Sam “QforQ” Houston

Today I voted for my first time in a presidential election and today the United States of America elected our first African America president, Barack Obama.  I just got done watching his amazing acceptance speech and I am so happy right now.

Congrats America.  We did it!

Yes we did

Like the title alludes to, this week has been exciting..but really the past two weeks have been good for me.  Since a decent amount of stuff happened I’m just going to dive in, so hold on!

First off, I’m very excited and happy to announce that I’ve been promoted to Community Manager at gamerDNA.  It was official last week but I wanted to sit on it first before I announced it on my blog.  I’m very stoked to be in this position and I’ve been told gamerDNA will be sending me to gaming events in the future to represent the company to gamers.  I’ll also be more active on forums, blogs and in game communities to help represent the company there.  In just about two weeks I’ll be at PAX giving away gamerDNA t-shirts and inviting people to our gamerDNA party so if you’re there, please let me know and you’ll get an invite and a shirt!

I’m still getting used to the job and all the new responsibilities and expectations but I’m enjoying it.  I love the challenge and it is fantastic to be able to work with two things I love to do:  working with games and working with gamers.  Over the coming months you’ll be seeing a gamerDNA podcast unveiled(finally), some more contests for the 360Voice and gamerDNA communities, as well as a TON more blog posts on the gamerDNA company blog.

This week brought the August meeting of the Boston IGDA Chapter which was sponsored by Harmonix (Guitar Hero 1&2, Rock Band, etc) and Ralph Baer, who basically created home video gaming back in the 60s, was the speaker.  Due to the awesomeness of Mr. Baer and Harmonix we had about 5 guys representing gamerDNA at the meeting.  Mr. Baer’s speech was very interesting because we gained so much insight into how little these guys had back then technologically, but all that they did with what they had.  In today’s world you could call this guy a hacker, making the craziest inventions out of what little they had, bringing the video game console to your living room.

After Mr. Baer finished his presentation Harmonix took over the stage and had the E3 preview build for Rock Band 2 for everyone to play.  Incase you don’t know…Rock Band 2 hasn’t even came out yet and it has been played by hardly anyone, so it was super awesome to be able to play the game.  Steve Sopp and I took the stage and rocked out, which

you can see here:

Steve Sopp (far left) on guitar and Sam Houston on Drums

You can also watch a slighly embarrassing video (for me) of us playing Rock Band 2, shot by the Harmonix job recruiter.

Finally, I’ve decided to join the Warhammer guild “Casualties of WAR“, ran by a few bloggers/fansite people I knew from Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.  The guild is made up of a *ton* of MMO bloggers/podcasters and industry people, so it should be a pretty awesome time.  I’m really looking forward to joining these folks in ventrilo and having a good time sacking cities and taking down some keeps.

That about wraps it up, soon I’ll be getting ready for our gamerDNA trip to PAX and I’ll be sending out invites to the gamerDNA party (with free booze!).  Stay tuned

Well I’m all moved in, I’ve got my own internet and cable setup from RCN and I’ve been enjoying my new TV.  The move itself went fine and only took a couple hours and about 3 car trips - so not bad at all.

I got pretty bored Sunday and Monday because I had no cable or internet connection but the cable installer guy finally came in the afternoon on Monday to setup my internet and cable.  This guy was a nice Boston normal guy…but obviously was just trained to do that trade and wasn’t super in to the internets or how things worked.  I was amazed when I used the acronym “ISP” and my internet service provider installer asked me “What does ‘ISP’ mean?”.  He also had no idea that Comcast screws with your internet connection and blocks certain ports (ports for torrents for example).  I don’t think he even knew what a port was.  Oh well, he was cool and hooked up my stuff and it works.  Thank you, Mr. RCN dude.

For my gaming update, I’m currently heavily addicted to my Xbox 360(especially now since I have a big HD plasma screen to enjoy it on) and playing Grand Theft Auto IV quite a bit.  I think I’m about 70% done with the storyline in the game.  I’ve also been playing a lot more Rock Band lately, mostly because we bought Rock Band for the office and the developers of the game are right across the street from us.  I went from being okay at playing songs on medium on guitar to now being able to play pretty much every song on hard.  I’ve also noticed a decent improvement in my drum skills in the game, which I’m happy about since I’ve always loved drums and used to play drums when I was a kid.  The downloadable content for Rock Band continues to be awesome and I’m currently addicted to songs from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Muse and the one Angels and Airwaves song in the game.   All the Small Things by Blink-182 is also in the game, which I bought and it’s fun to play, but the song is so overplayed to me I’d have a lot more fun if it was a song like “Always”, “Josie”,  “Dammit” or maybe “Rock Show”.  Whats my Age Again would probably be more fun that All the Small Things.

Oh well, it’s Blink and they’re my favorite band so I can’t complain too much

Current Music Addictions:  Muse, Tegan and Sara, and Spoon.

That’s about it!  Have a great rest of the week and enjoy the fast approaching weekend(already!).

Yes, that’s right I’m moving again. This time I’m only moving a couple miles down the road, rather than across the country. The new place has a bigger room and some pretty cool room mates, one that works part timem for a game development company that is making an MMO. I’m excited about the new place and I’m looking forward to living in a new area and hanging out with some new people. We’re right next to a river and a bike path so it should be a nice area to be in as the weather warms up

Work has started to pick up a bit and we’ve got some exciting things going on. This week we implemented some cool new features, like our Xfire Auto-Blogging feature which checks your Xfire account every day and creates an automatic blog entry about it. Players can later go back and add their own details to the blog entry, like your experiences, perhaps some screenshots or youtube videos, whatever you want. We’re going to be implementing the same thing for Xbox Live and World of Warcraft soon so I’m very excited to see some cool stuff on our site that we’ve been working on for awhile. We’re shooting to officially launch GamerDNA.com sometime in June so check that out and let me know what you think when we launch

This week we decided to kick it up a notch on our company blog and update it more frequently with information about new patches and features, stuff about the company or what we’re doing internally, funny little anecdotes from the office or stuff that we see on our site….all sorts of stuff.  We want to be transparent to our community and show them that we’re gamers just like they are so whether it’s an update about a cool feature, a blog post about how we’re all addicted to GTA4 and Age of Conan or whatever it may be, it’ll be up there!  We also just launched our GamerDNA Twitter which is a great way to keep up on what we’ve got going on, stuff that we’re talking about or checking out or if we’re having any uptime or killer bugs (hope not!).  Check those out and subscribe to our feeds and follow us on Twitter!

That’s about it for now.  I’ll try to update later with some stuff about this week, some of the games I’m playing and I’ll check in after the move this weekend.  Until then have a great 3 day weekend!

Today we announced that GuildCafe has changed it’s name to GamerDNA! We’re all pretty excited about our new name as it reflects our direction of the company and our focus: Giving a place for gamers to have their own personalized space that is all about their gamer history and accomplishments. Towards the end of this spring we will have a GamerDNA that resembles the future of what our platform is going to do and offer. I’m so stoked about this and can’t wait to see where we go and watch us grow as a company over the next few months.

Here’s an excerpt from the announcement:

GamerDNA Inc. announced that it completed a $3 million Series A financing led by Flybridge Capital Partners. The company, previously known as GuildCafe Entertainment Inc., will use the funds to expand product development, open new offices in Cambridge’s Central Square, and launch GamerDNA.com — a community that allows videogame players to join forces with friends, share their stories and discover what’s happening in the games they love.

For the full press release on our company blog go here.

Today Xconomy published a great interview with our CEO Jon Radoff that goes into more detail about what we’re trying to do with GamerDNA and what the future of the company will be. Check it out here.

That’s it for now. Cheers to GamerDNA!

I’m back! I’ve made a promise to myself that I’m going to keep up on blogging and I’m going to write about my feelings of different things going on in the gaming world, music, whats going on at work, etc. So, let’s get on with the updates!

I’m making some attempts at diving back into alternative media like IPTV shows and podcasts, as well as trying to use all the different Web 2.0 technologies. Over the past couple weeks I’ve started listening to podcasts much more than I used to because I’m now listening to them on my way to work and on the way back. I’ve found some excellent marketing and video gaming podcasts that I’ll make sure I add to my links on the side of the page. My current favorite IPTV (internet TV) shows are DiggNation and Cranky Geeks, though I’m checking out some of the other shows on Revision3. I really like being able to watch TV shows about stuff I’m interested in on demand through the internet. My hope is that this is the way things will go in the future and that eventually I’ll be able to watch History Channel, Discovery, Comedy Central, etc live via my internet connection via my browser.

In the Web2 department I’ve started using Twitter and I’ve added a little widget for it on the side of my blog page. Some of the guys I work with use it and really like it and use it as a way to keep up on news in the industry so I’ve decided to check it out. I’m currently using the Twitter app for Google Desktop which makes it very easy for me to Twitter whenever I want to. It kind of serves as a tiny little micro blog about what I’m doing right then or whatever I want to tell people about. I’m starting to really like it and plan to keep up with it quite often.

Tomorrow(technically today) will be our third week in the GuildCafe office in Central Square. So far I think everyone really likes the office and it’s been great to work with in an office setting. Communication is so much easier now that we’re all in the same place and we’ve had a lot of very good, important discussions about the company in these past two weeks. What we’re doing now is determining the future and direction of the company so its quite an exciting time. It’s fascinating to me to be in the company in the very beginning and watch it grow week after week.

On Wednesday we’re having our Office Warming party at GuildCafe. In conjunction with that we’ve got some big announcements to make which we’re all very excited about. Over 60 people have RSVP’d and we’ll have beer, pizza and video games for everyone to enjoy. Expect a blog post Wednesday or Thursday about the announcement

Besides that Boston has been great so far. I’ve been to the Boston Web Innovators Group meeting as well as the Boston Chapter of the IGDA (Boston Post-Mortem). Both were great networking events that I enjoyed quite a bit and I plan to go to all of their meetings in the future. I’ll talk about those more in the future as it’s late and I need to get to bed.

Looking forward to this week and make sure to check back on Thursday!

GuildCafe moves into our new office tomorrow, March 31st.  The office will be right smack dab in Central Square in Cambridge, just a stones throw from Harmonix which is the company who made Guitar Hero 1 and 2 as well as the awesomely fun Rock Band.  It’ll be my first time ever working in an office environment so it should be interesting and a lot of fun since everyone I’ve in the company has a good sense of humor and we enjoy video games.  It’s pretty cool to be able to talk about the upcoming WOW patch or what our favorite games, at work.

So far work hasn’t been too bad, though it’s starting to get a bit stressful because I need to read about two books for work and I’ve got a final exam in my Business Principles class in about two weeks.  I’m learning a lot because there is quite the learning curve jumping into a company with very experienced and professional people behind it..and you’re 20 years old.  I don’t mind it all, though, since it helps me become more knowledgeable about what we’re doing here and it’s also exciting to learn new cool and interesting stuff.

This month has been very exciting at work because we’ve almost doubled the size of our staff in just a few weeks time.  We’ve hired four new engineers along with myself (I work in Marketing) and my hope is that with this increase in staff there will be an increase in production.  There are so many cool and exciting features that we want to put in GuildCafe…just a matter of time until they get done.   Hopefully the increase from 3 engineers to 7 will help things along

I’m enjoying Boston, though it’s ridiculously expensive to live here.  I’m looking forward to using the public transportation system to get to work instead of driving every day.  Since the office is right off of the red line I’ll be able to get to work in just about 20-30 minutes, a lot quicker than the commutes I’ve had to make at my past jobs.

Overall the transition from small town Ohio to Boston is going well.  I’m excited about exploring the city and going to new places in April with my unlimited bus/subway pass and work is pretty kick ass.  Let’s hope April is even better than March and that it brings some great times to GuildCafe!

As of today, I’ve moved in to my apartment in Boston and I’m going to go to work tomorrow :)  I officially started last week and I’ve been slowly starting, getting some concepts and ideas together, as well as trying to track down some contacts. We’re supposed to be able to move in to the GuildCafe offices within a couple weeks..and they’re supposed to be the same offices that Harmonix is in..or atleast used to be in?!

Either way it’s pretty kick ass and I’m excited.

Now I just need to get a desk and chair and I’ll be like 10x happier

On Tuesday February 12th I was offered a full time job at GuildCafe and I was asked to move out to Cambridge, Massachusetts.  I’ve signed the papers and accepted the offer and I’ll be starting on March 1st, moving out there about a week later

My job title will be “Game Talent Lead”, which means I’ll be in charge of identifying community influencers in the online video game space, working with them on projects or pointing out new features, then working with them to promote GuildCafe to their sphere of influence.  I’ll also be running our radio station along with some other various things for the company.

Right now I’m looking at apartments in the Cambridge area on Craigslist and trying to line up some places I can visit while I go out to Boston next weekend to try to find a place.  It’s pretty crazy because I’ve never ever lived in a huge city.  I’ve lived in Delaware, Ohio my entire life pretty much.  This is going to be a wild adventure but I’m so freaking excited!

I’ll try to update with my progress as things pick up over the next month and beyond.  Right now I’m studying for a mid term exam I’ve got this coming week, then focusing on going out to Boston to find an apartment.  Just a week after that I start at GuildCafe!

I thought I’d use this blog entry to try and catch up with what has been happening over the past six months. I’m going to try and keep this short and sweet because otherwise you could write a small novel about what all has happened since the last real blog entry, so here are the important things.

Back in July I became “Uncle Sam” when my sister had a cute little boy named Adrian:

He’s been a blast to help take care over the last six months and I’ve really enjoyed being a part of his life. I look forward to making sure he likes good music, taking him to fun things with his uncle and making sure he gets an introduction to video games. I did my duty as a nerdy uncle and bought him a “Level 1 Human”jumper from Jinx.com and he should be able to wear it some time this summer.

A few weeks after Adrian was born I flew out to the SOE Fan Faire in Las Vegas. Through some convincing of the community management team for SOE they agreed to pay for my plane ticket out to Fan Faire. Las Vegas was a lot smaller than I thought it would be and it was ridiculously hot…when there was a breeze it felt like you were standing outside an oven. Since I was only 19 years old at the time I couldn’t really take part in the drinking and the gambling so that made the trip kind of lame, not to mention the Rio is a pretty boring hotel that is off the strip.

Overall, though, the trip was awesome and I got to meet tons of people in the MMO industry and the community around SOE games. This was my first chance to finally meet John Findlay who at the point of our meeting was the CEO of Uberguilds and I had only talked to on the phone and exchanged emails with. I also got to meet Ian Jones, the server/hardware guy for The Uberguilds Network. The guys were nice enough to let me stay in their room at the Rio, where I slept on the fold out couch and got up early every morning to setup our Uberguilds Radio booth.

Oh yeah, the whole point of us going to Fan Faire was that Uberguilds Radio was going to have a booth setup in the main Fan Faire hall and broadcast live all week. The broadcast went great and it couldn’t have been such a huge success without the help of TxTurbo who was our knight in shining armor and came in to make our broadcast what it was. TxTurbo came with a video camera, his laptop, mixing board, several mics, an LCD screen, speakers, a little marquee and more. This dude really made our booth stand out and we absolutely blew the competition out of the water. We filmed interviews with people all weekend and it put Uberguilds Radio on the map as a great source for MMO coverage. What we did in Vegas really showed the potential for what we could do with a relatively small amount of people, some hardware, and a love for video games. You can bet we’re going to be doing more of this stuff in the future…hopefully later this year.

I wanted to also mention that I met a lot of awesome people at Fan Faire, all of them being people I had either talked to online and become friends with or never talked to at all. Scott Hartsman was an awesome dude to meet and was so nice to me, it was unbelievable how cool he was to me..just some internet radio kid I also finally got to meet Steve Williams, who I interviewed back in March of 2007 about Vanguard’s Diplomacy and he too was an awesome dude. I want to give some shout outs to Silas Morse(Vanguard programmer), Troy from Voyages of Vanguard, the Flying Labs guys(Jess, Troy, Rusty), all my old friends from The Matrix Online(and even some guild mates), Brasse, and everyone else that we met at Fan Faire!

After that I went to Gen Con in Indianapolis, Indiana and filmed several interviews with game companies, with the help of Dan Salters from Uberguilds. There we got to meet Cuppa Jo from NCSoft, Theresa Prudenz and the rest of the Flying Labs Studios people, more Warhammer Online devs and that was about it. I hated Indy because it sucked to try to find a parking spot and if I had a choice I’d probably get a hotel room and walk next time because it was just absolutely shitty trying to park there.

Fast forward a few months and I started and ended a job from hell at Subway, I registered for the winter semester at Franklin University to study Marketing, and I started a job at Best Buy in the media department selling video games.  On November 21st GuildCafe officially announced that they had acquired The Uberguilds Network and Findlay and Ian now work for GuildCafe full time.  Dan and I both still don’t work for a salary and we’re currently considered volunteers.  Uberguilds Radio is still in operation and we’re currently making business plans for the future that will hopefully include it becoming a part of the GuildCafe business plan and become a full time job for me.

Right now I’m taking a business principles class at Franklin that is all online and I’m reading a ton of books about internet radio, radio, and marketing.  I’ve been told that GuildCafe is very interested in me working for them full time and possibly moving out to Boston to work directly with them.  I’m just concentrated on being as qualified as possible for any job that they want me to do and coming up with a solid plan for the station.  While this has caused a lot of stress on me because I want to work for them so bad I’m trying to stay patient and work hard to prove to them that I’m worthy of being employed.

Well that’s about it….besides the fact that I was let go from Best Buy(I was seasonal), I’m out of a job and I bought an Xbox 360 for myself for Christmas.  Maybe I’ll write some other time about the 360 :P  Until then I hope you can read my ramblings and have a good day