Monthly report: November 2005
I’m home sick this morning, feeling miserable enough that I can’t focus on anything but well enough to surf the Web… I’d like feedback on the site. But each time I ask, I put it at the bottom of some other post, and everyone ignores the request. So I thought I’d make a post just to talk about the last month of the site, and try to demand that you answer me! To make it worth your while, here’s a bunch of fun stats.
There were around 12,000 unique visitors to this site last month (usually between 800-1000 a day). The biggest day was of course when the KGC presentation got linked by (apparently) everyone on the planet. FWIW, BoingBoing seems to drive much more traffic than Slashdot Games does. Zonk, you need to drum up some more readers! (Though I see I got Slashdotted again today, along with Brad & Scott).
According to this goofy test, that means this blog is worth $36k:
My blog is worth $36,130.56.
How much is your blog worth?
Any buyers?
The other popular posts in terms of relinking were Blue World, which landed on Next Generation, and the Bill Roper keynote write-up, which landed a lot of places. It’s a little weird to see all this stuff getting picked up by media. Hmm.
The most popular site content was no surprise: the KGC talk, the laws, the timeline, the Small Worlds presentation, the Community Management presentation, the rights of avatars. But the stuff that you commented on the most added in Thinking like the audience to the mix.
51% of you are on Firefox. 13% of you are on Macs. Most of you use Google.
My favorite search phrases:
- multi-player internet games where you can make a character and make it do stuff by itself and with other people
- lunch in nj today?
- 30 years old in 2000
- parables made by people
- people getting scared
- turned 3 years old
- capo 2nd to standard
- poker algorithm bluff
- raphael s penguin blog
- tinysex logs
- obscene ascii
- changing the quake console background image
- special pages of nice stuff
- zork r k reproductive strategies
- how do clock manufactures segment the market
- i love raph
- internet site to propose goods not needed anymore
- top ten things college english majors should know
- playable revealing female online games
- bangalore expat bars
- stamp collecting market facts
- server admin commands for meridian 59
- what s so good about skittles?
People searched for that resuls in you landing here: Tracy Fullerton, Scott Jennings, Richard Bartle, Jeff Hickman, David Jaffe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a heck of a lot of book authors. A huge number of searches for Lemony Snicket & the quote from Native Son, for stuff by Scott Westerfeld, for other books or music referenced… I guess those posts drive traffic, even though few of you comment on them…!
Now the questions. More of what? Less of what? There’s around 80 of you registered to comment, but virtually none of you do. It was suggested one place that I add a forum. I don’t want to moderate it. 😛 Thoughts? Do you care what I am reading or listening to, or are you just here for games material?
22 Responses to “Monthly report: November 2005”
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Well, I get you by feed, so what the site looks like doesn’t matter to me. And, personally, I wouldn’t participate in a forum.
Because your “serious” postings are rarely more than twice a week, your “personal” postings are necessary to keep you from being forgotten. I enjoy them, but not as much as a serious post about game design.
On the other hand, I suppose you could just write more serious posts…
As a comparison, searches that show up for my page tend to be things like “anakin armpit hair”. I need classy ones like “tinysex logs”.
Don’t add a forum, for the love of all that’s holy. I *know* you’re not that insane.
Remember Scott, he was insane enough to have an open guestbook on the legend site. So… umm… are you SURE about that? *grin*
Seriously though, if there’s something that’s bugging y’all, let us know…
I am planning on sitting down and taking a look at making it so it’s not tied to rigid proportions, but allow the center content to fill as much of your open window as possible. It’s doable, I just need a good chunk of time to sit down and play with it… and figure out how it’s going to work with the image Raph chose… this was SO much easier for the cub scouts. =)
-K
It looks like we have the same tastes when it comes to comics, so keep that :).
It’s funny that you mentioned “Thinking like the Audience”. I think the title alone would get the most traffic: most people in the industry are gamers themselves, so one would think they wouldn’t need a reminder, but it was a very good article.
I’m the last person on earth to ask about aesthetics: as long as a site doesn’t tick me off with garish colors and I can do stuff (search/post) with a minimum of fuss, I like it. 🙂
I’m with Scott. I’m pretty sure it’s not worth it to add a forum. I think the look of the site is great; but the text column filling the screen would be nice. 🙂
I’m here for the games stuff, I suppose. But heck, I’m always interested in a good book. I think – write what you want. People come because they’re interested; they won’t come if they aren’t.
I love all the strange search phrases. It makes me giggle to have that little window into other peoples’ minds.
I came for the game stuff. I was impressed with the original vision for Star Wars Galaxies, though I grew more disappointed over time with the implementation. But now I’m here, I like the poetry, too.
And like others, I’m here via RSS, and I don’t like narrow columns either. 🙂
Well, the beauty of the blog format is that you can write whatever you want. If someone isn’t interested in the subject, that’s fine; I occasionally get snippy emails when I make a political post on mine, which I take about as seriously as everything else Internet-related.
It just seems odd you’re asking *us* for what *we* want. It’s your blog! More egotistical a device, man has not yet concieved. Revel in it! You certainly can’t get any worse than, well, the rest of the net.
My advice would be to view the site as a conversation. Most of the time it’ll be about your vocation, occasionally your hobbies. If it’s something people want to discuss further, they will.
If you’re wanting to further comments, I’d say ditch the enforced logins. In the 2 years or so I’ve run a WordPress blog I’ve had to go to the effort of “banning” maybe 3 people? You’re higher profile so you’ll probably have worse of a problem, but there’s tools out there to solve the problem when it happens, most of which are spam related, actually; training your blog’s spam filters to weed out “grief posting” solves many issues right there. IMHO random visitors (especially those driven by links) would be more apt to leave comments if they didn’t have to go through the verification process, and people intent on being jerks can always find new emails to create accounts through anyway.
If you’re open to topic suggestions I have one. I really liked (conceptually, if not in practice) Horizon’s events, which essentially affected everyone and as such everyone could participate, as either adventurer or crafter. I think EQ2 did something along those lines, but I don’t see anyone else talking about it.
Given all the hand-waving about community-building and retention I find the lack of group/guild/server level quests annoying. Despite the fact that DAoC servers are essentially split in three pieces IMO the Palomides community is/was every bit as strong as EQ/Brell’s. IMO it’s due to having realm goals (relics) and also the quest system (everyone in a group can complete the same quest).
So I have some questions:
1. Why aren’t there more group/guild/server based “quests”?
2. Outside of technical issues (lag and such) what would it take to make a mmog based on such “quests”?
OK, I think I have turned off the enforced logins. So we’ll see if that makes a difference. 🙂
And don’t worry, I did mean No on the forum thing… 🙂
Raguel, I wasn’t looking for topics necessarily, but actually, that’s not a bad idea — not just that topic, but asking for topics in general.
Raph, I tell ya, every day that I go to work and don’t end up lynched in effigy is a good one. Moving traffic is not that high on my list of priorities.
Also, technically you weren’t Slashdotted. The games page only gets about 1/5 to 1/6 of the overall site’s traffic. Don’t make me turn on the hose. 😀
More Raph Koster.
I enjoy finding music and books through others. It opens doors I’d never have found otherwise. I’ll obviously always enjoy gaming related information for obvious reasons, but that’s not the only draw here.
No forums though. Remember that comment “Massive moderation” ?? You don’t want to get invovled. 😉
What do I want? More insanity.
Write about stuff you think about but don’t think you could ever, ever get implemented. Talk about wild ideas for online games. Talk about possibilities for the future (but don’t necessarily preach how your path is the One True Path(tm)).
Otherwise, what you’ve been doing is fine. Sometimes a topic will incite comment, other times people will read, nod to themselves, and move on. Don’t fixate on having every topic be a deep discussion/debate between us developers.
Finally, don’t enforce a quota on posts. Your Sunday Poems is about the most you should worry about doing on a regular basis. If you do too much, you’ll fatigue us all with comments and your quality is likely to drop. Keep in mind that WordPress allows you to start a post and keep it unpublished; use that option to work on some things that take a bit more time and thought.
There’s my two cents.
Have fun,
I remember reading something Designer Dragon wrote when I started playing the UO beta back in 97. Since half a year or so back I have read about everything on your site, and I’m happily reading all the new stuff your writing.
Keep writing, I believe your on a good track to support the confidence of some future game developers and designers. And I believe the industry as a whole benefits from your steady stream of influence 🙂
Ok. How’s this slightly altered theme work for everyone?
The change should look pretty transparent, except for the fact that you can resize beyond 800 wide and it’ll stretch the text column to fit. The side columns aren’t quite as nicely defined, but I think I can fix that given time… well… I hope anyway.
Next step will be fixing the gaming/writing/music and art pages to match, once we’re happy with this one. =)
Raph –
Comments on your content is the best validation of the site.
Besides, you are making me work harder on my new blog (http://www.playnoevil.com/)… which is definitely not as handsome as yours is.
That and I am really jealous that you have so much time to read.
Steve
Steve, most of that reading happened while I was on vacation. 🙂 I am going much more slowly now that I am back at work…
Ok. That didn’t work as planned. I think I can finally see what’s going on, apologies to anyone who noticed things looked REALLY messed up earlier…
I’m not sure I can see the solution tonight… so it’s gonna look a bit broken on the banner until I can… it’s either that or go back to the narrow text column…
Will research and play more tomorrow as I’m able.
We’re back to the skinny view for now…
I like the mix of content here quite a lot. If I were going to say “more of”, I’d like to see you thinking back on past work you’ve done/past discusions (that you’re permitted to talk about), say, LegendMUD or the Bill of Rights, etc.: how does all that look now to you, how have your views changed? I think I also find it very appealing in general on blogs when people use the blog to grapple with their own uncertainties, the gaps and contradictions in their own work or projects, blogs that are self-reflective as well as outward-looking. But as I said, I think this is a nice mix of content, a very satisfying site to visit.
Aha! I think I got fixed side columns and a variable width text area…. We’ll run with this until Raph sees it and decides he can’t live with how that one little pixel is off. *ducks*
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