I’ve known about the ‘power of Penny Arcade’ for years now – in fact, I’ve watched it grow. The ‘power’ in case you were wondering, is basically their ability to get a mass of consumers to go after one thing; usually a game. Obviously, that’s a power often wielded to get people to buy their own stuff (and why not) but often it’s used to push people towards products they might not have otherwise heard about.
When it’s aimed towards a web site, often The Power can crush web servers that are unprepared. People used to talk about ‘getting slashdotted’ (ie, getting linked to by Slashdot – or just /. if you’re an ubernerd), and then ‘Boing-Boinged’ but when you get hit by Penny Arcade, you get wanged. (Their term.)
I was wanged once – a few years ago, when Jerry (Tycho) obliquely linked to Tagline (then, just a movie weblog). He wasn’t even directly linking; he was mentioning me in passing in a post (we’d met), and just threw the link in on some random word. Even with people thinking “Oh, I’ll just click that random link”, Tagline’s traffic increased by about 1,000% that week. Continue reading →
I’ll get back to the grovelling “Sorry I haven’t posted a lot recently, I’ve been busy” stuff in a second, but if I don’t say something about this, it’ll totally leave my head.
You may or may not know that Richard Bartle has been blog topic du jour a lot recently, all stemming from an interview he did with Massively in which he said:
“I’ve already played Warhammer [Online]. It was called World of Warcraft. “
Which apparently, is the Quote That Was Heard Around The World. Assuming your world consists of nothing except reading MMOG-focused blogs and then getting very upset that either:
(a) your new favourite (unreleased) MMOG is being ‘dissed’ or
(b) your old favourite (out right now and doing very well) MMOG is, er, also being ‘dissed’ or
(c) Someone has an opinion on either game.
A few days ago I might have tried to weigh in on the reaction to Richard’s comments, but better people have beaten me to it – read this very good summary by Alec Meer over at Rock Paper Shotgun if you want a good overall view (and read the comments too).
All I really wanted to say is, I’ve met… Continue reading →
I know I’ve been quite absent lately, but hey – this is what happens when work gets a mite busy and out-of-work gets busy too. Between work, socialising, theatre trips, writing and the (very) occasional game of something-or-other, it’s left very little time to think. Let alone write.
To guilt-trip myself into doing them here are a few posts in the brain hopper, ready to go down the chute:
This would be a damn good start.
Videogaming 247 – which exploded out of nowhere earlier this year and has almost effortlessly become my favourite gaming news site, bar none – is looking for writers.
You won’t get paid. You will get edited, but you will be edited by one of the All-Time Great Editors – Pat “I made C&VG cool” Garratt. (And quite frankly? We need more really good editors on gaming news sites, please.)
Most important of all, you’ll get published credits on a Very Good Site that’ll look fantastic on your CV.
If anyone out there reading this wants to get into the games industry or just wants to write about games like an obsessive nutjob (a la Garratt, who’s the kind of obsessive nutjob the industry needs much, much more of) then get your ass over to the site and apply pronto. Continue reading →
I couldn’t possibly comment on this list from Beckett, who publish a print magazine (how quaint!) called Massive Online Gamer (I assume that’s not a cutting reference to one’s weight). It is apparently, a list of the 20 most influential people in the MMO industry. Like I said, I can’t comment.
But you can.
Discuss…. Continue reading →