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:

Hi Scott,

Are you still looking for branding for your wiki? I don't know why this didn't dawn on my sooner but, duh! We're DoubleJump Publishing, strategy guide publishers! Would you be interested in branding your wiki a DoubleJump thing? We could promote it in our guides and you could promote our guides on the wiki, etc.

LMK if you're interested in exploring this further.

Best regards, Tim Lindquist DoubleJump Publishing, Inc.

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. --Safety Skizzerz ^{Talk · Contribs · Spel Chek™ · VFG · RTFM} 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. ;) Garrett^Talk 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:

Sounds good about the wiki. I'd totally be up for keeping y'all autonomous and would want to sign paperwork to that effect. I'm sure we could make it affiliated with Hardcore Gamer somehow, too, but some changes are coming for Hardcore Gamer which we need to sort through before doing anything substantial associated with it.

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. echelon_talk 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)

On a side note, DoubleJump Publishing is responsible for Hardcore Gamer Magazine. See http://djbooks.easystorecreator.com/ for a (probably incomplete) list of products. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 10:01, 14 September 2007 (CDT)

Sounds great! We're getting noticed, and appreciated by people. I'm all for this, although like the others I would be careful with the legal aspect of things. :-D --DrBob 11:49, 14 September 2007 (CDT)

Offer details

OK, I got another response from Tim, and I like it very much. He is going out of his way to make sure that we understand that no one is trying to take anyone over, and that there will be very little legal connection between us other than a good-will intention to promote each other's content. I don't think the most conspiracy minded person could find fault with anything Tim wrote here:

For the wiki, here's what I'm thinking. My interest in the wiki is to promote the DoubleJump brand. I'd love to just make it the "DoubleJump Strategy Wiki" with the DoubleJump logo right next to the current Strategy Wiki logo and add some banners for the latest DoubleJump guides somewhere (especially on the entries on games we've done guides for). In exchange, we would put an ad for the site in each of our guides (and on our site) to drive traffic there. Other than that, it'd be totally your site to run as you see fit. If the traffic increases to a point where people are willing to pay for content, banners and skins and stuff, that'd all be your responsibility to sell and manage and whatever revenue you could generate from it would be yours. Basically nothing in that regard would change. It's up to you to pay the basic operating costs and try to make money from your site now, and it'd still be the same afterwards, too. We'd remain a separate entities who are working together to promote each other's brands. I'd want to make up a contract that says we are licensing each other's trademarks to each other for their cross-promotional use only and that the agreement doesn't create a joint venture nor entitle either of us to the other's revenues. I'd want an easy termination clause which lets either one of us out of the deal with, like, 30 days notice, without penalty. Perhaps we could also consider another clause where, if you decide you want to sell the whole kit-and-kaboodle to someone, you'd give us the first opportunity to make an offer to buy the rights before offering it to anyone else. If our offer was not to your liking, you would not be obligated to sell out to us (basically, a first right of refusal option). If you did sell to someone else, we'd just take the DoubleJump logo and ads off the site and stop advertising it in our products.

The question that we, and especially echelon, must consider is how do we feel about being "DoubleJump StrategyWiki"? I've started a pro and con list below. Please add to it as you see fit. By the end of the month, we should be able to respond to Tim with our decision. As an aside (and this is directed exclusively to echelon), he adds:

Have you trademarked "Strategy Wiki"? You probably should whether we work together or not. Let me know if you need any tips in that regard. I've had a lot of experience with that lately.

Potential Pros and Cons of branding

Pros	Cons
Our URL would receive the benefit of nationwide publication in video game strategy guides, which has the added benefit of selective marketing to our target audience. Increased legitimacy and direct ties to the video game industry. Association with other website developers who may be able to contribute to our growth.	Potential dilution of StrategyWiki brand. Finding promotional space for DoubleJump guides. Potential traffic gains may be galvanized by our own current momentum (i.e. we're doing fine w/o promotion), but that could change at any time.

I know... I'm answering my own comment :P But speaking of momentum, has anyone checked out Alexa recently?? We hit an all time high yesterday!! Procyon (Talk) 10:32, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

From first impressions, I think this is good. I'd need to think about it more, and I'm a bit hesitant to change our name to "DoubleJump Strategy Wiki" (as I don't think that's good for anyone at this time — we'd suffer from the brand dilution, and consequently they would too), but I think it's a fair deal, and it can't really hurt us. What we need to do before we plump for it though, is to have a big meeting in IRC so that everyone can make their views clear. --DrBob 11:00, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

We have to be careful about how we add the DoubleJump logo, since we want it to be clear that we aren't owned by DJ, but that we promote them. My preference would be a vertical banner ad right below our left toolbox. It would get pushed down a bit too far, but that can be fixed by removing/moving some of the links. We can move the donate button to the right side, remove the CI button (it can be re-added with js for us regulars). The Main page link could be made redundant by having the top banner link to the main page. Another option would be to add a caption to the SW Banner that says something like "In association with Double Jump" or something. They seem to have a nice light-bluish logo so colourwise/branding, we should still be good.

What do you mean by "Finding promotional space for DJ guides? If they are listed on amazon, we can link to their guides. We get the amazon bonus and fulfill our promotional obligation (and they get some more "free" advertisement).

Do we have the funds to trademark StrategyWiki?

And as for Alexa, we're almost into the top 10k which is great! If you look at our rank, our popularity has been increasing exponentially (note that the graph is logarithmic)! -- Prod (Talk) 11:05, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

I suggest doing what Gamespot/Gamefaqs have done with theirs: we should simply tag a modified DJ logo somewhere near the SW logo (right side has plenty of space, I suggest lowering it/scaling it so that it doesn't get covered up by the links at the top (name, my talk, my prefs, etc.)).

Trademark registration is about $300.

Alexa says we are 28,000... --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 12:56, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

It actually says that yesterday we were 11,000 in the rank. That is a 3 month average.--Rocky ^{(Talk - Contributions)} 14:10, 19 September 2007 (CDT)