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

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

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!

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!

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 !

Engage your Audience

While this mainly pertains to "official" twitter accounts for companies that represent the company in its entirety (For example: Valve Software , CCP Games , EA , or Battlefield Heroes ), I encourage all Twitter users (especially those that are representing their company on Twitter) to use some of these techniques.

-Ask Questions/Invite Discussion

On our twitter account at gamerDNA I try to not only use it for information on our new blog posts, any downtime we may have, or news that we have to share…I also try to use it to engage and entertain our audience.  This can easily be accomplished by posing a question to your followers.  For example what Valve could ask,  "What is your favorite class in Team Fortress 2?".  You could ask for feedback on new trailers, announcements, additions to the game, or on the latest news from the game.  If someone gives a good answer you can then praise them and highlight them publicly through a new tweet that contains their @Name.

-Be transparent and show gamers who you are

What I also like to do on our official Twitter account is give our audience insight to who we are as a company.  In this new age of everyone being on the internet and on social media transparency is key.  Try tweeting about what the team is up to(IF it’s interesting and not secret) or share funny pictures on Twitter(Through TwitPic ) of your development team.

-Keep in touch with your community

Are you guys at a trade show or event that week?  Hold an impromptu "Tweetup" (a meetup of Twitter users coordinated through Twitter) where gamers can meet you guys at a local bar or restaurant.  Let people know where on the show floor to find you guys, when to stop by for contests and autograph signings, etc.  Twitter is awesome at events for keeping in touch with people and it’s a lot of fun,use it!

Random Tip/Note – Whenever you’re at an event tag your Tweets with a hash tag and an abbreviation for the event.  For example the 2008 PAX was #PAX08.  The reason why twitter users do this is that everyone both at the event or watching the event can keep up with what is going on by searching PAX08 on Twitter Search .  Using hashtags at events can be a great way to meet new people, get new followers who want to know what is going on, and find cool and interesting things happening.

-Highlight cool or interesting community generated content

Did someone make a really good forum post/thread on your official forums?  Did a fansite/podcast/blog launch for your game that blew you away?  Did someone just make some awesome fanart for your game that others should know about?  Share it on Twitter!

Hopefully some of these ideas help get the gears in your head going and you can go from here.  Do you have any additional ideas or thoughts on how companies can better engage their audience on Twitter?  Please share them in the comments section!

Do you have a question or a topic that you’d like me to write about?  Please email me at Sam AT QforQ dot com

To start, I should really be thanking everyone who helped spread the word about the article, retweeted it, blogged it, Dugg it and told their friends about it.  Big thanks also go out to Joystiq who broke the story about the article and then Kotaku who followed shortly after with a great write up.  Without everyone’s support I don’t think this list really would have been as good as it is and I’m happy to have helped everyone out by curating the list.  It’s my pleasure! Overall I’d have to say this experience has been quite encouraging, while sometimes a bit overwhelming.

I’ve received a lot of great comments from folks in the game industry saying that their company is now coming to Twitter partly because of this list, or maybe they are going to try to convince their company to use Twitter, etc.  I’ve also had a ton of requests for more lists, for people in different parts of the industry to be added, etc.  Don’t worry, I’ve got a plan and there should be more lists that includes a wider selection of people in a few days(Hopefully, depending on how much free time I have in the next couple days).

If you are in the video game industry whether it be as press, PR, investor or otherwise please let me know!  Send an email to VideoGameTwitter@QforQ.com and I’ll try to make sure you’re in the next evolution of this list and other lists.

I’d like to leave you by again saying thanks, this has been an awesome experience. Please Add me on Twitte r and check out my About Page for all my contact info . I’m planning to update this blog much more than I have in the past, focusing more on helpful tips and discussions on Community Management, Social Media, Marketing, and the Video Game Industry overall.

If you’re a game company interested in using Twitter/monitoring Twitter and have any questions please feel to email me at Sam AT QforQ dot com and I’d be happy to help you out.  We’re all in this together and the more game companies/individuals we can get on Twitter and other social media, the better.

Please subscribe to my RSS Feed for future posts!

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Luckily, since then a lot of game companies have signed up for twitter and they are using it for various purposes like personal use, advertising stuff they are doing(or worse..just using it as a way to post when they have a blog update via TwitterFeed integration), or even actively using it to interact with their customers/gamers and as a customer service tool.

Since things have changed since that August blog article and I haven’t really seen a list on the web somewhere of all the game companies on Twitter, I’ll try to start a list here.

Notice: Due to the popularity of this list I’ve decided to launch GameIndustryTweet.com .  If you’re looking for a list of Video Game Companies on Twitter please click here .

Please add me on Twitter to keep in touch and enjoy GameIndustryTweet.com !

Company I work for:

gamerDNA:

gamerDNA – Official Twitter account for gamerDNA

JRadoff – Jon Radoff, Founder and CEO of gamerDNA

SamHouston – Sam Houston (Me), Community Manager at gamerDNA

TrapperMarkelz – Trapper Markelz, VP of Product at gamerDNA

Duhame – Sean Duhame, Creative Director at gamerDNA

skio – Antares Meketa,  Social Media Engineer at gamerDNA

Colliny2k – Collin, Engineer at gamerDNA

FattyChubs – Stephen Sopp, Engineer at gamerDNA

Imran_Malek – Imran Malek, Product Specialist at gamerDNA

stealthbaz – Russell Miner, Engineer at gamerDNA

Some quick updates:

Last October I went to Blizzard’s BlizzCon, a convention for fans of all of their franchises (Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo). It was very very cool..an awesome game convention that was put on by just one company. Every marketer/game company person that is incharge of putting on events for their brand/company should go. They really take things to another level and you can’t help but go away and be excited about everything that Blizzard is doing. Hell, I’ve hardly even played any of their games and I bought about 50-70$ worth of swag

Things are continuing to go great over at gamerDNA. I’m really busy with some new responsibilities, experience, and some great mentorship/learning opportunities within the company. I can’t wait to see what the next year brings, especially the next 3-4 months. March will bring my year anniversary at gamerDNA and it is amazing to think about how far we have come in the last year.

I’m continuing to be active in the social media space…namely Twitter. I’ve got a post that I want to write this week about game companies being active on Twitter, sort of a short update in response to my post last August.

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