetic, pun-filled, “watch out we’re blatantly from GOOD OLD BLIGHTY!” reviews to even bother to cover the story themselves. Either that, or they’ve been tied up by trying to fit a million and one Carry On-style sexual innuendos into their content to remind people how hip and edgy they are. Or, they’ve been too busy trying to rub their reader’s faces in the dirt as they cry on with their “We’ve got a preview build of Big Title X from Big Publisher Y and it looks awesome and we’re playing it and you aren’t and let us tell you that you just HAVE to buy this when it comes out because we’ve actually masturbated ourselves dry over it. Twice.” And you realise that there just isn’t any point. They rack up a million and one visitors a day, and you don’t. They get the big advertising deals because of their visitor counts, and you don’t. They pick up the awards because of their visitor counts, and you don’t. They get stacks and stacks of preview code and exclusives from publishers, whilst you struggle to get a reply from the same publisher on the phone. This may sound like petty jealousy - I can see how it would - but the simple fact of the matter is that quality content just doesn’t matter anymore. You can write a well-informed exclusive news piece before any other site and find that one of the major sites has actually MADE UP a different news piece from thin air about the same game, and everyone’s talking about what they’ve said. Your factual news story might as well have not been written in the first place. You’d actually be surprised about how many of the big sites create completely fictional news pieces to boost the day’s reader count. I know I was. Just watch and see how many of them publish corrections and news stories that completely oppose what they’ve already written. I wasn’t willing to do that, so on a slow news day - yep, you guessed it - visits galore for them and their “news” - none for us. RewiredMind.com has launched, relaunched, launched again, been redesigned again, taken down, launched a further time, redesigned and launched “one final time” before being redesigned and relaunched once more. What can I say? I’m a fussy bugger. One day something looks good to me, the next day something else does. This time though - promise! - I’ll be sticking with the design that is on your screen right now. In addition, there’s going to be a distinct lack of news here. This is a blog, where I can post my reactions to the day’s news stories and what’s going on in gaming. Opinions live here, as always, and there is sure to be a fair smattering of reviews from myself and a team of guest reviewers. I’ll occasionally invite guest bloggers to put their two cents worth in if they feel like it, but for the most part, RewiredMind.com is now the personal blog of Ken Barnes.
Address: Ken Barnes, RewiredMind.com, 9 Addington Court, Exeter, Devon, EX4 4UY
Website: http://www.rewiredmind.com/review/worldchampionshipsnooker2003
