Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[newForumNewName]

[wmarshal]

Well not unless "4" is the new "10" according to this post back in 2008 about the new website then:

http://www.peginc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19325&sid=cc7146dce26694a7d98f4c2e6a2ff124


_________________
When a man lies, he murders some part of the world

[Amaril]

I think he meant the design aesthetic in general, not the actual age of the site. At least, that's how I perceived the old site, too. Very 1999.

I'll admit, the new site could benefit from some better information architecture. To start with, there are way too many images competing for my attention, and it's unclear where certain links are supposed to take you (games versus products, for example).
_________________
Kristian
Savage Bloggers Network
Savage Worlds Google+ Community
Fantasy Companion Loot Generator

[newForumNewName]

Yes. Design aesthetic. Sorry for being unclear.
_________________
"I had a whole bunch of advice for you but got ninja'd by newForumNewName. I'd just do what he says." -- 77IM

"While nFNN could be less of a jerk about how he says what he says, what he says is essentially correct." -- ValhallaGH

[Cryonic]

[Trilan]

Yeah but I liked the old design aesthetic. Especially being able to read the full news articles right on the page.

The new one feels cookie cutter, despite the PEG images.

[doswelk]

I hate to say it, but right now I do not like the new site.

I am sure it will get better but compared to the old version things are muddled and hard to find right now....

But maybe it's just because I was used to the old site and I miss an old friend....

And something is seriously wrong when you order PDFs by most recent and all it shows are the Deadlands Classics first!

I think recent should be by release date not by when it was added to the list of products.

But my biggest peeve is that I cannot just download a single PDF file from a section - I have to download all of them, annoying when all I wanted was a character sheet and I have to download 120Mb!
_________________
<nothing to read here move along>

[sinisterthings]

[Bavix]

Man, 5% is a really outdated number. It's more like 15% in the US and almost 20% worldwide. Apple has exploded is the past few years, especially with their mobile devices (which most use Safari).
_________________

[Amaril]

[Clint]

Hey gang,

While we do have the forums back up, the website is still a "work in progress." We just wanted to have things back up and running as quickly as possible, but that doesn't mean everything is finalized yet. Give us another week or so, okay.
_________________
Clint Black
Savage Worlds Core Rules Brand Manager

www.peginc.com

[JoeGun]

[Thunderforge]

I can't say that I like the new website either...

The biggest problem is the change in focus and screen real estate. The old site's main page had maybe 80% of the real estate devoted to Savage Worlds news with 20% for site navigation. I visited the main page to read it. The new site's main page is about 60% selling stuff, 30% Savage Worlds News, and 10% for site navigation. Because the news takes such a back seat, there's much less visibility for the third-party stuff you used to advertise every week, which I feel is bad for both them and Pinnacle. The balance is off and the sales aspect is too much in your face. If you want to sell stuff, fine, but scale it back 40% of the real estate of the main page max.

The next problem I have is the "Games" menu at the top, which is just an alphabetical listing of names. If you don't know what each of the things are, it's pretty useless. By the names alone, a new player would not be able to tell which is a core book, which is a setting, and which is a card game. They could easily think that Deadlands, Rippers, Sticks & Stones, and Savage Worlds are all different RPGs! Confusion can also come from people looking for Hell on Earth and Lost Colony. A new user may be very confused to find that that sequel settings are seemingly under the page for the original setting (as they don't realize the term is properly Deadlands: Hell on Earth rather than the vernacular Hell on Earth).

The organization needs to give more context. So I suggest the following as an alternative:

• Savage Worlds Core Rules
  
  • Test Drive Rules
    
  • Companions
  
  
• Savage Worlds Supplemental Settings
  
  • Deadlands
    • Deadlands
      
    • Hell on Earth
      
    • Lost Colony
    
    
  • Rippers
    
  • 50 Fathoms
    
  • (All the other ones in this list too, sorted by popularity with more popular at the top)
  
  
• Savage Worlds Showdown
  
• Rob Lusk's Sticks & Stones (Card Game)

With an organization like this there is some context to what products are of what type and makes it very clear what are the core rules, what are settings, and what are other types of games. It's also very clear that Hell on Earth is part of the Deadlands family without making it hard to find for someone who doesn't realize it. As for the other issues that I've noticed (which may just be a product of it being new):

Site Layout:

• As the above user have described, it is too difficult to find the Test Drive rules.
  
• There is no link to one-sheets, miniatures, or stories on the main page. Someone coming to the site looking specifically for any of them will not immediately find what they are looking for.
  
• The "Stories" link on every page is broken and just reflects whatever page you are currently on.
  
• In the promotional rotation, there are two images (why two?) for Deadlands with huge people (one of which is really Hell on Earth, but it doesn't say it) and one for Savage Worlds with small people. The disparity of scale just looks weird.
  
• There is no apparent way to contact Pinnacle or the webmaster.

Top Menubar:

• Clicking on the word "Games" at the top gives an uninspiring text-only list of the name of each setting. Can we have a picture and a brief description of each setting?
  
• Also, every item under "Games" has one sub-item: "Products." It should be renamed "Downloads". But why have sub items if there is only going to be one of them?
  
• For that matter, why have a separate page for downloads? Why not just put all the content on the main page for the setting?
  
• The menubar at the top has an item called "Forums" (plural) when it is singular on the forum itself and its corresponding URL.

Searching:

• Searching for "one sheets" does not have this page in any of its results.
  
• The search is broken for searches with multiple pages of results. If you search for "one sheets" and then go to page 2, it says that there are no results for "onesheets" (no space).
  
• Searching for "miniatures" does not have this page in any of its results.
  

Other Issues:

• All of the stuff it's trying to sell me are Classic Deadlands stuff and the Horror Companion, rather than the more recent stuff. (And $30 for a Boomtowns PDF? It's half that at DriveThru RPG!)
  

Wow! That list wound up being a lot longer than I intended. But I hope that you're willing to fix each one of these issues to make your site better.
_________________
Wild Card Creator: Any PDF. Any Setting. No Extra Cost.

The Elder Scrolls conversion and other fun creations.

[Greg K]

[Ketjak]

[phantomwhale]

Not wanting to dive too off-topic, but essentially most web browsers on mobile devices are going to use the Webkit engine (Safari, Chrome, Dolphin, Terra, ...) so usually it's sufficient to test for one or two of them (Chrome and Safari probably suffice - all said, we never test Safari, as Chrome testing is sufficient for our development).

Then obviously you need to check Firefox (Gecko engine) and IE (WhatWhereTheyThinking engine) too. And Opera, if you really must... (we don't)

E.g. If you test all the different front-ends that use Webkit, you'll never get anywhere !

Back onto topic, I will await the tweaks and improvements with open optimism and keen anticipation; it's good to have a site revamp, and done well it could be a real boost. But right now my thoughts are in line with many of the posts above, esp. the excellent summary by Thunderforge, and my concern is the site as is would be a degradation of user experience and information architecture, despite the fancy look of it.

[Baiyo]

[Chris Tavares]

I do appreciate the upgrade, and know it's a work in progress. I would like to offer one piece of what I hope is constructive feedback. This is particularly relevant given a recent thread on RPG.NET.

When you go to Games/Savage Worlds, the first thing it tells you about is a book that's out of print. There's not link or description of the Deluxe Edition, just explorer's, which you can't currently buy.

I've seen a good deal of confusion from newbies about which version is which and which to buy - would be nice to have some text there to disambiguate stuff.

On another note, I like what you're currently doing with the core download - I clicked through, and saw a nice table of contents with links to each individual file, broken out by GM or player use. So you can download the whole thing in one go, or get individual files. Nice!

[doswelk]

Glad to hear that this is not the final design and I think all of us care a lot about the PEG website (bunch of devoted fans that we are)...

I have to say looking again this morning it is already looking a lot more user-friendly and the downloads all appear to be working now

I am sure the new web-site will be great when it gets there, I have to say that just by implementing Thunderforge's suggestions most of my concerns would be addressed.

It will take time to get used to the new site but for me the news section was key, the other objective should be in being newbie friendly.

Looking forward to the final version.
_________________
<nothing to read here move along>

[The GIT!]