Post by NoxCastleKeeper on Dec 12, 2015 9:41:14 GMT -6
Hello everyone! 
With XombieMike's permission I would like to ask for your help and brainstorm some ideas. My name's Adam "Nox_A15" Dębski and I'm the founder of www.Castlevania.co website. I opened it in 2005 as CastleKeeper's Chronicles, which later changed more to The World of Castlevania (mostly due to FB and Twitter needs) or combination of both these names. In the beginning I've had a huge support of www.InnerWorld.pl editorial stuff (Polish site about Japanese games), which spotted CastleKeeper and took me in as an editor. I agreed to make CK a part of IW, but it's not a formal agreement. I started to translate news on CK into English after some time to widen the potential audience.
How does it look today? I still help with IW from time to time, but am alone working on CK, which for years begs for a major overhaul and more frequent updates. More importantly, I graduated and found a job in game dev this year, which was always something I was striving for (I'm a part of Plastic, small team behind Bound announced recently by Sony Santa Monica). So, as you may imagine, I don't have much time for work on CK, but I also don't want to shut it down.
So why am I writing this? Let's specify some ideas I have to evolve the site:
The last point is the most important one probably - I can't do this alone any more. Is there anyone among you who would like to be an editor of the site as well? Also what do you think about this situation and do you have any ideas/suggestions? I don't imagine the new CastleKeeper as a competition for other metroidvania themed sites or forums, just a place solidifying these communities. For example someone could post a link to a heated discussion taking place on the Bloodstained forum or to a news about new Metroid game on his private blog. It would be awesome to brainstorm these ideas and shape them together.
With XombieMike's permission I would like to ask for your help and brainstorm some ideas. My name's Adam "Nox_A15" Dębski and I'm the founder of www.Castlevania.co website. I opened it in 2005 as CastleKeeper's Chronicles, which later changed more to The World of Castlevania (mostly due to FB and Twitter needs) or combination of both these names. In the beginning I've had a huge support of www.InnerWorld.pl editorial stuff (Polish site about Japanese games), which spotted CastleKeeper and took me in as an editor. I agreed to make CK a part of IW, but it's not a formal agreement. I started to translate news on CK into English after some time to widen the potential audience.
How does it look today? I still help with IW from time to time, but am alone working on CK, which for years begs for a major overhaul and more frequent updates. More importantly, I graduated and found a job in game dev this year, which was always something I was striving for (I'm a part of Plastic, small team behind Bound announced recently by Sony Santa Monica). So, as you may imagine, I don't have much time for work on CK, but I also don't want to shut it down.
So why am I writing this? Let's specify some ideas I have to evolve the site:
- Make it more like a blog, but also with miniposts including only link, short description and an image (Twitter showed me how posting about news don't need to be time-consuming process).
- Widen covered topics to all Castle/Metroid/IGAvanias out there, but still staying true to the roots with Dracula/Gothic themed being a main focus.
- Change (very) obsolete framework to WordPress, which I already have some experience in modifying for my needs.
- Abandon translating news into Polish (I write drafts in English anyway and translation is time-consuming, audience not big enough unfortunately).
- Change of the domain? This one is pretty expensive for just one-person-site to be honest.
- Opening up the site to other people willing to care about it.
The last point is the most important one probably - I can't do this alone any more. Is there anyone among you who would like to be an editor of the site as well? Also what do you think about this situation and do you have any ideas/suggestions? I don't imagine the new CastleKeeper as a competition for other metroidvania themed sites or forums, just a place solidifying these communities. For example someone could post a link to a heated discussion taking place on the Bloodstained forum or to a news about new Metroid game on his private blog. It would be awesome to brainstorm these ideas and shape them together.
