Mass Effect 3 may very well be my favorite game of all time.  I’m still trying to process that.  What I have concluded, though, is that it is, at least, one of my favorites.  It truly is the closest thing I’ve ever played to a perfect game.  I still feel like I’m selling short my experience when I say that.  It really is so much more.  It’s the culmination of 5 years of my life, and the conclusion of one of the greatest stories I’ve ever experienced.  

It saddens me to see people saying that the last 3 minutes of one of the games of an amazing trilogy have ruined the entire experience for them.  It makes me wonder how much they actually care about it in the first place.  It’s something that I really struggle to understand.  If something really horrible happens to you right before you die, and ruins your life (obviously because you’re dead), does the rest of your life not count now?  Is everything that happened from when you were born until when you die just turn to shit and have no impact on your perception of the journey itself?  I’d like to think nobody feels that way in any aspect of life.  Unfortunately, it seems my hopes would be dashed on the ground, as it seems people who are calling themselves “Mass Effect fans” spread hate across the internet.  

I’ve decided to ignore this vocal minority, as I can’t find any common ground with them and don’t think they’ve been justified in anything they’ve said or done.  To demand Bioware change the ending of their creative vision…I can’t begin to understand that.

Enough about that nonsense, though.  The Mass Effect series is officially, and easily, my favorite of this generation, and possibly my favorite of all time.  I certainly believe that it has the best storytelling and characterization in games, and some of the most effective relationship building I’ve ever experienced.  Looks like an early game of the year decision this year, however arrogant and inconsiderate of other games that may seem.  No other game or franchise has intertwined itself into who I am, and why I play and love video games.

One thing all gaming sites need is a user base.  People who visit the site often, and are likely to come back.  It’s not as if the men and women in charge of these sites don’t understand this, but there is one key thing I believe is almost universally missed upon.  The true importance of a community site and the interactivity of the editors and staff with their community members.  I understand that these guys and gals are very busy, and I respect that, and I know they don’t always have time to deeply interact with their readers.  I also understand that not every gaming site has a dedicated, separate, site for their community.

One such site that does is IGN.  Their community site is called MyIGN.  It’s a separate section of the site, dedicated specifically to the community.  Members can interact directly with one another, write easily accessible blogs, and also have easy access to the editors and staff members.  Unfortunately, that’s where the example falls apart.  The community members themselves are very active, and visit the site on a near daily basis, whereas the same cannot be said of the editors.  Every now and then, an editor will write a blog, or, once in a great while, respond to a community member.  As I’ve already said, I understand that they’re busy people, and don’t always have time for such things.  I still think the interaction is an important part of building and keeping an audience.

Having been a fairly active member of the MyIGN community for nearly a year and a half, I’ve witnessed a lot of changes, and seen what users want out of their community.  There have been dozens of blogs on the site suggesting improvements, some realistic and some not so much.  I’m well aware that not all of these things are probable, and take time and money to accomplish.  IGN seems to have taken note of some of the suggestions, and implemented many of their own improvements over the past year and a half. The user experience on the community site has been greatly improved as a result, and is largely the reason the community persists, other than for the interaction with one another.

I think other sites could learn a great deal from MyIGN, which is why I originally decided to write this post.  I also have some personal and general suggestions I’ve seen throughout the community.  I really don’t want to sound like a self-entitled, many-baby, whiner, because that isn’t what this is about.  I don’t think I deserve better from any gaming site or its editors.  They have full lives and many things to do, just like everyone else, and they are already doing their best to provide their audiences with up to date and interesting content.  I just thought I might explain some things about MyIGN that make it a great community site, and things that could make it, or any other site, even better.

The Site

First and foremost, is the ease and accessibility of having a simple conversation with another MyIGNer.  It isn’t nearly as clean as it could be and isn’t always entirely stable, but there is a foundation in place.  Each user has a personal home page, and that makes it easy to directly address one another.  There are some areas here that could be improved upon, though.  It’s near impossible to find a specific person you aren’t already following (think Twitter, but if you couldn’t search for anyone effectively), so a search function would be quite nice.  Another useful addition would be that of chat functionality.  As it stands right now, you can really only have a one-on-one conversation with another member on their wall, and it happens to be a little clunky and doesn’t refresh unless you refresh the entire page.  The foundation is there, now it just needs to be built upon.

Secondly, the blogs.  Here’s an example of a MyIGN blog.  As they are right now, they work well enough, that is, when they’re working.  If Wordpress, or IGN itself, isn’t malfunctioning, it’s easy to write a blog and to view other user’s blogs as well.  Wordpress is pretty sketchy, and there’s probably a better service to use for hosting the blogs, but overall it works well enough.  Blogs are a necessity at this point, as most sites already have a blog function of some sort, and users always want to share with one another.  I would recommend a service other than Wordpress, or at least not the version MyIGN uses, because the interface is a bit clunky and confusing, and the service has a lot of problems.  This is probably the most fleshed out and developed feature of MyIGN, and it’s one I and other users appreciate.  Ya know, when it’s working.

One feature that’s already in fairly good shape is the “follow” function, which is nearly identical to Twitter’s follow system.  It doesn’t really need any more description than that.  There’s the typical “block” function to severe communication with another user.  There’s also a unique secondary follow system in place, as well.  The ability to follow games you are interested in, and see any news about those games.  That’s how it would work, in theory.  That aspect has always been very unresponsive and unreliable.  There’s a follow button for each game, as there is for users, but sometimes it doesn’t even work when you attempt to follow a game.  Even if you do manage to follow a game, your newsfeed (again, think Twitter feed) will rarely if ever update with news related to any of the games you’ve followed.  This feature is meant to give users the ability to keep up to date on games they’re interested in, and it is also intended to serve as a function for building your game collection online for other users to see.  It somewhat works in that respect, but again, is very finicky.  The ability to follow the games, as it exists, is unnecessary, and simply being able to add games to a list to build your collection would serve better.

Those are the largest parts of MyIGN.  There are many other smaller parts, obviously, but they are very basic and general and don’t really bear mentioning.  Rather, I’m going to write about another aspect of the gaming site community that I believe is just as important, if not more important, than the technical side.  Community and editor/staff interaction, and community events and features.

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