Category: Books & Writing

NBI: How not to build an audience

Posted on by Nimgimli

Hello again, new bloggers! You thought I’d forgotten you, eh? Not so, not so…

So by now you’ve got your blog going and you’ve hopefully found a writing frequency that fits your schedule. Now maybe you’re wondering how to attract readers.

Well, I can’t tell you. I’ve been writing Dragonchasers for 10 years now and I have like 500 readers who generate less than a thousand page views a week.

Why?

Well it could be because I suck at writing, but I don’t think that’s it because on my other blog I get as many as 10,000 page views/day (though that’s not typical… about 1,000/day is typical).

So I’m going to have enough hubris to not blame the quality of my writing, but instead to blame the quality of my marketing.

I figure if I tell you what I do, you can do the opposite and you’ll probably get plenty of page views.

So the first thing I do is, I don’t care about page views. I’m narcissistic enough that I actually enjoy reading my own writing, so I tend to write this blog for myself, not for my audience. I think they can tell and so go find someone willing to cater to their needs.

You should probably be more aware of your audience and try to judge what it is they’re interested in. How? Simple: ask them. Your fans will tell you what they like and don’t like if you ask them. In fact they’ll feel more committed to you because they’ll realize that they’re important to you. You may not have a lot of fans yet, but nurture the ones you do have and their numbers will grow via word of mouth.

Second, if you really don’t want an audience, be really inconsistent. Write three posts on one day and then go two weeks without writing any. Be nurturing and rational in one post, and in the grip of a flaming nerd rage in the next. Keep the audience totally guessing about what to expect next and it’ll guarantee that you’ll never have to pay for extra bandwidth.

But if you want an audience, you should probably find a voice and try to stick with it. Being angry is fine if that’s your shtick. There are plenty of popular rage bloggers out there. If you want to be wacky and weird, go for it. Again, plenty of wacky and weird bloggers have devoted followings. Ditto thoughtful bloggers who talk about game theory or what not. Just don’t mix these things up. Don’t go from philosophical musings on the nature of gaming to talking about how you want to build a sculpture of your favorite character out of navel lint and ear wax. People find that jarring. Once you’re established you can drift a bit, but even then it’s worth it to preface ‘out of character’ posts in order to warn people that they’re about to get a taste of something different.

Third, I’m an asshole on social networks. People block me all the time. People who block me certainly don’t read my blog. Mission accomplished!

In order to build an audience, DO get involved with social networks but remember that now you’re selling yourself. People absolutely will remove your blog from their RSS feeds and unfollow you based on one outburst. We all have more things to read than we really have time for and in some sense we’re all looking for excuses to cut down on sources. So don’t be a doormat, but do remain rational and respectful on social networks. You probably do this anyway because you’re probably not an asshole.

Fourth, swear a lot. Some people hate swearing and many will get nervous about reading your blog at work if you’re filling their screen with 4-letter words. As soon as I finish writing this I’m going to go find a nice jpg of a naked woman to insert into this post. I bet I can get 50 people to drop me from their feeds if the image is raunchy enough.

For you, keep a lid on excessive swearing and provocative images. None of us can admit it, but most of us do a lot of our blog reading at the office. Don’t make your audience nervous about opening one of your blog posts within sight of their co-workers.

Fifth, and I don’t do this one, but plaster ads all over your blog. People hate ads and they’ll avoid you in order to avoid them.

For you, skip the ads for now. Not everyone is sensitive about them, but some people are, and until you’re established you’re not going to make enough for it to matter. In particular stay away from sponsored posts or links because they make you look like a sell-out in some people’s eyes.

Bandwidth ain’t free and the best way to keep your costs down is to keep your audience down. So follow my plan and you’ll never have enough of an audience to worry about.

Or if you’re one of those crazies who’d like an audience and maybe to grow your blog into something more than a hobby, use me as an example of what not to do. Work hard, be true to yourself and your audience, be consistent, and before long you’ll have a huge number of devoted followers.

I can’t believe you want that kind of pressure, but whatevs.

NBI: New Blogger Initiative launches!

Posted on by Nimgimli

It’s the first of May, which means it’s time for May Poles (are those still a thing?) and the time to celebrate Beltane for my pagan friends. But for bloggers and in particular wannabe bloggers, May 1st means the start of the New Blogger Initiative (NBI).

So what is the NBI? It’s a program run by Syp of Biobreak that strives to invite new writers to try their hand at blogging (and to give them some help and guidance getting started). Maybe you’ve been meaning to try your hand at blogging but you’re not sure where to start, or even HOW to start. Well then the NBI is for you.

During the course of this month you’ll be seeing NBI posts pop up all over the blogosphere: Syp says over 70 blogs are participating! All of us existing bloggers will try to share what we know (or even what we don’t know) in order to help you get your blog off the ground.

But I’m going to spoil the event on you and tell you the deep dark secret of blogging: There is NO SECRET! If you can write a comment or an update on Facebook, you can blog. If you’re worried your writing isn’t strong enough, don’t be. First of all you’re probably better than you think you are, and you’ll continue to improve with practice.

OK end spoilers.

As a participant, I’ve agreed to write at least one post during the month giving advice on getting started. I’m aiming for the middle of the month for mine. (If all 70+ of us write just one post, that’s still going to be plenty of advice.) So who am I and why am I qualified? Well I’m qualified because Syp asked me to participate!

If nothing else I have longevity going for me. Dragonchasers is celebrating its ten-year anniversary this month. My first post was in May 2002 (though there’ve been big gaps at times when I took a break from writing for a while). Before Dragonchasers (long before it) I was associate editor of a now-defunct PC gaming magazine, Strategy Plus and executive editor of a multimedia magazine (it came on CD) called Interactive Entertainment. I’ve also done some freelance writing and in addition to Dragonchasers I write a personal technology blog for ITworld.com.

And that’s all I’m going to say about me, because NBI is about you: the person who has something he or she wants to say and is thinking a blog is the right place to do it.

So how do YOU get involved? Step one is to head to the forums set-up for the event, NBIHQ, and register there. Then head to the Newbie bloggers instructions thread and follow the steps to get started. It’s easy!

I can’t wait to read your new blog!

Shouldering the weight of your words

Posted on by Nimgimli

So in the bright sunshine of the morning after the Massively/Rift controversy, I wanted to open the topic up a bit more. Clearly I found it wrong for a pro-blogger to dismiss a soon-to-ship product without giving it a fair shake. Others, like Tipa and Arkenor, thought I was off my rocker. Ark voiced the opinion that anything goes in gaming coverage as long as it’s an honest opinion. Tipa just didn’t care one way or the other.

So I wanted to elaborate on my feelings a bit, setting aside the specifics of this situation.

First and most importantly, we have to ask the question of whether or not (presumably, see below) high-traffic sites like Massively influence buying decisions. If they don’t, then none of what I’m about to say matters. I’m assuming that some percentage of readers come to these sites in order to determine if a product is worth their buying consideration.

Next is the issue of scale. The higher the pulpit, the more carefully you need to weigh your words. Some guy on a street corner preaching about the end of days won’t have much impact, but if a TV network starts saying the same thing it could cause a panic. My assumption here is that Massively has significant traffic. If they don’t, then again, my arguments (and concerns) are invalidated.

So we’re talking then, about a site that has the ability to significantly move the needle when it comes to a game’s sales.

And we’re talking about a game still in beta and still being changed. This is not the game that customers will be paying for. We don’t know what that game will be.

With all these conditions met, I believe it is irresponsible for an author to off-handedly trash a game (and thereby influence sales of the game) in a post on the site. It isn’t irresponsible to say “This type of game isn’t of interest to me.” and it isn’t irresponsible to say “After 1 hour of playing my interest wasn’t captured enough to inspire me to dig deeper into this title” but it is irresponsible to say “This game is just like every other game” when you haven’t played enough to know if this statement is true or not.

As a blogger on a high-traffic site, you need to consider the impact of your words more carefully than, say, I do here on my dinky little blog.

Consider the situation from the other side of the fence. Imagine you’re working for a game developer. You’ve been helping the team make a game for the past several years and finally it’s coming to fruition and then some pundit posts untrue things about your game. Not out of malice but out of ignorance because said pundit never really looked closely at your product. Now you’re taking a hit (however small) on sales because of an off-hand comment.

Consider the situation from the point of view of your audience. They (presumably) trust you. They come to you to learn about a game. Don’t you owe it to them to know what you’re talking about? By stating what you perceive as (but what in fact isn’t) a fact based on incomplete data does an injustice to your audience.

Finally, consider the impact on your own career. By flippantly dismissing a title for reasons that aren’t accurate, you’re blowing your credibility with readers who have played the game and know that you’re stating things that aren’t true. Credibility that is very, very difficult to regain.

I’ve seen potentially good games canceled due to mishandled press coverage. Granted that was back when print magazines existed and the lag time for ‘corrections’ was very long. But damage can still be done, and if you’re a gaming enthusiast, that should matter to you. New games should be given a fair chance to prove themselves, and not be slagged prior to launch because a particular journalist wasn’t interested enough to really look at the game, and instead just made assumptions that ultimately aren’t accurate.

I firmly believe the writers at high-traffic sites need to be held to higher standards than they currently are. They should write about what they’ve experienced, and not what they assume to be true. If they’re writing about things they’ve only heard about, they should cite sources. I’m not saying they should sugar-coat issues, just that they should report accurately, even if what they’re reporting is just their opinion. Opinions based on assumptions need to be described as such.

Gone digital

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m a pretty loud advocate of e-books, as my twitter friends know. I often find myself advocating for e-books as a platform. But even I hadn’t realized out whole-heartedly I’d embraced digital content until last weekend.

Angela and I had taken a few days of to tackle The Closet… our office has a closet running the full width of one wall (the office is intended to be the master bedroom in this apartment) and it was over-flowing with junk. So we dragged it all out and I had 5 (!) milk-crates full of old magazines. I set them aside to go through later.

And so last weekend I found myself surrounded by stacks of old magazines: everything from issues of Realms of Fantasy from the early 90s, to Cardplayer Magazine from back when I played online … err, the spammers will invade if I say it, but y’know that gambling game that’s played online, to Linux Journals, MIT Technology Reviews from 2000-2003, Wired, Armchair General… just tons and tons of magazines.

A lot of them went right into the dumpster. Reading about the state of the art of Linux from 2003 just isn’t a good use of time, and I no longer play cards seriously enough to read a magazine about it.

But the Technology Reviews and the Wireds had some interesting content; interviews with current tech giants who were up-and-comers back then, or ‘prediction’ pieces that were so far off the mark as to be kind of charming. I knew I’d never get through them by ‘flipping through’ so I decided to check out each issue’s Table of Contents and see if there was anything worth reading.

At first this was kind of fun, but I quickly found it incredibly frustrating. Paper magazines, it turns out, SUCK. First you have to *find* the table of contents which in Wired, particularly, can be 10 pages or more in. Then you find an article you want to read and it’s on page 152. While you try to find page 152 7-8 ‘blow-in’ subscription cards land in your lap. The magazine insists in flopping open to various advertisements printed on thicker paper than the rest of the mag. Other times you find yourself flipping through 10-15 pages of “Advertising Section” or other un-numbered pages. When you finally do find page 152, your read it and page 153 & 154 and then the article is continued on page 185 and you have to start your search all over again.

Bah! I got more and more particular in what I felt was worth reading until most of the issues I was just chucking in the bin. My beloved Realms of Fantasy excepted… those are just so retro and awesome I had to keep them. 🙂

What I found curious about the whole episode is that if I’d gone through this process 8 months ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about the format of paper magazines. But since April I’ve been doing 99% of my ‘magazine’ reading on the iPad. In some cases I buy digital issues of a mag (Wired, New Yorker) and in other cases I just read the articles on a website. And now that I have a great edition of the New York Times on the iPad, I’ll go back to reading the Sunday paper and magazine section (digitally).

I don’t have many print magazine subscriptions left at this point, and I don’t expect I’ll ever subscribe to another one. I knew I’d embraced e-books, but until now I hadn’t realized how strongly I’d embraced e-magazines. I mean, I still have all my stacks and shelves and boxes of print books…I’m not going to toss those. But print magazines…they’ve become a relic of another age, in my eyes, and fit only for recycling.

Sony considering an iPad app for PSN digital comics?

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I just was asked to take a survey about my experience with digital comics from the PlayStation Network (currently for reading on the PSP). Reading between the lines, so to speak, it sounds like Sony is judging user interest towards accessing their digital comics on other hardware besides the PSP. Specifically mentioned were a PC, the PS3, and the iPad/tablet computers.

There’re already several digital comics sellers who’ve set up house on the iPad so it might be a tough nut for Sony to crack, but I’d love to be able to buy a digital comic and read it on my PSP or my iPad, depending on what was handy.

Again, this was just a survey so there’s no telling how seriously they’re considering the idea. I just found it interesting that they’d even think about jumping to Apple hardware.

Print is dead (to me)

Posted on by Nimgimli

So I bought an iPad back in April. I believe tomorrow is my 2 month iPad anniversary.

I love the thing. In principal I hate how closed iTunes is, but in practice I never find myself longing for something I can’t get. Basically I focus on what the iPad can do, and don’t worry about what it can’t. The iPad was additive with regards to my life…I didn’t sacrifice anything for it. I didn’t trade in my laptop or my netbook for the iPad, so yeah, I focus on what it can do today, while we wait for the Android competition to heat up. I’m looking forward to using the tablet that is better than the iPad, whenever and from whomever it comes.

Anyway, one of the things I use it for every day is reading books. I have iBooks (Apple’s books), Kindle and Barnes & Noble book readers on there. Right now I’m chewing through Storm Front, the first Harry Dresden book (which I got for free from B&N via a promotion). Before that it was For The Win and before that a couple of Riverworld books.

I’m looking at the stack of print books sitting next to my bedside table and find myself not wanting to open them up. I’m thinking about re-purchasing these books in e-book format. I’m that taken by reading on the iPad (I’m sure I’d feel the same about the Kindle or Nook, too).

My eyes aren’t that good. I really need to get new glasses but my job doesn’t offer vision coverage and I never seem to have the extra couple hundred $$ that it’ll cost me. With the iPad, I bump up the font. If I’m out and about and don’t have any glasses with me, I bump it up really huge. When I’m reading in bed at the end of the day, I wear my not-really-strong-enough glasses and bump the font up a medium amount. And turn the brightness on the iPad way down.

Since I always have the iPad handy, I always have my book handy. I really like that. And I always have the web handy in the event I want to quickly look something up. And I never lose my place.

I love my books but now I’m feeling this weird conflict. I don’t want to give up my shelves and shelves of books. Or the smell of an older book. And yet, I don’t really want to go back to reading tiny print on paper, either.

Same goes for magazines. I haven’t opened a print magazine since I got the iPad. I read articles on the web now.

It’s really a strange feeling. Like my world has shifted a tiny bit.

Doctorow’s For The Win is full of fun ideas

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I finished reading Cory Doctorow’s For The Win last night. I wanted to talk a little bit about it, because Doctorow has some ideas about the future of MMO gaming that I found pretty interesting.

If you haven’t heard of it, For The Win is a book about a group of gold farmers and other young people fighting to bring about better working conditions for themselves, and for other ‘invisible’ workers who’re treated terribly and work for tiny wages (notably Chinese factory workers). The book couldn’t be more timely with all the Foxconn suicides in the news these days.

The plot of the book itself was ok, but it wasn’t what had me turning pages. What I was really enjoying was glimpsing the future through Doctorow’s eyes. If a specific date for the happenings in the book was mentioned I missed it, but World of Warcraft is considered ancient history (as described by the ~20 year old characters) so I’m going to guess the year is 2025 or thereabouts. Also a lot of the book takes place in Mumbai & Shenzhen, two places which would be totally foreign to me today, being an untraveled Westerner.

So there are a lot of MMOs running in this future world. Four are mentioned often. One is Mushroom Kingdom, run by Nintendo. The other three are all run by Coca-Cola! Implied but not seen are other games run by companies that we don’t think of as gaming companies today. In the future, as now, gold farming isn’t legal, but there isn’t a lot the companies can do to stop it. There are “Pinkertons” running around in games to kill gold farmers (all worlds seem to be full PvP in the future) but they aren’t paid by the companies normally.

In this way For The Win feels a bit retro. Reminded me of Ultima Online with the PKK guilds trying to maintain order.

Most of the gold farmers work for mobsters stationed in India, China or Indonesia. Farming is big business and the games have gotten so big that there are people who really know nothing about the games but who make a living out of investing in virtual goods. The bosses drive their workers relentlessly at times when a particular item is selling for a lot.

Anyway, it’s a fun read, my biggest problem with it is that it makes gold farming sound fun (I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek). These gold farmers don’t stand around in a field alone killing trash mobs over and over. Instead they farm instances, both for the gold and for items. Generally they work in a PC bang together, shouting back and forth between terminals. They tend to be very good players rather than the rather mindless semi-bots that our real gold farmers seem to be today.

So let’s get to some of the ideas I thought were interesting. First, one of the games is called Zombie Mecha (Mecha Zombie??). In it, players pilot giant robots in a post-zombie apocalypse world. It’s a full-on PVP world with two rival factions, plus the zombies who’re AI controlled. Zombies can’t generally hurt someone in a mech unless it gets damaged or stuck, then they swarm all over it. Tales of battle in Zombie Mecha were really fun and I found myself wanting to play that game!

Second, the games are a lot more ‘complete’ than today’s games are. Most things in-world can be interacted with. Of course the programmers can’t think of everything, so when a player tries to perform an action that there’s no scripting for, the game pulls in a Mechanical Turk to take over. These turks are players who get paid a few cents per interaction. They generally run a bunch of sessions at a time so they’re able to juggle interacting with a bunch of players all at the same time.

I think this is a brilliant idea and one game companies need to incorporate asap. It needn’t be as elaborate as in the book, but imagine if every 50th orc you fought was actually being controlled by a person? How much more interesting could the game become? The person running the orc would have a goal of providing you with an immersive experience, not necessarily beating you. You get a better experience so you keep playing, and someone can make a few dollars while they’re hanging out at home playing games.

The next idea is a technology one. When Coke (in the game) is ready to roll out a new server cluster, they build it in a shipping container. They burn it in at their HQ, then ship it to somewhere very cold, and preferably somewhere near a renewable energy source, like a wind farm or a geo-thermal vent. By using the ambient environment to keep the servers cool, they save a lot of money (and energy). Every so often they rotate out one of these containers to bring it back to HQ for refurbing. This might seem trivial if you’ve never been in a big data center but trust me, those places spend a LOT of money and energy on air conditioning.

I had some more examples but this has run long enough for now. You can download a free electronic copy of For The Win if you don’t feel like paying for it. You might encounter some typos and such, but the (ePub) version I picked was very readable; it isn’t like it’s a first draft or anything.

If you’re an MMO player, you’ll probably get a kick out of the gaming aspects of the book. If you’re concerned about worker’s rights in Asia, then I think you’ll find the tale inspiring. Well worth a read.

Why I like the tablet form factor

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This post is a response to a conversation I’ve been having on Twitter. People ask me why I’m interested in getting a tablet (or slate, if you prefer) PC.

First, let me be clear. I’m not trying to sell anyone else on this form factor. I’m saying I personally like the tablet profile, and here’s why.

I surf the web. I know that term is now considered obsolete but it really describes what I do. When I’m sitting at my desk staring at a computer, I’ve got a bunch of tabs open to various web pages. I have a twitter client running. I have an IM client running. I’ve got email notifications popping up. My RSS feed is filling. I flit from place to place, skimming lots of different content. I’ll read a paragraph or two of a page, then be distracted by something else and later go back to ingest another ‘graph or two. “Surfing” definitely describes what I’m doing. I do very little “deep reading” on my traditional computers.

When I use a tablet, I don’t work in the same way. My current tablet (that I just got for Christmas) is the Asus EEE T91MT. It’s a netbook with a touch screen that folds back into a tablet format.

When I use it as a tablet, I tend to run a web browser with 1 – 2 tabs open (generally my Instapaper listing or articles to read and the current article I’m reading) or I run some e-book software. I focus on one thing. Part of that is a limitation of the netbook hardware. It’s got 1 gig of ram and an Atom processor…it can’t handle running a bunch of software all at once. But part of it is the experience of the tablet.

When I sit at a computer I’m reading the screen from 18″ or so away. I’m reading text that’s on an object. I also see my keyboard and the window behind the monitor and all kinds of other things. Even if I don’t run a lot of different software, I have a lot of distractions and I’m easily distracted by nature.

When I lay on the couch (or in bed) with the tablet I’m holding it 9-12 inches from my eyes. I see the content on the screen. Essentially it’s like reading a book or a magazine. What you’re reading pretty much fills your field of view. That keeps me focused on one thing, and I get a lot more out of what I’m reading. I read more deeply. I retain more. I finish articles all in one swoop.

The tablet form factor also means I can read more comfortably. I can shift around, move it closer or farther way. Lay on my side with the tablet laying on the bed next to me, or lay on my back with it resting on my chest like a book. It doesn’t get hot and it doesn’t have a keyboard jutting out of the screen (I know some folks balance a netbook on their chest…for my old eyes, that’s going to put the screen too far away unless the front of the keyboard is touching my teeth). Now the T91 is a little thicker and a little heavier than I’d like it to be, which is why I’m looking forward to a ‘true’ slate PC at some point in the not so distant future.

Werit mentioned that he could do all that I want to do with his Droid, and I agree. But for me the Droid is just a bit too small. I can hold it sideways to get an 800 pixel wide screen that displays the main column of most web pages, but then the depth of the page is so short that I’m constantly scrolling. For ebooks, I’m constantly paging and that kind of breaks up the cadence of reading. I just need something a tad bigger than the Droid’s screen for my personal comfort. (But don’t get me wrong, I have e-book software on my Droid and will happily read from it when I’m out and about and have some time on my hands…it’s an awesome phone.)

People say tablets are too big to lug around and I agree. I don’t want one to carry around with me. I just want one to take to the couch or to bed for when I want to catch up on reading some web content (or ebooks) that I really want to relax and enjoy; not skim through.

So those are my reasons…they’re hard to convey 140 characters at a time. 🙂

Dragon Age: The Calling

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Regular readers may remember my enthusiasm surrounding the first Dragon Age novel, The Stolen Throne, by David Gaider. I found it to be an entertaining stand-alone fantasy novel and its tie to a video game irrelevant. So it was with great anticipation that I picked up Gaider’s second DA novel, The Calling. I’m sad to say, this second book lived down to the general reputation of books based on games.

A lot of things went wrong here. My guess is that Gaider was under a lot of pressure to get the book out before the game, and it shows in sloppy editing leading to cringe-worthy sentences like “Holding up his hand, a surge of black energy surged out of him and lanced toward Fiona.” There are also lots of incongruous shifts in POV and characters reading each other’s thoughts via steely eyed glances and such.

Second, the plot is extremely one dimensional and honestly not very interesting. This is the most basic of “Quest” novels. A group consisting of Human/Dwarf/Elf Fighters/Thieves/Mages have to enter the Deep Roads (a series of tunnels first encountered in The Stolen Throne) to stop a Foozle. *yawn* The book was so clearly designed to showcase the races and classes of the game that it felt like one long chunk of marketing copy. The vast bulk of the book has our Group roaming through the underworld fighting Darkspawn.

Thirdly, even if you can get past the lack of editing and wafer-thin plot, the characters’ motives often make no sense. Without spoiling anything, one character in particular suddenly betrays the group and we never understand why (or at least I never did, perhaps I missed the one nuance in the entire book).

The epilogue is equally bizarre and I have to assume will make sense once I play the game.

Mike Stackpole says everyone has one novel in them and the real challenge is being able to go back and do it all over again once that first novel is out. Here’s hoping David Gaider has more than one in him and that he just faltered here due to time pressures (after all he is lead writer on the game and so must have had a very busy year; The Stolen Throne came out only last March). I’m not ready to give up on him yet!

Read The Calling only if you’re a huge fan of Dragon Age: Origins and want to dig deeper into the lore of the world, and in particular the Gray Wardens. But don’t read it for the story; it’s just not worth your time.