What's in a name?..
-
Hey all,
I’ve got a WPMU/BP site up and running. It’s been months in development, but is finally ready to begin hosting people and things and so on
I work with the Game Lab on campus, we do video game literacy, rhetoric, and make teaching games. We work heavily with the department of Ed creating games to help teach developmentally disabled children. Game studies has grown into an internationally recognized field, with dozens of universities around the world offering Interactive Media courses. It was our hope that http://theGSN.org (Game Studies Network) would give those academics a common place.
Sadly, the University of Wyoming isn’t taking us seriously. Without support from our own institution, we’ve got little to no hope of taking off with other academic bodies.
We have found that as soon as the world “Game” comes up, most academics (even in our own field) shut down. Most profs, schools, and groups prefer to use names like Ludology, a latin word meaning “the study of play”, or Narratology. Video games have made more money that Hollywood every year sense 2004, and outsold (both money and units) book and movies combined sense 2007. It’s the most widely consumed media in the world, it deserves study, and can easily be applied to help troubled students. But first we have to be taken seriously.
So, my question, we’re pretty much stuck with the URL we have (http://thegsn.org), can anyone thing of anything else that we could say “GSN” stands for? The “Game Studies Network” just isn’t cutting it?
General Studies Network… no… umm… Great Students Network… no…. bleh… HELP!
Thanks everyone,
~ Aaron
-
It’s going to be hard to be video game centric and dodge the word “game” in your URL and name. I’ll be honest, when I first saw “GSN” I thought “Game Show Network” which might be a conflict also?
If you’re stuck with the URL and absolutely cannot rename the site, then I would just press on with GSN and hope for the best. However, my first impression of the website is that it isn’t as professional and educational looking as it is fun and bubbly. My $.02 and I mean no disrespect.
Backstory: For college, I pursued a degree in multimedia and video game design, mostly because there wasn’t a “social networking” major in any school I could find at the time. Anything close had too much to do with public relations and brand marketing. I have no plans on doing anything with video games myself unless it involves working on their web team :xboxlive:cough:cough:
/BackstoryMaybe shifting the focus away from the users and more towards the tools they use (hardware/software/documents) that are essential to people in the specific fields of interest in the industry would help your site out? It’s one thing to network with people, but being able to collaborate and gain knowledge and skills from them is what’s important, in my opinion.
Thanks for the input guys!
You’re right, it is very ‘bubbly’ at the time we were followig the whims of the powers that be, who associated anything to do with games with the Wii. It worked to getting some funding, but in the end, hurt our cause.
I like the tools idea, I’ve got the build a new 1.1 theme anyway, might as well change the emphasis to something a little more appropriate
good tips thank you.Yeah… that’s what we ended up doing. It was a long story, and the powers that be weren’t happy, but in the end, it was the only option they left us.
Now I’m setting up a new install of 1.1 on our new domain. Hopefully a name change, and as John said, a shifting of emphasis, will keep up afloat.
Thanks for the tips guys!
~ Aaron
- The topic ‘What's in a name?..’ is closed to new replies.
