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[IMG]http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/06/wikigaming-thumb.JPG[/IMG]
By: Brian Crecente
Wikipedia turned the concept of research and encyclopedias on its head, making readers into writers and the once static text of a encyclopedic tomb into something up-to-the-second timely. And now, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales wants to do the same thing for gaming reference books. Giving game FAQs, walkthroughs and nuanced details a place to live on Wikia.
"Imagine a traditional encyclopedia, that's Wikipedia," Wikipedia founder and Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales, 40, told me in a recent interview. "Then think about all of the rest of the library, every other kind of book or work, (Wikia) is basically that. Specialized books."
Wikia was founded in 2004 growing steadily into an online research site home to more than 3,000 wiki communities in 70 languages, the largest of which, by far, is the one dedicated to gaming, Wales said.
"As we've watched the growth of the Wikia, what's fueling that growth is the gaming communities, which we didn't anticipate," he said. "A couple of months ago at our board meeting we discussed this, this is obviously something we haven't recognized going in that is clearly important."
Currently the Gaming Wikia is home to tens of thousands of articles about nearly 500 different games and gaming subjects. The entries range from the mammoth (the World of Warcraft wiki sports more than 31,000 articles and the Halopedia has about 2,500) to the minuscule (the entry for Yohoho is six sentences long).
But Wales is hoping to expand the Gaming Wikia dramatically. This E3 he will be meeting with developers to try and get the word out about the free site and how its community-fueled knowledge base can help promote their games. In return he hopes to get them more involved.
"We want to get known more in the gaming industry," Wales said. "Basically, we want to form relationships there, and see how we can work with the gaming companies to do things like get materials for the communities to be able to work with. We are ad supported so that's also why we want to get to know the companies."
Eventually, Wales hopes that the Gaming Wikia will become a place where entries are created and communities built before a game ships. But he doesn't see his site as competition with the likes of Brady Games or Gamefaqs.
"I'm not sure if we're competition or not," he said. "I think we are more competition for some of those smaller forums. It's like asking if Wikipedia is competition for CNN."
I asked Wales about the in-fighting that can often happen on Wikipedia, sometimes marring entries. (For instance a banned Kotaku reader successfully campaigned to delete my Wiki entry, which I didn't create, but was home, for a brief spell, to a rumor that I killed prostitutes.).
Wales doesn't see that becoming a problem in the often polarized world of gaming fandom.
"To some extent when you have an open forums people get into arguments, but by and large it is not the place for that sort of thing."
Wales seems to have a good game plan, already he's having his tech people look at creating tools that would make creating things like walkthroughs easier, he's added support for YouTube videos and is workig on both WYSYWYG support and more robust voting functionality. He even has a policy that prohibits taking ad revenue from gold farmers.
"Basically what we've decided to do is we ban all gold farming ads," he said. "It costs us some money, but it seems to be something that the community is really keen on. It's a tricky area, you want the ads to be relevant, on the other hand if the relevancy comes at the expense of the community's core values it just doesn't work."
The way Wales sees it, the biggest interest for the gaming Wikia will likely come from massively multiplayer online games. An area where printed guides can quickly become outdated.
"As gaming moves more into the MMO realm of things, things can change quickly in a game, either socially or in the program, which means that up-to-date information is more important," he said. "If you had a definitive guide to Doom back in the day, it is what it is, but with things like Lord of the Rings Online or WoW it's a moving target at all times."
And from the looks of the World of Warcraft wiki, the Wikia is keeping up, it even has its own easter eggs.
Gaming Wikia [Wikia]
[IMG]http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/kotaku/full?i=xOrrZA[/IMG]
More...
By: Brian Crecente
Wikipedia turned the concept of research and encyclopedias on its head, making readers into writers and the once static text of a encyclopedic tomb into something up-to-the-second timely. And now, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales wants to do the same thing for gaming reference books. Giving game FAQs, walkthroughs and nuanced details a place to live on Wikia.
"Imagine a traditional encyclopedia, that's Wikipedia," Wikipedia founder and Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales, 40, told me in a recent interview. "Then think about all of the rest of the library, every other kind of book or work, (Wikia) is basically that. Specialized books."
Wikia was founded in 2004 growing steadily into an online research site home to more than 3,000 wiki communities in 70 languages, the largest of which, by far, is the one dedicated to gaming, Wales said.
"As we've watched the growth of the Wikia, what's fueling that growth is the gaming communities, which we didn't anticipate," he said. "A couple of months ago at our board meeting we discussed this, this is obviously something we haven't recognized going in that is clearly important."
Currently the Gaming Wikia is home to tens of thousands of articles about nearly 500 different games and gaming subjects. The entries range from the mammoth (the World of Warcraft wiki sports more than 31,000 articles and the Halopedia has about 2,500) to the minuscule (the entry for Yohoho is six sentences long).
But Wales is hoping to expand the Gaming Wikia dramatically. This E3 he will be meeting with developers to try and get the word out about the free site and how its community-fueled knowledge base can help promote their games. In return he hopes to get them more involved.
"We want to get known more in the gaming industry," Wales said. "Basically, we want to form relationships there, and see how we can work with the gaming companies to do things like get materials for the communities to be able to work with. We are ad supported so that's also why we want to get to know the companies."
Eventually, Wales hopes that the Gaming Wikia will become a place where entries are created and communities built before a game ships. But he doesn't see his site as competition with the likes of Brady Games or Gamefaqs.
"I'm not sure if we're competition or not," he said. "I think we are more competition for some of those smaller forums. It's like asking if Wikipedia is competition for CNN."
I asked Wales about the in-fighting that can often happen on Wikipedia, sometimes marring entries. (For instance a banned Kotaku reader successfully campaigned to delete my Wiki entry, which I didn't create, but was home, for a brief spell, to a rumor that I killed prostitutes.).
Wales doesn't see that becoming a problem in the often polarized world of gaming fandom.
"To some extent when you have an open forums people get into arguments, but by and large it is not the place for that sort of thing."
Wales seems to have a good game plan, already he's having his tech people look at creating tools that would make creating things like walkthroughs easier, he's added support for YouTube videos and is workig on both WYSYWYG support and more robust voting functionality. He even has a policy that prohibits taking ad revenue from gold farmers.
"Basically what we've decided to do is we ban all gold farming ads," he said. "It costs us some money, but it seems to be something that the community is really keen on. It's a tricky area, you want the ads to be relevant, on the other hand if the relevancy comes at the expense of the community's core values it just doesn't work."
The way Wales sees it, the biggest interest for the gaming Wikia will likely come from massively multiplayer online games. An area where printed guides can quickly become outdated.
"As gaming moves more into the MMO realm of things, things can change quickly in a game, either socially or in the program, which means that up-to-date information is more important," he said. "If you had a definitive guide to Doom back in the day, it is what it is, but with things like Lord of the Rings Online or WoW it's a moving target at all times."
And from the looks of the World of Warcraft wiki, the Wikia is keeping up, it even has its own easter eggs.
Gaming Wikia [Wikia]
[IMG]http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/kotaku/full?i=xOrrZA[/IMG]
More...