We are Oscar Mike

Those of you who visit TSA regularly and take an interest in what we do might have noticed the little box way down there on the right hand side. It highlights the rest of our network of sites, and I hope to explain a little about that network now as well as what it might mean for TSA.

As most of our regular readers are aware, TheSixthAxis has grown to become one of the largest independent gaming sites on the internet. We’re immeasurably proud of that, especially as it has all been done with a volunteer staff and an extremely limited (read: non-existent) budget. We continue to add new features as well as supporting more and more community interaction via the hard work of our community team. This past week, based on readers’ feedback we have implemented two new usability features. The “Recent” drop down list in the top bar displays a list of our most recent news and features in the order they’ve been posted, and the new “Blog Format” link in the left hand menu shows a single column blog-style list of stories.

As of this past week, TheSixthAxis has been acquired by Oscar Mike Media. Alex (nofi) retains the rights to his copyrighted material but he no longer owns or operates TheSixthAxis. Fortunately, for everyone involved with the site, Alex is staying on with Oscar Mike Media to code, consult and perform the bulk of the public relations work. It is not an overstatement to say that without him TheSixthAxis would not exist. Since he and Michael founded the site, it has been Alex’s steadfast determination, intelligent analysis and subtle charm that has spurred us all on to build this place as big and as great as it is today. It is also fully acknowledged that without his continued support, knowledge and expertise, future growth would be that much more difficult.

We have recently been able to secure some advertising deals to fill what limited advertising space we do offer on the site (we keep that to a minimum so as not to spoil your viewing pleasure so we appreciate it if you add us to your safe zone in any ad-blocking software you run). That has given us a little more cash to play with. Not enough to actually make a difference if we shared it out among all of our staff, and not enough to pay a single salary to one person to manage the site either.

So, as I saw it, our options for this extra revenue were to spend it on Jammie Dodgers (I voted this way but Alex put his foot down and said no) or to try to take what little income we have now and turn it into a more significant income in the future with the eventual aim of taking on staff and paying our contributors what they deserve to be paid. This is what Oscar Mike Media is about. The aim of that company is to aggressively pursue advertisers and secure further outlets for the talent on staff here at TheSixthAxis.

With that in mind, the Oscar Mike Network was set up and is now responsible for the management of TheSixthAxis. We have quietly launched two new sites as well as sheltering TSA’s sister site, AppTilt. We’re taking things slowly right now, but hopefully the stream of content going up on our new sites will eventually rival TheSixthAxis and we’ll add even more sites to our network and even more subjects to our growing roster of outlets, all offering a similar approach to content delivery that you, as readers of TheSixthAxis, will be comfortable and familiar with.

The new sites are:

HalftoneHero, a blog about comic books which is being co-managed by Kris Lipscombe (you might know him as Raen) and myself. We will be reviewing comic books regularly but also adding some features and talking a bit about comics and comic book culture.

ScreenDemon is a site where we review movies, television and we’ll talk about the occasional internet oddity. Basically, anything that appears on a screen is fair game. ScreenDemon’s chief contributor right now is Lewis Gaston (you will know him as Gastos84) but there will be some more familiar names popping up from time to time (some joker called nofi posted his first review there this week, for example).

Of course, don’t forget AppTilt, a site that reviews iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad games and applications which has published reviews by a number of TSA’s staffers as well as featuring a few great contributions from Brendan Callaghan (who you all know as TSA community stalwart and all-round decent bloke, BrendanCalls).

But what does this mean for the future of TheSixthAxis? Well, hopefully it means that we’re broadening our scope, widening our horizons and all of those other well-worn buzz-phrases. Essentially, nothing much will change on TheSixthAxis. It is still our priority and it will still be publishing the great mix of news, reviews and opinion on all things to do with the gaming universe.

We hope that, in the future, the added traffic that we can attract to the network of sites will encourage more advertisers to look at us when they’ve got their chequebooks out. This will lead to an increase in things like competition prizes (in which you will hopefully have already noticed an increase) but it will also give us some income to provide travel expenses to our staff (possibly even to trade shows like E3, Gamescom and TGS) and buy hardware for the company so we can continue to review games as they come out on new hardware.

The ultimate goal is make the Oscar Mike Network profitable to the point where we can afford to pay full-time salaries in key areas that will make Oscar Mike Media – and the sites we operate – more secure and capable of offering more coverage in new and existing ways for your entertainment.

Don’t worry though; we love TheSixthAxis just as much as you do. We don’t want it to change either and we will always keep that in the forefront of everything we are trying to achieve. We won’t forget how we got to where we are today, even as we grow and expand to new heights.

Thank you for sticking with us this long and thank you for your anticipated support with what we’re trying to do for the future. Our future.