What Games Are: Game Design, Development, Publishing, Marketing and Art

The What Games Are Digest #7 [Weekend]

This week felt like a personal victory. I’m finally getting to some of the ideas about games and stories, and the response so far as been very positive. In addition, my Minecraft article was republished by Gamasutra and subsequently landed on Reddit and BoingBoing. More than that though, the ideas feel like they’re starting to move beyond just the blog itself into the wider community, and that matters more than traffic.

Also, my trip to the US was pushed back to this week, giving me a chance to get many posts that I have been working on released. I’m going this week instead, but hopefully I’ll be able to keep posting from afar.

The What Games Are Digest #6 [Weekend]

It’s been another great week. My Minecraft article gained a lot of attention, the Love Your Pirates article featured briefly on Reddit, and some previous posts were republished on Inside Social Games, Gamasutra and Gamesbrief. The blog broke over the 8,000 unique readers mark, but has fallen back a little to 7,700. This is due to the CityVille surge from last month falling out of the counting period. Subscribers are all up as well, with over 100 people each on Twitter and Facebook, 368 via RSS and 51 via Email. Welcome all!

I was travelling and working a lot in Ireland this week, so I couldn’t post as many in-depth pieces as normal. However it gave me more opportunity to think of the larger argument that I’m making with the book. I’m asking myself ‘If I were to give a TED talk, and needed to tell the What Games Are story in 18 minutes or less, what would that look like?’

More on this soon.

The What Games Are Digest #5 [Weekend]

Onward and upward. Traffic is steadily increasing, and recently I’m seeing the effects of StumbleUpon start to come through. In addition, subscriber numbers continue to increase at a slow but sure pace.

Also, the What Games Are Journal experiment seems is yielding a variety of excellent content. Every day I am discovering something new and strange through it, so thank you all for being a part of it. And remember, if you want to be involved then all you need to do is follow the What Games Are Twitter account.

The What Games Are Digest #4 [Weekend]

It’s been an energetic week. I am just shy of 400 subscribers across various sources, and I’ve also crossed the 5000 Unique visitors point (in the last 30 days) point as of today. Huzzah! In addition, my Mac App Store post from last week featured on the Gamasutra network, which led me to my second biggest day of traffic ever. Huzzah indeed.

Also, I’d like your feedback: When I began this blog, I often posted twice a day. Over the last two weeks, I’ve tried focusing on one substantial post per day (1000+ words) rather than two pint-sized ones. It seems to suit my writing style better, but at the same time, I worry that re-sharing that post twice on Twitter and Linkedin might be annoying to some readers.

I’ve been doing it that way so that my European and US readership will see them (they peak at very different times) but is it too much like spam for your tastes?

 

The What Games Are Digest #3 [Weekend]

And a happy new year to you too. Having contracted the worst case of flu that I’ve had in a couple of years, What Games Are didn’t see many updates over the holiday period. However the CityVille articles that I wrote prior to Christmas were re-published by the good people on Gamasutra, which helped increase this blog’s readership, subscriber numbers and Twitter followers significantly. I’m now at 3,700 unique readers for the month, 173 RSS subscribers, and around 100 followers between Twitter and Facebook.

The What Games Are Journal [Experiment]

I really like paper.li, the social news startup that compiles top shares from your Twitter account into a newspaper. It’s fun, but also incredibly useful. I’ve been testing it with my own account for the last two weeks (the Tied Tiger Tribune) and it’s great as a personalised source of interesting things, like a more social StumbleUpon.

It’s also given me an idea:

The What Games Are Digest #2 [Weekend]

In the first week of this blog I had a traffic spike for the Techthulhu article, but it fell back quickly. This week traffic has been more sustained and I am starting to see traffic from search engines as well as referrals. My unique user count for the month has risen to 614, and other stats like bounce rate, average page views and time on the site are all improving. I expect there will be some fall-off in the next two weeks because of Christmas, although I do plan to maintain a schedule of light, short posts over the holiday period.

The What Games Are Digest [Weekend]

This was the first full week of operation for the What Games Are blog, and a great week for me personally. I decided from the outset to publish twice a day - Monday to Friday at 2PM and 9PM GMT (for UK and US readers) - maybe once on Saturday and to do this digest on Sunday. I mostly stuck to the schedule, which I am personally proud of, and also managed to write several in-depth articles, which are now bouncing around the web.

According to Google Analytics, I received 290 unique visitors. That seems like a reasonable start. Here are this week’s posts as they happened: