My life over the past few years has been quite the journey. Four years ago I was a 19 (almost 20) year old who was just about to start working at Best Buy for the Christmas season, and a few months later I moved to Boston to start at a tiny startup called gamerDNA. At gamerDNA I was the 8th employee and we worked from the CEO's kitchen table, grew to 20+, went through layoffs and lots of late nights, but created many great memories. Then for the past two years I've been living in San Francisco, working at various game companies, including Playfish for the past year, where I've been working with Facebook Game communities for The Sims and MONOPOLY. Life's been a fucking ride, man.
 

On Monday I announced that I was leaving Playfish and that I had accepted a Community Manager job at a small SF startup called RootMusic. This was the result of some soul searching, lots of hardwork, and it was a decision that frankly scared the shit out of me. At this point I'm pretty well connected in the video game industry, I've had the pleasure of working for some great companies with amazing people, and now I'm turning my back on all of that and starting fresh. Not only did I announce that I was leaving on Monday, but Tuesday was my last day at Playfish, and today was my first day at RootMusic. Intense, to say the least.

I'm extremely excited right now. It's currently 11pm, I got home just recently from my first day at work, and I'm honestly at a loss for words. I've got a huge amount of responsibility and a lot of people are looking to me to make some big decisions and be involved in many different projects. But this is what I've been looking for, I'll get to work at a music company that works with virtually every top Band/Musician in the industry, but also makes a product that a tiny high school garage band could use to great effect. The music industry is changing rapidly, and RootMusic will be there to lead the charge. To think that I've been fortunate enough to land a role at such a company just blows my mind, and I can't wait to spend many years with these great people and go onto this next chapter in my life journey.

This new job is going to be stressful, it's going to be really hard, and it's definitely going to be intense. But I'm really looking forward to a very rewarding experience, and I can't wait to make an impact on how Community Management is done in the music industry. This is very much like a dream job, a dream that I started to formulate recently as I prepared to meet Tom Delonge from Blink-182 and came up with a pitch to him/his manager for reasons they should hire me as their Social Media Manager. They didn't end up calling me back, but the important part was that it got my wheels turning in my head, and it got me to where I am today.

Today is a great day. I can't wait for tomorrow.

Hey everyone – just a quick update…

Tomorrow morning I'm heading to Boston to attend Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) East 2011!  I can't wait to visit Boston again, see all my gamerDNA buddies, and see a PAX East that has been reborn to be bigger and better. I'm also going to be speaking on three different panels, each of them about Community Management and/or Social Media.

Here's the list – I hope you can make it out to one of them (or all!) and say hello!:

How Your Favorite Game Companies Use Facebook
Manticore Theatre

Friday, 8:00pm – 9:00pm

Like this. Like that. Facebook has taken the world by storm and has become a crucial platform for community managers and companies to help keep in touch with and grow their online communities. With the constant evolution of social media and Facebook in particular, you may not know some of the cool things happening on your favorite game studio's Facebook page. Join Collin Moore (Community Management Vet) as he moderates a discussion with community managers from across the game industry (Insomniac Games, Playfish/EA, Harmonix, and Robot Entertainment), about the importance of Facebook to game companies, and how pressing the "LIKE" button is just the beginning.

Panelists include: Collin Moore [Game Industry Vet], Sam Houston [Online Content Manager, Playfish - EA], John Drake [Manager of Communications and Special Projects, Harmonix], James Stevenson [Senior Community Manager, Insomniac Games], Justin Korthof [Community Manager, Robot Entertainment]

The Roads to Becoming a Community Manager (East Coast Version!)
Wyvern Theatre

Saturday, 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Based on the great feedback we received after this panel at PAX Prime, we've decided to do it again! East-Coast Style. You hear us on podcasts, see us in videos, read our blogs on websites, retweet us, argue with us on forums, and give us high fives at PAX. But have you ever wondered how we became community managers? From games journalism to forum moderation to public policy and QA, every road is different. Find out the random history of some of your favorite game studio community managers, and hear their advice on what skills and knowledge you’ll need to become one of gaming’s next-generation of community managers.

Panelists include: Alli Thresher [Community Moderator, Harmonix Music Systems, Inc], James Stevenson [Community Manager, Insomniac Games], Arne Meyer [Manager, Community, Naughty Dog], Sam Houston [Online Content Manager, Playfish, EA], Jennifer Kye [Company Blogger, Social Media Editor, Gameloft]

So I Still Have This Website…
Cat Theatre

Sunday, 3:00pm – 4:00pm

The community-focused panel from PAX Prime is making its way to the East Coast. You've spent the time and money building your community site, and now you're looking to take it to the next level. Maybe you want to get a job as a professional Community Manager, or maybe you're just looking for tips on how to get publishers and developers to pay more attention to your site. Whether you're just starting out, or have been running a site for years, this panel is the best place to get your questions answered. Together, these community managers have represented some of the biggest franchises, developers, and publishers in the game industry, and most of them started out just like you – running a fan site.

Panelists include: Justin Korthof [Community Manager, Robot Entertainment], James Stephenson [Senior Community Manager, Insomniac Games], Matthew Pruitt [FPS Community Manager, Electronic Arts], Sam Houston [Community Manager, Independent], Jessica Shea [Community Manager, 343 Industries]

Please stop by the panels if you can, I'd love to meet more gamer friends, and if you have any questions about Community/Social Media, I'd love to help you.  This is a total vacation for me and I can't wait to relax, walk around PAX, and try to experience the show as a gamer and not as a guy doing press interviews all day.  I also can't wait to see my gamerDNA buddies, as it has been over a year since I've seen most of them.

Today was my first day at Playfish/EA, and I figured I'd give the blog a brief update on the excitement so far.  On everyone's first day at EA, you have to go through new hire orientation – something that isn't too exciting, but it's good to get an overall idea of what EA is up to as a company, how it works and motivates its employees, and the various benefits of being an EA employee.  The whole thing lasts a few hours or so and at times it was hard for me to sit totally still for that long (due to my ADD, more than anything), but at least I got some free EA cups and a copy of Medal of Honor out of it

Orientation had me excited about EA, and it also served as a great reason to head down to the EA Redwood Shores (EARS) campus.  Since my last blog post, the Playfish gods pulled some strings and got me a full-time desk at the Playfish office in San Francisco, so I'll now be working full-time in SF.  This is absolutely fantastic and I'm very excited for many reasons, but it does mean I won't get to see all my friends at EARS any more than I would outside of work.  Going to EARS for orientation was fun because the campus was awesome, but also because I ran into two awesome people on my way into orientation and while on a tour of the campus.  The first being Peter (Marketing guy for Crysis 2, Alice 2, and other stuff), who I sat about two feet away from while I was at EA over the summer.  Peter's a hilarious guy with similar music and gaming tastes, as well as a great sense of humor.  It was great to see Peter since I haven't seen him in about four months.

The cherry on top was seeing Jaap Tuinman, though, as he played huge roles in my being hired for both my summer contract gig at EA, but also this Playfish position.  Jaap's a fantastic Director of Community at EA Games, and I'm forever grateful to him for all he's done for me in the past six months.  I consider anyone who gets to work with him very lucky.

After orientation, I headed back up to San Francisco and straight to the Playfish office.  I already had a desk with some nice Playfish swag on it (pictured above), and I even had an inbox full of email.  I was shown around the office, introduced to everyone, and immediately went into a couple community/company briefing meetings.  It felt great to be at a job again, and I'm really excited to get started on some community projects for our upcoming games.

So far, I'm really impressed by everyone at Playfish and I can't wait to work with them all.  Across the board, everyone was very smart, nice, funny, and laid back.  The entire company was very welcoming and people seemed genuinely happy and excited to have me there, something that I'm very happy to see on my first day

The Online Content Manager role is new for the Playfish SF office and there is a TON of room for me to grow and make the role my own, and I'm hoping to make a huge impact not only on the SF office, but Playfish as a whole.  Community Management is relatively new at the company, so I'm hoping to take what I've learned over the past few years, add a bunch of new knowledge from the Facebook Game community, and do some great things for both the company and our millions of players.

I'm very excited and I can't wait to get started.  Stay tuned!

Hello everyone!

Great news! Today I'm accepting at position to work at Playfish full-time as an Online Content Manager in their San Francisco office.  The Online Content Manager is basically a Community Manager, handling all community efforts for their particular game, and I'll be working on the games coming out of the SF office.  This comes with just about a week left before my prediction of getting a job before December would be void – I sure cut it close!

Playfish is a Facebook game company that was acquired by EA a year ago for ~$300 million,  and the company has created about 20 Facebook games over the years.  They're probably most famous for titles like Restaurant City, Hotel City, Pet Society, and most recently have recently released EA IP titles like Madden and Fifa.  It's very exciting to see the opportunities that Playfish has, to leverage both original IP, as well as EA portfolio IP's when creating new games.

While Playfish is owned by EA, they still manage to preserve a lot of the startup feel and atmosphere, and in general they're going to just trust me and expect me to do great work.  There won't be a lot of hand holding, just the expectation that I'll be creative, collaborate with the team across the board, and do great work.  This is what I LOVED about gamerDNA, and I can't wait to do it in a company that still has the backing of a company like Playfish/EA.  It's a great opportunity for me to learn more about community in the social gaming atmosphere, as well as a great opportunity to learn more about building communities at a large scale via social media and traditional community efforts.  Not to mention the Facebook casual gaming demographic is pretty new for me, so there will definitely be a bit of learning curve that I will have to adjust to.

From the first call I had with Playfish, things felt right.  All my conversations with the SF Playfish people were great, with very intelligent and easy to talk to people.  You can tell everyone is very talented and passionate about doing great work, but at the same time they want to have a good time doing it.  I've even been contacted by folks on the team already, urging me to accept and congratulating me, saying how excited everyone is to have me on board.  It feels great to be working at a place where people want me to be there and are excited about working together.

I should be starting next week, and I'll be working from the Playfish office in downtown San Francisco.  I'll also get to work at the EA Redwood Shores office occasionally, which will be great because the campus is great and I've got a lot of friends that still work at EARS.

This is just a quick post that I wanted to throw up since I literally just accepted on the phone.  In the future I'll be sure to post some more detailed blog posts

Hi everyone! It's been a couple months since the last update..and as always, a lot has happened.

After I lost my job at Perfect World, I started receiving calls and emails almost immediately from people, interested in talking to me and trying to line me up with opportunities that were out there.  Through sheer luck, right timing, and knowing the right guy…I was called by EA, interviewed with them on Friday of the week that I lost my job..then started at EA the following Wednesday.

For the past two months I was a contract Community Management Specialist, and I worked on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – An upcoming action RPG being made by Big Huge Games and 38 Studios.  I worked with EA to create our social network accounts for the game, create all the assets for those social networks, as well as create assets and fill out data for Xbox Live/Xbox.com, PlayStation.com and PSN.  That was just the first two weeks, because after that we had to officially announce the Amalur IP to the world at San Diego Comic Con via a panel starring Curt Schilling, Todd McFarlane, R.A. Salvatore, and Ken Rolston.  Luckily I was able to convince the team that there was value to having me be at Comic Con to live-tweet/facebook the panel, so I got to go to Comic Con for a day and spend time with the four visionaries by 38 Studios.  It was pretty awesome!

After that, I worked on various Community plans for Reckoning, and transitioned on to doing more asset creation and data filing for the upcoming FPS "Bulletstorm", from Epic Games and People Can Fly.  All the new PSN icons, Xbox Live icons, etc for both Reckoning and Bulletstorm were made by me – so check em' out!

Besides all that, I got to work with the EA Partners video editor to create some community videos for Reckoning, one of which I'm really excited about since I selected the footage for it and the video came out pretty awesome.  I can't wait for it to release!

Unfortunately yesterday, August 31st, was my last day at EA.  The contract was only two months, and unfortunately there wasn't enough work for me to do to have me sign-on for another contract.  Everyone at EA was awesome to work with, EA Redwood Shores is an amazing campus, and I'm so glad I got to work there for the time that I did.  Working at EA was such a good experience and I'm glad I got insight into what it's like to work at a game company like EA, with a great team of supportive people.

Now I'm getting ready to go to PAX, speak on two panels, and generally have a great time.  I'm really excited to see my friends and have a relaxing weekend in Seattle.  I've got a lot of people to see, luckily some of them potentially job related, and a lot of business cards to hand out.

I'll be following up this blog post with some details about some contract gigs I'm going to be working on while looking for a full-time gig, as well as all my PAX Prime 2010 details and where you can find me.

Summary of this blog post:  EA was awesome, and I'm really glad I got to work there and wish it was longer.  Hopefully there's a next time!

Since I’ve got a lot more free-time now, I’ve set several goals for myself that I can now attain. One of those is catching up on a lot of reading, online and offline, since for the past few months I basically had to unplug a bit from all the game news, community management articles, books, etc.  It started this summer when I took over all the PR for gamerDNA’s relaunch, and then carried on through to the last couple months when things were still busy and slightly crazier.  They used to call me “The Internet” at work because I knew so much about current gaming and tech news…and I don’t feel so internet-y any more.  So anyways…I’m trying to fix that now, and I thought I’d create a blog post every once in awhile that shares some cool stuff I’ve come across in my internet travels.

BioWare Reveals Dragon Age’s “Massively Single-Player” Details – Stephen Totilo – Kotaku

Stephen Totilo has a really interesting article that goes into the details of the new BioWare Social Network that just launched recently.  On the surface the social network doesn’t look a whole lot different than most other social networks powered by Social Engine software.  The customization is in the rich features, though, and it sounds like BioWare has spent a lot of money tying the game to this social network.  The features described in this article get my really excited about this game and definitely make me want to check it out…at least for professional research purposes  ;)

The Future of the Social Web – Brian Solis – PR 2.0

Forrester Research published a report that describes what they believe will be the future of the social web.  I happen to agree with a lot of it, and it actually describes a lot of what we built at gamerDNA.  Relevance and reacting to what we knew about a member were two huge factors in what we built at gamerDNA.  Definitely worth a read.  Makes me think about how this would affect game community websites specifically (in house sites, like WoW Armory for example), and not just 3rd party internet consumer websites.

5 Ways to Use Twitter’s New List Feature for Marketers  - Influential Marketing Blog

-This past week Twitter launched the List feature, which makes it so anyone can add a Twitter user to their own list, and that list can be shared with other people and even followed by others.  This blog article outlines some ways that people could use blogs and should help you think about some cool ways you could use Twitter Lists at your company.

From Strategy to ROI Model – slide deck from Dawn Lacallade, Community Manager for SolarWinds

As I get ready for job interviews, I’m trying to read up more on some various community manager topics and generally see how people are doing things these days.  I liked this presentation because it was very basic and didn’t skip over much as it explains the process of pitching and creating a Community plan for your organization.

Getting Started 1: Do you know what people are saying about you? -Fresh Networks

Fresh Networks wrote a blog post series/guide to help organizations “Get Started in Social Media”.  It’s all pretty basic, but I liked the list that they put together of free buzz tracking tools.  In the paragraph prior to the list, Fresh Networks says, “The best results come from using paid-for services..”.  I can’t really say this is right or wrong, since I didn’t have experience with paid services at a large scale.  I tried out Radian6 (the service mentioned in the article) at gamerDNA and wasn’t very impressed with it, but I think that probably has more to do with our scale at the time and the amount of conversations on the web. That and the price tag was pretty hefty for a startup like us.

If I remember correctly, it was roughly $5,000+ a year or more for the type of account we would need with Radian6.  It would have been a huge waste of money for gamerDNA, so we decided not to spend that money.  If you’re a larger company and/or have a large amount of mentions (to the point it is truly overwhelming and you need help sifting through it all), I suggest looking into these services.  Radian6 and Techrigy are two services that come to mind, and I know or have met people at both and they’re good people.  Hopefully at my next gig I’ll have the chance to check these services out – They’re doing some interesting stuff, if you’ve got the money in your budget.

The best buzz tracking services that would fit into this blog post are:  Google Blog Search, Technorati Search, Google Alerts, Twitter Search.  IceRocket search was basically worthless, bringing up posts that were (relatively) ancient, so it just turned into a waste of time when you checked your searches.  I covered this last year in my blog post “Are Video Game companies active in Social Media?“.

I think I’ll cover this topic in a bit more depth in a blog post later this week.  There are some decent new, free tools and services that can help you monitor your brand and interact with your community.  They can get you a long way, with no money spent at all (besides time).

Staying Power: Rethinking Feedback to Keep Players in the Game – Gamasutra

Microsoft Game Studios did some user research on gamers completing games and offers some solutions/insight into how game designers could help people complete their games.  This is a pretty in-depth article chock full of data..even with references at the end!  Worth checking out for sure.

That wraps it up for this blog post.  If you have any thoughts on the above articles, I’m interested in hearing them!

Thanks,

Sam “QforQ” Houston

As of this past week, I am no longer employed at gamerDNA and I’m now looking for a new job.  Myself and five others were laid off last week, freeing up the company a bit so that it can operate at break even and continue to do awesome things.  A news article about the situation came out earlier this week with some quotes from our CEO Jon Radoff, if you’re interested.

Working at gamerDNA was an amazing experience and has helped my career in huge ways.  I’m very thankful to Jon and the rest of the staff for giving a (at the time) 20 year old from Ohio the opportunity to work at a video game internet startup.  I came on board in March of 2008 as the eighth employee, when the company was still meeting at Jon Radoff’s house and our desks were his dining room table.  I saw the company grow quite rapidly, move into its first office, change our name and rebrand itself, and launch GamerDNA.com in early June of 08′.  I remember the meeting that we had where we decided on the new logo, the awesome work of art from the super talented Sean Duhame.  Everyone was always involved and kept up to date on what was going on in the company, and I came to love our Wednesday “Lunch and Learns”, where the company would have lunch together and update everyone on the progress that we were making and any big news or exciting projects.

I’ve been to PAX twice now, I’ve been to BlizzCon, GDC and E3…all because of GamerDNA.  Two years ago it was just a dream to be able to go to those events (especially E3..such a video game nerd’s dream!).  I even had the pleasure of launching a website at E3 and representing the company in interviews for MTV.com and Current.TV.  Most recently I put together all the PR for our GamerDNA.com relaunch on Sept 2nd, which resulted in the most coverage GamerDNA.com had ever received for one launch.

GamerDNA gave me a huge amount of opportunities and responsibilities, and for that I am very grateful to Jon Radoff and the rest of the team.  What started out as an entry level marketing position (“Game Talent Lead”), later turned into a Community Management role and then ultimately my role as Online Marketing Manager.  It was a great ride.

If you haven’t yet, please check out yesterday’s blog post which included a picture of the product team at gamerDNA.  It was taken last week at our company party at Trapper Markelz’s house, and it shows a great group of guys that have become my surrogate Boston family.

So what’s next?

Now I’m interested in going to my next dream job, a Community Management job at a video game developer or publisher.  I don’t have anything lined up just yet, so I’m still looking and applying to various job opportunities out there.  I’m looking to take what I’ve done at gamerDNA, take all my passion for Social Media and Community Management, and turn that into a career at a game company.  That’s my hope, at least

If you’re interested in finding out more about all the cool stuff I’ve done in my time at gamerDNA and more details on my experience, please check out my LinkedIn Page: http://www.linkedin.com/in/samhouston .  I’ve updated it quite a bit and it’s basically a web version of my resume.  If you’d like to get in touch with me directly, please shoot me an email at Sam AT QforQ dotcom.  I’m willing to relocate for a new job, and I’m especially excited about CM roles that will give me the opportunity to interact directly with gamers, as well as work with press and represent the company at events like PAX.

Other things on the horizon are a relaunch of GameIndustryTweet.com with updated pages and a new look….and some time relaxing and catching up on all these video games I need to finish .

Thanks for reading this far, if you know of any exciting Community Management gigs in the game industry – Please give me a shout!

-Sam Houston

Ramble about a trend I’ve been thinking about for awhile:

This is a trend that I’ve noticed over the past year, and it’s something that I’m obviously paying close attention to since I work for a game community:

As media is changing and leaving print media more and more, we’re seeing the media companies adapting to these changes in interesting ways.  Most recently we’re seeing companies like GamePro (IDG) and Game Informer (GameStop) invest money in bringing their readership and community from their magazines onto the web to their online communities.

This isn’t anything new or mind blowing…heck, 1up.com did this years ago with Elecontric Gaming Monthly and Computer Gaming World/Games for Windows Magazine.  (I’m wondering if 1up was just ahead of its time, or if it lacked some sort of feature set or push from Ziff to really get it to making bucket loads of cash)

Over the past week we’ve seen some pretty interesting changes:

• Garnett Lee, former executive editor for 1up.com left to join GameFly Media as their Editorial Director.  GameFly doesn’t just rent games any more..they own several different gaming websites, including Shack News.
• John Davison’s company/website WhatTheyPlay.com was sold to IGN, and now he’s leaving to go join GamePro as their Executive Vice President of Content.  His goal is to “reboot” GamePro, with better integration between the website and the magazine.
• Billy Berghammer (Director of Gaming Editorial) is no longer at G4TV.com…and I suspect others left as well.  I’m wondering what direction G4TV.com will take now, if any change at all, since they just relaunched their website at E3 and dedicated a lot of resources to it.
• GameInformer totally revamped and relaunched their website, turning it into a community website with editorial content in the spotlight.  It’s very 1up.com, and the site is looking great.

We’ve also got the new Electronic Gaming Monthly reboot happening this winter..which promises to be some sort of mix between Web and Magazine content.

We’re also seeing existing and new media sites recognize the importance of community and invest in interesting ways to help facilitate community.  For instance, Giant Bomb now tracks your PSN, Xbox Live, Steam and World of Warcraft Achievements.  Not only that, Giant Bomb is some sort of hybrid Wiki site mixed with an editorial site, the editorial brought to you by Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, and Vinny Carravelli (Sorry if I butchered your name man!).  All of these guys are former GameSpot guys, and they’re doing some interesting stuff.  As a side note: the parent company of Giant Bomb, Whiskey Media, is doing some interesting stuff in general. Keep an eye on them!

Other examples of news sites being communities would be Destructoid.com, Kotaku.com and Joystiq.com…all three of which are blogging sites that are growing more and more, and being taken more seriously by the game industry..and by themselves.  The amount of people reading these blogs every day is huge, and their power is not something to underestimate.

We’ve also got CrispyGamer.com, which is carving out its niche with a feature and video content based offering, and an advertising model which refuses to take money from game advertisers.

Lastly we have the GameSpot’s and IGN’s of the world…humongous game news sites and communities on the web that inform and entertain tens of millions of gamers every single day.

Anyways…I think there is some *really* interesting stuff happening out there right now, as some huge companies (and even smaller startups like Whiskey and Crispy Gamer) all invest in making the next version of the Media/Community site for gamers.  This is definitely something I’m going to be keeping an eye on, and I’m excited to see what everyone does next, as they all push each other to do something new and interesting in the game industry.

Are there any trends that you’re noticing?  Do you think any of the companies above are wrong about their approach, or one of them is totally dead on?  I’m interested in what others think of this trend..what others think is the larger story.  Let me know!

Wow…I can’t believe it’s been a week since E3!  It feels like it was so long ago now, everything has been a bit of a blur and I’ve been pretty busy at work.  Lots of exciting stuff going on, and now I can finally talk about most of it!

First off, E3 was tons of fun!  It was a great chance for me to see some new friends (mostly people I met at GDC/on Twitter) and meet lots of new folks, as well as get an introduction to a different side of the industry.  There is a big difference between the attendance of GDC (students/developers and press) and E3 (markters/sales, press, and buyers), so it was really interesting to meet more folks on the marketing/sales side of things.

GamerDNA sent me to E3 to do all of our press interviews for a new project that we launched, called TweetMyGaming.com .  TweetMyGaming tracks all of the gaming conversations on Twitter in real-time, and shows you what the most popular games are right now.  It’s a project that I was involved with since day one, all the way from the conceptualization and finding a contractor, to the execution/product direction and then doing interviews with the press .  It’s something that I’m very proud of, and I’m happy that I’ve been able to do yet another project around something I’m very passionate about:  Twitter and Social Media.

So far the project has been quite successful for us, with interviews going up on Kotaku , Joystiq , and Destructoid .  Destructoid’s article even features some quotes from me, as Samit Sarkar was kind enough to do an interview with me earlier this week.  It’s pretty good article, so I hope you check it out!

When I was actually at the E3 Convention Center, I did a number of interviews with Current.Tv and MTV Multiplayer.  These turned in to daily segments, and MTV Multiplayer has put up theirs:

MTV Multiplayer - TweetMyGaming Day 1 Wrap-Up

MTV Multiplayer – TweetMyGaming Day 2 Wrap-Up

MTV Multiplayer – TweetMyGaming Day 3 Wrap-Up

TweetMyGaming/E3 marks for the first project and event that I’ve had the opportunity to speak directly with the press and do interviews.  All the feedback internally has been positive, so I’m really excited and happy that I was able to do this for the company.  My hope is that I’ll get to do this more often, it was a lot of fun!

In the near future I may do a brief post about E3 and what I saw there, mainly with pictures from my iPhone.  So until then…see you around and thanks for reading my blog!

The past week has been a wild ride and I’ve been working hard on following up on my Video Game Companies on Twitter list in an effort to expand that service out to more parts of the industry.  The result of this effort is the launch of GameIndustryTweet.com .

GameIndustryTweet.com will be the centralized site for the video game industry and gamers to find their favorite game industry professionals on Twitter.  Right now the site covers Game Developers/Companies, Press, Public Relations and Community Sites that are on Twitter.

Every update to the site will be posted on the front page of the blog with a list of the new people that have been added.  This means that by subscribing to the GameIndustryTweet RSS Feed you will stay on top of all the latest people added to the list.

As for QforQ.com, I plan to continue to blog about Social Media and offer advice on how the Video Game Industry can best leverage these new mediums.  I encourage everyone to read my latest article on How to Engage your Audience on Twitter .  If you would like to know how to contact me please check out my About page .

Thanks everyone!  I hope you enjoy GameIndustryTweet.com !