Pre-Promotion (part 4)

[gorboth]

(Promotion Gear Up - Post 4 of 6)

Now, to discuss the website. Tapakah has been our pioneer for the
modern web needs, having taken on the task and doing a great job setting up
the structure of the current site and implementing clever things like the
rankings for mortals. However, the web is a fickle place, and what passed for
a nice design 7 or 8 years ago simply cannot be expected to hold up under
modern scrutiny. Tapakah himself recognized this and began collaborating
with me to find the talent needed to make a redesign possible.

For this, I felt strongly that we needed to find a way to distinguish
ourselves from the (literally) thousands of other free-to-play RPG games
that the internet offers, many of which use the same fantasy-stock visual
branding for their websites. I knew that a unique and distinct "first
glance" appeal was critical to making our website something people would
be drawn to for more than a quick no-thank-you peek. I wanted our
"visual branding" to steer clear of the cliche "me-too" artistic tactics
that so many of the other games use: anime, 3-D artwork, Frazetta or
Boris look-alikes, cartoony World of Warcraftesque figures, etc. I wanted
to find something that represented who we are, what we are, and what
we want to be. I believe we are:

- Decidedly old school (words only, man!)
- Inspired by classic D&D, stats, dice-rolls, maps, etc.
- From a different era, but timelessly cool
- A true hardcore roleplaying opportunity
- Huge, established, and content-rich

Thus, I wanted to have us represented by the sort of artwork I myself fell
in love with early on - stuff from the old Dungeons and Dragons manuals. For
this, I turned to an artist who was reknown in the field of manual
illustration, and has a legendary pedigree among computer game developers
from the Golden Era - someone who I, as a kid 20 years ago, had actually
written letters to as a fan, and received friendly responses. I turned to
Denis Loubet. I called him, and I hired him. Here is a brief description of
his credentials.

Denis Loubet is one of the most talented illustrators ever to work in the
computer gaming field. He got his first big break in the early 1980's when
Richard Garriot (a.k.a. Lord British) hired him to provide cover art for
his first published game, Akalabeth. Loubet went on to be the lead artist
and illustrator for nearly all of the games in the Ultima series, providing
black and white manual illustrations as well as the box cover-art for these
games. A fairly complete list of games which feature his art can be viewed
at:

http://www.giantbomb.com/denis-r-loubet/72-2967/games/

For the Genesis website, specifically, I asked him to create for us a design
and visual branding that harkened back to that old-school fine-line black-
and-white manual art that so many of us grew up obsessing over in our
D&D and Computer RPG manuals. The beautiful irony, of course, being that
my requests for the "look" was based on the sorts of images that he himself
helped make famous back in the day.

And so, after a year of development and back-and-forth between Tapakah,
myself, and Denis Loubet, we finally have a finished set of illustrations
and set-pieces with which to construct our website's main environment.

That is the good (no, GREAT) news.

The bad news is that we have been very unlucky in finding someone who is
able to dedicate the time who and has the html skill to put this page
together for us. Denis Loubet was very reasonable in his pricing with us,
and I believe that paying him has been money very well spent. However, to
hire a web-designer gets very expensive very quickly, and so we have continued
to search for someone who can do this for us in-house at no cost - someone
from our own community who has html skills and who has the time and
passion to make this a reality as a donation to the future of Genesis.

I believe the time has finally come for me to extend an invitation to anyone
who is reading this, and who believes that they have this skill, but more
importantly who has the time and drive to put serious work into it so that
we can turn it around into a functional website in fairly short order.

We have the artwork and the design in place - we just need someone who can
put it all together and get it working for us. Please mail me or PM me on
the forum if you think you might be able to help!

The next post will deal with the other external needs.
G.

[gorboth]

This post cannot be effectively deleted from this part of the forum, but I am locking the topic here and have merged it with the Pre-Promotion section of Keeper's Korner. Please reference that area for consolidated discussion on these topics.

G.