Well, it's a rare appearance of the GameSetWatch spaceman guy (designed by Mira Han, yay), so that must mean it's time for a little rumination on the history of the site, and a question on where you'd like to see it go next.

Firstly, I'm not sure if everyone has been reading for long enough to realize this, but GSW has been through quite a major series of shifts over the past three years or so (yes, we've been running since 2005).

Here's a potted history, with links to weekly archives to give you a good idea along the way:

- Early Prehistory (January 2006)
We started things off with more of a group feel and eclectic, six+ posts a day styling. In fact, our initial group bloggers theoretically included Michael McWhertor (nowadays at Kotaku, of course), Brandon Boyer (who just started the BoingBoing-affiliated Offworld, which early GSW vaguely resembles, only with less Greenblat), and Wonderland's delightful Alice Taylor. It evolved into a solo effort (with a few exceptions) over time, though.

- The Mid-Period Evolution (April 2007)
Halfway between the oldschool and the new school, GSW in mid-2007 had quite a few link-style posts. It was still clocking in at about five posts a day, some on eclectic subjects, but now had a regular-ish GameSetLinks link round-up. It was also starting to increase longer-form columns from folks like Slashdot/Massively's Michael Zenke, the indefatigable John '@Play' Harris, and quite a few more besides. It was a transition time...

- The Here And Now (November 2008)
Well, now we're at three posts per day, with the daily GameSetLinks round-ups picking up some of the more thoughtful writing online. The other posts alternate between GSW-exclusive columns (generally design analysis/critiques, like 'The Interactive Palette', or more personal perspectives, like 'Chewing Pixels'), and there are more crossposts from sister sites - particularly longform writing from Gamasutra that we think might get lost, but also link round-ups from sister sites like FingerGaming and IndieGames.

So that explains where we were, and where we are.

In a lot of ways, today's GameSetWatch is an 'unblog'. Which is to say - instead of lots of tiny, pithy posts, we hit you with three big chunks of text every day. I guess this is a little bizarre - and in our regularity in doing so, we're practically recidivist.

Of course, the site's current structure is partly a reaction to the site itself being a sideproject to our regular dayjobs running Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra, and helping with GDC, so there you go.

But I'd like this to be a call for ideas, and feedback. What bits of GSW do you dig now - which columns, whose writing, what particular features? What would you like to see more of, and what would you like to see less of? What are we doing that's important and enjoyable, and what are we doing that's tedious or less than necessary?

[Feedback to editors at gamesetwatch dot com welcome, of course, but the blog comments are the best way to get discussion going.]