Hello everyone!
You’re reading this post on the brand-new version of Doublejump.co, which we’ve put together over the past couple of weeks (of Melbourne’s lockdown) and we’re super, super excited about! We just wanted to run you through some of the new features we’ve brought in with this update.
Scroll through the feature list — which, funnily enough, is housed within one of those new features — to see what’s new, and let us know what you think about the new site in the comments section down below!
A fresh, new design:
Literally the first thing you would have noticed as you loaded into the site is that the whole thing has been redesigned, and we think it looks pretty damn good! The design itself has some really nifty features, too:
- It’s much easier to navigate, with all of the pages actually built on the site;
- You can now choose whether you want to read the site in light mode or dark mode, and your selections will be saved for future visits (provided you allow cookies on the site!);
- There’s a whole lot more content on the homepage, which will make it easier for you to find something to read;
- Features like that nifty blue bar up the top and a slide-in message (that’s currently not in use) will help us guide you to the most important content — and you can dismiss them permanently as well if you so choose;
- We’ve cleaned up a lot of the back-end coding so that the whole thing loads quite a bit more quickly; and
- We’ve finally been able to build a mobile version of the site that isn’t just a shrunken-down version of the desktop site.
We’ve got a bunch more to share with you, though, because the site itself has a bunch of new features to help improve your reading experience on Doublejump!
News content is coming back!
The original version of Doublejump — you know, the one we launched in 2012 — was a news website at heart, with a review or a feature article dropped in here or there. As an homage to that, and as a way to give you more articles to read, we decided that this new version of the site should come with some news content.
It’s not going to be the sort of news content you’d find in the papers, though. Our news team will select pieces of news that interest them and produce articles that both let you in on what’s happening, but also contain a good bit of opinion and subjective writing. It’ll be the best of both worlds, celebrating what Doublejump really is: a publication written by video game fans, run by and for video game fans.
To start with, we’re hoping to be producing one of these articles a week, but that will definitely expand as the team grows!
We’ve got paginated articles now:
One of Doublejump’s biggest focuses is on providing well-written, well-researched, in-depth feature content, but let’s be honest: that content can get really long, and readers might see it as a bit of a daunting task to get through. Fortunately, the feature you’re reading this from right now exists to make it a little easier to digest all of the content in our longer articles, and even to be a handy bookmark if you’re interrupted while you’re reading it!
This feature will mainly be seen in listicles, while some longer reads will also make use of it to ensure the best possible reading experience for you.
The Multiplayer series is back!
Our Multiplayer content was some of our best-received and best-performing content, but unfortunately it reached a point where it was difficult to manage alongside full-time work (this is before Melbourne’s latest round of lockdowns).
We’ve always loved and missed the series, though, and so we’ve come up with a way to bring it back. Instead of running a Multiplayer with 15+ entries in it, each around 400-500 words, and turning your scrollbars microscopic, we’ve decided that we’ll open each topic multiple times, with a maximum of seven entries in each. That, in conjunction with the paginated article feature you’re currently looking at, will make each entry in the series a whole lot easier to consume.
We’re now scoring our reviews:
In the past, we were pretty firm in our stance that we wanted to avoid putting scores on our reviews, instead looking at video games as experiences or works of art. Over the past few years, though, with more video games coming out and more people looking for a quick nugget of information from each review they read, we’ve realised that that might not be the way to go: people who want to read the full review will always read the full review, but there are always occasions where people don’t have time to read the full review, or they’re just doing a sweeping comparison, and that’s cool too.
That’s where review scores come in, and that’s why we’ve decided to use them again. Going forward, we will be scoring games on a very simple five-star scale, with no half-stars — it’s essentially “great, good, average, bad, or terrible”, with no room for our writers to get stuck dealing in half points or internal “is this an 8.7 or an 8.8?” debates, and no room for you to get stuck wondering what it means if a game’s got a half-star or not. It’s a simple scale, presented in a beautiful module that you’ll see when we next publish a review, and it’s there to help you make an informed decision on a game purchase, quickly.
It’ll also still come with a written verdict, so don’t stress if that’s what you prefer!
Dedicated pages for Doublejump Radio and our Twitch channel:
Our podcast and our Twitch streams are a huge part of what’s brought us to where we are today, and so we’re stoked to be able to feature them both on their own static pages, easily within reach on our very own website.
You’ll always find the latest episode of Doublejump Radio embedded on its page along with a running record of all the episodes we’ve released in the past, while Twitch viewers will be able to find the up-to-date streaming schedule and an embed of the live channel on the Doublejump Live page. Both of those are in the navigation bar up the top as well, so you’ll only ever be a couple of clicks away from the fun.
And finally… Doublejump Memberships!
Last, but most certainly not least, comes our new Membership function. If you’ve ever supported a Patreon campaign or subscribed to someone on Twitch, you’ll be familiar with the system we have here: you can choose to make a monthly or yearly contribution to the site in exchange for an ever-expanding set of perks. It’ll set you back less than a cup of coffee per month — even less than that if you choose a yearly membership! — and all of that money will go straight back into the site.
We’ve employed this system because remaining independent is massively important to us. Our independent status gives us complete creative and editorial control over the content we produce, which allows us to produce content that is informative, unbiased, unfiltered, and that serves you, the reader, first and foremost.
If you’re interested in supporting Australian journalism and helping us continue to improve the content we offer here on the site, please consider becoming a Doublejump Member today!