Importance of Fansites for the Game Industry

Right now we are bombarded by the news of the games and the industry because of the "E3". There are tons of videos, trailers, interviews and previews of the games that, we cannot even trace all of them. When I tried to find information about the upcoming game of the "Bethesda", "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim", I found an interesting fansite that, summarize all the information about the events of the "E3" for the Skyrim's fans.

The fansite I found was "The Skyrim Guild", which is the one of the important fansite of "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". "The Skyrim Guild" offers information about the lore, skills, items, news and trailers of the Skyrim. Also, you can find interesting topics and share your ideas with the other fans of the Skyrim in their forum page. Moreover, they have their own facebook and twitter page. Furthermore, I noticed the countdown of release date of "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" (It's actually very painful to watch because there is still 147 days to release.).

After I searched how important "The Skyrim Guild" for the fans, I decided to make a little bit research about the importance of the fansites to the industry. I found out that many important games have their own fansites such as "Batman Arkham City" and "No Mutants Allowed" for the Fallout series. These fansites are more likely to "The Skyrim Guild" which offers information and a community place for sharing ideas and discuss about their favorite topics. There are also, wikia pages which are created by the fans and offer lore, information and walkthrough about their games.

I noticed that, many developer offer fansite kit in their official site (most likely in their forum page) for the fans who want to create such websites. I downloaded such a fansite kit in order to understand what are they contain for the fansites. Most fansite kits offer various screenshots, videos and design materials for creating a fansite. I understand that many developers use fansites for their own marketing plans. Especially, fansites are really effective to create an awareness of the game.

Furthermore, many fansites have their own facebook, twitter, rss feeds and other social media channels like "The Skyrim Guild". This activity of the social channels offer developers a chance to reach more players with the help of their fans (and lowering their cost of marketing). Also, fansites are platforms which developers can listen their audience and make some changes for meeting the demands of the market. Although fansites can be effective for the marketing of the game, they can be some drawbacks.

Fansites cannot be controlled by the developers. They are under total control of the fans and these fans may not be happy about the some changes of the game like gameplay, graphics or interface. This can be a huge problem for the developers because they may face an organize complaints from huge amount of crowds.

The best example of this situation is the resistance of the "No Mutants Allowed" fansite for the changes of the "Fallout 3". They were worried about the game would change into "Oblivion with guns" so they protested the changes of the Fallout 3. This situation created an awkward relation between Bethesda and the fans of the Fallout series, but Bethesda overwhelmed the problem with receiving many good reviews, awards and of course sales.

In the conclusion, fansites does a great job nowadays and they become more important for the marketing plan of the developers. Their "reach" gave a huge advantage for their marketing even though they cannot control it. Thus, many developers creating fansite kits to hope their fans create a huge fansites and deliver them to that "reach" to create a game, which attends the needs of their audience.