For the less observant of you, there have been a few minor changes here at Australian Gamer. We felt it was time that AG "step up", improving our look, our style, and our capabilities by offering a shiny new site with shiny new reviewers. I'm even wearing shiny new pants. They're leather. And tight.

I saw a guy walking through the valley once, with bright blue leather pants on. Seriously, that takes some balls. That's what I like about the Valley. You see random things and they're normal. I once saw a guy walking along with two giant red parrots, one on each shoulder. It was like he was going to a fancy dress party as a pirate and was unsure of the specifics of the costuming. "Something about parrots, mum." Another day I saw three people in a row who caught my attention. Two hot girls, then a man in a scuba mask. No reason. Just... scuba mask.

Anyway, back to the site first, then onto the new people. We've added some new things, we've removed some old things, and we'v...

For the less observant of you, there have been a few minor changes here at Australian Gamer. We felt it was time that AG "step up", improving our look, our style, and our capabilities by offering a shiny new site with shiny new reviewers. I'm even wearing shiny new pants. They're leather. And tight.

I saw a guy walking through the valley once, with bright blue leather pants on. Seriously, that takes some balls. That's what I like about the Valley. You see random things and they're normal. I once saw a guy walking along with two giant red parrots, one on each shoulder. It was like he was going to a fancy dress party as a pirate and was unsure of the specifics of the costuming. "Something about parrots, mum." Another day I saw three people in a row who caught my attention. Two hot girls, then a man in a scuba mask. No reason. Just... scuba mask.

Anyway, back to the site first, then onto the new people. We've added some new things, we've removed some old things, and we've generally done a bit of a tidy up and revamp of the site.

The bar on the right hand side has been gutted, stripping out the references to the defunked (I know that's not how it's spelled, I just like the look of it) World of Warcraft guild, and the poll that was frankly a pain to update every week, meaning Yug had to make up stupid things to fill the space like "Favourite Cheese". We've added some new things, too. You can now sign up for our shiny new newsletter. We don't actually HAVE a shiny newsletter, we're just going to capture your email and sell it to porn companies. Seriously, though, we don't have a newsletter actually ready to go yet, we'll have it up and ready once we have some interest in it. We're also not quite sure what we should put in there, so that's up to you, really.

We've been running this site for about two years now, and in that time we've learned for ourselves (as well as being repeatedly told) what did and didn't work about the old layout. The main thing that we knew ourselves did not work was that "news" was never available immediately. It was impossible to see what had changed on the site "above the fold" as they say, and it took quite a lot of scrolling to actually see any new content. Especially on the rare occasions that an update might be late.

To counteract that we have the top left bit now containing the latest "stuff". This is actually pulled in directly from our own RSS feed, which is probably a bit weird, but hey, that's what it's there for. A little below that we also have the latest forum posts, which show how important our forum is to us, and how much we value its activity.

Another criticism of the site has always been the actual update editorial text being too long. This was always a contentious issue. It was always felt that the comic image and the editorial should be of equal importance and weight. The removal of that text to an external page basically relegates my major contribution to the site into the bargain basement bin like a NIN CD.

On the other hand, it's a gigantor slab of text, and once you've read it, why should it STILL be in your way. So the proposal was made to move it off, but was fought vehemently. Despite what you might think, it was actually me who proposed to move it to an external file, and Yug who fought tooth and nail to keep it on there.

Our hope is that the current setup is the best of both world. By staying "rolled up" the editorial spares real estate desperately needed for pervy videos of softcore hentai games. It can still be viewed in full and still gets a respectable degree of priority on the site.

Speaking of external pages, you may have noticed that comments now link to a separate page. Well… yeah, they do. There are a few reasons for this. One is that the main page gets freed of having to download 12 pervy videos for softcore hentai games and screenshots, image, etc, get moved off. Another is that we can cram a bit more in, allowing more to be seen on the page at any given time, with less scrolling and greater ease of reading. The external pages also make a more "friendly" link that people can send around, link to, etc. The final (and most important) is that Google spiders text links really nicely. We're ugly, but we're not stupid.

As a last note on the site itself, this design is a radical change to the old site, built from the ground up to be fully CSS and XHTML compliant. What this means, as per web standards, is that it probably doesn't work. If you find links that break, or bits that don't line up properly, please feel free to point them out on the forums. Try to include as much as possible about your environment, especially OS and browser version. We found some awesome bugs in IE7 on Vista.

Naturally there's something far more important to share, however. We have new members!

Yes, the hunt was on to find some new people to take on the load of reviewing and keep the website news happening, and I'm very pleased to welcome them now.

Just a quick word to the many applicants we had that didn't get in. It was a long and difficult process deciding who to keep and who to throw into the reject pile with the NIN CDs. Our requirements were very specific, and not meeting them does not make you a bad person. Two major requirements really thinned the "herd". Those were location and console ownership. We were quite brutal with that, and eliminated possibly 2/3 applicants based solely on those criteria.

The rest were eliminated on looks.

Sorry, joking.

Anyway, we have a massive "overstock" of Melbourne people even at the moment, and we want to keep ourselves geographically spread out, so we can ensure the best possible coverage all across this wide brown LAN. (See what I did there?) We also need people who own more than a DS. We got a number of people this round and the last who enthusiastically told us they only own a Dreamcast. Which is very exciting for them, and the DC rocked hard, but if you only play retro games, you're not much good as a reviewer, are you?

In any case, if you didn't get through this round the chances are pretty good that location was a major factor in that decision, but may not be next time. Please feel free to apply again. For the record, Samo missed out initially, being narrowly pipped by AJ, but was the first of our second batch.

Oh! And also, we've said it before, but if you CAN'T WRITE WITH WORDS PLEASE DON'T APPLY! A subject line of "CAN I JOIN U PLZ!!! :D:D:D:D:D" does not bode well. Yes we really had that. If we wanted more illiterates we'd have accepted Oracle twice.

So, without further ado about nothing: THE NEW PEOPLE!



Carl

A fledgling actor/performance artist/writer, Carl is the youngest member of the gang at only 17, also making him the only "non-adult". Nevertheless, Carl's writing stood out as exceptional from the start, and he has a dry sense of humour that belies his age and will make him an excellent addition to the site.




Cav

Known until recently (thus spoiling the game) as 'the_twisted_one' on the forums, Cav brings an older and wiser (?) perspective to gaming, having two young kids of his own. He's been an active and respected part of the forum community for some time, and we know he'll bring even more when he has access to post stuff on the front of the site.




Jae

Jae is big on the import games and a fan of the more obscure titles. He's also a personal trainer by day, presumably making him the fittest member of the team. Jae stood out as a dynamic, intelligent writer who made a nice complement to the rest of the team.




Phil

Phil was our most controversial selection. He was basically poached directly from PALGN, where he's been working for some time. Phil felt that AG was more suited to his interests and inclinations. Which presumably means he wants to write poorly researched nonsense with a lot of typos.




Starks

Starks has been a long time friend of the site, to the point of sleeping in a hotel room with us once, and staying at Yugs place another time. Starks is heavily into the competitive side of gaming, and will be providing as much coverage as possible of the console and PC eSports activities around Australia, an area Yug and I are lacking in. Starks has very spiky hair, and is wrong about God.


So there you go! New people, new site, all revved up and ready to go. Look to see a major increase in content as Yug and I are able to put time back into the site instead of this re-vamp and the new people start doing their thang.

Without meaning to sound like the closing song of Metal Gear Solid, the best is yet to come. Of the new stuff we have lined up in the very near future this is actually NOT the biggest stuff. I'd say to keep your eyes open but you don't really need to. It's going to be pretty freaking obvious when it's done.