What has changed on Gaming World since we moved servers

A new homepage, a Discord server, a separate corner for the owner's own projects and a list of smaller fixes, plus the Lighthouse numbers from before and after, including the one that went down.

AI-drafted from 4 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

In October Gaming World moved to a new, bigger server we call Ernie. The move itself was meant to be invisible: studio mail kept arriving and the pages stayed up. What you may have noticed is everything that went out after it. Here is the round-up, and what comes next.

A new homepage

The top of the homepage is a new pixel-art scene, drawn separately for the dark and light themes and tinted by your accent colour. Signed out, it says "Indie games you haven't heard of yet." with buttons to submit a game or join. Signed in, it welcomes you back and offers Request a review and Write for us. The words are real text, not part of the picture.

Behind the rest of the page there is pixel art too: a starfield in dark mode, clouds and green hills in light mode. Its layers drift slowly as you scroll, and reduced motion gets a still picture. The first version let its bottom edge scroll into view on long pages. That was fixed the same day.

Each homepage section now opens with a small divider in the same style, placed in the flow of the page so it never covers a screenshot or text. The new footer line reads "Reviews and features by people who played the games. Previews drafted with AI always say so."

Meiux Meiux gets its own corner

The person who runs Gaming World also makes games under the name Meiux Meiux. Those projects were spread across our homepage, which made the site look as if it was mostly about them. They now live at /meiux-meiux, with Mall World under it, and the old addresses send you there. The homepage is now about other people's games.

The numbers

A background like this is easy to get wrong, because pretty layers can make a page slow. Google's Lighthouse tool was pointed at the homepage three times on a simulated phone and three times on desktop, before and after the change, and the middle result of each set is below.

The main picture now shows up more than a second sooner on phones and three seconds sooner on desktop. The hero sky loads first on phones, and the background art waits until the rest of the page has loaded. Best Practices reached 100 because the homepage had been asking for a stats address that did not exist, which logged an error on every visit. That is fixed.

The phone Performance score did go down, by four points. The phone spends more time drawing the page now, and the layered background is the likely reason. We have not profiled it yet, so take that as our best guess, not a finding. Desktop scores also swing from run to run, between 85 and 97 this time, depending on which news picture the carousel lands on.

Also new since the move

Gaming World has a Discord server, with rooms for talking about games, a desk for writers, a lounge for studios and channels that fill up as pieces go live. Reviews and previews also have RSS feeds now. Our editor has moderator tools for the server, from timeouts to bans, in the site's staff area, and staff can pick which alerts they get by email.

Previews and reviews with a Steam store link now offer "Open in Steam app" beside it, and links shared in Steam chat show a proper preview card. On a Steam Deck the header menus work with the arrow keys, and selected buttons show a clear outline.

Shared reviews now use a real screenshot when the main image is too small. Previews no longer pick up other games' pictures from the "more games" tiles on portal pages. Columnists can file straight into their own column from the desk, and staff have an image tool in the editors whose pictures always carry an "AI illustration" credit.

What is next

Accessibility is stuck at 93 for reasons outside this change. The review score badges put white text on yellow, which is too hard to read, and some genre chips and author pictures are smaller than a finger should have to hit. Those are next. The biggest speed problem is still full-size screenshots squeezed into small cards, so smaller copies of every picture come after that.

Further down the list:

Every change is listed on the changelog. If something looks broken, tell us on Discord with your device and theme.

Sources

Image: Gaming World

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