Gamers With Jobs: Press Pass Launches!

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Today, we are very excited to reveal our next big project: The Gamers With Jobs: Press Pass. The Press Pass (www.passthepress.com) is the result of the same basic desires that inspired us to create GWJ in the first place, a realization that we were looking for a gaming news site with a particular style and community that we simply couldn't find anywhere else. So, instead of settling for the wasteland that has become the current model of news delivery, we decided to try and create our own realm, our own quiet and hopefully better shelter in this corner of the internet. The mission of the Press Pass is simple: deliver gaming related news at a higher standard. That means offer something in every article that isn't available anywhere else; inspire intelligent conversation; look for the deeper story, and be a news and information source instead of a copy and paste instrument of gaming PR. There are deeper stories to be told, more to the news than press releases, and a better method than dealing in quantity before quality. So we invite you all to visit the newest addition to the GWJ family: The Press Pass.

IMAGE(http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/images/GWJPressPass.jpg)

Now! Many of you probably have questions, concerns, comments, derisions, jubilations, asides, quips and hyperbole that you'd like addressed. Let's see if I can't tackle some of the biggest issues right off the bat. In short, what does the Press Pass mean for the GWJ you've come to know and be mildly attracted to in a manly platonic way?

I want to stress this, so pardon my bold: The Press Pass will in no way affect GWJ as we know it.

We were deliberate and conscious in creating the Press Pass as a completely separate and independent site. We feel as I suspect many of you do that anything that could threaten the existence and integrity of Gamers With Jobs is not a risk worth taking, which is why regardless of how the Press Pass fares, the end result will not change what you've come to expect from GWJ. This site, Gamers With Jobs, is our primary concern, and always comes first. That was rule #1 in creating a second site.

The site is on its own server, and no donation money given to GWJ will ever be used for the Press Pass. No features or articles that have been featured on GWJ will be moved to the new site. No writers for GWJ will be required or expected to contribute, though we have offered all our writers the opportunity to do so if they wish so long as it doesn't interfere with their ability to perform for this site. The Press Pass does not share a user database with GWJ. To be simple, if not brief, the Press Pass is nearly as separate from GWJ as any other site on the net. Concretely, the two share only some trademarks and an RSS feed.

To that end we've brought a few people you might know on as our initial staff. I'd like to start by thanking Baggachipz who did some outstanding work in making technologies vast and inscrutable do the little tap-dance that has become The Press Pass. He is to the new site as Pyro is to this one, the high wizard with his magical incantations and, I assume, silk, billowing robe. I'd also like to thank Morrolan, Illum, Swat, Coldforged, and Prederick for agreeing to be abused and berated for content by Certis as the launch staff for the Press Pass. They, along with Certis and myself, when I can manage anything like brevity or succinctness, will be providing the lion's share of content for the new site. Again, while we invite our current crop of GWJ writers to contribute when inclined, they are and will remain dedicated first to this site.

Independence also means that the rules and philosophies aren't shared between the two sites. Where GWJ is a community driven site in which the forums act as the foundation, the Press Pass is specifically content driven. There are no forums, and though we think it's absolutely critical to our success to develop thoughtful and, fickle deities willing, copious comments to the articles, we expect threads to stay on topic and comments to be salient. Some sites pride themselves on their loose hand with moderation and standards. The Press Pass is not that site. Be funny, be topical, be witty, clever, or informative; we welcome all of that, but save the wiener bomb and DDTs for their proper forums.

Additionally, most of the content will be shorter and far more succinct than the often epic missives you do or don't enjoy here. However, our goal is not simply to regurgitate what everyone else is already talking about, but instead to take a deeper look, offer a new perspective, and put it into context. We are going to strive to do something it seems few other independent sites are doing: research. Imagine, if you will, a world where your gaming news doesn't make assumptions, doesn't take things at face value, doesn't simply let the word of a press release become the gold standard for unbiased truth. It's not a matter of using more words, but of finding the ones that matter.

There is one final significant element which I should address. The Press Pass will be ad supported. That's not to say it'll be crass about it, or indiscriminate, however we will need to pay the bills. I bring this up primarily to reassure you that the inclusion of ads on the Press Pass should not be interpreted as a change for Gamers With Jobs, which is a community based site supported by the generous donations of its members.

This new site excites me. I've been dying for a gaming news site that I trusted to be discerning, critical, clever, and informative all at once. I am sure many of you will be suspicious of yet another gaming news site, and I also think that's an entirely appropriate response. The internet is rife with would-be game-news sites, most of them poorly executed. We aren't trying to replace sites like Shacknews, Joystiq, or Evil Avatar, but we are trying to provide a level of depth and insight that those sites don't seek to supply. We want to create the Press Pass as a critical and unique voice, one that people enjoy reading and come to trust. We are putting ourselves to high standards, and the difficulty and challenge of the project are as enticing as they are terrifying.

We invite you to join us and help build a new kind of gaming-news community. Kick the tires. Tell us what you think. There's a lot of work to be done in the coming days and weeks as we find our voice, fine tune the site itself, and get up to speed. We hope you enjoy it.

Today is Tuesday, January 17th 2006 – Welcome to the launch of the Gamers With Jobs Press Pass.

Be sure and check out Certis' launch day comments for more specific thoughts on the new site.

- Elysium

Comments

Best of luck with the sister site guys. it seems a good compromise between growing the scope and not alienating what made this site what it is. May your tightrope walk be surefooted and well balanced!

Added to my Bloglines feeds.

I promise to be less obnoxious there than here.

Best of luck with the sister site guys. it seems a good compromise between growing the scope and not alienating what made this site what it is. May your tightrope walk be surefooted and well balanced!

Thanks! We're incredibly protective of Gamers With Jobs and the community as it stands and how it operates, it played a big part in our decision to make The Press Pass a separate site with its own user base. We think it's a good compromise too

Wordpress is great, ain't it? My homepage is powered by Wordpress, with a bunch of plugins for crossposting to common blog sites (LJ, Xanga, etc) as well as other neat stuff.

Are you guys using Wordpress 2.0?

I can't register. I never get my email with the password, yet I do get the email to reset my lost password. =\

Should we make comments and suggestions in this thread or on the actual site?

I'm excited! If my hyper-posting on this topic hasn't already scared away the other writers, I'm anxious to see the sorts of things we can all come up with.

Are you guys using Wordpress 2.0?

Yep!

I never get my email with the password, yet I do get the email to reset my lost password. =\

That's odd, I registered a test account using my gmail and it worked ok. Legion is on too.

Should we make comments and suggestions in this thread or on the actual site?

My welcome post on the site would probably be best, assuming you CAN post

Best of luck with the new site. I already spent more time reading it tonight than I did reading the "news" on the other sites in the past few months. And unlike the latter, I don't feel stupider for having done so. I anxiously look forward to making it part of my morning (and afternoon and late evening) reading rounds.

That sounds great guys! Cant wait to get on it and see what its like WooHoo!!! I'm excited now

I guess this means that Gamers With Jobs is one step closer to becoming the evil, faceless, giant mega corporation with secret agendas of world domination

Seriously though, excellent work on branching out and creating another site on the net that mature, intelligent readers can go to. Keep it up guys.

Presumably this would be the place for those interviews I mentinoned? (If any of the sods had actually got back to me.)

First thing... never ever ever quote Tom's Hardware.. ok that is all.

You know what's amazing about that site? I always find an add there that is interesting enough to click on.

Great looking site. I'm really excited about its possibilities!

Sounds great! If this new site does anything close to what you've described above, I'm sure it will be a runaway success. Good luck!

In short, what does the Press Pass mean for the GWJ you've come to know and be mildly attracted to in a manly platonic way?

Boobies.

This is such a great idea...best of luck with it. I have often thought that GWJ needed a real "News" feature, since the days of news updates had long been supplanted by (admittedly more interesting) articles. This seems like the perfect solution: GWJ couldn't have been a good news site and still retained the quality of the standard content. A new site is the only solution. Huzzah!

The site itself looks great. I think it would be useful to have a prominent link from Press Pass back to GWJ.com and vice versa.

I guess I don't get it, why make this seperate from the GWJ site? Maybe it's just annoying convenience factor for me. If you wanted to get into more "bullet" news type listing while still staying separate from the main articles, why not go with a 'journal' system like some other sites use, for example Arstechnica.com?

LeapingGnome wrote:

I guess I don't get it, why make this seperate from the GWJ site? Maybe it's just annoying convenience factor for me. If you wanted to get into more "bullet" news type listing while still staying separate from the main articles, why not go with a 'journal' system like some other sites use, for example Arstechnica.com?

You will conform or you will have your trachae crushed.

You know what is the coolest part about this whole thing?

Gamers With Jobs Press Pass = G.W.J.P.P.

IHAVEABIGPEEPEE

Goodjer Peep!

Good luck with this undertaking, guys!

I guess I don't get it, why make this separate from the GWJ site? Maybe it's just annoying convenience factor for me. If you wanted to get into more "bullet" news type listing while still staying separate from the main articles, why not go with a 'journal' system like some other sites use, for example Arstechnica.com?

That would have been one of the pluses of keeping it in-house, for sure. We will be adding an RSS feed to the left-hand panel (where the image link is) so that will probably help.

You know what is the coolest part about this whole thing?

Gamers With Jobs Press Pass = G.W.J.P.P.

IHAVEABIGPEEPEE

And this is why the original site will always triumph. Because good is stupid.

I still haven't received my password in my email. Even when I tell it that I lost it and it sends me a new email with a new password I still don't get that one either. It's not in my spam box too, so I don't know what to do.

How much cross-over will here be between news/commentary on the new site? Commentary and games and gaming is something that GWJ does very well - will we see a swing towards seeing that kind of stuff more on the new site?

I know it's been said that GWJ will be unaffected, but, well, I fear change.

Elysium wrote:

The internet is rife with would-be game-news sites, most of them poorly executed. We aren't trying to replace sites like Shacknews, Joystiq, or Evil Avatar, but we are trying to provide a level of depth and insight that those sites don't seek to supply.

Well, I hope that you manage to replace them anyway. I'm getting pretty sick of their style, yet I no longer have the spare time to go digging through all the big news sites for the juicy info on my own. Therefore, the idea of a GWJ run news site excites me very much, and I wiish you the best of luck in making it happen.

I still haven't received my password in my email.

I blame whatever hippy, network voodoo you are or are not running. Check your PM in a sec, I'll give you a password!

How much cross-over will here be between news/commentary on the new site? Commentary and games and gaming is something that GWJ does very well - will we see a swing towards seeing that kind of stuff more on the new site?

I know it's been said that GWJ will be unaffected, but, well, I fear change.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, you won't see much change here with the Press Pass operational. Reviews, previews, editorials, E3 Coverage, etc. will still be on GWJ as usual.

OK, cheers. Good luck with the site.

Edwin wrote:

I still haven't received my password in my email. Even when I tell it that I lost it and it sends me a new email with a new password I still don't get that one either. It's not in my spam box too, so I don't know what to do.

I think the Saudi secret service intercepted it and are now using your GWJPP membership to send PMs to Al Qaeda.

It's GWJ: The Blog (TM)! Good job, looks snazzy. Wordpress is pretty spiffy for blog type activities. I've got a bare ass community site for my college friends at http://www.techhouse.us. As nice as it looks, it's not very functional except for the gallery and forum, which aren't linked. I'd love to get a forum, photo gallery, blog and events calendar all tied together nicely like GWJ, but I just don't have the time for all that. WP might solve some of that headache.