SoGamed
SoGamed is a community website focusing on gaming and eSports. It provides extensive reporting on eSports, supports forums and IRC channels, and refers to itself as "the CNN of e-Sports". It is mainly a gathering point for Counter-Strike players around the world, but many other FPS games are supported. Over the past few years, SoGamed has developed itself the one of the premier homes of the CASUAL and elite e-Sport player.
In this community, eSport players from the whole world meet, interact, share news, talk, download demos and store online profiles. By 2005 there were over 400,000 members on SoGamed from more than 60 countries. SoGamed offers forums for nine different languages: English, French, German, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.
Members can post local news from their country or major news for the entire community. As such, all major news gets out on SoGamed before all other major eSport sites and has thus become the "market newspaper" where the other sites turn to for the latest news. SoGamed also indexes the news of all the major eSport sites, listing them under the "Gaming News" section; this makes SoGamed very useful for finding out what's happening in the world of eSports.
With such a large user community, news that gets posted on SoGamed often reaches over 250,000 unique visitors within 24 hours. Also, since all the major eSport players are represented on SoGamed the discussions often influence the way eSports evolve, even the big event organizers often take part in the discussions and learn from it.
Content
- Profiles: Like most forums each user gets their own profile. Interestingly, while the user can specify any country, there is an IP check which compares the IP address with an internet service provider database. If the specified country does not match the country determined via IP check, it will be displayed in the profile as an extra entry indicated by 'Real Country'. The profile also offers a guestbook where other registered users can leave a message. The profile shows the 20 latest visitors to that profile and displays the user's buddy list (up to 85 users). There is also a function to upload a person's configuration file (the game settings a player is using for a game), for other people to see. Finally, each profile includes statistics on: logins, messages, forum posts, news posts, comment posts, demos uploaded, forum threads, spotlighted threads and how many times the profile has been visited by other logged-in users. SoGamed lists the top 100 profiles, sorted by hits - some members have had over 250,000 visitors whom have examined their profile. The diary function was introduced in March 2004. It allows people to have their own diary on the site which is visible to other users as well.
- Clubs: The club section allows users to create their own clubs. Each club has a specific topic (e.g. Cinema, Music, Sports, Game Help). It is also the place for non-gaming related interest groups to have their own room for discussion without getting disturbed or interfering with the usual gaming-related discussions going on on the site. A club is a way to have a closed mini version of SoGamed for yourself together with the people you choose to invite. You can also choose to list it in the clubs database for other members to browse and then apply to join.
- News: The site contains sections on site news, featured news (gaming events, particularly tournaments), community news ('Local Community News' and 'Major Community News'), interviews, SoGamed Watch (live event news), and gaming news (based on an RSS feed). The Gaming News section displays the latest headlines from news/articles on other gaming related sites and offers direct links to the news item/article.
- SoGamed Features: The feature section holds content exclusively written for SoGamed, such as tweak guides (how to improve the performance of games), a movie tutorial (how to create a movie based on captured material from games) and more. This section also hosts the so called 'Speakers Corner' articles which allow people to submit their own articles and discussing it with other users.
- Multimedia: One of SoGamed's biggest sections is the demo section. A demo is a recorded match, very much like a recorded football game (or similar sports) which you can watch after the game was played. SoGamed can be compared to an online archive of all the big matches that have been played around the world. Since December 2001 there have been over 3.5 million unique downloaded demos from SoGamed, each demo being 5-10 MB on average. SoGamed offers demos from games such as Counter-Strike, Quake III Arena, Warcraft III, Unreal Tournament series, Day of Defeat and Call of Duty. In the 'Frag Movies' section, you can find reviews and download links to movies based on games. SoGamed TV was a feature of SoGamed version 3.0 (no longer active) and allowed people to spectate multiplayer games live.
- Cafe Watch: A list of user-submitted internet cafes with detailed information such as the homepage of the cafe, opening hours, address and contact information.
- Polls: SoGamed conducts polls that change on a regular basis asking for the users opinion on certain issues. Sample polls include 'Would you risk going for a fulltime pro-gaming career?', 'How often do you play online games?', 'What's your CPU MHz speed?'. These poll results used to be shown on each users profile and SoGamed is working on bringing this feature back.
Interactivity
The site and its original concept offer a rich basis for interactivity. The motto was always "From the community - for the community." It is not meant that the site staff produces and publishes the entire content. The site is based on the community spirit and the contributions of the users. Almost every section of the site allows to leave comments and every user can Contribute to the site in many different ways. People can submit articles, news, gaming movie reviews, interviews, demo files and more.
This spirit of interactivity has resulted in a lot of special publications and activities. The community compiled a FAQ itself instead of waiting for the site staff to publish one. Users have published a SoGamed song, created a skin for the Steam platform, developed a SoGamed ftp script which allows the easy administration of ftp file servers and adds the layout of SoGamed to the interface visible to the users accessing the ftp server and created search engine plugins for Firefox for the various sections of the site. There have been contests such as a wallpaper contest and multiple quiz where the users had the chance to win prizes like mousepads, mainboards, headphones and SoGamed t-shirts.
The activity of the users is measured by the star system, which was first introduced in the early 'GeekBoys' days. The more a user posts on the site, is active in general and contributes quality content, the faster his star level increases. The stars are star shaped symbols next to the users alias/nick name. There are different star levels indicated by different star colours. Besides the star colours for members of the site staff there are seven user stars in different shades from dark blue through light blue to white where the seventh star (white) is only handed out manually to former staff members for example.
History
- 1999 - GeekBoys (computer related site)
- early 2002 - GeekBoys (gaming site)
- mid 2002 - SoGamed
- early 2003 - SoGamed 2.0 (Clubs introduced, SoGamed Arcade introduced)
- March 2004 - SoGamed 3.0 (Diaries introduced, Photo/Picture Gallery introduced, SoGamed TV introduced)
- August 2005 - SoGamed 3.5 (face-lift of the 3.0 design | new profile features added: moods, total time spent on SoGamed)
GeekBoys
SoGamed was originally called GeekBoys. It was created by Andreas 'bds' Thorstensson from Sweden in 1999 and focussed on general computer news. In the end of 2001 GeekBoys went under construction only displaying a very simple, temporary site with a few links to applications and web projects by Thorstensson (such as GeekPlay and Zkillz) as well as his e-mail address.
When the site returned with its new layout in early 2002 it had been transformed and was entirely devoted to 'Counter-Strike', which attracted a lot of users as a prime source for demos, configs (configuration files) and famous players. No other site at that time had this much information, causing GeekBoys to grow rapidly. Nowadays there are many other sites that compete with each other making it impossible to create such a monopoly like GeekBoys was.
Another huge advantage was the ASCII layout of the site. It was a very simple layout consisting only of a black background and fixedsys font - entirely without graphics.
SoGamed
In 2002 the site went offline again - this time going through yet another big change, re-opening in mid-2002 and renamed to SoGamed. SoGamed was now run by David 'G3X' Garpenstahl and Mattias 'Mr. Kill' Hjelmstedt, both from Sweden as well. The site continued to grow rapidly. New features were added, yet the simple ASCII layout remained. In the fall SoGamed was taken down to prepare for version 2.0. SoGamed continued to grow during version 2.0 and may have been the largest, most successful gaming community at that time. The main new features introduced in version 2.0 were Clubs, the Speaker's Corner and the SoGamed Arcade.
The SoGamed Arcade allowed users to rediscover the past and enjoy some INCredible old-school arcade games. The Arcade started with Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Tetris and Snake. There were monthly tournaments with a "Hall of Fame" and "trophies" for user profiles.
The Speakers Corner is a section of the site where everyone can contribute and submit articles to discuss and share opinions on. This is a place for anybody in the community to grab the mike and get his/hers IDeaS and thoughts out for debate in the community.
Version 3.0
In early 2004 the site was taken offline again to prepare for version 3.0, perhaps the most anticipated one in the history of the site. In March 2004, SoGamed 3.0 was launched and proved to be a devastating hit for SoGamed. For the first time the ASCII layout was abandoned and replaced by a graphical interface. Though SoGamed 3.0 introduced even more features to the site, the layout change and changes in the management of the site led to a drastic departure of regular visitors. The site was nearing half a million registered users, yet the average user count of logged-in users doesn't come close to the average users in former times and the general activity of users on the site has significantly dropped.
Version 3.5
Version 3.5 of SoGamed.com was launched on August 10th, 2005 and presents a face-lift to the 3.0 layout. The graphical interface of the site was redone with new graphics and new features were implemented as well as minor bug fixes in various sections of the page.
The profiles have received a lot of minor updates. It is now possible to choose from various different 'moods' to indicate what mood you are currently in. There is now a predefined area to specify one's hardware setup instead of having to come up with a structure to provide these information yourself. A small world map picture marks the region you are logged in from depending on the ISP you are using. And a new entry in the statistics section now displays the over-all time spent on SoGamed since the launch of 3.5.
Glocal
SoGamed intended to help the growth of e-sport and gaming by acting & supporting local gaming scenes. SoGamed.com became "SoGamed International" - the main global portal. A global perspective with a local foundation. Combine the word global with local and voila!; you get "glocal".
To further explain some of the glocal concept let's take an example. "SoGamed Brasil" is in Portuguese and have 80% local content. Things concerning the Brazilian gaming scene such as Brazilian match reports, demos, LAN and event coverages done by the local Brazilian crew living inside Brazil. The remaining 20% is material from SoGamed International (such as coverages from ESWC and CPL finals) but with a local presentation. SoGamed was looking for new locations to go glocal in - Asian and Middle Eastern sites were expected. The Glocal sites can be reached via small flag ICONS at the top right of the page making it possible to easily navigate between the international SoGamed.com site and the various Glocal sites.
- The Glocal site for Brazil ('SoGamed Brasil') was launched on September 16th, 2005.
- The Glocal site for Sweden ('SoGamed Sverige') was launched on September 30th, 2005.
Version 4.0
For the SoGamed.com site itself there was a new version being made, which was going to be labeled '4.0' and bring major updates to the site. However the crew lost its coders and most of the remaining crew members involved with the project. Nowadays the level of activity decreased significantly and technical problems are routinist.
User Community
The countries with the most registered users on SoGamed:
December 2002 Countries (Top 10)
1. United States
2. Sweden
3. Germany
4. China
5. France
6. Norway
7. Denmark
8. Brazil
9. United Kingdom
10. Canada
January 2005 Countries (Top 10) +/- change in rank
1. Norway +5
2. Poland +15
3. United States -2
4. Macedonia +20
5. Brazil +3
6. Germany -3
7. Canada +3
8. Sweden -6
9. France -4
10. Turkey +10
External links
SoGamed can also be found on IRC where people can discuss in real time. The channel on the QuakeNet network is #SoGamed