I personally would really like to see it added to this site. It could just be like a sub category or a tab on the side like everything else. Wouldn't really make a difference having highscores honestly imo.
Personally I have little to no interest in high scores. I won't be grinding for points. Points in a lot of games is meaningless anyway in most games I like. This seems more like a preservation effort more than anything. It would be cool to watch for some games like shooters or in certain modes of some games I suppose. Like the old Ninja Gaiden Black Challenges.
I care not for whatever option you decide to go. As long as it does not cause unnecessary clutter.
"Points in a lot of games is meaningless anyway" To be fair, you could say the same about how fast you can complete a game. The time that you finish a game in is meaningless anyway.
Speaking from a personal view point, I run Surf's Up and while the game isn't popular it potentially could be more interesting to new players if there was like a highscore il leader board since the actual tracks take roughly the same amount of time each run and going for the highscore in particular levels could bring some more rewarding and easier to get into gameplay. Especially for older games like arcade stuff it would be really nice to see here.
But recording High scores using time is sub-optimal and quite confusing
Honestly, to avoid losing too much money I think you should do option 4. It seems like the simpler option and although I know creating a site takes time. And for a name, forgive me if this is stupid but the only name I can think of is HighGamingRecords dot com. But I do think adding high scores to something like speedrun.com would make the both communities a lot more popular
Id love getting HighScore.com, it just seems so much more official.
I like option 1 & 3, but what if you could use the domain “highscores.com” (with a “s” at the end), “highscore.net” (instead of .com), or “highscores.net” (with a “s”at the end and with .net instead of .com).
Edit: Sorry, I didn’t read your post about having the “s” at the end. Never mind then.
I much prefer option 4. I've always thought having highscores tracked on 'speedrun.com' was kinda silly as highscoring and speedrunning are completely different beasts and in many instances are the antithesis of each other. A sister site appropriately named with same interface and accounts etc would be cool though.
I actually used highscore.com at some point but it does indeed have few flaws and it is slightly dead. It's a shame because I like some of the more active players in there. I'd personally pick 3, but I since I only read OP, I might have missed the price of that domain. If it's super high, it may be just better to get a new domain which few good ones are mentioned above this post.
There's one thing though. If this new high score website is going to be anything similar to speedrun.com, it would be amazing to use the same account that you use on speedrun.com to avoid terrible confusion.
It's called speedrun.com for a reason. Not "slow as fuck trying to get a slightly higher number than someone else".com
I stand by my opinion that we should rebrand to runs.com and accomodate all runs, be it diarrhoea, speed or score.