Hell, it would be worth it just to find out what the hell happened to drive everyone out of bliz North, and what they were doing and not doing on Diablo III at the time. Not that I could then turn around and share that info with anyone but Malaya, but you would all enjoy a healthy, happy glow just by knowing that I knew.

Right?

 

Flux,

You should go for it! Your writing style is just sarky enough to pique the interest of likely gamers.

Also, I know that I (for one) would "enjoy a healthy, happy glow" instead of the current pasty-color on my cheeks.

:-)

 

If finishing the novel "soon" (I keep thinking it's going to be another year before you actually finish... :P ) and trying to get it published is very important to you, I'd regretfully say no to that oppurtunity.

If you're interested in having a potential employment back-up plan in case the novel(s) never make you any money, I'd say go for it. But yeah, it'd likely delay the writing quite a bit. Then again, you might not get it (or you could apply and jut not accept if they offered), and just have a fun/info-seeking experience. Tough call.

 

go.get.that.job.

 

I'm not entirely sure you meet the first two points:

# Experience in website development and maintenance.
# Proficiency with a wide range of web tools.

I mean, do you know flash, java script, CSS, RSS and all that other crap? Just look at how long and reluctantly it took you to modernise blackchampagne a bit with blogger doing all the indexing etc, and that you still aren't using a more sophisticated gallery type thing for managing your images or any kind of content organisation for all of your sprawling articles and apparently don't have any interest in researching and implementing any of these features. Then again, it's different when you're getting paid money you can live off to work on a website, rather than just a hobby one in your free time.

But having said that, you could learn, and you more than make up for it on the remaining 3 points.

I suggest you apply for the job if only to see how you stack up against everyone else who is going for the job, this could give you a confidence boost or let you know that even if you decide not to accept the job, you could get it (or a similar one) if you needed too.

Also, since their game is probably 6 months away from being released, for the forseeable future they shouldn't be having too much for you to do, so it's possible you could come to some compromises on the working schedule or something just so you can get your book finished up and on the way to publishers/editors/etc.


But basically it boils down to this: applying for the job is not going to harm you, so you might as well apply. Whether you then choose to accept it is another matter, but you'll probably be kicking yourself in 6 months time if it turns out no one will buy you book and you think back to the opportunity you had which you didn't even try to investigate.

 

For all of you folks with the encouraging comments... Thank you. You guys rock!

 

Wow, it would be awesome to see flux back in the gaming scene. ^^;

 

As a fellow Struggling Writer, I know just how torn you are, but I'd have to say, try for the job; heck, you can always quit once you've got the book contract, eh? ;) Mmm, savings against a rainy publishing day...

 

After thinking it over for a day, talking about it with Malaya, and seeing that everyone else thought it was a good idea (what have I got to lose?) I went ahead and spent a few hours typing up a short cover letter and a not so short resume. It's an odd experience tooting my own horn like that, especially when most of the tooting involves diabloii.net, a site I just sort of fell into working on back in 1998, never expected to work on for more than a year or two, and thought of as a fun little hobby for most of the time.

I don't seriously expect to get the job, for various reasons, some of which Lanth hit upon, but it would be damn fun, and you know, money's not such a bad thing either, after 2.5 years of little income and living off my savings to split costs with Malaya.

Since I know people there, I can at least expect to hear back, and perhaps hear who they hired instead, and why. I'm honestly not sure if knowing so many of the guys from their bliz north days is a good thing or not. I hope they don't see my application and think, "Oh Flux just thinks he should get the job because he did the d2 site for so long."

I'm mostly hoping to at least get an interview, even if it's just over the phone, since I've got tons of cool ideas for their sites, current and future, and i think I could impress themwith that. I honestly don't think they could hire anyone better than me for the job, in terms of dealing with the fansites and creating new content. They could certainly find someone better if they want PR credentials, or immediate expertise on CSS site construction, but they don't stress those things in the job description, which keeps my hopes up. Besides, anyone can learn to use a new HTML editor; it's thinking of anything worth saying via it that's the trick.

 

It would be a good idea for you to flesh some of those ideas out thoroughly so you were prepared for an interview or whatever, so show that you're really interested in the job and have experience in this sort of thing. The more unique and interesting they are, the better. An idea that seems popular amongst game companies is a weeekly update of some sort; the fans are really eager for any crumbs thrown their way. Blizzard did it with the Screenshot of the Week, and Valve do it with the update of the week that everyone eagly waits until Wednesday or Thursday to hear, in the hopes that the update news will be about a new map, or a release of a new technology or new screenshot of the Half Life 2 expansion or whatever. Of course that sort of thing depends on whether you have the backing of the studio to give you content like that to put up, so you should try and come up with some ideas that you yourself can do without needing so much support from the developers (sounds tricky to me, but I'm not the one going for the job :).

Also given your long history with the snafus that Geoff did working on Blizzard's site, you can use that to your advantage of how *not* to run a gaming website as you've been on the receiving side of it. Perhaps you could directly draw on this in a polite way; "I believe that the official website should contain useful information about the game, but it should not be a be-all-and-end-all repository of information, that sort of content should be left to the more than capable fansite community to develope, otherwise it creates ill-will and disallusionment amongst them" or whatever you want to say.

Probably if you go browse 10-15 other game developers websites and write down what you like and don't like, you could come up with some kind of content outline for both the game website and developer website as an idea for the things you'd like to do - don't be affraid to take that to (the hopeful) interview, even if you never get to reference it; if they can see you sitting there with a list and rough website outline in your lap, they might be intrigued and ask what it is.

Basically, prepare. Do everything you can that you think no one else would bother to do, and try and show this off - employers want people who are eager and passionite for the job. It is good to promote your past experience, but you need to show that you can go above and beyond and use that past experience wisely in the new position, and try not to come accross as burnt-out from your glory days :)

 

Oh, and this is fairly obvious but I might as well mention it since I forgot too.

You need to go to their current websites and study them. Say what you don't like, both in terms of content and design, and how you would fix these issues. Then also say what you would do to add content and flair and improve the sites even more. You could also look at the technical side of things, assuming you are going to be honest and say you don't have a strong technical background - but giving proof that you have thought about the area, done some research and have ideas is a good sign that you can, and want to, learn. Exactly what this would entail I don't know as I'm pretty technically illiterate when it comes to web sites, but perhaps you could look into various technologies and perhaps even adopt them on to this website so you have experience with it, and mention that - "while looking around for solutions that would do XYZ I discovered ABC which turned out to be a useful feature for my website, so I spent some time integrating it and it turns out it will/will not work for your websites" - obviously having a positive idea here would be better, but if you try and few things and think they suck, and they think they suck, then it's better than if you say something is amazing and they think it sucks.

In my job interview I dropped in that I'd had a look around their website a bit just to see what they were up to - I was pretty blatant about it, but this is going to be in your job description, so it's vital that you do it.

 

Oh, and as for knowing someone who works there, it's always a positive, even if they're not sure they would give you the job based on what they know about you already, they're much more inclined to give you an interview or catch up with you as to why you think you could do it, so you shouldn't worry about that aspect of things.

Really don't know why I'm rabbitting on about this, I should have probably just sent all this as an email. Oh well.

 

aren't you goth? goth people can't work in office buildings. duh.

 

Lanth, you're doing a pretty good job describing what I put in my resume. I didn't go into that much detail; i was already much longer than a standard resume as it was, but I gave some ideas for future web projects, thoughts on interacting with fans and fansites, comments on their current websites, etc.

If I get an interview, I'll certainly be giving more of those thoughts, and will be evaluating a lot of other company's gaming websites, etc.

One thing i disagree with you on is the work to be done. I think they're much mroe than 6 months from launching hellgate, and I think they're really wanting to get to work on a super website for that title; hence the job opening now. I anticipate the new hire having a ton of work for a few months, though I'm defining "playing hours a day of hellgate london to learn more about it" as work, in this instance.

 

Well that's good then :)

 

This is a little redundant now, seeing how you've already decided to apply for the job, but it can't hurt to at least find out in greater detail what they're going to expect from you as the website manager. If it turns out that they want you to sift through e-mails from dawn till dusk, then so be it, but you may as well let them know that you're interested.