Beta Preview: Embedded Stream Posts

We’ve added a new posting category to our blog: Beta Preview!  As the team behind Gamers Portal works hard to launch the beta site, we will be using our blog to give you a preview of some of the new or improved features for the new Gamers Portal.  We know you’re anxious to see what we’ve been spending our time on, and we’re anxious to give you a peak!

The Streams are staples of Gamers Portal, allowing users and clans to easily interact publicly.  Over a year ago we added the ability to embed content on streams from any source, along with extra care and design for more popular sites such as YouTube, Imgur, TwitchTV, and over a hundred more (the full list can be found here).
[Read more...]

Clan Spotlight on Team Axion

For this spotlight, we interview Team Axion. You can view their portal on Gamers Portal here.

Tell us the story of how your clan was formed… How did your clan get to where it’s at today? How long has your clan been around?

Axion was founded around 1999 by Demo and Evol. It was started with an intent to compete against other teams in Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear.  We laddered endlessly with a desire to succeed and be the best Rogue Spear team. We experienced much success as a team on the two most popular ladders which we participated on. As the community began to fade out, so did Axion around 2003. Some members moved on to other games while some stopped gaming completely.

Axion was revived once again in October 2011 with the release of Battlefield 3. Most of the original members have been reinstated. Original members reconnected with old friends from other Rogue Spear competitive teams as well as finding new members with strong backgrounds in competitive Counter-Strike. Now almost a decade later Axion is back in full force.

More detailed information about our history can be found at TeamAxion.com/about/history
[Read more...]

The Wii U — What is an R700 GPU and why does it matter?

What is an R700 GPU?

So we’ve all heard the rumors about Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U console, and how it’s going to be some strange tablet-y thing with a touchscreen and analog sticks and a microwave and a cat. Or something. It’s all very interesting and strange and I don’t really care because it’s going to be obsolete the minute you finish the next Zelda title. Here’s why.

The rumor mill started saying early on that the Wii U would use an AMD/ATI Radeon R700 GPU, and it’s been all but confirmed by Nintendo. But what does that mean? What is an R700 GPU?

Complicated and relevant nonsense

Let’s start with the basics. A GPU is a Graphics Processing Unit, that is the chip in a computer or console that processes geometry, textures, lighting, and postprocessing effects and composites them into the image that you see on your screen when you play a video game. Modern GPUs use dozens or hundreds (or even thousands) of tiny, specialized microprocessors called “shaders” to execute the complex mathematical operations that turn a collection of binary digits and code into an actual image. A system’s GPU is the primary determinant of the quality of graphics that it displays. [Read more...]

Clan Spotlight on Nothing But Skillz Gaming

For this spotlight, we interview NBS (Nothing But Skillz) Gaming.  You can view their portal on Gamers Portal here.

- -

Tell us the story of how your clan was formed…  How did your clan get to where it’s at today?  How long has your clan been around?

The clan started off as a Dutch and Belgian only Wolfenstein Enemy Territory Scrim team.  It was founded in 2010 by the current owner Bas ‘Woooooo’ Appelman. Bit by bit it became bigger in the ET pro scene and NBS became international.

Until August ’11 NBS was ET (Enemy Territory) only, until Brink came out. Brink was meant to be the first next game of NBS in its way to a larger MGC covering many other games. However, Brink failed and we started looking at other games.

Later on we even bought our own dedicated system to host our servers on. As soon as we had that, we expanded to several other games such as: Call of Duty 4, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike 1.6 and League of Legends.
[Read more...]

We want you! Guest Blog Writer Program

Have you ever read a gaming review and felt like the author didn’t know what he/she was talking about?

Have you ever had an insight that you thought could change the world of gaming?

We want to give you the opportunity to share your views with the world.

Gamers Portal is looking for talented writers everywhere to help contribute to making our blog bigger, better, and more awesome.  We’re giving gamers like you the opportunity to write about your gaming strategies, opinions, and insights.  Our invitation is open to anyone with a passion for writing, video games, and having their ideas read by many.

There are no restrictions on content as long as it relates to gaming.  You can post reviews of games, industry critiques, or information about a gaming event or tournament.

What we expect from guest writers:

  • Willingness to spend the time to write meaningful content for the Gamers Portal blog (generally between 500 and 1000 words)
  • Content must be delivered in a finished state, including section headers/dividers, and images that you wish to have included (both images and section headers are required for readability)
  • An open mind towards revising content; we have certain standards when it comes to quality of writing, and if the editor-in-chief (that’s me) would like a certain topic fleshed out more, you can’t take offense to the suggestion
  • With posts: it’s okay to be provocative, but don’t be offensive
  • This is all for free: if we can’t afford to pay ourselves, then unfortunately we can’t afford to pay you
  • Once an article is published, Gamers Portal owns the copyright to the content
  • No plagiarism of any kind (we don’t need a scandal on our hands)

What we promise to give you as guest writers:

  • Guest blog posts will be featured in our email newsletter that goes out to all Gamers Portal users
  • You will be given 100% credit for all blog posts you write
  • We will not edit your content; we may ask you to alter certain parts, but you control the copy; if you decide you don’t like our suggestions, you don’t have to edit, but we don’t have to publish

What’s the next step?

If you’ve stuck with me to this point and you’re interested in writing for us, then shoot me an email (Matt [at] gamersportal [dot] com) with these three things:

  • Writing samples – content or articles that you’ve written in the past (if you have them; if you don’t, then you can still apply)
  • Three sample topics that you’d like to write about on the Gamers Portal blog – this will be the bulk of how we evaluate potential writers
  • A short bio about yourself and a real life picture of yourself

Make sure to send it from an email you use often, because if we accept you as a contributor to the blog, the email address used to apply will be tied to your login to posting content.

We hope to hear from you soon!

Reintroducing: The Chat

Gamers Portal is one of the only gaming sites to offer a full, real-time chat without the need for any installed client.  Gamers Portal created the chat because we wanted you to be connected to your teammates, opponents, and gaming friends across the world.  Gamers move fast, and we created a solution that keeps up with the speed you move in real life and in game.

The chat resides in the bottom-left corner of the Gamers Portal website in your browser window:

Our chat has many necessary features to help you interact:

  • Our Channel Manager ranks the most active chats and allows searching for and favoriting custom channels
  • Clan chats are automatically added upon team creation to make chatting with your teammates a breeze
  • The Scrim Finder is integrated to the chat to make coordinating a scrim painless!  Well, as painless as coordinating can be… :)
  • The user list and private messaging makes it easy to talk with your friends

The chat history is always saved, so even if someone private messages you and then goes offline, you can message them back and they will see the message the next time they log in to Gamers Portal!  Neat, huh?

Some lesser known “advanced user” features:

  • Favorites: Marking a channel as a favorite is a way to bookmark it in order to keep track of the channels that interests you.
  • Create: Create your own custom channel! You can have a total of 20 people in the channel at once. Also, you can create a total of 3 custom channels.
  • Advertise!: You may advertise your channel in chat by typing in #channel#
    • Use your full channel name to advertise; spaces and special characters included.
    • Example: To advertise “C00lest clanEv4r!!”, type in #C00lest clanEv4r!!# so that others can easily follow.

Is there anything it can’t do?

Remember, all of this is available real-time from any web browser from which you’re logged into Gamers Portal!

If you love the chat then let us know in the comments!

- -

Here’s a video walkthrough of the chat if you’d like a little more information.