(Full Disclosure: I did a write up on the gamerDNA company blog so I’m going to keep this fairly short and sweet. The purpose of this is to give my personal take and record some of the more fun, notable events)
It has now been a week since the last day of PAX and I’m still getting back into the swing of things. Last week I had the pleasure of attending PAX with three others from gamerDNA from Thursday through Monday which was the entirety of PAX. We went there on a mission: Go to the biggest gaming expo in North America and talk to people about gamerDNA. All in all, I’d say it was a success.
If you haven’t gone to PAX before, you should. This was my first time going to PAX and it was the biggest gaming event that I’ve ever been to. Last year I went to SOE Fan Faire and Gen Con and those don’t even compare to the size of this event or the amount of fun had at PAX. The PAX officials have reported that about 58,500 people invaded Seattle and attended PAX, well over the 37,000 that they had last year. I wonder what they will have next year…and how they will fit everyone in the Seattle Convention Center.
Most of the weekend was spent spending some time walking around the Expo floor and then meeting up with the guys from work for a press interview or some other event that we wanted to attend. Friday was very busy for us in particular because that was the opening day for PAX along with the day of our gamerDNA PAX Party that we had later that night. During the couple hours that we had to poke around on the floor we decided to hand out gamerDNA t-shirts to random PAX goers and check out the various booths on the floor.
The expo floor was huge, with booths from all the major and some of the minor game studios out there. Strangely absent, though, was a booth from Activision(Besides Guitar Hero World Tour and the Blizzard Booth). While taking a quick survey of the floor I noticed the dominance of the Xbox 360 which was being used to demo practically every game on the floor. One of the games that I did see demoed on a Playstation 3 was Mirror’s Edge (they showed the E3 level), which ironically froze up while I was watching and they had to reboot the PS3.
After only a couple hours on the show floor we had to make it back to our hotel to get ready for the gamerDNA Party. The plan for the gamerDNA party was simple: Have some food, some free drinks and Rock Band. We didn’t want it to be too sales-pitchy, we wanted it to be a fun atmosphere for people to come in, talk to people and have fun playing games.
The party was a definite success with over 150 people stopping by over the course of the night. We had a lot of friends from Microsoft show up, the GamerCast Network stopped by as well as many others throughout the night. My personal highlight was when Alex Albrecht and Jeff Cannata from the Totally Rad Show and DiggNation showed up for a little while. The guys played some Rock Band (which by the way, they were really good at) and hung out for a bit. I had a chance to introduce myself and talk to Alex a bit, but it was really just cool to have guys like them show up to a party that was put on by my company. We also had Donna Park from Electric Playground (you know, that show that used to be on G4TV..and now it’s coming back on) who interviewed our CEO Jon Radoff and ended up sticking around at the party for most of the night. Not only was she a gamer, but she was a very cool person to talk to and seemed very genuine. Two thumbs up!
After that Friday (the first day of PAX), we spent the rest of the weekend walking around the show floor, hitting up some panels, and doing interviews with press. I had a great time meeting various developers of different games, as well as friends that I’ve made but never actually met before, which was really cool. I also had the chance to play some games, but not very many…I did a lot more looking than actual playing of video games that weekend..ironically
PAX was a great experience and I’d highly suggest everyone go! I’m definitely going to go next year with gamerDNA and I can’t wait for PAX to come to Boston in 2010
Sure, many game companies are using social media these days as advertising platforms, but are they really using Social Media to the extent that they could be doing? I don’t think so. How can they step it up? That’s simple.
They need to listen.
Over the past few years we’ve seen sites like Facebook and Myspace balloon in size, everyone and their mom become a blogger, and tools like Twitter dominate the news. Surprisingly, a lot of companies that you wouldn’t think of as being very active and on the bleeding edge, like Dell and Comcast, are leading the way in Social Media and how to reach out to your existing and potential customers. I think it is time for video game companies, especially MMO game companies, to take this bull by the horns and capitalize on the wealth of opportunities out there on the world wide web.
First, I think I should start out with how game companies can reach out to bloggers, since I’ve recently joined a Warhamer Online Guild full of bloggers. Last week I asked them if any game companies reach out to them when they talk about their products and I was disappointed when they answer was “No” followed by, “I don’t think they ever will”. The extent that game companies had reached out to these bloggers seemed to be the simple beta key for a game, which I think is a step in the right direction but they could be doing a lot more.
How to listen to the blogosphere:
Start monitoring the blogosphere using tools like Google Blog Search, BlogLines and Technorati. It’s very simple to setup a search for “Warhammer Online” (or any other game/company name for that matter), sort by the most recent date and then get an RSS feed for that search result and pop it in to Google Reader. Every day, and if you can throughout various parts of the day, have someone on the staff monitor the blogosphere for these conversations and respond accordingly. If someone is having a problem with the game or complaining about a system respond to it. Even a simple “we’re aware of the issue and we’re working hard to fix it” and acknowledging the writer will help.
Sure, there is a lot of noise out there but you will also find a lot of opportunities for you to create a positive customer support experience with your company. I’ve also learned that responding within the first few hours of the post is very key so that the writer sees your comment, other commenters see your comment, etc. It doesn’t help anything if you show up 2 days late to the blog post..everyone has moved on already.
Once you’ve mastered monitoring keywords and phrases that have to do with your company and/or products (game names, company name, etc), you could start monitoring keywords that your company estimates will provide a lot of opportunities to bring in new customers. Perhaps you could monitor “What’s a good MMO” and pop in the comments telling them about your game and providing the writer a free trial key to the game. As long as the original poster is asking a question and inviting replies/discussion, you should be welcome and be seen as helpful.
How to listen to Twitter (And other status related applications)
Twitter has a recent success story for a company that has really caught on and being used by millions of people every day. Luckily monitoring Twitter and other status apps is relatively easy because it has a lot less spam and noise than tracking blogs or forums. There are also a few great examples of companies that really do well in this area
Create a company Twitter account and start updating about things related to your company. Online game companies could use this particularly well, encouraging all their fans to follow them on Twitter and use it to update them on the status of servers, downtime, patch time, new updates, etc. Thankfully Twitter has had pretty good uptime lately, so if your game is down, hopefully Twitter will be up and your fans can find out what is going on via SMS, IM, Twitter.com or various Twitter applications.
Similar to blogging, start monitoring certain keywords on Twitter and act on them. Search.Twitter.com is your friend and you can easily create another RSS feed for your search and import that into your staff RSS reader. You might also want to check out applications like TweetDeck which allow you to use all of the features of Twitter.com and their Search within one application.There are a couple examples of companies using this as a great tool to engage with their customers. If you ever go on Twitter and complain about your Dell computer not working, expect a reply from Richard who will try to help you. If you ever are having problems with Comcast expect Frank from ComcastCares to show up and ask you if you need anything. Two of my coworkers have mentioned Comcast on Twitter before and been contacted by Frank who tried to help them out. Twitter is a great tool for customer support, community management, public relations and marketing. Everyone should be using it.
When you’re a relatively small company or a niche title, I imagine it would not be terribly difficult for a community manager, marketer or PR person to monitor all these conversations. Once you get up to games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty 4, it gets a lot harder to separate the important information from all the noise. At that level you could probably have someone like Frank at Comcast who works full time monitoring social media and taking action if not more. In the near future I think you’ll see a lot of companies crop up to make applications that are supposed to help you monitoring social media. I’m currently checking out one of those companies now, so I’ll have to let you know if it’s any good.
Conclusion
All of these are methods that I’m using today at gamerDNA to listen to potential and existing conversations about our brand, products and opportunities that might arise for us. I’m just beginning to learn about these things so I’m by no means am I an expert, but I think this is too big to not share with everyone out there and to get some discussion going about it. It may take you awhile to master each of these things but in time I think you will see how powerful these tools really are.
After all, when have we ever been able to listen to what people are saying about your brand and act quickly? These are exciting times for marketers.
If you would like more information on social media and getting more involved there are a ton of people out there that can help you. One person in particular, who I’ve learned a decent amount from as of late, is Chris Brogan who works for Cross Tech Media. I’m sure they could help you out and get you started in the right direction.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions via email at sam A qforq DOTT com or leave a comment. I’d love to hear what other bloggers, media and others in the video game industry think. You can also find our gamerDNA Twitter account here (which I and a few others are behind) as well as my personal twitter account here.
This week has already been a long week at work, mostly because monday we stayed until about 3am getting a brand new Quiz system implemented and up and running. Along with the launch of a brand new quiz system we launched 3 new quizzes for players to take. Now instead of just the Bartle Test (and the MMORPG and Guild quizzes that are no longer with us), we have a Gamer Decades of Influence quiz and an FPS multiplayer and RTS multiplayer playstyle quiz.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for what this system can do and we’re working right now on some new types of signatures for people to
use to show theirresults. We’re also kicking around ideas for new types of quizzes that we could put out there for people to take.
Maybe you guys could help out…why kind of quizzes would you like to take? Personally, I’m thinking of putting together a quiz for PVPers.
Lastly, I’ve gotta give a shout to Casualties of WAR, my new Warhammer Guild which is expanding to over 100 people! I’ll also give a shout to Rick over at /Random for being a nice guy and checking out my blog!
Thanks guys, until next time..happy gaming!
(PS. Since I’m being considered a blogger now I figure I should live up to that title and blog
more often now..like more than once every 2 months. You can count on more entries as time goes on :))
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
Hey blog, long time no see! Sorry for the neglect, I’ve been so busy lately with work, moving and life in general that I haven’t had much time to sit down and blog. I’m going to jump around a lot because there is a lot to update you on, so please bare with me!
Since I last wrote an entry some big changes have been made over at gamerDNA. We changed over from GuildCafe.com to gamerDNA.com and launched our brand new look of the site, to complete the transformation and evolution from GuildCafe to our new identity as gamerDNA. The product team is plugging away on feature additions, polishing existing features, and fixes tons of bugs, every week. As a whole the company is making a lot of progress and I think it’s safe to say we’re all very excited about what the future holds for gamerDNA :) Currently the team is working very hard on rolling out a brand new quiz system, which I think should be unveiled in the next couple weeks. All in all, very awesome stuff and I have some big news concerning gamerDNA and myself coming up in a blog entry in the next week or so (I hope!).
On a some what related but not really-note, I’ve become pretty damn addicted to Twitter. I’m using it multiple times a day now, checking it constantly and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. Before guys at work introduced me to it I thought it was a worthless site, but it has become a very valuable tool for keeping up on gaming stuff for work as well as maintaining my relationships and a presence, both professional and personal. You can check out all my Twitter updates and a link to my profile on the upper right corner of my blog.
We’re now at the end of July, which means I celebrated the Fourth of the July in Boston, the first time I’ve ever celebrated it outside of my home town. The fireworks over the Charles River were pretty neat and it made me think about how awesome it is to celebrate our nation’s Independence in the city where it all started. I’m still fascinated that I live in such a historical place now. I should make more of an attempt to get out there and see all the historical places.
July also means that my nephew just turned one year old! :) It’s hard to believe that I’ve been an uncle for an entire year. To celebrate I made the long 12 hour drive from Boston to Ohio down in one day, visited family for the weekend, and drove back on Monday. That is the longest drive I’ve ever made in one sitting with virtually no breaks, and I’m proud of myself for making it through without problems. My ipod filled with E3 podcasts and music gets the credit for that, along with the Monster energy drinks
Lastly, I’m excited to announce that I will be going to PAX this year with the gamerDNA crew of Jon Radoff, Russell Miner, and Steve Sopp. This will be the biggest convention I’ve ever been to and my first PAX, so I think it’s going to be a week full of awesome. Right now I’m putting together an order for roughly over 100 gamerDNA t-shirts so we can hand them out at parties and events that we attend. I can’t wait to see all my friends from the various game companies that will be there as well as make new ones :) So excited! I’ll definitely be sharing pics and stories when I get back!
That about wraps it up for now, stay tuned for my announcement coming soon!
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.
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!
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