Game Music Online (SEMO Successor) Launched

[Chris]

Happy to announce that we've finally launched our new site. It's called Game Music Online (vgmonline.net) and focuses solely on journalistic content (e.g. news, reviews, features, interviews, bios). We link back to VGMdb for all database content.

We're getting back into the swing of things on the journalistic front. We published a triple Basiscape interview and Resident Evil box set liners for launch, with a few other things in the works. As always, we're open to suggestions on what to cover in these regards. The new brand and technical features will make the site much more friendly to industry members and visitors alike.

As some of you know, the site was originally supposed to incorporate an album and game database as well. But it wasn't possible to satisfactorily integrate everything, despite much effort. So I am now making sure we do a few things very well than a lot of things not so well. Happy to share the MySQL files for that intended game / composer database if VGMdb can do anything with them. Saw some mention of needing something like this in the David Wise thread.

[Efendija]

That idea of having some sort of additional discography list on artist pages for the games that never got any official soundtrack release has been around for quite some time but nothing's done about that yet (at least visible). It would be an extremely useful feature imho.

All the best to you & the rest of GMO team!

[Phonograph]

I don't know for other chrome users but the site really looks bad with me
it's normal with IE tho, it looks a bit like a blog no?

[Xenofan 29A]

Originally Posted by Phonograph

I don't know for other chrome users but the site really looks bad with me
it's normal with IE tho, it looks a bit like a blog no?

That's odd. It looks the same in both browsers on my system.

[strugglepoo]

Nice. I've been a frequent visitor of SEMO for years and have been checking back occasionally for the past year. Good to see things moving again. Excellent interview with the Basiscape team. Right up my alley.

[Phonograph]

actually, after clicking the [_] of chrome the page became normal and stayed after reclicking
it only appears when I launch the url (from vgmdb or from a new tab + url)

some screenshots:

Spoiler:

[cal]

^ I get that bug too. Also using Chrome.

Edit: And it happens on all pages, not just the main page.

[Chris]

That's not good. I'll look into it. Thanks for letting us know.

[Datschge]

Glad to see the articles having a date stamp now.

[dissident93]

great to see all the artist biographies get updates too.

[Chris]

They've all been rewritten pretty much from the ground up. There were a few inaccuracies in some of the old articles and I didn't like the writing style. We've also added a lot of new one. Most are about a year old now, but I'll be going through them to make sure they're 100% up-to-date when things are properly moving again. Also hoping to add quite a few more of both Western and Eastern composers in the future.

[Rhythmroo]

Bookmarking this site! Best wishes and success to the site!

[Chris]

Thanks for all the kind comments. I'll not let you down.

[GermanSeabass]

Fantastic news -- congrats on the launch!

[Ramza]

I've already said it elsewhere, but I'm SO happy to see this site up and running. Congratulations guys! Can't wait to see what comes of it! I've set aside some time for myself tonight to read that Basiscape interview.

[Jormungand]

We appreciate what you do, Chris. I like the look of the new site. Bookmarked! I look forward to reading it regularly.

[Secret Squirrel]

Congratulations on the new site. It's looking great in Chrome now, and I like how you've already got a steady stream of news stories (including some bad news that I hadn't heard.)

Originally Posted by Chris

As some of you know, the site was originally supposed to incorporate an album and game database as well. But it wasn't possible to satisfactorily integrate everything, despite much effort. So I am now making sure we do a few things very well than a lot of things not so well. Happy to share the MySQL files for that intended game / composer database if VGMdb can do anything with them. Saw some mention of needing something like this in the David Wise thread.

Thank you. I'd love to start associating composers and products (games), and it's always been part of the vision, though these days it has been hard to find time to initiate any major projects (which I know you can relate to.)

[LiquidAcid]

While I didn't add any of these links myself, I remember that on a lot of album pages we have links to reviews on SEMO. Not only reviews IIRC, but also liner notes and other stuff. It would be good if these links were updated to point to GMO.

[Dag]

Looks great and content-packed, congrats.
Some things feel kinda bloated though? (ex. author blurb in every page)

Stuff like "Daisuke Ishiwatari was part of SNK" seems fixed too, gives me a lot more confidence in the site.

[Muzza]

Well done, Chris! This is an exciting venture. I'll certainly try to check this website daily.

[Chris]

Thanks for all the kind comments people. I appreciate it. I hope you had a fantastic time in NZ, Secret Squirrel!

I will work on updating the VGMdb links for old reviews and new ones as we gradually get through the backlog. SEMO will stay up as an archive until we've completed that. As explained here, I only set up the domain a month ago after being dissatisfied with my previous direction for a long time. There's a big backlog to get through, given we hosted 3500 reviews at SEMO. But I thought it would be better to post those up later than waste another three months dithering.

I noticed the same Chrome issue that Phonograph reported a couple of times. But it seemed to be transient and was resolved by refreshing. But if this continues to be a problem, let me know. It could be a host issue, so also let me know if you notice any downtime or slowness.

Most of the original biographies were written at a time when information was scarce and VGMdb wasn't around. It's amazing how much more is known now thanks to sites like VGMdb. There were some peculiar things floating around that I couldn't find much source for. I tried to thoroughly fact-check and removed anything I couldn't substantiate.

I'll work on making the site less bloated. I'm making little changes every day to improve it. Working on options to sort posts alphabetically too. Also hoping to jazz-up the logo once I've found a decent designer.

[LiquidAcid]

The author description must go away, or at least you need to shrink it down significantly. A very good example is this review, where the balance is terribly off. A quick pass through 'wc' gives 1157 words for the review part itself, and then 642 words for the author description.

IMO the length that is used by Anime Instrumentality is quite OK. Also you can always put the author description in the main author page.

[Datschge]

I don't actually mind the length of the author bio as is, the only issue with it is that it pushes the "related posts" and "comments" sections out of sight for most visitors. I'd suggest to shrink the "author bio" section (with a link to expand it). Can be easily done using jQuery that's already included by WP (feel free to PM me).

[Echo]

Originally Posted by Efendija

That idea of having some sort of additional discography list on artist pages for the games that never got any official soundtrack release has been around for quite some time but nothing's done about that yet (at least visible). It would be an extremely useful feature imho.

I would also appreciate a feature like that!

I really like the look of the new site! So clean and easy to read. It will definitely go to my list of daily visited sites.

One thing I found missing though, is an alphabetical list of all the reviews (or at least I couldn't find one). Would be useful, I think.