@Longo_2_guns @Ivory_Soul @Master_Craig
Hey folks,
I'm going to give you some context here as I can understand frustrations from long-time readers, who may be upset or concerned by the various changes that took place during 2017.
I took over GR in September 2017 when the site wasn't doing so hot. It wasn't performing badly, per se, but it hadn't really hit a major breakthrough in terms of viewership. It's a difficult world for online media these days, and when a site isn't performing as well as it could be, that can spell trouble. GR is owned by a network, and when I took over the number of editorial staff assigned to the site had dropped to 3, myself included.
As you can imagine, running a site such as GR with just 3 people was no easy task. It meant that community-focused projects, features, and other more time-consuming projects had to be put on the backburner for a while as we focused on keeping GR stable. Thanks to a hell of a lot of hard work, we not only managed to do that but we also managed to start rolling in more readers than GR had achieved with a larger team (though not a perfect indication of readership, you can take a look at
GR's Alexa ranking to see how much has been achieved). This ensured that in early 2018, we could start hiring more staff. By the end of 2018, we'll boast a workforce of 20+ GR staff, with us currently housing 10+. This includes an expanded editorial team, which will make up the largest workforce that GR has had since its inception in 1996.
But obviously, I can understand the concerns and the opinion that GR started to feel "like a blog site." The reasoning behind this is that throughout late 2017 and January 2018, we had such a small team that we couldn't do anything aside from work diligently to ensure that GR started reaching the heights it was firmly capable of reaching. This included a lot of behind-the-scenes work that didn't translate into content that would be appealing to our community. We knew that we would lose out on some of GR's dedicated community during this time, though sometimes you have to make difficult decisions for the benefit of your future, and this was one of them. In April, we achieved the highest number of GR users since 2007.
However, if you've been tuning into the site recently, then you'll notice that things have changed. We set up a
podcast, a
Twitch channel (and achieved Twitch Partner status within 4 weeks, imjustsayin),
contests, even a
bloody magazine. In modern media, every site struggles with maintaining a dedicated audience, and while GR has enjoyed a much better community than most, the late 2017 blip it experienced inevitably saw more than a few drift away. Now that GR has finally hit its stride, our goal is to regrow the community, bring in fresh faces, and make sure that you folks want to keep returning.
I'll be making changes to the forum today ahead of E3. On top of that, I think a refresh of our community features is in order. If you like certain features, community posts, or have any ideas for stuff that you'd like to see, then please comment -- though our job is to reach out to you folks, your input is invaluable, too.
