Lots of great feedback here so thank you very much. If you guys are going to take the time to really dig in I'm going to respond to all of it. I want to preface this by saying that I'm not trying to make excuses for anything. Obviously, the site needs to change to be a success. But at the same time, many commenters are assuming that zero thought went into the site and nothing could be further from the truth. I know many on the Internet tend to assume the worst so I've taken that into account. But I think if you know why the site works/is designed the way it is it will help in shaping constructive feedback. Here goes:
Not Really Taking Feedback to Heart
Absolutely not true. Prioritizing all the feedback. Updating a Twitch page that no one is going to visit until Monday is not an immediate priority. I didn't "pimp" our Twitch page. I included a link so people can join the summit tomorrow night.
What's the Original Content? Why would I pay for it?
Someone asked why they would pay for our original content when there's so much free content out there. Why does anyone pay for any content then? Our content mantra is if we can't do something differently we won't do it at all and that plays right into this way of thinking. I think you can see that from our roster:
Pachter Factor: Everyone knows this one. Still no other show like it even though the concept is old.
GameFace: Weekly three-hour videocast with (my opinion) production values that are very high compared to most.
GIFE: An opinion show that tries to tackle crossovers between gaming and culture. Also very weird/different.
PlayView: A crossover of traditional video previews and Let's Plays.
Dossier: A monthly roundup of all the games coming that month with hype ratings from SIFTD editorial and its users.
Bad Dudes: A final boss review show.
Shane's Addiction: I look at piping hot (addictive) games like PUBG and ultimately decide whether they're truly addictive over the long haul or just a flash in the pan.
SIFTD Hangout: Our Let's Plays. Definitely the one series we create that's not especially innovative, but every pub needs to do these in 2017.
Game Evals: Our take on the game review that gives users a custom review score based on their tastes.
Begging for Donations
Not begging for anything. Asking people to subscribe. Would be stupid not to include a donation link in the article. Why is this considered begging but other publications posting Patreon links is not? Just curious if it's a perception thing.
Marketing
We have a marketing plan and have had one from the beginning. It's easy to market when you have money, but we don't, so we've had to be very crafty. Pachter Factor free on YouTube, paid/targeted marketing on social media, SIFTD referral program where you get free Premium for bringing users to the site, GIFTD where you can buy subs for others, etc. We're trying to do the most we can with what we've got. I'm open to suggestions on other cheap marketing tactics. Someone suggested that paying someone to handle social media marketing is cheap. If they have someone willing to do it for a pittance please send them my way. I've yet to find someone who doesn't want a huge salary. Every piece of content has social media links. We can't force our users to use them. The idea that with social media marketing is easy and cheap is absolutely false. There's too much noise to cut through and it's often for minimal gain. Only paid programs have moved the needle at all for us. We also have a co-branded marketing campaign with LootCrate and have released merch.
Why Would I Use SIFTD?
Again, I feel like people who are saying they get the same thing from Reddit/RSS Readers/Social Media haven't used the site for longer than five minutes. In addition to just giving people what they want in one click it's a great discovery tool for content creators and products. You'll never miss a thing using SIFTD and it literally takes less than five minutes to register and set your sift preferences.
I saw posts where people were like, "I would just follow these six Twitter accounts. Or I would just set up and use an RSS reader. Or I would just blah, blah, blah." All of that takes a ton of time and discovery. How does the average person even know the six Twitter accounts to follow? Setting up an RSS reader to get relevant results is a pain in the ass and extremely time-consuming/tech-heavy. Why would you do that when you can sign up and set your sift preferences in five minutes and let us do all the heavy lifting? I can't understand this way of thinking. It's like someone trying to convince themselves that what they've been doing it all along is the right way to do it instead of looking at alternatives for someone who's coming into it fresh.
SIFTD also does tons of stuff no other site does. Where else can you find all the trailers that came out in the last 24 hours, 48 hours, week or month? Where else can you find all the coverage of Japanese games from those time periods? Where else can you find sales numbers for games in both the West and Japan with two clicks? Where can you find all the latest information just on JRPGs or over 60 other categories with a single click? Using the publication pages on SIFTD is better than using the native sites We have on-site leveling and achievements. Private forums called Crews. I could go on and on. I think SIFTD's biggest problem is that you don't start to truly understand its power until you've used it for awhile. I'm open to any suggestions on how to fix that.
Should be Easier to Use
Everything can and should be easier to use. I would love to incorporate machine learning into the site. Totally agree what we should do that, but that's development money we don't have. That said, our interface is very easy and kind of fun if you ask me. Hopefully we end up having enough money so that we can completely ditch the interface, though.
Using Content Curation as a Trojan Horse for Premium
Yes, we use the site's unique functionality as a marketing tool to get folks to the site. Then they experience our original content during their free Premium trial and hopefully convert to paid subs. However, the content is not discrete from the curation. We mention curation on GameFace every single week and our show Dossier is specifically driven by the curation metrics.
Having to Register
Not sure where people are getting that you have to register to use the site. You can view any piece of non-Premium content without ever registering. The only time you're prompted to register is if you try to comment or use the forums (how do you comment without a username) or access Premium content. Seriously, go use the site. You can view everything without registering.
Comments
Our comments are built just like Reddit. Most upvoted comments bubble to the top, most downvoted to the bottom. Comments that have just one 1up are stacked based on replies, and from there it's chronological. The big difference is that replies are not collapsed by default. You have to do it manually, but we set it up that way from the beginning because we didn't have a ton of users so comments sections would look empty if they were all collapsed. If the site grows to a place where it's an issue we will change it to collapsed by default. I agree that we need an option for people to see newest first if they want. Comment timestamps are hourly until 24 hours, and then it shows how many days it's been. Do you need more detail than this? If so, please share why.
Every Website Has the Same Content
For the most part this is true. No one knows this better than us because we sift through it all every day. However, if you use SIFTD you will discover new content providers on almost a daily basis and shows that you never knew existed that you'll love. The other difference is that gaming sites do not like to promote competitors. So, for example, you're not going to go to IGN and see GameSpot's content. I feel like I'm trying to defend social media here. If there was no value in pulling in everything sites like Twitter and Facebook wouldn't exist. To use an analogy, SIFTD is like a Facebook for gaming without your feed being filled with cat videos and pictures of food. You're also not missing anything. Many of the major sites are using us to find stuff they missed the next day. It's totally fine, but that shows how comprehensive our curation is.
Power Users/Pro Tips Article
Someone said that the site is set up for Power Users. That's not true. If you take five minutes to set your preferences you're going to get a great content feed tailored to your tastes. Sure, the site does a ton of stuff under the hood that power users will make use of, but it would be stupid not include some hidden depth for those who want to dig. The Pro Tips article is even set up so that the most basic stuff is at the top and features grow more obscure as it goes on. How can we improve this?
Usability
Stumpokapow gave some feedback on the functionality/look of the site. The look of a site is subjective to a point. I like the look of it, some don't. That's totally fine. I doubt any site is going to be aesthetically pleasing to every single user. Definitely open to more feedback on this.
His/her feedback is from a drive-by and not actually using it, though. I appreciate that you took any time at all to look at it, but for instance, there is absolutely a channel nav on the E3 page. It's just farther down than normal because of the featured content at the top of the page. Agree in hindsight that the bar should have been above the featured content and it will be changed for Gamescom, but that's just one page out of tens of thousands. It's a special page for conventions. We create like six of them per year. We want to feature the important content from conventions so folks can easily find the really big stuff, but even if you move the nav above it, then you still have to scroll past the featured content to get to the results. No easy answer. Maybe we should just drop the featured content from that page altogether?
Rounded corners are not unique to SIFTD. Not sure why it's so bad when it's on our site. Agree 1000 percent that mouseover tooltips would be a help, but I think most people know what a comment icon looks like and it's pretty obvious that 1ups are our likes. The save for later option could really use it, though.
Not sure what you mean that the site is not responsive. It's lightning quick for me and we've never had a single user complain about the speed of the site. It's crunching a TON of data at this point. After just two years it's sifting 43K pieces of content. The read/watch overlays in no way impede anything or take up any extra space. They're just overlays on the thumbnails that prepare users to know whether something is a text-based or video-based. On mobile where some people are watching their data usage it's relevant in my opinion and not all content has a title that clearly says whether it's video or text. Just explaining our thinking behind it.
Giving Away Premium Content
This is something we're going to start doing more of. I'll admit that I've been too concerned about making sure we're not screwing our paying subscribers by giving away the content for free. Our subscribers have spoken over the last two days and say they're OK with it because they want the site to survive more than anything, so we'll be shifting our strategy.
I think that's it. With the context I provided hopefully it will help folks supply even more meaningful feedback going forward. Hope to see you all on the stream tomorrow night. It takes a lot of time to go back and forth with text. Should be a much more constructive conversation on the stream.
Oh, and in before the obligatory, "Said he wasn't going to make excuses. Made excuses." post.
