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NZG 5.0 and The Great Leap of Faith

Published: Sun 24 Aug, 2008 | 39 Comments
Tags: nzgamer 5.0, blogs, reader reviews, beastiality, censorship, rugby 08

It has now been roughly a month and a half since NZG shed its old skin and re-emerged slightly slimmer, slightly greyer. I was meaning to write this article shortly after launch, but alas, sh*t happens. So now, with a free moment, lets do this thing, and lets do it right.

 

First we need some background. We’re into NZGamer’s fifth reincarnation of design and functionality, affectionately referred to as ‘NZG 5.0’ to the website’s inner-sanctum of grizzled overlords and smack junkies. It is only a handful of madmen within these ranks and on the forums who remember an era where staff physically dragged and dropped news and articles into the raw code of the site to update it. A practice that is now unthinkable to the modern admin. A few will recall the years where NZG glowed a gut-churning orange. Most will remember the technicolour platform hubs and user wishlists that NZG 4.0 dished in steaming, jumbled piles. There is history here, people. We have f***ing roots.

 

My interest lies not in NZGamer’s latest paint job but how 5.0’s new functionality expands on the website’s existing business model. In the last few years, strange waves have been rippling through the internet and NZG has been cresting the big one for a while now. Even the lay man may have heard of the ‘user generated content’ revolution; that awful buzzword thrown around by internet entrepreneurs and techno-forecasters with all the piled hopes and dreams of the quest for the f***ing Holy Grail. Blogspot, Myspace, and Youtube, makes these freaks steamy, and the influence of these user-powered giants has contaminated even the humble videogame website. Both IGN and GameSpot now offer reader reviews and blogs and it’s likely only a matter of time before they introduce video uploading. NZGamer themselves added reader reviews in their last site revamp and, as far as I’m aware, it was a feature weakly taken up by the community. Few non-staff members wrote them and I assume few folks read the ones that were written. So here, to our fascination, NZG has not only expanded on its UGC credentials by introducing user-blogging but, unlike either IGN or GameSpot, it positions a running feed of the damn things on the frontpage.

 

 

 

So there must be a very good reason why NZG isn’t giving up on UGC fight. And there is. Because at the heart of UGC is a dream, a golden promise that the small group of boys who run this website are well familiar with. At night they writhe and froth to visions of reader reviews, blogs, and forum posts, and in the morning they stumble to their computers with raging hard-ons. They have been bewitched by that impossible yet inescapably captivating dream that UGC promises the aspiring internet bourgeois: that content can be generated for free with no cost or labour required. In this UGC utopia, a sole web controller may fall deep into his chair, sip chocolate milk, and watch as content is autonomously produced and advertising revenue effortlessly churned. This isn’t a vision a website like IGN, Youtube, or even NZG is necessarily eager to share with you. The news article that accompanied 5.0’s launch cheerily informed viewers that blogging was added because:

 

“We felt we've been doing the typical thing where we 'tell' you about how great/terrible a game is for too long - it's time to turn that notion on its head and have you, yes you, the visitor firmly in control.”

 

This is mindless PR-dribble, but this isn’t important. I’m not trying to burn NZGamer; there is nothing revelatory that NZG is business, does PR work, or even that UGC is a business strategy. I only want to establish the importance and high hopes NZG has for blogging so I can get to my real focus here, a question I’ve been pondering since 5.0 was first launched: how will blogging conflict with NZG’s need for self-censorship?

 

Offensive content would be a problem for any website with blogs but because NZG displays a running feed of their blogs on the frontpage and because NZG has some very young readers, censorship issues become unusually weighty. NZG has blogging guidelines about offensive content but how do you define ‘offensive content’? What’s an acceptable number of times I can say f*** anyway? What happens when *babyentrails32* posts his top five reasons why the holocaust might have been justified? The community have always enjoyed a hefty amount of freedom in the forums which are safely tucked away, but how far do you let us go on the frontpage of your website? Some of this can be helped with a ‘flag as offensive’/’explicit content’ tool that most UGC websites employ, but what happens when content isn’t necessarily offensive but might ruffle the feathers of NZGamer’s administrators? For instance, how far do you let people talk about how awesome Gameplanet.co.nz is or how awful NZG’s latest review was? What happens when some dick uses the blog system to examine NZG’s business model in more detail than you would prefer? Addling this, whose voice is more likely to be published? Would we be wrong to assume staff, particularly senior writers, likely have more leeway on controversial issues than a new user? I’m a gnarled site oldee who might be able to get away with a blog post like this but… can you?

 

 

To my mind these are intriguing moderation issues that I think will continue to be tested as NZGamer’s blogosphere grows. Currently, as far as I can tell, the boys have about three tools to direct and filter blogs in the ‘direction’ they’d prefer. Firstly, any user’s first five blogs have to be approved by the administrators, which is a powerful means to filter jackasses (myself included) from ‘NZG approved’ bloggers. If you came to rock the boat chances are you don’t have the time or patience to post five blogs. Secondly, one of the presumptions of the ‘comments’ and ‘blog rating’ system is that the community will sink blogs that are overly offensive or controversial. Finally, NZG’s recently introduced ‘best of the blogs’ feature is an effective means to not only foster the ‘fame’ of blogging but sets a model for what NZG’s overlords deem ‘ideal’ content. All of these have their uses but none of them will wholly solve some of the stickier issues I see on the horizon, which will come down to case-by-case moderation decisions.

 

The difficulty here is that with too little censorship NZG risks exposing little Jimmy, who only was checking the site for their review of Rugby 08, to a world of salty prose and bestiality. Too much moderation and you will kill both the membership number of bloggers and the vitality of discussion in the blogosphere – if I can’t recount the basic plotline of an episode of The Sopranos what’s the point? Not only that, but too much moderation goes against the glorious dream of USG; you’re no longer creating labour-free content anymore if you’re an admin who has to painstakingly read and check through blogs every single f***ing day, including your weekends.

 

Blogging could be a potential boon for NZGamer in terms of the growth of both its community and its content. I am a huge fan of seeing blogs displayed on the frontpage of the website, but I think there will be some hidden complications around the corner. It’s going to be a balancing act. A running experiment. And I’m curious to see how NZGamer will ride out this cruel wave.

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