Konichiwa,

Hi, dudes and dolls. I’m James Walker, owner, executive editor and overall grand poobah of Binge Gamer. After a month off to recharge the batteries and do some much-needed housework on the back end, However, after about a month of getting things in order and working ourselves to the bone (except for Mike, who’s out doing the convention circuit. Damn him for living in Orlando), I am pleased to announce that Binge Gamer is back in force.

Now, odds are if you’re a regular, you’ve noticed that the website has changed just a tad. For those of you who are here for the first time, this is what the website looked like before the relaunch:

Gah! Look at that! That dinky logo. That cute-but-out-of-place RSS image. The Times New Roman font. That depressing as hell blueish-gray background that makes you just want to slit your wrists. Nothing about the homepage was right, but what irked all of us here and a lot of you who have been coming to the site for a while is our blog experiment. I am pleased to say that after trying this out for four excruciating months the homepage has returned to a proper homepage.

First thing first – the feature box. What is this feature box? Well, the feature box is a box (thus the name) that cycles through our four latest “feature” pieces. All content on Binge Gamer is original, however pieces in longstanding series, new episodes of our podcast, reviews, interviews and convention coverage (as well as other special pieces) will be especially accessible through the feature bar. In short, while all our content is pretty kick ass, what is in the feature box is the cream of the crop.

Below that you have the tabs for some of our categories:

• Originals: This category shows the six latest articles that we consider truly “original”, i.e. reviews, opinions and entries in one of our weekly or monthly series.

• Gaming News: Just because we gave up on covering gaming news full-time doesn’t mean that we gave up on gaming news entirely. We still love the gaming industry and will still cover the bigger stories, which you can find here.
• Nerd News: We’re more than video games, dammit! We like comic books, movies and watching absurd amounts of television. While not updated as frequently as “Gaming News”, if we find something nerd-related that we want to pass along to you, this is where it goes.
• Best of the Rest: Our daily rundown of gaming news. The stories that other gaming sites make their money off of, we simply pass along to you through convenient links and much more clever titles.
• The Bender: You a fan of our podcast? You are? That’s unfortunate. This is where you can find our most recent episodes, though.

Below that is our “Latest Videos” section. While not every video we post will go here, the videos we like usually do wind up there. The videos may very well be the only thing on this website that isn’t ours. Besides the ads.

Finally, at the bottom of the homepage we have a carousel of games that are slated for release in whatever month we happen to be in. Right now it’s March, so games like Resident Evil 5, MLB 09: The Show and Wheelman are there. As the month changes, so do the games.

Not much has changed over here. You still have your “Latest”, “Popular” and “Comments” tabs, but between “Popular” and “Comments” is the new one, “Random”. The Random tab will bring up ten old stories from the website’s past. Why do we have it? Well, maybe you’ll see something that piques your interest and you’ll click it and drive up our pageviews.

Other than that we have the typical monthly poll, advertisements (sorry, we have to pay the bills) and on the homepage, links to our friends.

No changes on this front, outside of a new look for our review scores. Instead of the typical “4 out of 5” score image from the past, we now have Binge Gamer Seals of Excellence that we use for our reviews. In other words, instead of this:

We now have this:

Nothing major, I just think it looks better with the new look. The seal will also be modified to become our new “Lager of Excellence” award, which will be handed out each week along with our “Bitch Slap of Justice”, which is awarded to the worst person, company or news story of the week. Both awards will be issued every Sunday in the revamped “t3h w31rd” segment, counting down the weird, wild and plain stupid stories from the week that was.

It’s good to be back, and while we aren’t the same site we were just last month, the new direction that focuses on reviews and original features and a renewed dedication to releasing a fun, entertaining and ever-so-slightly informative product promises to launch Binge Gamer to new heights in this year and beyond. Thanks for your patience, and hope to catch y’all around.

-JW

Popularity: unranked [?]