Games-HQ.com

A website created by WebTechGlobal Ltd. It is built on WordPress and is slowly being customised to become a gamers social network. The sites theme, WordPress core and plugins are all being edited to suit our needs. It has a very nice Ajax slider gallery on the home page and a star rating system. It currently has a 2 year development plan which includes some unconventional approaches to kick-starting what is to be a unique gaming community. The clients request includes a specified level of traffic and community size. This means WebTechGlobal has had to venture into new areas and our job for the last year has included not only studying the Gaming Industry but getting in involved in it.

How Is The Community Being Encouraged To Grow?

Ryan Bayne decided that standard marketing was not enough. It was not enough to encourage and pay for traffic even if well targeted. After days of research he decided that such traffic would gain very few long term members. The clients funds would be wasted unless a more direct approach was taking. That approach decided was to build Clans and sponsor them. From doing this the hope is that the most dedicated gamers can be encouraged to become administrators of Games-HQ. If the site is a success, there would be enough loyal supports to create staff when needed. This is an expected phase after two years, until then the website is none profit. The key to make this work is to make Games-HQ each Clans home, with their own pages, blog and forum.

At some point Games-HQ may host Clan/Guild websites on sub-domain. Until then we decided that a profile approach similar to any social network would be enough. Clans will have profiles, not just the gamers.

The First Clan

It is by no small task to create, grow and continue the success of a gaming clan. In this case it is actually named a Fleet because we chose to begin on Star Trek Online. The Fleet was created in February and as I write this in March, there is already over 200 members. Many of these members have already taking on active roles that they apply to their gaming experience every-time they log-in to play Star Trek Online. We have a developer creating the ability to pull information from the Star Trek Online website, developed by Cryptic Studios. The information is specifically related to players and so we hope to provide the functionality of filling a profile on Games-HQ simply by entering a player handle/nickname/code.

The first Clan/Fleet was named Assimilated Initiative by Ryan Bayne and he is also managing the Fleet until it is stable enough to manage itself.

The War

One very interesting request from our client who cannot be named is to add a sort of RPG system. We have only been giving a rough outline of what is required and have come up with The War. It is a system that all members of the site are automatically a part of. Everyone who signs up on the site will become part of a faction, each faction at war. Everything a member does on the site will effect their standing in The War, even if very slightly i.e posting a comment which gets 100 thumbs up gets a bonus reward for using in the game such as money,resources,soldiers etc. A member of the site can ignore these facts and have no interest in The War but their account will still be part of their faction.

For the first two years it will be a system of data, forms and statistics seen by site members. During the third year it will slowly be changed into a more complex gaming system with flash being added, video, deep storylines and many images. This may happen earlier depending on the success of the site.