There is a lot to talk about here but I’m going to be pretty brief where I can to get through it all (probably not). Obviously, you’ve noticed that we’ve begun creating articles on gaming news etc. We want to expand on that and create even more for the gaming space and our community, so I wanted to also use our article space as a way to create updates and get feedback on things happening around the HQ.
There is often a “here’s what’s coming” post, and then you don’t hear anything about it for a while. You’ll have to understand we’re a small business, and priorities change super quickly with a small staff putting things back even further than where we liked them. Especially when it comes to the online side of things, for example this article area and system took months, on top of the second complete revamp of the website as a whole. If you’re active on the website you’ve probably seen these changes piece by piece over time – apologies if that has created confusion on where things were and then they get moved haha. We’re pretty much done minus the updates we’re working on listed below…
So, let’s start with some of the stuff we’ve talked about before that are for sure coming to the HQ.
We now BUY SELL TRADE WAY more Items!
You’ve recently seen that we are now taking in Steam Decks, Ipads, Tablets, laptops, collectibles, etc. This is a new space for us, so if you want to know pricing on your electronic items, be sure to bring them in so we can take a look case by case and give you a quote. We’ll have a more streamlined hardware pricing guide on our website in the near future.
Tournaments
If you login to gamershq.com and go to your account page, you’ll see a grayed out area marked “Tournaments”. Our goal is to create an ever growing competitive space so each time you come to an event you can track the results as well sign up for the next one.
Prior to that, we will of course be going standard with a simple sign up as soon as we can. If you noticed, we had a reach out to hire an Event Manager as the main issue was staffing these events. Tournaments alone wasn’t going to be enough, we have tons of ideas for events and need someone to focus on them. We’ve solved this, so soon we will be back on track with rebuilding our event schedule and getting tournaments going along with various other events.
Adult Night
Adult night was a huge hit. We ran into quite a few snags however, with things like having multiple games available for large groups as well as smaller games prepared for smaller groups. Often people couldn’t play the game they wanted as a group because we didn’t carry enough of those titles in the lounge area in advance.
To fix this, we have to expand quite a few concepts of how to approach the lounge to make sure we lower the possibility of you not being able to play the game you want with the amount of people you came with, and having them downloaded/updated and ready to go in advance is even more of a difficult challenge. We’re pretty sure we have a solution for it, so it’s coming back in the works alongside tournaments and other events when that’s ready. Please understand we don’t have an ETA as the list of things to do are growing.
Trade-In online
The hit list has been taken down for game pricing. The current system on-line that displayed pricing was entirely manual, and keeping up with hundreds of items added to it to adjust their pricing was just not working. The new website that you’ve seen built over time was actually designed to accommodate this issue. If you view the shop, all the listed items have a white trade button on them that doesn’t do anything.
That’s intentional, as later on when you click this it will grab the item you’re referencing and take you to the new version of the hit list which will integrate with our system directly so we no longer need to manually update it. Design wise, it was better to leave the button than create the empty space or fill it with something else. This is a huge task however as its forced me to learn a lot more development goodies on the website end to get it all to work. No ETA, but it’s in the works where you can directly use the website to get the exact trade value we are currently offering on all listed items.
Once this happens, we will also be taking trades from anywhere in the US! We tested this system recently, and it worked rather well so we’re excited for this. How exactly this will work will be updated at a later date.
Repair Online
You currently can request a quote / diagnosis online for repairs. Soon, we will also have our prices listed on the website more appropriately to match the new site design and make it easier to review prior to requesting a diagnosis. Additionally, we may in the future be looking at taking in repairs from anywhere in the US instead of just locally. I don’t have a lot of details I can talk about just yet.
Discord
Welp, that’s the end of the article. Bye everyone! Kidding, discord is a sore spot for me personally as I use it for 100% of my gaming communication. The goal with discord was to create an additional area for the community to hangout and play games together, but we ran into many problems with trying to do that. I personally come from PC gaming and that’s where discord is primarily used so most of our community being console related it didn’t really come into play very well.
Additionally, Discord requires me to be pretty hands on. I simply can’t do that, and still get my work done for the day that needs to be done. As much as I’d love to sit in discord and chat all day – it’s not a reality. Instead, we want discord to take on a life of its own with the community deciding how to steer the ship minus a few things that will uh – get you banned. Haha.
As it stands, discord has a handful of really cool people who still chat daily. If you saw our recent post, Discord is being integrated to Xbox and PS5 so that will mean more console players will be involved in the discord space and hopefully allows us to do some more cool stuff with it.
My hope is that once we start events back up, I can integrate discord more easily into that workflow to re-imagine it. We’d love to hear your feedback on what you want to see discord turn into.
Video Content
We would love to be making video content. We push something out every so often, but the amount of work it takes to create a solid production at the scope we’d like requires tons of time and planning. Which, as you can imagine Caleb and even myself have a difficult time coming up with that available time. We still have plans for it, but there is a huge to-do list before we can start making video content again and the worst thing we can do is start it back up and have to stop the wheel from turning due to something else we need to do. Unfortunately that means it will be some time before we can get videos rolling in again.
Live Streams
tldr: same problem with video content. Personally I would love to create a large collaboration with local streamers and staff who already stream to make this happen. The problem with this is a lot of streamers locally would have to change how they approach streaming in order for it to be successful and for them to scale their own streams in the process. Running a stream team in itself is a job, and even though I have the skillset for it – I don’t have the time yet.
If you’re a streamer, and want to look at streaming as something not only fun, but can build revenue for you – post here and let us know. If there is demand for it, I can maybe make time for it to give it the attention it would deserve to work out.
Funny story: When I met Caleb at the HQ for the first time; I actually came in to ask how much would it cost for me to come in and record videos using the lounge as an atmosphere so I could create an online course on how to apply branding/marketing and data to online streaming to become successful in the saturated field. It instead turned into a conversation of me joining the HQ team – and here I am, going on almost 2 years (wild.).
Blog Platform
When we built the community page originally, the problem was “how do we fill it with content?” and with that we came up with this idea of creating a medium.com/reddit like space to let people come and more loudly voice their opinions on gaming topics and news, as an open community space. So you could sign up and become an author and start writing blogs and connecting your social media accounts and scale your streams by writing even.
However ran into the inevitable concern of staffing moderation to remove trolling and the likes. In a perfect world, we let the community up/downvote to push things away or even report posts. There may be a solution for this after all, but we’re not sure if this is something the community wants. So be loud if it sounds cool to you, and you’d write/read opinion columns from the local community!
Account Profile System
The account page area is growing. It’s not quite as robust as I’d like it. You’ll be able to (if not already by time of this post) add all your gamer tag information, and then later go through a members list to find people to add and play with. If we do the above platform, it’ll also show users ‘ contributions such as likes, who they follow, what games they’re into, posts they’ve made and more. Time will tell how far we can get here or what it needs to have added or removed.
This is just the tip of the iceberg on what’s going on behind the scenes. Some very big stuff is taking place in the shadows that we can’t talk about just yet, you’ll just have to wait and see. Let me know what you guys think about the upcoming stuff, drop feedback, or even recommendations. We’ll be using this space to talk about updates pretty often where we can. Thanks for reading!
One Response
The folks in the Extra-Life community have voiced they’d love a place to stream. I’ll also post on Facebook to see if there’s something we can do to collaborate at your location