What are unions? The newbies might ask. Well, they're community-run, community-driven websites within Gamespot. They resemble Gamespy's Planet Sites, where gamers who have a common interest on a certain console, game, genre, way of thinking, etc. unite to form a site where content and ideas created by people for the people are constantly being made and exchanged.
Unions were thriving communities a few years ago, Gamespot even held an awards ceremony for the best ones back then. It was constantly improved and rewards kept coming, the unions of the old days had incentives, and when they reach certain goals, awards waited for them.
A few years ago, Gamespot suddenly stopped the leveling system. They said it was to stop unions from spamming in order to level up faster than others. It was for a cause, but why take away something that so many people have worked hard for? It gave us an incentive to work harder and to increase the quality of the content our unions offer, it helps in the competitiveness of the community.
Sentinelrv, leader of the Headcrab Union, had a vision. A new era for unions, a rebirth, even. That would change the way the GS Community thought about unions. It will be feature-packed, streamlined, and smooth. But Unions Version 2 never materialized, even four years after the vision was created and shared to the Gamespot Community.
Unions have been hit and miss lately. There's been a lot of new ones, but most of them aren't active anymore. Because no one is joining them, and no one is providing good content. There are a few exceptions, though, and I wish all of them the best of luck.
Here's my list of updates I wish Gamespot would finally implement. They aren't the sweeping changes some want to happen, these are some simple, logical changes that could change the face of Gamespot Unions forever.
1. Bring back the level system!
2. More Emblems
3. Consistent tracking of page views. My union's number of page views has been at the same number for a few months now, I'm sure we now have a lot more page views already.
4. Include Personal messages in Invitations.
5. Show off more stats in the Stats page, such as number of published articles, etc.
6. More archive categories. Such as reviews and previews.
7. Image Section that contains uploaded images from the leader and his or her officer/s.
8. Increase character limit for telegrams.
9. Delete union button. Could be the key in lessening the clutter and dirt in the directory.
10. Unions section in the inbox. Should include telegrams and invitations
11. Add a link to the union directory on the front page
12. list unions in search results
I'm sure there's a lot more than what I just said. Unions contain a lot of untapped potential that when harnessed, could make for the most active and most competitive Gamespot community in years.