Rebranding discussion

[Dominic]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm going to save you the normally long and thought out post and instead just offer you a few questions. We're looking for as much feedback we can get on this topic, seeing as it's a big change. Should we rebrand Steam-Gamers entirely? What names do you think make sense? Do you think we should change the colors? This could all be opinion based, or perhaps you have some sort of logic to back it up with. I think our current name has some pros and cons, but if we're going to rebrand and if it makes sense to do so - now's the perfect time.

 

All feedback is appreciated!

[Phoenix_]

Just throwing a couple of ones I thought of for rebranding (yes I looked to rank names as inspiration):

 

1) Veteran Gamers- The community has a large population of active, reserve, and former military personnel and you guys could shift your target audience to fostering a place for military vets, family of military vets, and anyone really can come together and enjoy games and discuss them. Color scheme could be purple and gold?

 

2) Legend Gamers - Idk this one just sounds cool? Could use gold and black/dark grey color scheme.

 

3) Tech gamers- could open the door into hosting more tech-related discussions about computer parts, companies, etc. 

 

 

I think it is about time for a re-brand that breaks the brand restraint of "steam gamers" and allows for more brand-sensible expansion outside of just steam games, and something that honestly just sounds more modern? Maybe it's just how my brain works but Steam-gamers sounds very fitting for the era it was named, but not for the modern era of gaming.

[fozilla mirefox]

Epic Games Store Gamers

 

EGSG

[Danno]

Wow, its weird to think of a world where Steam-Gamers isn't Steam-Gamers, especially after all these years.

 

I have no imagination but I have some preferences, if they help:

• I wouldn't bother with a rebrand if it is just going to be [another word]-Gamers. "Gamers" feels outdated and overdone in gaming. Maybe [something]-group/squad/corps/troupe. 
• It should probably reflect what our focus is, whether that be gaming or community. I'm not around nearly as much as I was 10 years ago so I have no clue what the focus is nowadays.
• I've never really cared for the shade of green that we use but keeping it as a piece of the "old SG" wouldn't be an awful idea! If we change it, my vote is either aqua or light blue; purely because they're pleasant to look at.

[jazzy]

Fast and flashy .gg or .dev or .app or .io domain name. It can be an acronym, just keep it short and sweet so it fits in the minimal space we have for our server titles. I want to think more about names but don't have anything just yet... Maybe after this weekend I will drop some ideas

It would be nice to have a landing page not be the forums but rather a simplistic page showing our servers, playercounts, and a discord link. I understand the forums are nice and I love forums but it'd be nice to advertise our servers over our forums, especially since our servers & discord see more activity than forums today. I posted it in discord but the old site design but back in the early 2010's we had a much more prominent landing page to show our servers while still blending news/forums activity. I think it's good, at this point, to really just not direct people to the forums (but leave them as a piece of history) and force people quicker into discord.

 

Colors... I have no preference. I just recommend we keep a nice dark tone with lighter highlighting, just like we do today with the forum colorscheme. My only recommendation is using flat graphics rather than gradients/excessive shadings. Most modern web designs typically don't style this way anymore, and tend to choose flat color schemes for simplicity.

[Metal]

 

 

When ZM (Zombie Murder) became SG the transition was pretty smooth from what I recall.

I was still fresh blood in ZM and a month or two later we changed to SG.
 

So what I remember is ZM stayed for a while with its few servers before changing them into SG servers.

Breakfloor, Naplam, Escape I and Escape II and Zombie Hell.

Here is what it looked like back in the day.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090331230244/http://www.steamgamers.com/forum/
 

So my suggestion is to slow transfer with a rebranding just to pump ourselves up and to give players a notice that we are rebranding.

Another thing would be de-clutter a lot of out SG branded Steam groups and from onward maybe keep things simple to one or two.

One for the main community and one for events.

 

For years I've loved forums, it was a good place to talk about anything and have updates on the community.
Today, seems more people focus on Discord as its a one stop shop so having both would not hurt but maybe tone down how many topic threads we have.

 

Whats the saying, keep it simple?

 

 

I think rebranding is a great idea, a clean slate and a fresh start.

 

SG was always a safe place to hang out and play with friends.

Drama did happen and we all grew up together so it would be pretty damn cool to come back to that.

As for names, I think It needs to represent what we are or what we want to be.

In my eyes, we are still a place to come together and play games with good company.

1. (GH) GamersHaven(Green Black or Red Black)
2. (NSG) Nonstopgaming (Yes I'm aware its similar to TotalNonStop (TNS)

3. (CG) Collectivegaming

 

I still believe If we are to pick a name, it really needs to focus on community.

I'll keep an open mind on names and more ideas over the next few days.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

[sWz]

GAMING GAMERS (GG)

 

On 10/6/2023 at 3:20 PM, Phoenix_ said:

1) Veteran Gamers

 

2) Legend Gamers

 

3) Tech gamers

god i love u phoenix but all 3 of these gave me a hernia

 

whatever u do with this rebrand thing (awful idea btw) i beg of u to take "GAMERS" or "GAMING" out of the fucking name 

[Ejivis]

I'll copy paste what I said on discord:
Steam-Gamers is a good name IMO.  Its a bit basic, but it probably does well with search engines related to, well, gaming on Steam.  The only bad thing being you can get confused with Steam support sometimes.  It has a very "retro" look and the acronym of "SG" is cool enough to make up for the every basic name.  So, it may be a little bland, but people do not go around saying "Lets get on the Steam-Gamers server".  usually it is just "Lets go play on SG <server_name>."  

I'd say its a staple name and has been around for a long time.  If you rebrand then the rebrand better be  to warrant it.

 

[Jake]

What does rebranding accomplish exactly? Why rebrand? I feel like this is one way to drop the already dead player base even lower as when people look up SG they are going to find it gone. One the things this community has going for it, or did was the long standing history and rebranding defeats that in my eyes. I could be wrong or out of touch but its my two cents. 

 

 

[Synk]

I don't think a rebranding is what we really need right now at least. I agree with @Jakein that we would lose a lot of people who are looking for steam gamers. There are a lot of fond memories even from people who are not in our forums. If they try to find the same server they where looking for years ago looking for the time-honored title of SG they wouldn't be able to figure out the SG has rebranded and would be lost on how to rejoin the community they missed. They may even just look for a new community just because we where not easily available to find. I think we should wait until CS2 servers are out and give it time for people to rejoin the community that way they can still find us.