ultimategamerrific0123@123fakemail.com?

We've finally integrated the intro we've made for Titan Strike and the result is satisfactory. Since satisfactory to us is nothing short of bad ass then please don't expect anything less. We've integrated a splash screen for the site. Creating the splash screen brought us to a crossroad of whether we should have users sign in to access the system or let the public preview the system. We've opted to only allow registered users to view the entire system. The exception to this is if you receive a photo album or photo link, then you'll be taken to a link displaying the album.

Although the splash screen creates a barrier to the public, they need only register. We decided on this barrier for a few reasons, the most important being security. I've been participating in a Meetup - Los Angeles User Experience message board discussing whether to fore users to sign up before accessing the system and the general consensus has been to do two things:

1)force users to sign in
2)have users validate emails.

Firstly, forcing users to sign in reduces the chances of bots mining information, spam, bots causing needless stress on servers.

The latter may seem obvious but with the flurry of social networks available to users it seems that some networks are changing their rationale to make it faster/easier for a user to access the guts of a system without considering the effects on the other users. This debate isn't new, nor will it be my claim to fame theory but I've been humbled by the effects, first hand, of removing valid emails to create an account. One receives junk information in your database by removing this simple step. On another social gaming network I removed the need to confirm email, the result (as expected) was fake emails, bots just killing our mail server. The confirm a valid email will be reverted back to the confirm an email step in the very near future. This is a testament to not cut corners - from the user experience process to the development team's pipeline.

My final, shameless promotional point is that when you visit Titan Strike, do sign up with a valid email otherwise you won't see the gold-threaded networking modules we've been tirelessly creating. See you inside.