I really like it. Can't fault it. I see references to the film 'Metropolis' which is a nice touch.

Thanks chamferface! You don't think it looks too austere for a game site?

No, not at all

I'm sorry, but I was really fooled with your site. I really thought it was a site for an architectural company or town center, in which case it would have been perfect.

The good thing is, it is clean and visitor-friendly. Overall I felt comfortable in your site and I wanted to stick around. Its impressive.

However the look needs to be fixed, because it made me guess what the site was about. Your audience should be able to figure out what type of website they're on right away, unless there's a real good reason for them to guess.
Get more inside the head of the audience you are trying to attract. In my opinion the header says game design more so than the body. I dunno, maybe try pulling those dark colors tastefully into the body as well. Tinker with it.

Learn from your competition. http://simcitysocieties.ea.com/index.php
Notice what attracts you right off the bat when you go to their site. You don't have to copy them exactly, just observe. One thing that lets me know its a game site is their emphasis on their images. Your site might do well with more things like.

I hope this helps. Otherwise, its an impressive professional-looking website. Just need it to attract the right people.

Thanks Markasin, I think you might be right on the money... I was pretty happy with the design at first, but after looking at it for a couple weeks I started to think something just wasn't sitting right with me; It looks nice, it just doesn't really say "game".

So, I decided to make a new graphic for the header to see if that helped; but once I finished it I thought that a brighter header demanded a little more color on the main page; but that didn't work so well with the current theme, so I thought I may as well see how it looked with a different one... and before I knew it I'd basically redesigned it Here's version 2 (haven't changed the live site yet, I'm going to give myself some time to let it sink in):

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y225/jnbixler/metropolis_test.png

(I forgot, is there a max size for embedding images in the post?)

I'm actually a lot happier with this version, but maybe I'm just suffering from New Design Overenthusiasm What does everyone think?