Announcing Games.slashdot.org

For years Slashdot has had an abundance of game related content. Unfortunately, we've also had limited space to post those stories. We strive to cover a wide range of tech news, and this often means passing on a good game story because something else is more important. But today I get to announce the creation of games.slashdot.org, where we'll finally have a home for all the gaming related content that might otherwise have been rejected. Keep reading to learn more.

The Slashdot Game Section will function similiarly to the other major sections on Slashdot, like apple.slashdot.org and Ask Slashdot. Visitors to the direct URL will be presented with additional, more focused, topical content. The best stories in the section will be posted to the main page and shared with a more general audience as they always have been. Logged in users can choose to consolidate Games content to the main page.

You'll notice a few things in the game section that are new. Most important is the addition of our newest editor, Simon "Simoniker" Carless. Simon is a sharp guy who has written for a variety of publications, but also is uniquely qualified since he has a history as a game designer for Eidos & Atari. Backing up Simon is the man of many polls himself, Jon "CowboyNeal" Pater. CowboyNeal is an obsessive gamer, having sacrificed his body for years to become a better gamer. We'll all benefit from his efforts in the field of sitting, pressing buttons and eating snacks.

The Slashdot Game Section will cover a variety of game related material. We will not be limited by platform- we intend to cover the major consoles, new and old releases, as well as computing games. We want to cover classic gaming as well as emulation. We intend to provide occasional original coverage, but mostly, we want to provide more exposure to the existing gaming sites, while providing our users with a place to discuss the major gaming news of the day.

Initially content will be found in the overflow from the Slashdot submissions bin. But as the section grows, we expect that readers will use the Games Submissions Bin to submit stories directly to Simoniker and CowboyNeal. You can also contact them directly by emailing games at slashdot dot org.

We've been looking forward to creating this section for a long time, and I hope you will all enjoy reading it as much as we'll enjoy researching stories for it ;)

Comments

Section bar

[42forty-two42]

Will this be added to the Section bar on the right-hand side?

MY EYES!!! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!!

[Winged Youth]

JESUS...the purple is sensory OVERLOAD. I'm not so sure that the first thing you want to see when you put down your sniper rifle, take off your night-vision goggles and exit the game is a bright white and purple webpage...

I mean...don't get me wrong, the slashdot logo looks cool like that...but so much purple detail all over the place? it's just too much

In other news: DUDE! Games.slashdot.org! COOL!

large advert on right hakd side

[tplayford]

Dear me...

That huge advert on the right hand side of games.slashdot.org is really irritating!

Any change of reducing the size, changing the position or stopping the animation?

I realise Slashdot needs to make money... but there must be better ways than this.

Original content?

[shivianzealot]

"We intend to provide occasional original coverage, but mostly, we want to provide more exposure to the existing gaming sites [...]"

Could this be a hint to a slashdot game reviews feature similiar to the current book reviews?

...I hope so

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Matrix272]

I don't think there's too much purple. For every good webpage, there should be a color scheme or at least 3 colors, but no more than 6 (6 is just too many, IMO). The wonderful, intelligent people at Slashdot decided on black, white, and purple for the Games section. The Apple section is teal, Apache is purple (an uglier purple), Ask Slashdot is gray, etc. Given that there are only 8 primary colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet / purple, brown, and black), eventually they have to duplicate one somewhere. FWIW, I like it.

games.slashdot.org running Linux

[NewbieSpaz]

OK, Netcraft shows:
The site games.slashdot.org is running Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_perl/1.27 mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6g on Linux

Linux on an Xbox? Dreamcast? What? GBA maybe? Nah, it'd get /.'ed too quickly.

Suggested new colours: #330066, #330099

[Compact Dick]

The current colour, Electric Blue aka #3300CC, is very harsh on the eyes, as many have already made clear.

I recommend using #330066 or #330099 instead. These browser-safe colours are easier on the eyes and more aesthetically pleasing.

Cheers,
CD

Well, *I* like it.

[Randolpho]

I like the colors. I say keep 'em.

One thing I note, however, is that the games section is not in the slashboxes yet. Hopefully this will be remedied soon.

Also, why is it that the Collapse Stories preference works exactly the opposite of the way it is indicated? Collapse Stories implies that I only get main stories. Unchecking that should get me all stories from all sections.

I had to check it to get all stories from all sections. That's kida opposite, isn't it? All stories from all sections should be the *default* preference, too.

Dumb idea... maybe...

[pr0ntab]

Allow users to choose color scheme in preferences? You can enforce a default, and all the whiners can tweak it to their hearts' content.

Hasn't anyone added a patch to slashcode that actually uses CSS? Jeez.

But I do like the idea. games.slashdot.org and science.slashdot.org... and I wonder where does the time go? ^_^

"... consolidate Games content to the main page"?

[Enfors]

Logged in users can choose to consolidate Games content to the main page.

How does one do that?

Re:How do you pronounce Simoniker?

[rigmort]

Thanks. Ever read an 800-page book where you're not sure how to pronounce the main character's name? Just wanted to avoid that feeling here...

Simple fix for the colors

[KlausBreuer]

May I suggest a simple fix:

ZAP

Works great, I use it a lot.
And Games.Slashdot is suddenly a lot easier on the eyes...

Re:Browser-safe colours

[radish]

Not quite. The browser safe colours are those which are guaranteed to be rendered without dithering on a browser running on a 256 colour desktop, regardless of platform. There is no requirement that they are rendered the same, as mac and windows boxes have different gammas and even different monitors can change the displayed colour. The only guarantee is that they will never be dithered.

The reason it is less than 256 colours is to allow space for the underlying desktop's system palette.

As for it's relevance, the person credited with figuring out the palette (as for some reason the technical people who defined it didn't release it) has since said there's no point using it any more. Particularly since (from a design point of view) it's such a horrible set of colours to use. She wrote an excellent article describing why it was useful, why it's not any more, and what it should have been in the first place.

scripting.slashdot.org now !

[hemabe]

I would like to see a scripting.slashdot.org for news about perl, python, ruby etc.

Is someone (CmdrTaco) thinking about this?