Monthly Report, March 2006
Alas, my sense of humor is much diminished by the cold I’ve been suffering for the last few days (which is also why posts have slowed somewhat recently). So don’t expect this month’s report to be full of the usual self-deceptive impression of wit.
The basic news: ack, the site got bigger and more popular. Again.
Key stats: March saw over 2.2 million hits, in 152,000 visits. Almost 1.7m files served on 389,000 pages, for 28 gigs of bandwidth. Each day averaged 4925 visitors, and a bit over 71,000 hits. For comparison, December only had around 700,000 hits total. Basically, across the board, every metric I have shows that the site is 150% more popular than it was the month prior.
This all makes me wonder why my Google AdSense has only earned $2.26. Maybe I need to unblock all those gold farmer ads.
The biggest day was right at the start of the month, because the lessons of MMORPGs has really proven very popular (and is still getting trackbacked today). My departure from SOE generated the next biggest bump in traffic, but it hardly compares.
This month we see a new country among the top users of the site’s bandwidth: China pops up at #7, edging out the Netherlands.
Our monthly update on the campaign to get people to listen to the music on the site: uh, I think I forgot to post any music on the site this month. Oops. Total hits on MP3 files: 85. Ouch.
Most popular pages on the site this month:
- Small Worlds, holding at #1.
- About Raph, which really needs updated since now it’s plain old wrong; up from #4.
- The Online World Timeline, holding at #3.
- Laws of Online World Design, down from #2
- How to Manage a Large-Scale Online Gaming Community, up from #10
- Running Massively Multiplayer Games holding at #6
- Online World Design Patterns down from #5
- Declaring the Rights of Players holding at #8
- A Story About a Tree, which wasn’t on the charts last month
- Moore’s Wall, down from #7
Alas, What Does It Take to Make a Successful Persistent Online World fell from #9 to #11 and thus off the chart.
It’s very clear, though, that the blog entries are drawing a lot more traffic than the pages; the lessons and the healing game both rank higher in raw visits than any given page. Heck, the Sunday Poem “Out of Water” scored higher than #11 did.
I was going to put a table of the most popular Sunday poems here, but I found that they simply went up in popularity based on how recent they were. The newer, the more read they were, which makes sense given the rising tide.
Pages hardly anybody visited (which still means 14 people): the HyperPS2 interview and Should we pursue balance?.
As far as lifetime popularity of posts goes, I once made the prediction that the mostly content-free post about OGLE would not be dethroned until the heat-death of the universe. Last month, that was proven untrue. However, I now have a new candidate for “post that will never surrender the #1 spot.” And if anyone needs some raw data for proof of power laws in post traffic, here’s some.
| 1) | 29001 | What are the lessons of MMORPGs today? (up 9000 visits this month!) |
| 2) | 7397 | The Healing Game |
| 3) | 7342 | Do levels suck? |
| 4) | 6819 | OGLE |
| 5) | 6256 | Where does popularity come from, or the Wisdom of Crowds revisited |
| 6) | 5236 | Do levels suck? Part II |
| 7) | 4343 | A guild trademarks its name |
| 8) | 4188 | Leaving SOE |
| 9) | 3802 | The evil we pretend to do |
| 10) | 3761 | Are single-player games doomed? which gained only 800 visits |
The most popular blog posts made this month, however, were:
- The healing game
- Leaving SOE
- GDC Day Three
- A bit on how I think games work
- Where’s innovation gonna come from?
- Ultra-fast release cycles
- Can MMOs be sandboxes?
- Shaping perceptions
- last month’s monthly report
- Mischiefblog designs the next generation of MMOs
- Darniaq has seen the future of MMOs
I am guessing that a lot of people are interested in the future of MMOs. And last month’s search terms. It’s also nice to see some posts on that list that I don’t even remember what they are. 🙂
A lot more folks are using feed readers to keep up with the content; in March we hit a peak of 588 people reading that way, just this past Thursday. Overall, I’m seeing a steady rise in this form of reading the site. 32% of those are using Bloglines, split across 5 aliases. Also popular are Firefox Live Bookmarks, NetNewsWire on the Mac, and Google Desktop.
The posts that caused the biggest arguments, most commentary, and in general inflated the database with material not my own, were:
- The Healing Game
- Leaving SOE
- A bit on how I think games work
- Mischiefblog designs the next generation of MMOs
- CAN MMOs be sandboxes?
- Shaping perceptions
- GDC day three
- WoW or SL?
- Where’s innovation gonna come from?
- At least it’s great company
In the ongoing battle between the forces of Firefox and the minions of Microsoft, the blog has flipped to the IE side. Looks like Firefox held steady at 41.6%, which is close to what it was last month, but IE made a 2% gain to 46.3%, which means that stuff like Netscape, Opera, and Safari lost ground instead.
The referrers are a fun batch this month, again thanks to those dratted Lessons plus my job news:
- Nodwick, by a mile
- GameSpot (because of my SOE departure)
- BoingBoing
- Negatendo’s del.icio.us
- Terra Nova
- Blue’s News
- SWG forums
- Scott Jennings’ blog Broken Toys
- Gamasutra
- StumbleUpon
Which finally brings us to search engine terms. The ones on the blog’s search engine are blah this month:
- jythri. According to Google, Jythri, son of Nyp, son of Setolumnus, son of Rand, was born on a ship sailing to Norrath. As a lad, he perched on the foredeck of his father’s ship, not on the foredeck of my blog.
- blankets (at a guess, they were looking for this, but if not, they should have been).
- parc and park. Most of the parking is to the right and behind the building, as I recall. There’s not that many spaces out front.
- green card. Given the recent political events in California, I suppose that makes sense.
- weakness of theory. Depending on your viewpoint, either there’s no evidence for that on this blog at all, or the entire blog is evidence. Your call.
- surreptitiously. Spelled correctly, too. Alas, it was logged, and is therefore paradoxical.
- PWC Forensic Customer News. I think you should be looking in the Dilby Classifed Ads in the London Borough of Lambeth, not here.
- the hairy toe. This toe, if you recall, was popular last month as well. I refuse to speculate.
- poème pour anniversaire and poemas sobre escola — see, the poems aren’t a waste! They are helping countless unpoetic individuals do homework, plagiarize verse for loved ones, and possibly, write greeting cards.
- Avatars Offline and its director, Daniel Liatowitsch. You can buy the DVD here, it’s worth seeing.
- Monty Python. Are you here for an argument?
- resident assistants. Yes, I was one. I’m not anymore. Unless you ask my kids.
- Taylor Hicks. The man’s got soul, I tell ya.
- bloodwilltell. Yesitwillandit’sthickerthanwater.
- buddhism. You are both here and not here for an argument at the same time.
- Prydan and O Castelo de Llyr. I think you meant “Prydain,” and the book you want is here in English, at any rate.
- fluctus. No thanks.
- homo powerludens. The t-shirt is available..
- sankuokai, which proves I am not the only person to remember this show.
- musica raphera. I am a genre!
And the main event, the wild and wooly world of the Internet, which washes up weird and wonderful weblinks which winkled out wacky wordage from Google, which I wish started with a W.
- playmate february 2006. You know, there’s a lot of people who go looking for Cassandra Lynn and instead find a different sort of imaginary playmate.
- catherine mcphee — well, she’s not picking songs as well as Taylor is, but she does remind me of Kelly Clarkson.
- jogos para jogar as opposed to the sort of games you do other things to, like set on fire, or use in baking.
- sonntagsgedicht. Nein.
- warren spector`s website. I don’t think Warren has one.
- contrast works and los vendidos. This one intrigued me. It was both statement and yet inconclusive, covering two languages without making sense in either. Plus, the Spanish means “the sold.” Hmm.
- jack bauer hitler stalin. Yeah, he could take ’em.
- poem smile and poem grandmother and poema para o pai and…
- ceppi hemlock. Did they serve it to Socrates in a ceppi cup?
- google tarth. Did you mean north?
- unfun jeux. Why would you search for those? Ludomasochism?
- limericks with comments. Yeah, I recall Richard adding a few.
- how can i get onto runescape without the site being blocked by my student account. Well, you could use an anonymizer, move off campus, or just buckle down to your studies until you can graduate, get a good job with good pay, and afford your own damn account.
- how i learn milestone of average child development. I recommend What to Expect the Toddler Years.
- how to make your own mmo. First, you type “void main()”.
- hate marketing — you sure you’re not in the games industry?
- taste of skittles. I like them, but Kristen says “yuck.”
- raph koster peering … at?
- who invented the popular board game called monopoly. There’s actually a lot of controversy over that.
- what do npc do in mmogs. As little as possible.
- what characteristics made babylona civilization. Considering she not only stopped updating her blog, but let the domain lapse, I think it’s a dead civilization.
- a website that times people. Doing what?
- beethoven s ninth mmo. Ninth? I didn’t know he’d made ANY!
- microsoft popular entertainment software created in 1983 with bruce artwick? Oooh, ohh, trivia! I know, I know, Flight Simulator, right? SubLogic? God, am I a geek.
- game website nobody knows about. Given the traffic, not this one anymore. As I recall, Heartless was upset I was stealing his traffic. Try that one.
- stop fluent iteration. Why?
- arguably 有è¯æ®è¡¨æ˜Ž. Indeed.
- si usted se atreve means if you dare.
- how to make a mmo emulator. First, you type “void main()”… Hmm.
- mud1 the game like runescape. See! People understand that text muds and graphical games are the same!
- second life tentacle. You mostly hear about the furries there, but I am sure they can accomodate you.
That’s it for now — this post now takes two hours to write each month. At the current trends, I expect you’ll eventually get one post a month, and this will be it.
12 Responses to “Monthly Report, March 2006”
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I’m currently stuck at “void main()” 🙁
return 42;
I thought it was Charles Darrow? (I only know this because I have Darrow blood in me (incl. Clarence), and we always wondered if the Charles B. Darrow in our tree was, or at least knew, the Charles Darrow of Monopoly fame.)
The monthly posts are fun. I only ever get hits from your site and the girly message board I read.
Actually, Janey, that’s what the controversy is about. 🙂 Darrow is usually credited since he holds the patent, but there’s a lot of evidence that a very similar game existed already, and that he packaged it together and sold the rights (out from under the Quakers, no less!).
A brief summary can be found here but you can Google for lots more.
Trivia: I actually played anti-Monopoly not too long after it came out, hippie kid that I was. 🙂
No, there really isn’t a big controversy over Monopoly. Monopoly itself was designed by Charles B. Darrow; no real questions on that point. However, Monopoly is one of a class of games with certain shared characteristics (properties purchased by players, a track that wraps around, movement by the throw of dice) of which there are many folk versions extant by the time Darrow designed his game–and which derive ultimate from Lizzie Magee’s The Landlord’s Game. Magee’s game didn’t have houses or hotels (or mortgages of properties), so Darrow’s Monopoly is indeed a different title. One may certainly argue that Parker treated Magee very shabbily (they resolved any legal issue with her by licensing her game, printing a small number of copies, and burying it)–and I’d agree.
But while Monopoly is derivative of The Landlord’s Game, it is still Darrow’s design, in the same way that, say, EverQuest is derivative of dikuMUD, but is not a “rip off” of the game–an evolution from it. And the facts of the matter are in the public record, and not under any real debate.
[…] Comments […]
Greg, you’re much more of a historian of this that I am, of course, but what about the alleged story of the Quakers in Atlantic City who were neighbors of Darrow’s, and all the rest of the stuff alleged by Ralph Anspach?
You realize, of course, that now that we’ve talked about this, “who invented the popular board game called monopoly” is going to be on your search list every month from now on, yes? 😉
It really ought to be
int main()
so it can return -1. 🙂
Raph:
The controversy is over whether Darrow’s patent was valid; clearly his game was based on prior art, and should have been ruled invalid. And given that patent and trademark are the only viable protections for boardgames, that would have screwed Parker… a possibility they sterilized by paying Magee a pittance.
But “design” isn’t “invention”; if Dune II had patented its basic gameplay, then Warcraft and Command & Conquer would be viewed as obviously derivative works, and possibly as “rip offs” of Dune II. This is one of the reasons I veiw the increasing tendency of people to talk about gameplay patents with alarm–particularly as this isn’t anything novel; there’s a history of game patents that goes back into the 19th century, and they are likely to hold up.
From a “design” perspective, Darrow’s game clearly builds on Magee’s, but is a different game, just as Warcraft is not Dune II. For that matter just as most modern fantasy builds on Tolkein, and thank god we don’t have “fictional architecture” patents or some damn thing.
In other words:
Darrow designed Monopoly, which builds on systems pioneed by Magee.
From the perspective of patent law, Monoply probably infringed on The Landlord’s Game, but I’m not sure that’s relevant.
And as for Anspach… in my opinion, the court decision on Antimonopoly was founded on bad law. The argument was the “monopoly” is a common English word and therefore cannot be trademarked for specific uses, which I think is bogus. The argument should have been that Antimonopoly is sufficiently different that no purchaser was likely to be misled into thinking that it was a Parker Brothers product.
Damn is that an insult or a compliment -_-
Either way I’ll take it!
[…] I made the report Raph Koster has his monthly report up for March and I’ve made the grade.The question remains… is this an insult or a compliment? “And the main event, the wild and wooly world of the Internet, which washes up weird and wonderful weblinks which winkled out wacky wordage from Google, which I wish started with a W.game website nobody knows about. Given the traffic, not this one anymore. As I recall, Heartless was upset I was stealing his traffic. Try that one.”Either way I’ll take it! [ # posted by Heartless_ @ 1:42 PM] [ 2 comments ] [ Post a Comment ] [ Home ] […]