The era of big sites is coming to an end

The days of dominant gaming websites are numbered, says The Games Tribe’s Richard Keith.

Instead, smaller and stronger communities of core gamers will be targeted with more relevant and specialist content.

The ex-Future exec made the comments to MCV this week as The Games Tribe expands its network with a number of new sites.

The online media network launched two new specialist RPG websites earlier this week – jrpgtibe.com and raidingparty.net – and will follow these up with four more genre-specific sites next week. All will provide a mixture of in-house editorial content and links to other partner sites.

I think the era of a few dominant multiformat games sites is coming to an end,” said Keith.

Engaged, committed communities – or ‘tribes’ – of real gamers are far more valuable than users who flit in off the back of a high Google ranking, pick up a nugget of news or a review score, and head off again.

By bringing gaming communities together, we can offer marketers and PRs a simple way to reach these gamers, and give the sites themselves the same support as a big media firm.”

The Games Tribe also acquired games journalist network gameleon.net which already has over 2,000 users.

Keith formed The Games Tribe in September after leaving Future. So far, he has recruited ex-Future staff Kim Richards and Nick Ellis, plus veteran games journalist Jamie Knight.