PLAYME – Video Games News WordPress Theme

The news moves on and the game page stays

You publish an announcement, a release date, a trailer. The next day another story pushes it down the home page, and all that work ends up buried in the blog archive. Meanwhile, people searching for that title still want the same things: what it is about, which platform it comes to, who develops it and whether it is worth it.

On a video game site, the game database is what builds value, and the news should feed it. Each article can add to a stable page instead of competing with yesterday's.

PLAYME, by RamsThemes, starts from that structure. It is a WordPress theme for game news portals, review sites and gaming blogs, with a dedicated content type for games, an IGDB connection and a built-in review system.

One page per game, created from IGDB

From the WordPress dashboard you search for the title on IGDB, select the result and save the post. On save, the theme imports game information, artwork, screenshots, release data, ratings and metadata.

• Game page: brings together metadata, screenshots, reviews, trailers, related games and connected taxonomies.
• Dedicated taxonomies: Developer, Genre, Platform and Collection.
• Two-way links: related content stays connected from both pages.

The slugs of content types and taxonomies can be changed; after that, permalinks must be refreshed in the WordPress settings.

Reviews, accounts and search with no added plugins

Several features that used to need a separate plugin now come inside the theme:

• Reviews: a native system with custom and editor scores. The scale can be shown out of 10 or out of 5.
• Accounts: its own registration and login, profiles, a settings page and My Reviews and My Comments tabs.
• Wishlist: part of the theme's core.
• Live AJAX search: covers games, reviews, posts and the taxonomies you choose, with configurable result limits, thumbnails and caching.
• Dark mode: remembers the visitor's preference and can follow the operating system's setting.
• Filters: a facet widget for building filter sidebars.

It also brings home page templates, home modules, RTL mode and compatibility with WPML and Loco Translate for translating the site.

An editorial portal, with no game store

PLAYME is aimed at portals, databases and review sites. Its features do not include selling games or keys: within the same family, the WooCommerce store belongs to another theme, FLUX.

The import uses the IGDB API, an external service. It is worth testing it with a few titles before planning the whole catalog around it.

Installing PLAYME and publishing the first game

The theme is built on Bootstrap and powered by Advanced Custom Fields Pro. You need WordPress and basic knowledge: creating posts, uploading images and installing plugins. The contact page uses Contact Form 7.

1. Unzip the package and find playmewp.zip and playmewp-child.zip.
2. Upload and activate the parent theme first from Appearance, Themes. The child theme is optional and meant for code changes.
3. Create the menu and place it with a Navigation Menu widget in the Sidenav sidebar.
4. Search for a game on IGDB from the dashboard and save the post.
5. Choose on the home page which posts or taxonomies each module shows. With the Blocks option you can drag content to order it.

Neighboring themes and the piece behind PLAYME

If your site reviews much more than games, Revieweb supports rating by one or several criteria on posts, services, products and hosting, and works with Elementor. Plaxer is another option in the catalog, a gaming and esports theme.

And if you need the piece PLAYME relies on, Advanced Custom Fields Pro is in the catalog too.

Importing games and choosing an editor

Do I have to type each game's data by hand?

Not what comes from IGDB: you search for the title, select it and on save the data, images and screenshots are imported. Your text and your review remain editorial work.

Does it work with the block editor?

Its content types are compatible with Gutenberg, and there is Classic Editor support too.