A new call to arms for the Gaming blog!

Question

Jin recently gave us a proper theme that looks the same as the Gaming site itself and visitors to our site that aren't logged in even get a link to the blog in their header! But the past week has proven that its becoming too hard to keep up our 1 post/weekday with our current amount of writers. Based on feedback from both Rebecca and Jin, we're going to try 2/3 posts/week and see how that goes.

The current situation is so bad that we haven't been able to blog about the past two Questions of the Week, because they involve Minecraft and I didn't manage to convince any of our fanatic Minecraft-users to help write a post. I could have tried writing them up myself, but the blog is supposed to be for the community, by the community, not a one-man-show. So once again:

I'm actively looking for users who want to write blog posts!

So how do this work? Simply mail me a draft post or drop by in our Blog Editor Chatroom! Preferably about your favorite or best Gaming question/answer; a game review or just some crazy Gaming report!

The blog has two main purposes:

• Help promote Gaming.Stackexchange.com by highlighting great content such as our Question of the Week or more elaborative how-to guides and tutorials that extend on questions or answers.
• Provide a "bully pulpit to write about broader, discussion-y, possibly opinion based topics that are forbidden on Gaming. It's an important outlet for editorial content, the discussion/opinion "yin" to the "yang" of our strictly business Q&A." [Jeff paraphrased from MSU]

That means users could write about:

• New technologies, that make you giddy
• Upcoming games, you're dying to play
• Professional Gaming, like sharing your favorite e-sport match
• Discussion of topics on the site, because not everyone reads Meta
• Good games you may have missed, everyone says they love recommendations: prove it!

Basically, its like the Bridge only in a structured format. That's also why its important everyone pitches in, its not about what I like about Gaming, but what you all like about it! For those who doubt their writing skills: if you're able to write answers that get upvoted, you're equally able to write a blog post. For those who doubt they have anything interesting to say: if the stuff you say get's starred on the Bridge, it means people care about what you say. So don't be shy and show us what you've got!

Answer 1

What about game diaries? This has worked well for other gaming sites:

If you're not familiar with the game diary format, it's basically a series of entries about your experience with a game. A given entry might talk about the graphics, or about the comparison to another game, or about something that pissed you off. It can be a tangent to something entirely unrelated. These aren't reviews, necessarily, or AARs. Instead, they're what you want them to be. I realize that's kind of vague. But ultimately, a game diary is about you, with the game as a sort of lens.

A series runs one or two weeks, which means either five or ten entries, and they can be written up in advance or doled out over the course of the run. Entries should be short-ish. They need some sort of screenshot or picture as a visual hook. They also need a headline. But beyond that, it's completely and totally up to you. I'm happy to work with you if you want help, or editing, or suggestions. Alternatively, I'm happy to just run verbatim what you submit. This will be your space for the run of the series, and I don't want to get in the way. I'm also happy to handle all the Word Press stuff for you, so as long as you can work a word processor, you're qualified.

I intend to run a few of these concurrently. Right now, I'm specifically interested in someone writing up his or her experience with Dragon Age 2 and DCS' A-10 sim. Down the road, I'm open to doing this for any game, new, old, obscure, high-profile. If you're interested, send me a PM, whether it's for one of these two games or something else entirely.

They're actually great -- and not hard to write, you just tell the story of you experiencing the game and add screenshots to the mix. I think they have worked well on the homepage of this gaming site:

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/category/features/game-diaries/

Answer 2

Minecraft Build Walkthroughs

There have been a few good posts about building certain types of farm, mechanism or structure in Minecraft. Askers of such questions could be invited to show how they took the advice in the answer to build their finished structure.