Gaming sites have a wide variety of purposes, which isn’t surprising given how diverse the industry has gotten over the years. Look into any game’s fan communities online. You can see people engaged in discussion over visuals, design, and even just other popular streamers that have played the game. Esports have also further extended the ways in which people engage with video games as a competitive platform, and the introduction of some video games into museums as examples of an emergent and interactive art form.
To even make a site related to video games thus requires a clear goal in mind lest you end up paying for plugins and functions that may not even be relevant to what you’re trying to do. Here, we have curated the 15 best WordPress themes for your gaming needs. If you want WordPress themes to set up a gaming community, for example, Blackfyre is a great one to look into. For a game you’re trying to market and develop as a game studio, Entropia and Eldritch have solid designs that can match certain visual identities for certain games. However, if you want to do an esports site, then something like Overlord that contains team matching features will be required. As you read through this article, it’s good to take stock of what you want your gaming site to be about so that you can make sure that the theme you pick out suits your needs to a T.
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1. Oblivion – The Ultimate Multi-Purpose Gaming Theme
Oblivion is an incredibly versatile WordPress theme capable of catering to a large variety of needs related to gaming.
It has a great variety of page layouts and plugins that can be mixed and matched easily using Visual Composer’s drag-and-drop features. Colours and backgrounds on the theme can also be switched out fairly simply, allowing you to adapt the site as you wish. If you’re building a site around a specific game (either to discuss it or as a marketing platform for a game you’re developing), this feature would likely be something that’d be very useful to you. The variety of pages also allow you to add plenty of additional functions to your site. If you’re a game developer, the Team and Portfolio pages might be useful for you to showcase your studio’s members and past work you’ve done. If you specialise in gaming merchandise such as gaming accessories, the shop and blog pages will definitely be a boon. Indie developers looking to release alpha versions of their games will also find the Forum page useful for gathering feedback from players too.
And on top of specialised pages, Oblivion makes using them so much easier with its premium plugins. The Isotope Gallery plugin ensures that you don’t need to manually curate your image galleries; simply upload and the plugin arranges them itself. The bbPress and BuddyPress plugins, which specialise in managing robust forums for interaction with a community, is compatible and can thus be useful to managing a community dedicated to discussing video games. WooCommerce comes built in to this theme as well! You can start up a storefront without worrying over the coding and managing of sales as the plugin streamlines this process easily. So if you want an adaptive WordPress theme for a gaming site that can handle a variety of pages for plenty of different uses, Oblivion is definitely the theme for you.
2. Respawn – Esports Gaming WordPress Theme
An incredibly stylish theme featuring beautiful animation and layouts, Respawn is great for starting up an esports gaming website.
This WordPress Theme is particularly tailored for an esports site. Pages for esports teams, matches (with score tracking for competitions), streams and even esports player feature articles are all prebuilt and made available through Respawn. Respawn also has plenty of blocks with video and slider shortcodes that can be used to switch up the layout of the pages too.
Respawn can be very quickly integrated into your WordPress site. Pick out the demo best suited to your goals and utilise the one click install feature. Its compatibility with Elementor also means that such edits can be easily made with a visual editor with an intuitive and easy to learn drag-and-drop feature. You won’t have to worry about the formatting of your site too, as the theme is fully responsive and formats itself for every device that can access your site.
And if you’re planning to start up a storefront selling merch of your esports team, WooCommerce is there to cover your needs. The plugin ensures that building an online store on the site is more manageable regardless of whether you’re selling physical merch or even virtual items.
3. Game Addict – Clan War Gaming Theme
Whether you’re running competitive matches for multiplayer games or keeping the community updated on them, GameAddict is the theme for you.
This WordPress theme comes with all the pages and functionalities we’ve come to expect with any website. However, its developers took it one step further and even designed a Clan Wars system capable of cataloguing players and team names and setting matches between them. A scoring system even shows the results of each match. Of course, where’s the fun in just watching two teams duke it out on the virtual battlefield? The BBPress plugin packaged with the theme also sets up forum pages for users to discuss and speculate about the competition as they become more invested in watching their favourite teams ascend the ranks.
Style and design is also important in this theme. Plugins like the Isotope gallery (packaged for free without having to pay for the individual plugin at $14) and blocks like the OWL Carousel and the stylish Parallax and Video blocks with shortcode that you don’t need to worry about slogging through to code yourself all come for free in Game Addict. The site even allows for uploading your own background images (useful for special competitive events) and animated images and icons. And don’t worry about whether the site can handle this much on other platforms, as this WordPress theme ensures that it automatically formats itself for any device or browser it might be loaded on. With Visual Composer and WooCommerce support recently added as well, you can branch out and even turn the Clan Wars integrated in the site into a business as well. Stoke rivalries and embolden clan pride with merchandise like t-shirts and mugs with the seamless drag-and-drop editor to build storefronts full of items for sale. So why not give Game Addict a try and build a platform for the most competitive players?
4. SquadForce – eSports Gaming WordPress Theme (formerly Good Games)
If video game journalism is more your speed, Good Games has a sleek design made for handling written articles and plenty of unique shortcodes.
Checking out this WordPress Theme’s demo shows that it has well designed shortcodes capable of handling and displaying recent blog posts and even news articles. Even esports competition scorings and outcomes have a special tab in which you can key in scores, team names and match timings. And if you’re planning to cover a mutltitude of game genres with review articles and speculative think pieces, the site offers tagging options to split them into genres like Action and Adventure, for example. You could even step it up a notch and utilise the Twitter feed and Instagram feed shortcodes for micro-news updates that work better on social media sites compared to your own site. This way you could even improve your outreach beyond just banking on SEO.
The developers have also added functions like mobile navigation being done through swiping on the screen, showcasing their consideration for mobile users as well by adding this on to their responsive site design. Plugins such as MailChimp even boost outreach to readers by encouraging them to sign on to your site’s newsletter so they can get updates in their emails as well.
5. Pandemic – Esports Gaming WordPress Theme
Pandemic is a visually unique theme that’s a good fit for an esports team’s home site.
From its logo harkening to a competitive team logo to its various pages built to feature news, member bios and matches involving esports teams, this WordPress theme is very obviously built for esports teams and their communities. Its default dark and neon green theme is sleek, and the animations as you scroll down the demo that bring out various blocks like match results and future matches really suits gamer aesthetics and introduces a sense of interactivity to the page. Of course, you can also pick other equally well-designed demos if you require a different layout through the fast and easy one click install. And should you decide that none of these don’t quite fit all that well, you can move elements around using the Elementor web page builder to drag out unnecessary blocks and drop in whatever else you need.
For example, if you want to integrate more parallax elements or video blocks, just drag them in! Looking to build a forum for dedicated fans of the team? The bbPress plugin can set up forums that you can very quickly pick up and use to manage these spaces. And with WooCommerce support, utilise the simple Elementor plugin to quickly build a storefront for whatever team merchandise you want to market then get down to WooCommerce’s easy interface and sort out pricing without worrying too much about the difficult coding work in making your own forms and shopping cart.
6. Overworld – eSports and Gaming Theme
Overworld is a great theme for covering esports for a variety of competitive games, but the variety in its provided demos offer much more than just that.
The Overworld theme has all the bells and whistles you’d expect of any esports theme. Pages for tournaments and countdowns to events are all robust and honestly come with a great design with stylish fonts to use that come packed with the WordPress theme. However, while all its graphics and pages in the demo appear skewed towards the competitive theme, it would be a shame for it to be used for such a limited scope. Distinct and goodlooking pages are useful to other gaming sites as well, such as the launch platform for a game or even a community site for other video games. Overworld enables you to upload images that could be either from an esports teams or shots from the video game you’re looking to pitch and market through this site. Want to feature gameplay and character art? The carousel and video button shortcodes can definitely be helpful. If you’re an indie developer launching updates through Patreon or other sites with rewards systems but aren’t satisfied with the cut they take out of your audience’s payments, you can even use the WooCommerce functionalities in the theme to handle those functions on your own so that you get a full cut of the profits as well.
Plus, the theme even comes with the premium and very adaptable WPBakery Page Builder that interfaces with WordPress themes and really brings up the amount of customisability that themes can offer; all in a visual editor that is simple to master! Even if you want to just use the site for an esports team, getting this theme definitely opens up many more options should you want to extend the possibilities available through your site.
7. Youplay – Gaming WordPress Theme
A clean and flexible theme, Youplay can be used for a variety of gaming sites from communities, clans, gaming news, stores and more!
Where other themes have focused on design and visual layouts that cater to the average gamer’s tastes, Youplay may seem slightly watered down in comparison. It is smooth, and its demo is fairly simple and pleasing to browse through. This plays to its favour, as this makes it more capable of being changed and adapted to a multitude of ways. The WordPress theme even boasts a whopping 230 theme options, showing just how much the developers could do with it and suggesting that more can be done with the theme. With trendy features like parallax effects and skewed carousels provided amongst its many shortcodes and full freedom to upload new background images and change the theme’s colours, you can shape the site in any way that you want.
Its versatility doesn’t just lay within the visual design of the WordPress theme, but also inside its various plugins offered alongside what is already a very sizeable amount of content. BuddyPress and bbPress work in tandem to offer you the option to build a community on the site for people to discuss and share their passion for gaming; be it for design, play or competition. WooCommerce allows you to sell anything, be it demos for a game that you’ve made, merchandise or even virtual things like video game artbooks. Youplay’s simplicity also ensures that the site still looks good when loaded on other browsers and devices so you can cater to both the desktop and mobile crowds.
8. Arcane – The Gaming Community Theme
If you want to feature a lot of visual media on any gaming related site, Arcane is a cool theme that manages to look simple and visually distinct at the same time.
Its easy-to-read layout and clean user interface all come together to make a theme that really screams ‘gaming site’ with all its elements being reminiscent of a video game’s UI. Visually, this is the kind of WordPress theme you’d definitely want to use for an audience of gamers. All of its demos are even consistent with this aesthetic, and can be seamlessly installed with the one-click install system. What’s even better is that the various demos are all designed for any gaming related site, be it gaming news and blogging, game studios and portfolios, team and player features for esports and even community gaming sites. Each and every single one of them are even freely customisable with the very user-friendly Elementor page builder and its visual editor and drag-and-drop capabilities.
This WordPress theme’s ability to integrate visual elements, however, is its best feature. The demos show off how sites that run Arcane don’t just feature images in a well designed manner, but can even integrate animated images or even videos and icons without any strain. Parallax blocks and the interactive animations on the site’s elements that slide text into the screen as you scroll down add to a visually engaging and pleasing experience as a visitor goes down the page. Arcane’s developers definitely show that they understand the audiences that game site designers are looking to appeal to, given the key importance of visual mediums that games feature. So if you want to have a site that draws gamers in, Arcane is the right way to go.
9. Gamix – eSports & Gaming HTML5 Template
Gamix is a stylish and simple theme with additional functionality for all your mobile game site needs.
While having less layouts and not offering much in the way of plugins, this WordPress theme’s simplicity is a lot less intimidating to work with for those new to building webpages. Its W3C validated HTML and CSS means that it has some of the most updated coding currently on themeforest. The 4 modest landing page layouts are clean and easy to look through, relying mostly on a small set of visual media and solid animations to catch viewers’ eyes. This simplicity also leads to the site being very easy to load given the lack of coding that devices will need to run; meaning that your visitors won’t have to worry about lagging and stuttering that might spoil their experience on your page. The demos also show off updates from other pages on the site like a products and article carousel that show off the most recent pieces you’ve written and new merchandise as well.
If you’re new to building a site, this WordPress theme really makes the experience as smooth as possible by cutting out complicated features that can be learnt and integrated later through additional plugins and shortcodes as you accrue experience. The responsiveness of the theme’s layout to different devices also means less fussing over formatting for phones and tablets. All in all, Gamiz is a fairly affordable theme for anyone looking to get started on building a game site from scratch!
10. PlayerX – A High-powered Theme for Gaming and eSports
From game studios to esports teams, PlayerX is a robust and elaborate theme catered to whatever game project you want to showcase.
This WordPress theme boasts a multitude of demos and layouts to utilise for any gaming project. If you’re a studio that develops mobile games and apps, there’s a demo that not only allows you to put your games on a carousel to display but also link to their pages on the Apple AppStore or the Google Play store. A separate Portfolio Carousel can also allow you to compile links to individual pages for you to go into further detail on creative projects you’ve embarked on. For competitive games, you can link to live streams of tournaments and matches and even catalogue upcoming events and indicate the esports teams involved by displaying their icons in a very sleek interface. Every format has varying degrees to which they feature visual media like images and videos in galleries and carousels as opposed to text. That way, if you want to build a news or blogging section the theme can definitely support you in that task.
The pre-fabricated pages are all made possible by the incredibly diverse range of shortcodes that the theme contains. Pages can be divided into rows with varying numbers of columns, opening different ways to arrange the page. Images and product listings may be presented in sliders, galleries or masonry layouts. And for ease of navigation, shortcodes that help visitors look up pages on your site include matching shortcodes that help them get to your content faster. PlayerX boasts a great balance of aesthetic and functionality while still being customisable to the needs of your game site.
11. Plaxer – Gaming and eSports WordPress
Plaxer is a wonderfully made game theme designed to support all things related to games and entertainment.
7 home page layouts and 3 flexible menus are just some of the things you’ll be getting out of this WordPress Theme; all of which can be downloaded into your site with only one click. Gaming merchandise, Gaming Streams and game journalism are just a few of the topics the demos have been made for. The smooth animated elements also add some creative and aesthetic flair that really draws the eye and appeals to the aesthetic senses of anyone who’s a fan of games. Images and videos are also cleanly arranged in galleries that you can have arranged in grids or more stylish masonry arrangement.
Should you want to focus more on text-based content, you could choose between 2 Blog layouts as well. And even if the available layouts aren’t quite to your liking, feel free to edit it with the built in visual editor, or even the cleanly coded HTML5 and CSS3 code if you really want to get into the guts of the theme.
Furthermore, this WordPress theme comes with the premium Contact Form 7 and WooCommerce plugins. The former allows you to receive feedback, queries and even contact information of any clients and visitors that come to the site. This makes it highly complementary to WooCommerce which assists in setting up online ecommerce pages for you to sell both digital and physical wares. Thus, Plaxer offers both a beautifully made theme alongside great functionality.
12. Eldritch – Epic Theme for Gaming and eSports
Of all the themes here, Eldritch takes one of the most interesting directions in its aesthetic.
Its demos feature fantastical imagery with serif fonts, suggesting that they’ve developed the theme more for fantasy and RPG style games through its use of more classic fonts. Even then, the 800 fonts the theme is packed with offer you the choice to change the aesthetic up, though full screen background images and large blocks for other photos also allows you to introduce whatever more suitable images you’d like to have uploaded. Aside from that, the UI is clean and simple, leading to less visual clutter that makes the viewing experience pleasant. If you’re making a site that relies heavily on visuals like a game portfolio, project showcase or even a game developer studio, Eldritch can definitely do your work justice as you can see from how its demos can manage loading high definition and pixel perfect images.
The inner pages, blog and forum capabilities are also an added bonus. All the layouts are just as beautiful as the rest of the theme, and integrate well with the packaged bbPress plugin for any community building purposes you might have planned for the site. If you want to run a business as well, WooCommerce and Contact Form 7 are compatible and work well with the social icon widget that the designers have included in this WordPress Theme. So if you want a theme custom built for a fantasy RPG aesthetic as well as offering a great abundance of additional features, Eldritch is a good fit for that.
13. MonsterPlay – eSports and Gaming HTML Template
If you want to build a more focused site, MonsterPlay is a rather simple theme with a minimalistic look that is beginner-friendly.
This WordPress theme contains 4 demos that can be easily downloaded and edited and 20 premade components that may be appended to the site at your discretion. Additional pages for forums, eSports and social networking are also packaged into the theme, offering a fair deal of additional functions that the site may serve. Plus, additional shortcodes for AJAX contact forms, Instagram and Twitter feeds and even parallax and animation all extend the customisability of your site with this theme.
You won’t have to worry too much about coding if you happen to be a newcomer to website design. In fact, you may not even need to touch any code at all with the Bootstrap page builder that the theme is built upon. Simply drag-and-drop whatever features you need, or even re arrange the available demos and page layouts. Furthermore, you can sit easy knowing that the theme’s developers have done the work necessary to ensure that any changes you make to the theme are reflected on mobile devices as well given the responsive coding built into the theme. Sure, there isn’t quite as much additional functions provided like bbPress plugins and WooCommerce shortcode, but that allows you to focus on the basic site building aspects before moving on to learn different plugins to extend your site’s functions.
14. Entropia – Gaming and eSports Theme
With cyberpunk and sci-fi being among the more popular genres in recent years, Entropia’s design and look is in-vogue with the aesthetic interests of modern gamers.
Ideal for hosting high-definition images and video previews of games, this WordPress Theme shows off a great sense of style without compromising on functionality. The variety of shortcodes for sliders, galleries and even video streaming means you can trust the theme to handle whatever media you want to showcase like game projects or concept art to draw audiences in. The layouts largely prioritise images, which works great in drawing in players looking for the next visual experience that your project can offer them. It even comes packaged with the premiium plugin Slider Revolution that you can use to produce smooth image carousels.
With 7 demos available to look through alongside its multiuse inner pages, you have a great range of choices for how you want to present your site. Shortcodes included even help for compiling portfolio texts and image galleries, and help to organise page elements in line with the overall theme and look of the site. Plus, WooCommerce and Contact Form 7 plugin compatibility coded into Entropia allows you to utilise the pre-built storefront for any business you might want to run selling merchandise and such for your game or even esports team. As with most of the themes here, this one is also highly responsive, which makes it ideal for any projects you might also be marketing on mobile social media platforms as such users can simply click on the link on their phone and view your site there. So try out Entropia and get ahead of the curve with its cyberpunk and techno styling.
15. Blackfyre – Create Your Own Gaming Community
Blackfyre is a great site if your key focus is building a community to discuss all things related to video games.
The demo presented is styled after a typical gaming forum site, with the option for the designer to upload a specialised background image. User pages and clan and guild generation are some features that the theme offers, which coupled with front-end forums for discussion of various gaming topics all come together to generate a platform for users of shared interests to get together. Said clan pages may even be customised to really establish their identities and encourage a sense of engagement within the site’s community. The full administrator control allotted through WordPress itself also means that you can easily manage and moderate the site; an important thing to do when ensuring that the community you end up cultivating is kept inclusive and civil. All this is made possible through the bbPress and BuddyPress plugin already to go as part of the theme.
This WordPress theme can be very easily integrated into your site through a one-click install, and may even by edited given the block system that allows for changing and shifting of page elements. The WpBakery and Bootstrap page builders can also easily edit the theme if you happen to have them, same does with WooCommerce being compatible with Blackfyre should you want to consider developing merchandise for guilds that start to accrue a strong enough identity and history on your site; thereby strengthening their sense of community through physical merchandise.
In Conclusion
We hope this list has helped you to consider and understand the kind of functions that web designers have developed in response to the needs of game enthusiasts online. While there’s plenty of business to be made in the industry, a vast majority of these designers have ensured that each and every one of their themes all have a means of building communities on their sites or at least a means of interacting with visitors through contact forms and the like. Additionally, good visuals are a definite must as they establish a sense of personality either for a game or even for esports teams. With video games being a largely visual medium, their players are also going to focus on how nice your site looks, so a theme that caters to your audience’s interests will definitely play to your favour; think Eldritch’s fantasy appearance and PlayerX and Entropia’s sci-fi inspired imagery.
Thus, it would be unfair to claim which of these are the best suited to all gaming purposes as your needs may vary. The most salient things to look out for is the visual appearance of the site and how useful the features are to your project. As long as the theme hits those marks, you’re sure to have a good base to work from!
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