Sam “QforQ” Houston

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.

Check out our brand new quiz page here and take some tests!

See the bottom of the post for my results.

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 :))

Here are my results:

(more…)

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!

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

I should probably use this since I just spent about 100$ for hosting this for another year.  I partly did it so I can have my own personal email address that isnt tied to anything work and I own completely….and if I ever need a file server I can host stuff on here and not worry about bandwidth or disk space.

Lots of stuff is happening these days,  I might start updating this this week to track my progress in school, track how things are going with GuildCafe and what has happened with that…and just life.  Sounds like a plan!  Tons of stuff has happened since I last updated and I should get back into this!  I’ve become an uncle, GuildCafe acquired The Uberguilds Network, I went to Las Vegas for the first time and covered SOE Fan Faire, I took a semester off from college and switched schools….tons of shit happened!  I’ll try to catch you up today!

Hello interwebs, I imagine there is no one out there reading this since I never update it but I thought I’d update just for the sake of writing down what I’ve done. It’s for the memories, right?

This past year has brought me many opportunities and changed my life in a big way. I have attended my first year of college, changed my major from Computer Science to Marketing, I gained a brother and law and I’m expecting to become an uncle any day now, I started two internet radio stations, started my employment with the Uberguilds Network and I’ve began my quest for a career in the video game industry. Those are most of the high lights, the bulk of them happening within the past 7 months. It is stunning all that has happened in a relatively small amount of time and I don’t think I would change anything.

It is funny how things seem to fall in to place when you look back at all that has happened. Since my philosophy class winter quarter I have thought a lot about free will and if everything happens for a reason. From my experiences so far, I believe that everything does happen for a reason. Well, most everything. I think it’s more about what you make of it, than anything.

Now I’m in the middle of my summer vacation and things are happening at light-speed. On June 9th I launched Uberguilds Radio, the evolution of Vanguard Radio. Uberguilds Radio is an internet radio station for the general MMO gamer community which has a focus on featuring both the player base and companies in the industry. Most of the internet radio stations in this niche market focus on the games and what the developers of these games are up to. What we do is focus on the developers and their respective companies but we also focus on the players. This means we interview and feature fansite owners, bloggers, podcasters, prominent guilds, and others. Anyone who has made a significant contribution is someone that we’re interested in.

Uberguilds Radio has given me a lot more responsibility and upped my presence quite a bit in the industry. As the director of the station I’m in charge of contacting all of the various MMO companies that make the games that we cover. I’ve been able to meet several new and exciting people through the radio station and I hope I have made some lasting contacts in the industry. I enjoy this part of the job quite a bit as it is very rewarding when your hard work pays off and you finally land that interview or get the company to commit to work with you. The bad part of the job is that you quickly realize that you have to work on their time, and if that means you have to wait 3 weeks to hear back from them, tough luck.

Through Uberguilds Radio I have been given a lot of new opportunities and been able to do some great things. On August 2nd Sony Online Entertainment is flying me out to Las Vegas for their Fan Faire, an annual player meetup where they show off all of their games and meet with the players. It should be a ton of fun and as far as I know I’ll be the only multi-game radio station to cover the event live. I’ll have a booth setup and a laptop where I can interview developers and players while providing commentary on the events all weekend. It is going to be an awesome experience and I hope to make quite the impression on the SOE staff. Hopefully this will prove to them that I’m not just some 19 year old kid from Ohio that runs a radio station

Since I’ve been back home for the summer I’ve been thinking quite a bit about my college choice. I have decided to transfer to Franklin University and studying marketing, while working part time and helping out my family financially. Not only would this save me a lot of money by changing schools, I’d be closer to home and be able to devote more time to Uberguilds and whatever my part time job will be. If I don’t like it, I can always change back or to a different school. I figure I should at least try it.

In other news, a friend of mine has approached me and another mutual friend about helping him start a gaming center in the city we live in. This would be sort of the arcade of the 21st century, with 25+ computers setup with some of the latest hardware and games and several Xbox360 consoles to indulge your gaming needs. All for a few bucks an hour and you can enjoy playing with your friends all day, as much as you want, in one safe place. The friend of mine, his cousin will be the financial backer and the business man, while we are the people in charge of keeping up with the game industry, getting the hardware up and running, and the general operation. To sum it up, he writes the checks and keeps us on task while we do what we do

Well that is about all I can think of right now, thanks for taking the time to read my blog and I’ll update soon!

-Sam

I realize I’m a bit late but I wanted to comment on this apparent rumor that Blizzard is interested in making some sort of World of Warcraft mobile application for your cell phones, iPhones, etc. The reason I wanted to add my two cents is mainly just because I’m so excited about the possibilities with this. Everything is going mobile these days, from internet browsing to internet radio, people want to stay connected and our technology is allowing them to do so.

I want to echo what Pocket Gamer said, with this:

“Forget mobile games, and make a mobile application instead. Something that gives you access to guild chat, or other admin aspects of the PC version of WoW. Instead of selling it through mobile operators, Blizzard might tack this onto the regular WoW subscription - pay a quid/dollar extra a month, and get the mobile app.”

I agree, everyone should probably forget about hoping to raid Onyxia on their iPhone. They should instead be excited about how they could manage that raid on their phone, how they could check up on their sales in the auction house, work on crafting a new item, or maybe just chat with their guildies and friends. I doubt these applications would be super complicated to build, definitely not as complicated as trying to fit WOW on a mobile device and have a graphical version playable.

I think in general as video games go more and more online that they should be making mobile tie-ins to their service. To me it’s all about surrounding yourself with your hobby and with something that you love and enjoy. After all, that’s why I do internet radio for gamers. This could do all sorts of good for your brand royalty and after all, the more time people spend in your game the better, right? If you could provide tools for your players that could make it easier for them to do things, like coordinate raids for example, I bet you’d make them quite happy. I’d much rather send out a message on our integrated mobile device raid function than have to coordinate a last minute main-tank change via IM or phone call.

This isn’t the first time that MMO companies have talked about doing stuff like this but I do wonder why WoW has been so slow to act with regards to this. SOE’s The Agency has talked about possibly integrating game features into mobile devices, for instance getting a text message from your own Q when your new car is ready. I’m pretty sure 38 Studios has also talked about integrating into mobile devices, as well as a slew of other things like movies and other media forms. In my opinion more and more companies need to be thinking like 38 Studios and be proactive about the future and lead the way. I think this is the future of MMO/Online gaming and I don’t understand what is taking developers so long to act.

Is Raph Koster’s MetaPlace talking about this? Why hasn’t Second Life done something yet? It’s time to start thinking outside the box and creating an entire experience(in marketing terms, your brand) for your players. It’s just a matter of time and I can’t wait What do you think MMO companies should do to break outside the mold and do something new and unique, beyond just adding new ways to PVP and raid?

Hello, and welcome to my blog. My name is Sam “QforQ” Houston and I’m a college student studying marketing. I’ll be keeping this blog to log things that happen in my life, things that I do with my websites, and anything that I think is of interest. I cannot gurantee that this blog will be kept up well, but I’d like to keep it fairly up to date with what is going on.

The previous incarnation of this site was a website dedicated to the band Quarters for Quitters. Since the summer of 2006 that band has broken up due to it’s members going to college and being in seperate geographical areas. I played bass guitar and sang in the band, as well as wrote lyrics for all the music that we wrote and performed. It was a great time and I’ll never forget it, and I can only hope that I can capture some of that same magic that we had in future groups that I will perform with.

At the moment my main project is a website called “Vanguard Radio“, an online radio station fansite for the game Vanguard: Saga of Heroes The site is rising in popularity as the game gets more and more attention and I have very high hopes for it’s success. Recently I was featured in the nationally published magazine Beckett’s Massive Online Gamer, with a full interview about Vanguard Radio. It’s been a very exciting project and I’ve learned a lot, I can’t wait to see where it goes in the future.

The website is now sponsored by Uberguilds.org(They host large online gaming group websites), which now means I am in essence an employee of Uberguilds. They host the radio server and website for free and in return we try to drive traffic to their website and promote their services. It is my hope that Uberguilds’ business starts to pickup and they start to become successful, because that would mean I could have a job with them after/during college. Since my major is marketing, I’m going to try my best to come up with new marketing campaigns and ways to approach potential advertisers for their network.

After college I’d like to pursue a job in the Video Game industry doing public relations and/or marketing for game developers or game publishing companies. Right now I’m working on building up contacts in the industry through my position at Vanguard Radio and through Uberguilds, so hopefully it won’t be as hard for me to get a job after graduation. In the future I’d like to attend the Game Developers Conference that they have once a year, where game developers come and have seminars/discussions about things facing the industry. It’s a great place to make contacts in the industry and would be a great oppurtunity.

Well that’s about it for now, thank you for your time!

-Sam Houston