User talk:Procyon/DoubleJump

Offer from Hardcore Gamer
I was thinking of posting this on Community Issues, but I didn't think that it really belonged there. And yet, I needed some place to put this. So I figured any member of the staff who patrolled the RC would find this, especially with the edit summary. We have a fairly serious offer to consider from DoubleJump publishing. Here is the exact email:

A lot of details need to be worked out obviously, but this could lead to a LOT of exposure. Obviously, echelon's opinion is most important, but I'd like to know how the rest of you would receive this. Discuss. Procyon (Talk) 17:38, 13 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Wow, an email from the president (I did some research, obviously). Surprisingly (or maybe not so), I really haven't even heard of this company before. I'm for it if it would yield a lot of hits, etc. but I'm a bit leery of exactly how the promotions will take place. I do NOT want to see any flash-based promotions, so it would have to stick with text in the sidebar and maybe an icon at the bottom. Also, since I'm completely unfamiliar with the "branding" process, how much control over the wiki would we lose by going through with this. -- 18:24, 13 September 2007 (CDT)
 * DoubleJump don't publish as many guides as Prima or BradyGames, but they are held in high regard for the insane level of information their guides contain (their site calls one of them "a 650 page strategy-brick"). They also have the extra leverage of all their guides being official. I'd be very interested to see how exactly this would be achieved. Certainly I don't want to see this site become DoubleJumpWiki. ;) GarrettTalk 18:55, 13 September 2007 (CDT)
 * The whole reason this came about is because of the article that I was asked to write for Hardcore Gamer which is published by DoubleJump publishing (or by the same organization, I'm not entirely sure what the connection is. Tim of DoubleJump was the one who asked me to write the article for Hardcore Gamer, so there clearly is a connection.)  If you visit Hardcore Gamer website, they have a wiki of their own, but it's doing abysmally.  So when I started communicating with Tim, I mentioned SW as an aside, and he said he would check it out.  A few weeks later, and here we are.  I wrote back to Tim expressing an interest to explore the matter further (and nothing more than that at this time), and he wrote back to say:


 * The bit about remaining autonomous was a good sign in my eyes. Anyway, more food for thought. Procyon (Talk) 20:23, 13 September 2007 (CDT)
 * Having to sign anything legally binding really scares me. We could get screwed really badly by people with more resources than we have, and this is further complicated by the fact that none of us are likely lawyers or have access to lawyers. That said, business is usually conducted in this fashion and I expected them to do want something in writing. We have to be very careful about that.
 * That said, I would love to have news of our website published and more reachable by the public. This could enable that, should we decide the deal to be worth it.
 * My one condition is that there is no way we will change our name or branding. That is how people see and associate with us. We can't damage that. echelontalk 02:21, 14 September 2007 (CDT)
 * In all honesty, my father is a attorney, albeit not one that specializes in internet or publishing, but he is certainly capable of reviewing any document before we sign anything. However, I think in this case, Tim's offer is very genuine because he is offering paperwork that protects StrategyWiki's interests instead of dissolving them.  In other words, he wants SW's rights and interests to remain protected in the deal, and not be usurped by any arrangement between the two companies.  At least, that's my belief.  As far as the branding goes, we would always remain StrategyWiki, but something would have to change somewhere in order for the arrangement to be cross promotional.  Either DoubleJump's logo would appear somewhere in each of the skins, or somewhere along the nav bar, I don't know.  It depends on what they have in mind.  The bottom line is that in order to get the promotion that printing our URL in their strategy guides would bring, we need to do a little promoting of our own for them, or the deal is lopsided.  If we ultimately decide that we aren't interested enough to alter any aspect of our site to provide promotion for them, then we are deciding that we don't want to enter into an agreement at this time, which is fine.  At the very least, I think we should hear there terms; see what they are willing to offer us and what they would like in return. Procyon (Talk) 06:43, 14 September 2007 (CDT)