gamerDNA.com | The Blog

You think we have quizzes? We have not yet begun to quiz!

You might not consider it on the surface, but quizzes are a huge part of what we are doing at gamerDNA… there is the auto-data capture side… where you can put in your XFire, Xbox Live, or WoW character and we auto-pull data and provide daily updates about your game play on your profile… the other side is building out behavior analysis to really define what you, as a gamer, find important when you game. The Bartle quiz scratches the surface of that for MMOs, but what about other genres? Other scenarios?

That is why we are investing the time in a new quiz system that is not just fun to take, but really tells you something about who you are as a gamer and what you find important. If you don’t know what your gamerDNA is, we will help you discover it!

Sneak peek of the new interface:

We are of course working on many other things in parrallel, but I wanted to share one of the big features right around the corner that will add a whole new dimension to who you are as a gamer… it will be complete with embeddable signature graphics you can take places and share with others, displaying your gamerDNA for all to see.

As you know, every week we do a build of the site… we put in some bug fixes and new features.

Note: Anytime we do a release, it is best to hit CTRL-F5 in your browser to force all files to refresh.

Here was what went in yesterday:

User Profiles
These are changes to pages specific to you.

1. Users can now delete any shoutbox entry… or click to delete all their entries.
2. The Xbox Live gamercard is now on your profile page if you have your Xbox tag in the AKA of your profile.
3. User registration and guild registration now check for uniqueness due to coming OpenID requirements. No member name can now conflict with any guild name.
4. Gametap.com added as an AKA on our site.
5. Images can now run in a stand alone page. We have also added pre-built links for HREF, IMG, and BBCODE on the image page to make it easier to share the image.
6. Fixed the DNA Panel to use the image thumbnail when viewing characters. This should speed up the character panel.

General Site
These are any changes made to wider parts of the site.

1. The IRC link that is called in the nav has been updated to support tabs that can easier allow you to use NickServ and other features.
2. Fixed an issue where the Warhammer page on the guild directory was having CSS troubles.
3. In cases where guilds had the same name in the same game on different servers, people were being take to the wrong guilds. We simplified the link to the profile page so they should now work in all cases.
4. Repaired an issue where fame history and activity were giving 500 errors due to a new method for generating page titles.
5. The gamerDNA panel should now properly fit into 1024×768 resolution and not obscure any buttons.
6. Fixed a few places where the guild template styles were conflicting with the gamerDNA panel styles causing strange display issues.
7. Implemented a standard method of doing character counting on text boxes… this is in places like shout box and game comments, etc.
8. Small tweak made to game page titles.
9. Tweaked some design in the guild hosting sign up page to use smaller text.
10. Fixed a bug where if you filtered the gamerDNA active strange on the home page the link on the avatar was pointing at the wrong location. It should now point at the correct location.
11. Fixed an issue with some 500 errors in the image gallery for certain users.

Coming soon
These are bigger projects we worked on that didn’t see deployment. So you know they are coming.

1. An entirely new and revamped quiz system that will help you discover your gamerDNA.
2. A new guild event management and notification system.
3. Enhancements to games so that we have more information and more games in the system for you all!
4. OpenID support

Be prepared
Here are a few changes we need to make shortly. We will be contacting you if you are affected by this.

1. Due to OpenID we need to fix about 8,000 user names that are using non-compliant characters in their names. These users will be asked to rename their accounts so that the openID system works correctly on their new names and profile locations.
2. The current blog system will be going away. We will allow people to migrate all content into the new Experiences model, complete with your comments. This will be optional if you do not wish to keep your content.

Feel free to leave any comments on the past, present, or future!

One of the most annoying things about working in MMOs is listening to armchair quarterbacks talk about subscriptions, play time, and what have you without a speck of data. “The sky is falling!” is one of the most common refrains of a player whose particular little red wagon isn’t being fixed fast enough. Do I sound jaded and bitter? Friend, I’ve been around so long that I remember when “everyone” was quitting Ultima Online after the carebear patch. Yet it’s still there, and doing better with more loyal subscribers than a number of other AAA titles I could mention but won’t.

So let’s take a look at some numbers for Age of Conan. Specifically, let’s use the data we’ve got to test two common hypotheses - one, that players who left WoW for AOC are going back to WoW, and two, that the patches are causing players to stop playing. (Please note that I said “stop playing,” not “quit.” I will not speculate on whether or not players are actually canceling subscriptions. I will simply note that in my time on the front lines during the first year of a new release, if I checked the billing records of twenty people claiming to have canceled, one of them would have actually done so… and half of those that did so resubscribed within the week.)

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We recently created a new #gamerdna channel for IRC. If you want to connect up and live chat with members of the company and community peeps, you can do it a few ways:

1. Go to irc.gamerdna.com. This will launch a default IRC channel viewer.
2. Use our Mibbet link. This launches a popular IRC viewer. You can also find this link in the FORUM drop down in the Gamerdna.com nav bar.
3. Download a plug-in for your favorite browser. Everyone at GamerDNA uses FireFox 3… so there is Chatzilla. Connect by using the command: /server irc.gamerdna.com
4. Grab some client software…mIRC is popular.

In general though, our information is:

Server: irc.gamerdna.com
Channel: #gamerdna

Come hang out though… we have had a good number of people chatting over the last few days and it has been great meeting you all.

Theo and TX Eegras worked together to put up a stat page of the chat as well! Thanks guys!

I had a few people ping me today, suggesting things they’d like to see in a future Data Driven post. But why should the people who have guessed my IM name be allowed to have all the fun? You can email me at sweathers AT gamerdna DOT com if you’re not a member, or you can get priority and send me a PM through the GamerDNA site.

Our data depends on you, by the way. If you think your favorite game is underrepresented, make sure it’s in your profile (or make sure you’ve added your Xfire data to your profile page) - and drag your friends in that game over to us to track their DNA

If MMO players are social butterflies, trying anything in their beloved genre, and FPS players will play several titles at once with no regard for any one title’s feelings, who can you turn to - in gaming, anyway - for loyalty and fidelity?

Football. And by football, I mean real football - soccer to those of us from the USA.

Less than 30% of those who play either FIFA (the EA franchise, which has most of the licenses to use “real life” teams and players) or Pro Evolution (formerly known as “Winning Eleven,” by Konami) play both games. In the USA, that number drops into the teens.  Contrast that with, say, shooters, where 70% of FPS fans have four titles in their recently played pile.

Clearly, women should date more soccer gamers.

Last week, we looked at the games that players of WOW enjoy when they aren’t stomping around Azeroth, and we compared it to the list of games enjoyed by Guild Wars players. I concluded that MMO players are pretty much whores, and will try anything once… but underneath they’re terribly loyal, and will almost always stay with whoever buys them a house and expensive clothes and a 500 person friend list.

Today, I want to run a comparison with a game that refuses, to its detriment, to get into a box and stay there.

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On Tuesday, I showed you the top “also played” games for WoW players. On Thursday, I contrasted that with the top games for Guild Wars players. Today, I want to show you the list of favorite games for people who have never even TRIED World of Warcraft.

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All right, last time we looked at games that enormous amounts of WoW players ALSO play. One of my first thoughts when I beheld the list was “Oooh, big shock, Counterstrike is on the list. Whoopty doo. Half the universe has played Counterstrike, I’m not impressed that 41% of WoW players have tried it.  I was equally not shocked to see Oblivion on the list. Golly gosh, you mean people into RPGs have also purchased one of the biggest single player RPGs mankind has ever known? Call the hospital, I’m on my way with a heart attack. Those proportions should hold true in general across the fantasy game playing population… right?

Well, I was wrong.

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It’s not easy being a startup game company. Heck, it ain’t easy being a startup ANYTHING. Unless you are rolling in so much venture capital that you’re getting one dollar bills stuck to your… feet… you have a limited amount of advertising money. The easiest way to spend efficiently is to put up your ads in places where people who are likely to try your game are congregating. Predicting crowd behavior is a lucrative business for certain species of consultant, and to avoid paying consultants, most bootstrap operations go with “like attracts like.” This is a perfectly good theory that’s even mostly true - people who like cartoony sword and board games will give another cartoony sword and board game a spin, as long as the second game offers a small variation.

But as a long term strategy, it doesn’t expand the market. It cannibalizes existing markets, as companies who have released a sequel have proven.

So, this week, I’m looking at “also-played” games. Today I’m looking at what games WoW players have in common. There are opportunities on this list!

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We have listed E32008 as a game. It IS a game, with levels like “How To Get Crappy Coffee From a Line 200 Deep Without Swearing.” Handy tip from a vet - the women’s restroom is deserted. Put on some lipstick and a skirt and march right in.

Uh… sorry, I get off topic. Anyway. We’ve listed E3 as a game, because that will help YOU to automatically feed content to the page! Check it out here: http://www.gamerdna.com/games/e3-2008

Any time you see anything related to E3, or better yet, you are on the spot yourself, share the good stuff with those of us trapped at home, stuck to our refresh buttons?

For many of you who are already members, we have a fancy new registration process that you will probably never see. Here is what it looks like:

(ooo ahhhh)

Also, because the registration is no longer modal, you can link people to it! If you find yourself in a conversation and someone says “Hey what is this gamerdna thing?” you can say “Go register and check it out at http://www.gamerdna.com/register”

It doesn’t get easier than that!

We are also working on registration improvements for the guild hosting creation as well so look for those soon.

Let’s talk real-time strategy games; specifically, the behemoth franchises.

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Hey, guys, thanks for voting for our own Zel the Artist - she won the Imperial division at the SWG art contest!

You have to be careful when you’re waving your data around. Context is everything.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because I was checking out our RPG stats. Our feeds right now show Oblivion to be far and away the most popular single player RPG out there right now. But if you look at our profiles, Diablo II crushes Oblivion, aka ESIV. Or does it?

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People say they want to win, to dominate, to be a global force of awesomeness. In fact, at GamerDNA we were just arguing about what would constitute winning as a business. Some of the guys made the error of stating that they would get our logo tattooed onto their flesh if we were to be winners in the social networking game. I’ve been part of these logo tatt discussions at other companies, and people are such wimps when it comes to follow through, so I pounced - I want to hear numbers, timelines, and tattoo locations.

But that’s maybe a little off topic.

Today’s tidbit of data is about being in second place - and when it comes to games, second place is not a bad place to be for a publisher. There’s plenty of money being spent on second place. And if you’re not in first place, you’re free to take chances. Innovate. And in doing so, maybe steal that first place hat.

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