As part of the 3.1 announcement, Microsoft announced they are renaming Xbox LIVE Community Games to Xbox LIVE Indie Games. (If this is new to you and you want to discuss how awesome this is, please discuss it in this other thread). As such http://xblcg.info is going to become (at the end of July) wrongly named. So I want the help of the community in getting a new domain idea.

Right now I bought up xboxindies.com on a whim after seeing the announcement. What do you think of that domain? Are there other domains? I'm hesitant to go with xblig.info or xblig.com simply because it's too similar to what's there and might lead to confusion. Plus I'm not a big fan of that acronym yet. :p

Great news!

I disliked the community games denomination, Xbox Live indie games is much better!

Regarding xboxindies.com... great idea! The right domain in my opinion.

Nick Gravelyn:

(If this is new to you and you want to discuss how awesome this is, at this point I encourage you to start a new thread, please)

Already done!

xboxindies seems OK, but IMO it sounds more like a gamers clan or something, rather than indie developers. "xblig" is growing on me already, and if it may lead to confusions, you can have a page on xblcg.info that says "Due to the name change, this site's name is slightly incorrect. The new domain is here - thanks for understanding!" or something like that.

What about "xboxindiegames.com"?

or xblindiegames.com?

and it's so close to xbling.com...

Well it looks like either someone here, a bot, or just someone else has gone through a bought up xboxindiegames.com, xbling.com, xblig.com, and xboxindiegames.com. I think I'm going to stick with xboxindies.com since I'm guessing the rest of the logical names seem to be taken.

Nick Gravelyn:

Well it looks like either someone here, a bot, or just someone else has gone through a bought up xboxindiegames.com, xbling.com, xblig.com, and xboxindiegames.com. I think I'm going to stick with xboxindies.com since I'm guessing the rest of the logical names seem to be taken.

Your kidding. Great start :(

Nick Gravelyn:

Well it looks like either someone here, a bot, or just someone else has gone through a bought up xboxindiegames.com, xbling.com, xblig.com, and xboxindiegames.com. I think I'm going to stick with xboxindies.com since I'm guessing the rest of the logical names seem to be taken.

Seriously? That's just not cool. >:-(

I guess xboxindies.com it is...

Domain squatters are everywhere... I've been having a heck of a time coming up with a good game studio name because I'm unwilling to buy a domain from them. I think the .com name is good.... I would definately still with .com, .info just doesn't have the same cachet.

most of them seem to be registered with the same registrar so maybe MS picked up these domains.

Blackpanther989:

most of them seem to be registered with the same registrar so maybe MS picked up these domains.

Those domains (at least one) are registered through http://domainsbyproxy.com/ which is a service to hide who really registers domains.

Microsoft typically includes their name with registered domains... so I'm doubting it was them.

Oh well. xboxindies.com is a nice domain. It's short, it's easy to say and easy to remember, and is close enough to the service name to associate with it. Now to just start the rebranding and upgrade process for the site. I'm thinking the site needs some new stuff. Now that the dash will have user ratings, they're kind of useless on my site (I'm still keeping them, but I'm just saying) so I think I'm going to see about adding news to the front page with a possibility of later doing reviews on the site (from me and others). Things like XNA Round Up videos and things would also be nice. Just to try and help the community out a bit more.

If it's any consolation, I like the sound of xboxindies.com more so than the other mentioned names.

Have you considered linking to reviews already done on the games pages? For instance links to reviews by IGN, XNA Round Up, or any other misc blogs? It would be nice to get a listing, though they likely would have to be manually entered. Maybe allowing some wiki-like editing would do the trick so you didn't have to do all that work yourself.

Kris Steele:

Have you considered linking to reviews already done on the games pages?

I already do that for WorthThePoints.com and XNPlay.co.uk. I've thought about adding more, but that just starts getting messy and hard to update.

For instance links to reviews by IGN, XNA Round Up, or any other misc blogs?

My goal for the update is to not link out to lots of sites. Personally I'd rather see something emerge from xboxindies.com that was more like TouchArcade.com where all the news, reviews, and everything was on that site. As a user I personally hate being tossed around to various websites and appreciate having all the content in one place.

If you (global 'you' to anyone reading) do reviews of XBLCG games, please email me so we can talk. I'm looking to build a small (~3-5) team of people to provide news and reviews on the new site, so send along links to your writing and please don't be offended if I say no; I want to find quality writers who want to help build a consumer news site specifically for this market. I'm planning on integrating Wordpress on our main page for the postings (which would allow for comments from people) and I'm thinking we'll be doing news, short reviews, XNA Round Up videos embedded, and other little things.

Maybe allowing some wiki-like editing would do the trick so you didn't have to do all that work yourself.

I ran XNAWiki.com for a while. I'm not going to run another wiki. :P Too much hassle.

Nick Gravelyn:

My goal for the update is to not link out to lots of sites. Personally I'd rather see something emerge from xboxindies.com that was more like TouchArcade.com where all the news, reviews, and everything was on that site. As a user I personally hate being tossed around to various websites and appreciate having all the content in one place.

If you (global 'you' to anyone reading) do reviews of XBLCG games, please email me so we can talk. I'm looking to build a small (~3-5) team of people to provide news and reviews on the new site, so send along links to your writing and please don't be offended if I say no; I want to find quality writers who want to help build a consumer news site specifically for this market. I'm planning on integrating Wordpress on our main page for the postings (which would allow for comments from people) and I'm thinking we'll be doing news, short reviews, XNA Round Up videos embedded, and other little things.

A good review/news site would be useful. Are you aiming to have this be a site that is more useful to consumers or to developers though? I think there's room for both, but things that a developer might find useful or interesting are often not going to be things consumers care about (for instance, consumers care more about the games themselves or new features that can be put into the games, developers will care more about technical details, new tutorials, development contests, etc).

It will be far more consumer oriented. Developers have this site or Ziggyware to find new developer news; they don't need another. Consumers don't care about the latest samples or tutorials so mashing the two is just going to add disinterest to consumers.

I wanted to clarify a bit on the "review" part. I'm not planning on doing lots of reviews. I don't plan on reviewing nearly every game. What I really meant was that we'll talk about games we really like, games we think did something well, or games that are just not getting enough love. We'll be embedding XNA Round Up which will cover a lot more games than we will, but ultimately I want our site to be more news oriented rather than review oriented.

I went and grabbed liveindiegames.com just to keep someone horrible or a bot from getting ahold of it.   now to figure out what to do with it :D

Nick Gravelyn:

We'll be embedding XNA Round Up which will cover a lot more games than we will, but ultimately I want our site to be more news oriented rather than review oriented.

First off I like XboxIndies.com

Secondly I agree.  There is a great XNA Review Site that takes user reviews and sums up scores:  www.xnaratings.com It's got the most comprehensive written reviews for XNA games out there.

Stick with your recommendations system (which is a great tool that has advantages over score-based reviews in order to find quality games quickly...I almost wish MS goes this route for rating Live content)...and go for the news stuff.  Are you planning editorial content like opinions on big XBL Indie news items?  The topic of the name change itself would make a great editorial...especially if it had takes from all angles (MS, Indie Devs, Consumers).  There are bound to be equally interesting topics popping up in the future.  There are a couple of sites out there that cover XNA News, XNARatings and GamerBytes...but none that add any editorial content so that's why I suggest it.

Another reason why I suggest it is because it does help legitimize your site as the de-facto source of news.  I know, "opinions > factual reporting" seems backwards but it's how it is. 

I understand that you don't want to link to too many sites, but may I also suggest to link to XNARatings.Com's developer interviews, those are sometimes very interesting for consumers (maybe you can pick and choose and feature only interviews with devs of very popular XB Indie Games).  By the way I don't work for that site or am associated with it in any way.  I've mentioned it so many times I think I deserve some royalty fees, heh.  I do agree that you should limit your links to other sites and to limit your scope (ie. no tutorial links and that stuff).

Ultimately it's up to you and in my eyes you can do no wrong as your current plan (as well as the current xblcg.info) looks very sound to me.  These are just a few suggestions you might want to consider for now or later.  

Man I type so much when I post here.  Sorry for that guys.  I'll try to get to the point quicker when posting in the future.

I'm just going to jump in real quick and say that xboxindies.com sounds like a fine name.

I grabbed xboxliveindie.com on a whim as well. Its pointing to xblcg.info currently as a mirror so if you use it, you will see that as the domain while you are there. The exception is that when you sign in you will return to xblcg.info. Anyways, just thought I'd let Nick know if nothing else :)

I also have the .net, .org and .info so any of those could also be used. I kind of like the .info ending but I think that most people are super used to .com

One final thing regarding trademark, I think any URL's containing xbox are in a gray area at best and in violation of MS's trademark at worst so no idea what will happen in regards to that, sorry to bring up a spectre of possible bad news. I know I certainly won't fight hard if MS asks for the domains to be taken down :)