While Spring is in bloom, here in the Pacific Northwest, the news is warning that the Northeast may see snow this week – up to a foot, in come locales. It may seem odd that snows will come this late in the season, but the Northeastern Summer will be better for them.

Snows melt; we all know that. When snowmelt happens, it creates surface runoff – an important source of water in the lowland watershed. Regular rains also contribute to lowland water levels, but the benefits of a rain come and go quickly. Snow contributes an ongoing source of water, melting slowly over time.

Events are like good snowfalls.

Events are great ways to engage your community. During an event, people are taking pictures and posting them on Facebook. Interesting conversations spill over onto Twitter and are immortalized on blogs. If you’re lucky, you might even make it into the evening news!

After the event is over, however, what’s left? Your customers all have memories – good ones, you hope – but new things come in to take their attention away. You can create new and timely content to continue engaging your community. These one-off initiatives are more like Spring rains – here today, and gone tomorrow.

However, if you plan your event correctly, you can create a bunch of content that you can slowly release over time. This content can remind those that attended your event of what a great time it was, and keep the conversation evergreen, just as snowmelt keeps many a lawn from turning brown and uninviting.

Creating Snowmelt Content

In order for content to be useful weeks and even months beyond your event, it must have ongoing value. Some suggestions:

1) Create content that is easy to acquire and that can be gotten from many different sources. While on the Gamerati Tour 2011, I started making short ‘I am the Gamerati’videos with people at my events. In each video, someone talked about something that happened during or because of gaming, each one ending with the phrase ‘…and I am the Gamerati’. I was able to record hundreds of these videos, and am still releasing them on Gamerati.TV, even though the Tour ended nine months ago.

2) Release portions of content over time. We’ve recently started a “Hanging Out” series of interviews on Gamerati+ during which Gen Con’s Peter Adkison speaks with an industry professional about life and gaming. Before each event, fans can submit questions via Google Moderator – a number of which are chosen and invited to the Hangout so they can ask them ‘in person’. Those fan questions, and the guest responses, are also recorded. However, instead of releasing a flood of videos all at the same time, we’re releasing the “Hanging Out” video first and using the fan questions as snowmelt content over the subsequent weeks to point back to the initial event.

3) Repurpose portions of content as part of subsequent releases. Instead of releasing portions of content over time, you release it all at once. However, you then use parts of the original content in conjunction with others and create new releases – sometimes combining like items, or combining a portion of an old piece of content with new content to make it even more fresh. The easiest example of this is using a photo from a past event to encourage people to come to a future one. You can get more sophisticated, though, and create content that is specifically designed to be modular. If you’re running a Settlers of Catan tournament at your game convention, ask the champion for ‘3 Tips for Tackling Catan’ and release that on your YouTube channel. Then, over the next three months, take clips of each Tip and use it as a seed for an entire article on your blog that digs deeper into that strategy.

You can tweak your content creation strategy in any number of ways so it acts more like a snowfall than a rain storm.

What events do you have coming up? How will you create snowmelt content from them?

Last year, I took the time to create an About page on my website. This is not a fun task. It’s hard to distill who you think you are down to a single document – one that you are willing to share with any person who might read it. Creating this About page, though, forced me to focus on who I am and who I want to be. In the end, I chose to describe myself in the context of what I care about: family, games, and faith.

To be sure, I’m not the father or husband I hope to be. Nor do I have the skills I need to run my business as I know it should be run. And I would be a prideful liar if I were to say I have the faith I desire to. The very act of creating my About page – by focusing my life story and writing it down – has helped motivate me toward achieving those things I desire most in life.

Giving voice to your desires in a public way will motivate you to focus on what is most important to you.

What I’ve learned about focus:

1) Focus must be personal. You can have mission statements and broad plans, but every person needs a focus. Every team needs a focus, one that incorporates and feeds off the focus given to each team member.

2) Focus must be clear. Spending more time with your kids is not focus; spending an hour with your kids every day is. Increasing your sales is not focus; growing sales by $2,000 per month is. Being kind is not focus, volunteering once a month at a local soup kitchen is.

3) Focus must be visible. You don’t need to write it on your website, but write it somewhere and look at it every day. I have a clear focus for each of the areas of my life I hope to improve. These are on my wall, above my computer, and (thanks to NudgeMail) sent to my In Box every morning.

In addition to the above, it is also imperative that you remove distractions from your focus. I spent years without the ability to say ‘No’ to a new idea. Every idea had to be tested… Now! Pretty soon, I was doing a dozen different things – some well, some not so well. Last year, I decided to disentangle myself from commitments that kept me from my focus. Some commitments were killed altogether; I left Iron GM in November, to focus on Gamerati. Others were incorporated into my central goal or pushed back until they made more sense; I took down my game review site, and will incorporate it into the Gamerati site once that is built.

Removing distractions includes removing distracted or distracting people. It’s hard to part ways with someone you work with, particularly if you enjoy having that person around. Letting an employee go often feels like a break-up. But, if that person is unable to focus on their job, or keeps you or your team from focusing on the task at hand, you need to let them go. In the end, they will be better off in a job they can focus on, and your other employees will get more out of their jobs when they can focus on creating value and changing the world.

What is your focus?

Is there anything in your life that is distracting you from that focus?

Recently, with the rise of Kickstarter, I’ve had the pleasure of running campaigns for a number of crowd-funded projects. Here are the best performing banners, each ran for Kickstarter projects looking for funding.

Each of the above banners received click-thru-rates that were more than four times the network average.

I was hired as a consultant by CCP Games to help refine their approach to social media; the contract ran from January 2010 to February 2011. Google+ hadn’t been released, yet, and the content team had a current editorial plan for the company blogs and YouTube channel, so my focus became Facebook and Twitter.

My directive: Generate traffic to CCP-owned websites, especially the EVE Online website.

My Key Performance Indicators:

• Site Traffic: Looking at the raw amount of traffic that passed from social media into the EVE Online website would give me an indication that the content posted on those platforms was engaging enough to result in an action – a click through to the EVE Online site.
• Source Rank: In addition to traffic, I tracked how each platform compared to all others as a source of traffic. Other sources might include search engines, paid advertising, blogs, news sites and outside message boards. By tracking this, I would be able to tell how important – in terms of traffic – Facebook and Twitter were, when compared to other traffic sources.
• Pages per Visit: It’s one thing to get someone to go to the EVE Online site. If the goal is to have them stay there and engage with our content, though, I needed a way to measure how ’sticky’ that content was. By measuring changes in the pages viewed each time someone visited the EVE Online website, I could get an indication as to whether I was pointing people to good / sticky ports of call.

When my contract with CCP ended in February 2011, these were the results of my efforts:

• Facebook: Traffic had risen so high that Facebook ranked as #3 (up from #46) on the list of traffic sources to the EVE Online website, with visitors viewing 324% more pages per visit than in January 2010. The only sources of traffic that were generating more juice for my client (in terms of traffic) were Google organic search (#1) and direct traffic (#2) from people typing a known EVE Online URL into their browser. For perspective, Facebook was generating more traffic to the EVE Online website than both paid advertising (#5) and referrals from other EVE-related URLs (#4).
• Twitter: Traffic was also up from this source as well, moving Twitter from is previous ranking (#271) to being the #14 generator of traffic to the EVE Online site, with visitors viewing 266% more pages per visit that in January 2010. This change in Twitter traffic was impressive, at it sat just under the traffic generated by the EVE Online newsletter and just above traffic from Bing (organic search) and Yahoo (organic search).

In addition, while my task was not one of customer acquisition, I was also able to track new customers brought in by my direct efforts. In the end, the value of customers generated by those efforts was greater than the cost to the client for my services – meaning my contract, when netting with revenues from acquired customers, had at least a neutral effect on CCP’s balance sheet.

I performed some other tasks before my contract ended, not related to my original mission. What I believe I’ve proven – at least for my client and myself – is that social media can generate a substantial amount of traffic, even to rival sources usually thought of as the defacto kings in this area. I also believe, based on this experience, that while social media is not best suited for customer acquisition, it can certainly help in this regard, even to the point of providing a positive ROI for your social media efforts.

Anyone that runs an analytics program estimate how many people visit a particular website. They can even get an idea of which country, or region of a country, those people come from. However, since most sites don’t merge their statistics under a unified analytics engine, they have no way of determining if Joe Gamer from Iowa goes to multiple sites. And if he does, they’d have no way of accounting for this, should they want to combine statistics to estimate gamer population (at least the online portion).

Because I manage the advertisements on a number of great gaming websites, I’m able to see a similar set of information as a website owner. However, because all those ads are served from a central server, I’m also able to get a unique perspective on gamer populations, accounting for unique visitors across multiple sites. So, when Joe Gamer visits multiple sites on my network, I can account for this and only count him once, if I want to estimate unique visitors across the network without double-counting.

According to Google, here’s a list of the gamer populations in the United States. All numbers are for unique individuals over the course of a calendar month.

Magazines are just one of many options available to businesses looking to reach out to new customers. Unlike online advertising options, such as banner ads, magazine advertising presents some unique challenges, in that it’s a little harder to measure the results of your campaign.

For publishers of tabletop roleplaying games looking at magazine advertising, Kobold Quarterly is one of the best options available, and I will use it in my examples.

Tip #1: Have a single, commanding image at the center of your advertisement.
You want people to stop and take notice of your advertisement, so that you can communicate with them. The best way to do this is to use a single central figure. This will draw the eye more quickly, and hold it more readily, than a scene with no central figure. To see this in action, check out the listing of Dragon Magazine covers on RPGnet; scroll down the page and note which ones attract your eye. Chances are, they are the ones with a single central figure.

Tip #2: Use an easy to read font.
I get it, cool fonts are… well, cool. Sadly, unless they are easy to read, they don’t draw the eye – that wonderful organ that converts text into data so that the brain can attach meaning to it. I’m not saying you should stick with Times New Roman or Arial, but you should seriously consider your choices before opting for more stylized fonts. Your goal is to communicate, first an foremost. Don’t let your design choices get in the way.

Tip #3: Your headline should be 11 words of less.
For years, advertising agencies have studied how many words a headline should be so as not to get in the way. What they’ve found is that a headline that is more than 11 words… doesn’t get read. It’s just too long. Consumption fatigue sets in and the reader moves on (ie. turns the page). Keep you headline short and to the point.

Tip #4: Try using a question in your headline
In the latest issue of Kobold Quarterly, there’s an advertisement for the Complete KOBOLD Guide to Game Design that uses this tactic. At the top, in large print, the reader is confronted with the following: “Questions about RPG Design?” If you are an aspiring game designer, this headline speaks directly to your desire to learn more about your craft. It’s a perfect headline.

Tip #5: Use a dedicated URL in your ad
How will you know if your advertisement works? You can put your company’s home page URL in the advertisement, but how will you know if Joe Gamer responded because of the advertisement. If you’re advertising in Kobold Quarterly, try a custom URL such as yourcompany.com/kq/ or use a URL shortener. Don’t use this URL for any other campaign – only for your magazine advertisement. This will allow you to measure how many people respond to your advertisement. It won’t be a perfect, 100% measurement, but it will give you an indication of how effective your advertisement is. NOTE: Some magazines also have digital editions, which means you can have the magazine sales manager hot link your advertisement to this dedicated URL.

Tip #6: Use a dedicated landing page
On the other side of your dedicated URL, have a page that is only used for your magazine advertisement. It should speak directly to people who read the magazine you’re advertising in. Test headlines on this landing page so that you know which ones keep your new potential customer most effectively. And also test your calls to action, making sure they are blatant and compelling.

Tip #7: Know what your desired result is before you advertise
Are you looking for newsletter sign-ups? How many? Set that number before you advertise so you know if the campaign was a success. Are you hoping to sell product? How many sales do you consider a good number? Here’s a simple exercise you can use, assuming you’re advertising your tabletop RPG in Kobold Quarterly:

$300 cost of a full page advertisement (assumes a four-issue campaign)

$25.00 MSRP (sticker price for your book)
$10.00 COGS (the cost to produce one copy of your book)
$15.00 Margin (how much you keep when you sell one copy of your book)

$300 / $15 = 20 (the number of copies of your book you need to sell to break even on this campaign)

If your goal is to at least break even on your advertising campaign, you need to sell 20 copies in order to dub thine campaign a success. This is why you want to have dedicated URLs and landing pages, so you can measure your resulting ROI. Without them, you’re advertising in the dark (assuming your goal is to increase sales).

Background: Facebook recently made it so you can post status updates up to 63,206 character long.

Here’s a couple RPG-related products that would fit wholly within that new limit.

Pumpkin Town
Created by Peter “Doc Fortune” Seckler, and available for free on Jared Sorensen’s Memento Mori Theatricks site, Pumpkin Town grew out of early game design discussions on the Gaming Outpost forums. In particular, Mr. Seckler credits Mike Mearls, Jared Sorensen and Nathan Hill for their help in the creation of this fun little game.

You can get it here.

e-Publishing Secrets
In this pamphlet, 12 to Midnight’s Preston P. DuBose shares “The shocking truth about starting your own RPG company.” You can grab it on the 12 to Midnight website, or head over to DriveThruRPG and pick it up, along with the ePublisher Guide from Minion Games and GM Skarka’s ePublishing 101. Or, for something more recent, there’s I am Mongoose, and so can you! by Matthew Sprange of Mongoose Publishing. Alas, none of these latter three fit in a Facebook status!

You can get it here. (PDF Download)

GameMastery Module D0: Hollow’s Last Hope
Written by Jason Bulmahn and F. Wesley Schneider, and released as a free PDF on 23 June 2007 (Free RPG Day), this was the first adventure ever set in the fabled land of the Pathfinder (that would be Golarion, by the way). I wonder what ever became of Laurel, Falcon Hollow’s canny herbalist. Hollin Hebbradan should be almost 15 years old by now. I hope he doesn’t claim her heart…

You can get it here.

XXXXtreme STREET LUGE
And I quote: “the best thing ever posted on a livejournal.”

You can thank Ben Lehman for this gem of a game, in which your character is “an extreme street luger.” If you want a game that fits in a Facebook status, this is it. Hey, it fits on a single sheet of paper!

You can get it here.

Guestbook: The RPG
A really awesome game (IMnsHO) from Machine Age Productions, it is actually a series of characters. You choose one and another player chooses… another. And, you play. I’m not sure how many characters have been published to date, but the initial series of five was followed by a second series (thank you, Kickstarter) and supplemented by a number of special characters from Gen Con.

You can get it here.

The Gamerati network now serves over 25 million impressions to over 1.5 million gamers and comic book enthusiasts each month. To date, we’ve served over a billion banner impressions and recorded over 2 million clicks.

… Here are the best performing banners of 2011:

The average click-thru-rate for display advertisements on the network is 0.16%. Each of these banners received at least twice the average response.

From time to time, an event organizer or store owner will ask me to help them get a handle on how many gamers live in their area. I don’t have a perfect way of determining that number, but since I do manage ads on some of the best gaming websites, I do have the ability to speak to how many people in a location visit the sites I represent.

Today, I thought I’d use this ability to see how many of the people that live near me also visit these websites. Since I live on the border of two counties in Washington State, I decided to poll both.

Thurston County
During 2012, I will serve ads to 15,768 people in Thurston County, WA.

Pierce County
During 2012, I will serve ads to 16,869 people in Pierce County, WA.

In total, that’s 32,637 people that live within 30 minutes (or so) of my house. I wonder how many of these people I could make contact with this year, and how I could go about that task…

Oh, and just for fun, I also took a look at my home town: DuPont, WA. 278 people. Cool.

But, before I can go forward… I need to lay a foundation on which to build.

Over the last couple months, Josh Dalcher has been helping me build a user module – a little bit of tech to allow people to set up accounts on Gamerati.com so that they can interact with the site, and the content we’ll be putting there. I know, it sounds soooo sexy, right? It’s an important first step, though. I need something that is robust enough to tie together all the products and services that fall under the Gamerati umbrella, while also being flexible enough to allow the addition of new products and services in the future.

Here’s where we stand.

As of last week, we’re almost done with the core user module. While people will be able to create a Gamerati account from scratch, we’re also integrating user management technology from JanRain so that users can jump start the process using their existing accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. We’ve got most of this working, but still need to improve the login system. Before we can move on, we’ve got to:

* Implement the hashing/security mechanism for stored Gamerati account passwords. Right now they are being stored in plain text in the database, which is not acceptable.

* Implement session management across the pages we have created for Gamerati so far. This will make the UX better and allow people to flip around with their browser buttons from page to page without nonsense happening. This will help in the long run for current and future features.

* Ensure the database access code is not subject to SQL injection. SQL injection is how many database enabled web applications are compromised, and we need to spend a few days shoring the system up to prevent this from happening.

After these tasks are finished and the login system is done, we’ll be moving on to integrating one of the Gamerati services (probably the ad network). I’m talking with Josh right now about the possibility of inviting a couple hackers to help us ‘bombproof’ the user module – in essence, help us by trying to break it.

So, that’s where we stand right now. I hope we’ll have many more (and more exciting) updates for you about the future of Gamerati in 2012.

Last September, I wrote about the Looxcie “Ear Cam”. It operates like those blue tooth tools people have on their ears, but you can shoot video instead.

Well, the Looxcie has a new look and some new toys to go with it. Introducing, the Looxcie LX2 (aff) Wearable Video Cam.

As I no longer have an iPhone, I’m glad to see that the Looxcie now works with Android phones. In addition, you can now store up to 5 hours of video (in mp4 format).

I’m also glad to see some clips and mounts. There’s one for your baseball cap (aff):

If you’re into mountain biking, paintball, etc… there’s also a mount for your helmet (aff).

Even better, for me… There’s clip for mounting your Looxcie on the visor in your car (aff). I wish I had this while on Tour this Summer. It would have made video on the road much easier.

A simple GetGlue summary: You can check into the media you’re consuming; books, movies, music and games. You can even check into ‘ideas’, but that seems a little nebulous and silly, so I’ve not paid any attention to this option. It’s very similar to foursquare, and you can tie both networks together so that you can (for instance) check into New Year’s Eve (on GetGlue) while watching it at your local theater.

This, of course, assumes you still go to the movie theater.

Anyway, I’ve been poking GetGlue for the better part of the last month, trying to see if there is ‘anything there’. At first, I was very frustrated, as the database backing up the service is a little lacking.

Lacking #1: You can check into podcasts, but very few of the shows I listen to are on the list. I’ve submitted Marketing Over Coffee (one of the best marketing shows, period) multiple times, and nothing has happened.

Lacking #2: You can check into games. On the app face, it lists “video games, board games, etc.” Alas, there aren’t anything but computer games. I tried checking into Monopoly (aff) and the only options were computer versions of the game. You don’t have the option of checking into the tabletop version of one of the most well-know board games. Forget about Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: the Gathering, Settlers of Catan, et al. I’ve tried to contact GetGlue numerous times to offer help with their database. Nothing.

That said, there may be a good use for GetGlue, particularly for game publishers. If you’re looking for a game idea, and would like to plug into an entertainment trend, you can check out the Top Trending Shows. When I checked the list, it had The Walking Dead, Dexter, Once Upon a Time, Hell on Wheels, and Homeland as the Top 5. The list changes all the time, depending on the day of the week, but some of the shows float to the top on a regular basis.

The Walking Dead: Zombies – ’nuff said.

Dexter: Crime and murder. Perhaps your game could focus on hiding some behavior that society deems aberrant.

Once Upon a Time: Folklore and faerie tales.

Hell on Wheels: Post Civil War cowboys, perhaps with some alternate history thrown in.

Homeland: Modern investigative drama. More crime (in case your keeping score).

You might find this useful. If so… and you end up making a game because of it… let me know.

I watched When You’re Strange (aff), the 2010 documentary film about The Doors, tonight. The film reminded me of the fact that Jim Morrison was a member of the so-called 27 Club – that he died at a young age, having seen great fame in his short life.

Morrison didn’t just ‘happen’ in 1965, springing from the ether to become a cultural icon. Sure, he was with The Doors for less than five years, but The Lizard King was reading Nietzsche and Blake from an early age. He spent long hours writing poetry and lyrics, and years expressing himself in music and film. He spent time learning and honing skills, which magnified his natural talent and charismatic, if erratic, persona.

For argument sake, let’s say Morrison started growing into the man he would once be when he entered his teens – when most people start trying to think for themselves, and start making choices based on those thoughts. In this view, he spent roughly a third of his time left on Earth in a formative stage, a third honing his craft in and around his college years, and a third setting the world on fire (yes, I know he didn’t write ‘Light My Fire’).

So what?

I sometimes look at who I am and what I do and wonder ‘what if’: what if I’d stuck with learning programming, or what if I didn’t spend five years in the Army, or what if… Sometimes I feel the urge to do something different or more, but I feel the momentum of my life keeping me where I am.

I’m 37. My life is on a track that leads in a direction. Is it not too late to do something new or great? Am I always going to be this Ed Healy, just getting older as the years tick by?

Then I look at Morrison. In thirteen or fourteen years, he accomplished his entire journey.

Hey, it’s just simple math. I could ignore everything I have done or learned up until today and, with hard work and talent and dedication, I might be able to do something new and great by the time I’m 50.

And 50 isn’t that old.

And I don’t have to ignore my past.

And I don’t have to start from nothing.

What would I like to accomplish?

What kind of man do I want to be?

Why not just do those things and be that man?

This is what I learned – oddly, I must admit – from Jim Morrison.

Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, thanks for making Dungeons & Dragons, which introduced me to the hobby side of games.

Frank Mentzer, thanks for designing the killer ‘Red Box’ D&D set that captured my imagination, even if Bargle got the better of me.

Mom, thanks for buying that Red Box for me, and being my first DM, even if for only a short time.

Brian Palazzolo, thanks for spending untold hours with me, playing D&D after school.

Tom Mcdonald, thanks for designing worlds with me and pawning over every issue of Dragon Magazine we could get our hands on.

Michael Jackson, thanks for handing me your copy of Dragons of the Autumn Twilight, and turning me on to fantasy novels.

George Vasilakos, thanks for the awesome art in high school, that kept my imagination alive. And thanks for Imagination Games & Comics, without which I would have had no idea where to get good gaming product.

Tracy Hickman, thanks for having a website so that I could find you on AltaVista back in 1996. And thanks for Starshield, my first experience with game design.

Bernie Trombley, thanks for inviting me to help playtest for New Millennium Entertainment.

George Vasilakos and Alex Jurkat, thanks for starting Eden Studios with me. I only wish I’d been smart enough to stick with it, instead of getting a ‘real job’.

Rob Placer, thanks for running a great game store, through which I met gaming friends I still keep in touch with, though we’re thousands of miles apart.

Gaming Outpost, thanks for being my home after leaving Eden Studios, and introducing me to the likes of Mike Mearls, Jared Sorensen, Peter Seckler, Nick Lalone, Graveyard Greg, Gareth Hanrahan, and The Scarlet Jester.

Clinton Nixon, thanks for ApartmentCon, my first gaming event ever.

John Wick, thanks for your Orkworld design series, and for introducing me to industry peeps like Greg Stafford, John Kovalic and Jonathan Tweet at Origins 2000.

Ron Edwards, thanks for responding to my letter about Sorcerer and opening my eyes to game design theory. Thank you for taking charge of The Forge, and making it more than I ever would have.

Gary Thompson, thanks for organizing GIDFA (Gaming Industry Disaster Fund Auction) after 9/11.

Wolfgang Baur, thanks for Open Design, which gave me a creative outlet while joining the Army. And thanks for Kobold Quarterly; I enjoyed every moment I worked with you.

Jon Morin and Ezra Davis, thanks for being my friends, in gaming and out. I love you both.

Chris Perrin and Paul Tevis, thanks for introducing me to podcasting and helping me cope with Iraq.

Dan Repperger, for showing me what community means.

Paizo, thanks for having a great community, without which I would never have tried my hand at freelancing.

Rick Miller, thanks for publishing my first article in The Oerth Journal. And thanks for working with me on our article in the Pathfinder Adventure Path.

Wes Schneider, thanks for showing me what a good editor is.

John Ling, thanks for inviting me to the Werecabbages. I made so many friends because of you.

Rone Barton, thanks for responding to my ideas, for designing games with me, for being my podcasting partner, and for being my friend.

Martin Ralya, Johnn Four and Yax, thanks for opening my eyes to what great game blogging is all about.

Adhocrats, thanks for being my brothers (and sisters) in arms and introducing me to the joys of wormhole life. In particular, thanks for Klokvarg for keeping me in EVE Online, when I almost left.

Erik Bauer, Mat Morton and Nick Bevilacqua, thanks for being great business partners and friends.

Josh Dalcher, thanks for working with me. Gamerati would not be possible without you.

Thanks to every publisher that makes the games I play, and the ones I have yet to play. Without you, I would still be wearing a suit and working in a cube 14 hours a day. Ack!

Thanks to every store owner that sells games, and provides a community where people like me can meet others, can learn new games, and can participate in this great hobby.

Thanks to every event organizer, from Emerald City Gamefest to Gen Con. You give us gaming pilgrims little pieces of paradise, even if only for a day (or four).

And thanks to every gamer who shares my love of games. You’re all unique and special, and I love you all.

With the recent release of Google+ Business Pages come the expected comparisons between Google+ and Facebook. I’ve had my own thoughts about the pages themselves.

Today, someone asked for my personal thoughts as to which is better, Google+ or Facebook.

The answer: It doesn’t matter. The right questions are:

(1) Do any of my current or prospective customers use these services?

(2) If they do, how can I use these services in a unique way to reach them and add value?

While in Oklahoma City, as part of the Gamerati Tour, I had the chance to have dinner with the crew from Super Genius Games. According to the Geniuses, I just had to get some ice cream from Braum’s; and so we did. While standing in line, waiting to order, I noticed the menu displays above the counter (pictured above). These are the same displays you see at any number of fast food joints, from McDonald’s to Panera Bread. While staring at them, I began to wonder if the fast food industry can teach us something about marketing.

I wonder if a retailer might make use of the same display theory to communicate new releases and customers. The display doesn’t, per se, have to be as blatant – it could be as simple as posters above related book shelves – but the concept would be the same… Promote those items that are most likely to attract a customer’s attention, so as to induce a sale.

What about package deals? Most people grab the meal deal, even if they end up throwing away half the fries. Why? It’s convenient and easy to say yes to. Why not offer that new pirate adventure from Green Ronin with a ship map set from Savage Mojo, with a small discount to encourage purchase?

Could this be used at conventions, to drive sales at booths? What about placing such items above the check out area to encourage customers to pick up the custom Cthulhu dice that would ‘go great with’ that game they’ve got in their hands (your new release)?

What about marketing special events at the convention during registration? If I’m signing up for the Catan event, I might like to also know about (and pay for access to) the meet-and-greet tomorrow night, with famous board game designers in attendance.

The Gamerati network now serves over 25 million impressions to over 1.5 million gamers and comic book enthusiasts each month. To date, we’ve served over a billion banner impressions and recorded over 2 million clicks.

… Here are the best performing banners of Q3 2011:

The average click-thru-rate for display advertisements on the network is 0.14%. Each of these banners received at least five times the average response.

Why do you think these banners performed so well?

How do you think these compare to the last two lists?

The ven diagram is a good way to represent many things. In this case, I’m illustrating how types of customers are attracted to businesses. This could be equally true of social groups, charities, and the like.

A steakhouse probably won’t have a large number of vegan clients. Distributors of engine parts don’t usually get orders from quilting supply shops. Stores that don’t stock Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, don’t have Yu-Gi-Oh! players as customers.

If you want a particular type of customer, you must make or sell what they will buy. Conversely, if you don’t want to a particular type of customer, don’t sell what they want.

Some people don’t shop online, so if you’re solely an eShop, they won’t be your customers. Soccer moms don’t usually grab Little Jenny and hang out in a comic shop run by Jeff Albertson. Products that are hard to understand usually sell better if someone is available to explain how to use them.

Not every company has the same type of customer – even companies that sell the same, or similar products. The customer that picks up random issues of The Economist at the airport is not the same customer as the lifetime subscriber. Same product, but it must be sold in different ways depending on the type of customer.

This is a simplified look at a complex series of issues. Whole books have been written to discuss ‘what you sell’ and ‘how you sell’ it. My goal, here, is to encourage you to keep these basic concepts in mind.

What business are you in? How does what you sell and how you sell it influence the type of customers you have?

I’m currently in Bozeman, MT as part of the Gamerati Tour 2011. Because there was no event today, I had the pleasure of eating dinner… alone. Unlike Phoenix, the weather here is cooperating, so I decided to cop a squat outside the local McDonald’s and enjoy myself.

As you can see from the picture (above), the tables are in clear view of the drive-thru exit and the trash can that every McDonald’s franchise seems to have. While I enjoyed my meal, swatting at the pair of bugs that wanted in on the experience, I watched five vehicles exit.

Every one stopped at the trash can and deposited various-sized bags and drinks containing the McDonald’s logo.

While I applaud their use of the trash can, and the fact that McDonald’s places it so conveniently, I’m assuming these people weren’t throwing away the meals they just purchased. It was clear that these people were throwing away the bags and drink containers from their last visit to the Golden Arches.

How can we make products that are as habit-forming as McDonald’s?

(1) Consistency over time: This doesn’t help the start-up, but it’s important to note the obvious fact that McDonald’s has been around around 4EVAR! People know what to expect from McDonald’s, which is a draw.

(2) Convenient availability: As of today, there are 31,000 McDonald’s franchises, worldwide. I seem to recall that, next to the Vatican, McDonald’s in the largest owner of real estate in the world. That may seem like it doesn’t apply to you, but it does. Think about game stores, for instance. One reason game publishers should care about the health of the game retailer is because they provide a convenient place through which games can be made available. The internet doesn’t count in all cases. Many people buy online, but there is a percentage of the gaming customer base that will only buy at a local retail store. If there are no stores, they just won’t buy. Furthermore, game stores act as ‘gaming franchises’ – familiar locations that people associate with their routine, where they can pick up new gaming goodness and drop off stuff they no longer want.

(3) Customer value: I don’t think anyone will say that McDonald’s serves food on par with a home-cooked meal. They don’t try. They give you food that is fast and cheap, something hungry humans on the go find valuable. I’m not saying that everyone should use the same pricing strategy – far from it – but you should give an appropriate level of value for the price you charge.

(4) Consumable goods: A Big Mac is, in every way, a consumable good. Can you make a product that gives good value, but has to be paid for over and over again, in order to be enjoyed? A number of companies do. For example, my favorite is Gaming Paper; for only $4.00 you get an awesome roll of graph paper for your tabletop RPG or war game and it’s a product retailers can sell to you over and over again. Brilliant!

I’m sure there are more, but these four things should get the gears turning in your head.

Can you make a consumable product that gives good customer value, and can you deliver it consistently through convenient means?

At the basic level, this is an easy calculation. Let’s take the publisher with a single product:

Cost to Customer – Cost of Product to Publisher = Profit per Sale

If I am selling a book for $25, and it cost me $7 to produce that book, then my profit per sale is $18. For the single-product publisher, then, the CLV is $18.

But what about the publisher with multiple products?
You can measure CLV in a few ways. If you have a complete record of each sale, perhaps because you capture every customer email, then you can simply divide your total profit (revenues – costs) by your total number of customers.

Most publishers aren’t that lucky, though, so we get to estimate. Let’s use the example of the three-product publisher.

Product #1
MSRP: $25.00
COGS: $7.00
Profit: $18.00

Product #2
MSRP: $50.00
COGS: $27.00
Profit: $23.00

Product #3
MSRP: $4.00
COGS: $0.80
Profit: $3.20

Now… let’s assume that the publisher knows that 75% of customers that buy Product #1 also buy Product #2, and 50% of those same customers also buy Product #3.

Calculation of Value for Product #1
$18.00 * 100% = $18.00

Calculation of Value for Product #2
$23.00 * 75% = $17.25

Calculation of Value for Product #3
$3.20 * 50% = $1.60

Total Value: $36.85

In the end, this publisher can reasonably expect that a new customer that purchases Product #1 will mean more than the original $18.00 in profit. In fact, this customer will mean an average of $36.85 in profit.

This is a basic look at CLV.

What is a vanity URL?

By default, your Facebook page has a URL that looks something like this:
facebook.com/pages/Your-Page/1234567890

A vanity URL looks like this:
facebook.com/Your-Page

Which one do you think looks better?

Watch this video to find out how to grab a vanity URL for your Facebook page.

Direct link to HD version of this video on the Gamerati Facebook page.

Links From Influencers Rock
In the first week, 1,862 unique people visited Loot 2,595 times. Most of these visits came from five sources:

* Direct Traffic (28%): People typing in the URL.

* Gamerati Banner Ads (23%): People clicking on ads I bought on my own advertising network for gaming websites (PDF).

* Facebook (19%): The daily Loot deals get syndicated to the Gamerati Facebook Page. With over 1,100 members, it generates a decent amount of traffic.

* The Geek (8%): I started posting board game deals to Board Game Geek and roleplaying game deals to RPG Geek. This isn’t something I intend to continue (more on that in a future post, perhaps) but it did help get us off the ground.

* Twitter (6%): I post the daily deals to my Twitter account, and numerous other people have been nice enough to retweet those deals. Thanks, by the way – keep it up!

On Monday of this week, I logged into Google Analytics to check on the site traffic and had a present waiting for me. Whereas my best day of Week 1 saw 617 visits, Monday of Week 2 had 1,318 – more than a 100% increase. Clicking on the Traffic Sources link, I saw why… Apparently, we were mentioned on GameSpy.com. A little more investigation led me to this article by Aaron Williams, he of Nodwick fame.

Take a look at Aaron’s article. Notice anything? That’s right, it’s not about Loot. The Loot love is all the way at the bottom, buried in a bunch of other links. And still… It drove a ton of traffic to my site. In fact, of the 4,334 visits to Loot this past week, 1,032 (24%) came from Aaron’s article.

The moral of this story? It’s nice when someone with some juice offers to share it with you.

Yeah. That’s nice. So what does that mean for me!?!
I haven’t spoken with Aaron in over a decade, not since I took the above photo of him at San Diego Comic Con International 2000. I didn’t ask him to talk about Loot, but would have if I’d thought of it. The evidence is clear, though, that people like Aaron can really help you.

So here is my gift for you. Three links:

* RPG Bloggers: If you want to connect with people who write blogs about roleplaying games, this is the place to find them.

* RPG Podcasts: Same for podcasts about roleplaying games.

* Board Game Podcasts: Ditto for podcasts about board games.

You may not be able to count on altruism from your own personal Nodwick link. What you can do, however, is build relationships with those people who do have audiences that read and listen to what they have to say. The bloggers and podcasters on those sites are passionate about games, as are their audiences. Most of them will gladly mention something cool and new that a friend is doing, especially if it’s something their audience might be interested in.

Sow some seeds. Make some new friends.

Oh… and while you’re at it, check out Nodwick and tell Aaron thanks for me.

Lesson 1: Good People Are Gold
The first thing you should know about Loot is that I didn’t do it on my own. I had the help of Josh Dalcher, who I met via his gaming blog. We worked on a couple projects together, during which I came to know him as a competent coder and a professional. Those two skills – competence and professionalism – must go hand in hand when you’re looking for people to work with. They can be the best at what they do, but if you spend more time waiting for things to get done or restating project specs because they don’t know how to follow instructions, you’ll wish you’d never met them. Similarly, the people you work with need a requisite level of skill in order to make the relationship work. In short, I’m lucky to have found Josh. He’s Gold.

Lesson 2: Gamer Like Dice
One of the first tactics I’m testing with Loot is the use of banner advertising. I have two goals here: to test click-thru-rates on my Gamerati Ad Network (PDF) and to learn what types of ads work best. We made three sets of ads. Each set included a leaderboard (728×90), a rectangle (300×250) and a skyscraper (160×600). One set focused on card games, one on board games and one on roleplaying games. After our first week of stats, the results speak for themselves… viewers click on ads that have dice on them. Our best performing advertisement was the RPG rectangle (below), which pulled a 0.48% CTR. But all the ads that had dice did very well, each netting a 0.22% CTR or better.

Lesson 3: You Need A Good Host
In the past, I’ve been a big fan of Go Daddy. They have decent prices and they have 24-hour customer service. However, they proved to be inadequate for me this week. We had our first Loot sale 8 minutes after we went live. Twenty minutes later… the site crashed. During the nearly six hours it was down, I spoke to two customer service reps and one technical specialist. None of them could help me. In veritable despair, I started poking around on my server blindly… and fixed the problem on my own. (NOTE: I know nothing about servers or internet protocols, etc.) The Go Daddy people were cordial and patient (professional), but knew next to nothing about their own product. The fixes they proffered not only didn’t work, but broke some of the other services I had on my server as well (incompetent). Needless to say, I’m looking for a new hosting company as soon as I have the time. I guess you could say that Go Daddy was not Gold.

That wraps up my thoughts on Week 1 of Loot. As I have more thoughts, or learn more lessons, I’ll make sure to let you know about them.

“At its heart, business is not about formality, or winning, or ‘the bottom line’, or profit, or trade, or commerce, or any of the things the business books tell you it’s about. Business is what concerns us. If you care about something enough to do something about it, you’re in business…” - Sir Richard Branson

The above quote is from Business Stripped Bare (affiliate link), which I’m reading on recommendation from Chris Brogan as part of his 2011 Business Book Club. Less than 1,000 words into the Introduction and I’m already confronted with an important question:

What do I care about?

Family: I have been truly terrified only twice in my life. The first was when I’d done something I know my wife would not approve of and was ashamed to tell her about it. The second was during my first tour in Iraq. I was not scared of getting hurt, or worse. No, I was terrified at the prospect that I’d come home and my baby girl would not know who I am. Thankfully, both fears were unfounded. That said, they taught me how much I value my family. I cannot think of any relationships on this Earth that I would trade for my family.

What about you? What relationships matter most in your life?

Games: I am a blessed man. I not only have a great family, but I get to support that family by working in an industry I love. In college, my infatuation with games drove me to start a publishing company with two friends. And even when I left the industry behind to get a ‘real job’, I was always yearning to return. When I saw the opportunity to help Wolfgang Baur with Kobold Quarterly, I grabbed it – jumping at the chance to return to the games and gamers I love. For the last three years, my passion has become my profession.

What are you passionate about? What do you think about when you’re ‘at work’?

Faith: I have not always been a very ‘religious’ person. I grew up with church and church stuff all around me, but I turned my back on these things for a number of years. As I’ve grown older, however, I’ve developed a faith of my own – a faith that is very personal to me and that I hold dear. It’s a faith in a God that loves me and a faith in the men and women around me who try to make life better for the people they meet. My faith is that thing I care about that is bigger than myself.

And that’s what I care about.

The unwritten question in the words Mr. Branson wrote isn’t ‘What do you care about, Mr. Healy?’, but rather, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ That is my take-away, so far, from Business Stripped Bare, that if I really care about something… I’ll do something about it.

What do you care about?

You’ll make mistakes. Learn from them.

One of the basic skills needed for orienteering is the ability to read the map and choose the best route so that you can reach your objectives while avoiding obstacles along the way. The trick is that you don’t have access to the map until the race begins, so your ability to quickly access the situation and make decisions is important. This isn’t a skill you can develop at home – it only comes from being out in the field, testing yourself time and time again. You’re going to get lost at times, but you’ll learn from those mistakes and you’ll make better decisions – and quicker ones – with time.

I don’t know a single successful business where the owners jumped in without any previous experience, made no mistakes, and struck gold. It doesn’t happen. If you’re starting a business, accept the fact that you don’t know everything. Make a bargain with yourself; when you screw up, be determined to learn from it so that you can do better next time.

Focus. Don’t get distracted.

After you start running in an orienteering race, you begin looking for distinctive things, like a birch tree surrounded by pines or sharp changes in the terrain, which tell you it’s time to change direction. If you stop looking for those landmarks and start paying attention to others, you can easily mess up. Overshoot your target, and you may need to backtrack or attack your goal from a new direction. Concentration – the ability to focus on the task at hand and not get distracted – is important.

Businesses are rarely founded on singular, isolated, ideas. Often, you choose from a number of options; you put aside the least appealing and focus on the one that has the most promise. The allure of new ideas doesn’t stop on Day One, though. As you travel down the path your choose, new ideas and new opportunities will spring up. Sometimes these amount to new information that will allow you to reach your goals more quickly. More often than not, however, they are distractions. If you start focusing on them, you won’t see those landmarks you established at the beginning. You may never get to them. Don’t be deaf and blind, but don’t allow new things to take away your focus.

After the start, it’s all about endurance.

We love seeing the start of races. Runners head off into the distance, all full of energy and anxious to tackle the challenges ahead. In orienteering, as with any long-distance race, it’s the competitors that have the most endurance that have the greatest edge. Anyone can sprint for 100 meters. Not all can run at a good clip for four, six or ten kilometers, though.

Starting a business is fun, but the hard work quickly sets in. If it’s your business, you’re going to have to do the work. Even if you have help, employees or contractors, you’ll be putting in some long hours over an extended period of time. Expect it. You’re going to have to push through the dip in order to get to your goals. It’s not about how fast you can run in business, it’s about your dedication to see your vision through to the end.

Experience. Focus. Endurance.

Just as with orienteering, navigating a successful business takes experience, focus and endurance. You may not have all these skills right now, but the good news is that you can learn them. Choose your path, focus on your goal, and don’t quit until you get there. And if you get off track, correct course and attack again.

What if participants stayed in a house together? What if every day someone came in to give instruction on design, marketing, community development, etc.?

I wonder if there are people who are driven enough to see their ideas see the light of day that they’d jump at a program like this. I wonder if there are people who would be willing to give their time to someone else’s project, and live in a community of motivated designers for a few months.

I wonder…

Icon courtesy: Open Clip Art

Why an ESP?
Well, over the last few years I’ve been using Gmail as my sole base of email operations. This is great for personal emails, and business communications with a small number of people. However, Gmail has some serious limitations.

You can only send out a small number of emails each day before Gmail shuts you down. It’s hard to send out an announcement to hundreds of retailers when doing so will mean I can’t also shoot my Mother a picture of our new foster kitten.

I’m blind to deliverability. Sure, if an email is no longer good, I’ll get a response letting me know. But what if an address to good, but the person isn’t getting my emails? Gmail won’t tell me.

I have no idea if my emails are being opened. Getting an email is one thing, opening and reading it is another. If someone isn’t opening my emails, it’s an indication that they’re not interested in the content I’m sending. Instead of pestering them, and tempting them to use the dreaded ‘Report Spam’ button of death, I’d rather back off and leave them alone. Without knowing who opens my mail, I can’t adjust fire.

I know too many people. Gmail allows approximately 10,000 addresses in an address book. When you’re using Gmail to store contacts at every game store and game publisher, you get a fair number of entries. When you add to that addresses for everyone that listens to Atomic Array and RPG Countdown (that I know of), and all the freelancers in the industry, you start approaching 10,000 with ease. Not only does having this many contacts slow down my email program – even Gmail has limitations – it means that I have to use Gmail Groups to sort my contacts. I need a way to organize large groups of overlapping communities.

Add to this the fact that I’m a serial entrepreneur, who’s always starting something new, and it’s just that time. I need email help.

Why Blue Sky Factory?
Simple. Trust is a Ninja. Over the last two years, I’ve grown to respect and trust Christopher S Penn. He has a brilliant mind for statistical analysis, is very insightful when it comes to applying technology to marketing, and is open and honest about who he is and what he believes.

I’ve known for some time that I needed someone to help me with my email needs. When Chris joined Blue Sky Factory this year, there was no question in my mind that they would be the only choice. It’s really that simple.

That’s it. That’s all there is to say.

PS: Expect to get an email from me soon…

You can read my interview here. Also make sure to check out those given by Rone Barton, John Reyst, and VSCA Publishing.

Think Jawbone, but with a video camera attached, able to record up to five hours of video (according to the marketing copy). If the quality is as good as the examples on the Looxcie YouTube channel, this product will be awesome.

I would have killed to have one of these when I was in Iraq. In fact, I tried buying a “spaghetti cam” – like the ones you see in movies – and a solid state hard drive for recording, but the vendor I used never sent the goods. I went on my last tour without my dream – a way to record, hands free.

Where would I like to see Looxcie go from here?

1. Increase the video quality. This is a must, and something I’m sure they’re working on.
   
2. Add a transmitter so that I can send my video feed to a laptop, or even a thumbdrive-like accessory in my pocket, for recording.
   
3. Add streaming, live to the ‘net. This would probably have to start with the secondary step of piping the stream through a laptop, but some day… Some day we’ll be able to stream live from an “ear cam” to uStream, or to a centralized production hub – Live.

I’m excited about what Looxcie represents. I can’t wait to see where this product category goes.

And I’m going to be watching Steve’s blog and Twitter stream more closely, now that I know he’s interested, too. Thanks for the heads up Mr. Garfield.

“Hey, fellow RPG publishers, I’m thinking about PDF pricing. How do you price your PDFs compared to your books, and why?”

I haven’t been a publisher for a number of years, so I’ll leave the ‘why’ part alone. I thought it’d be fun to poke at product pricing using statistics, though.

I track sales of roughly 6,000 individual product titles while producing the RPG Countdown podcast. If I treat each individual product as a separate item, regardless of sales volume the average MSRP is $9.40. If I weight based on gross sales per product, the MSRP becomes $19.97. If I weight based on percentage of units sold, the MSRP becomes $10.47.

Sales Greater Than 100 Units
Here are the same stats for products that have sold more than 100 units:
Average MSRP: $9.95
Weighted by Gross Sales: $19.78
Weighted by Units Sold: $11.06

Sales Greater Than 250 Units
Average MSRP: $11.45
Weighted by Gross Sales: $20.79
Weighted by Units Sold: $12.08

Sales Greater Than 1,000 Units
Average MSRP: $14.45
Weighted by Gross Sales: $23.16
Weighted by Units Sold: $15.62

So what about print vs. PDF MSRP?
I’m going to assume for a moment that Vincent wants to sell more than 100 copies of his games. He may or may not care, but by limiting my sample size I only have to compare the prices of roughly 500 products. And in truth, many of the products I track that sell less than 100 copies, are PDF-only releases. As such, they fall outside the scope of what Vincent wants to know.

Discounts off MSRP range from 33% to 89%. Typically, larger discounts are given on Core Rulebooks, with lower discounts available on setting books and adventures. Statistically, though, the discounts appear to be fairly consistent when you look at the whole group – the mean, median and mode all land in the 50%-55% discount range. This holds true whether I discriminate based on percentage of gross sales or percentage of units sold.

Hope that helps, Vincent.

(1) Why is this game fun?

(2) What can I do in this game?

Answers to these questions are our first priority when we interview people for the Atomic Array podcast. They’re also the focus of the first two paragraphs of any review published on Game Cryer.

Without knowing why a game is fun, and how I can experience that fun, I’m not really interested in a full description of the setting, a list of skills and spells, a catalog of gadgets and weapons, or a historical timeline. So why don’t game books open with answers to these questions?

Most of the books I crack open start with a short story and/or a discussion of the setting. Some try to summarize the game in the Introduction, but this is usually condensed setting fluff that rarely answers my two most important questions. I usually have to skip the first 10-20% of the text before I find out why I should care about the Newfangled RPG.

What do you want to know when you pick up a new game?

Are publishers answering these questions for you? Are they doing it up front, or do you have to search for your answers?

Icon courtesy: Open Clip Art

First, some definitions (source: Merriam-Webster)…

unity
1 a : the quality or state of not being multiple: oneness
2 a : a condition of harmony: accord
3 a : the quality or state of being made one: unification
4 a : a totality of related parts : an entity that is a complex or systematic whole

uniformity
1 : the quality or state of being uniform

uniform
1 : having always the same form, manner, or degree : not varying or variable
2 : consistent in conduct or opinion
3 : of the same form with others : conforming to one rule or mode : consonant
4 : presenting an unvaried appearance of surface, pattern, or color

Unity is unification based on agreement. Uniformity is unification based on similarity.

One uses harmony of opinion to form a consensus which is agreeable within a group, without sacrificing the uniqueness of each member. The other harmonizes all members of the group by destroying the uniqueness of each member and forcing all to conform to a single pattern.

One adds members to the group as they are, accepting those differences that do not destroy the ability of the group to stand behind the thing that brought them together. The other adds members to the group by destroying all diversity, whether at the point a new member is added or progressively over time.

Which unification does your group strive for?

As part of the Gamerati Analytics project, I went out looking for a way to render maps based on geographically significant data. I knew that I wanted to have data mapping available, but it seemed that would be just a dream without a hefty budget.

Then I ran into Pete Warden from OpenHeatMap.

Right now we’re working on ways to integrate his mapping technology with the Gamerati Analytics back end. To give you an idea of what this might look like, check out the map below (click image to go to map):

This is a map of the friendly local game stores that I have personally visited. Nifty stuff, right?

Added bonus, if you point your mouse at the map, it’ll tell you the name of the nearest FLGS (that I’ve been to) and how many miles away it is.

If you’re a publisher or retailer, we’d love to include your stats. Email me to learn how.

Getting sales information is one thing, but combining it quickly and accurately to create a ranked list is a chore. When I started the collection process, it would take more than 25 hours to collate all stats. Every two weeks, I’d spend the better part of three days mashing spreadsheets together. In order to save my sanity, I hired a programmer to help streamline the process. Much of the data collection is now automated, though it still takes me about 6 hours to get ‘the list’ for each episode of RPG Countdown.

Development and streamlining isn’t stopping. In fact, what I’d like to do now is give publishers and retailers a way to see more information about what products are selling. I’ve hired a programmer to, in essence, make a Google Analytics for sales figures.

I’m trying to make a laundry list of what analytics to develop for the back-end, so that I can make the tools that publishers and retailers need in order to get a better understanding of how their businesses run.

Any input you could provide, no matter how small or pie-in-the-sky, would be most helpful.

I keep going back to Google Analytics and using it as a model to be adapted. It’s slick and compact, while being imminently robust. If I can make something half as useful for tracking sales as GA is for tracking website traffic, I think the analytics will be very useful for the people that make and sell the games we Gamerati love.

So I’m building a ‘Gamerati Analytics’ suite.

The Dashboard
The graph at the top of the Google Analytics Dashboard reports Visits over a certain period of time. However, you can change it to show other metrics: Pageviews, Pages/Visit, etc.

For Gamerati Analytics, it would be nice to be able to show sales revenues, units sold, number of customers, etc. Can you think of any other metrics that would be useful?

You can also use Analytics to compare two metrics at once; Visits vs. Page Views, for instance.

For Gamerati, this would also be useful, allowing companies to compare sales revenues vs. units sold, etc.

Summary of Important Statistics
I think it’d be nice to see a summary of important statistics right off the bat: Sales Revenues, Customers, Orders, Percentage of Returning Customers or Percentage of First-Time Customers, Average Number of Products per Order, etc. What would you say are the most important questions you’d like to answer on a regular basis?

Map Overlay
A map feature would be extremely useful, in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be great for a publisher to be able to see that it sold $9,857 world-wide last quarter, and that $1,541 of that was sold to customers in Canada?

As with the Dashboard, it would be nice to be able to change the metric on the map, so you could see Sales Revenues, or Sales Volume, etc.

The Map would also be good for drilling down to local sales data. This would allow publishers and retailers to see which states and cities their customers come from, which would allow for better outreach and community development. Looking for a convention to attend, publishers? Why not go to one near a concentration of your customers so you have a ready pool of GMs to run events?

When combined with a retailer database and sales, publishers could learn which retailers are supporting them most actively, or even discover areas where they have a solid fan base but no retailers carrying their products.

Combining sales information with census data would allow us to see:

• Areas with the highest number of customers as a percentage of population.
  
• Areas with the highest sales revenues as a percentage of median income.

Can you think of any other ways in which geo-targeted information would be useful for you?

Sales Sources
Publishers, wouldn’t it be nice to know that 46% of your sales were generated by local retailers, 31% was generated by PDF eTailers, 17% came from direct sales off you website and 6% was from conventions?

Or what about being able to see which distributors generated the most sales for you, which eTailer was the most effective, etc?

Product Performance
This one seems simple, but there is so much a publisher (or retailer) would like to know at the granular product level, right?

• How many units of Product X have sold?
  
• How much revenue has Product Line Y generated?
  
• How does Adventure A compare to Adventure B?

What about putting in costing information so you can see your break-even point, or line up multiple like products, released at different times, so you can see what a typical sales curve looks like over the life-time of a similar product? Publishers, would that not help with budgeting?

Publishers, what else would you like to know about your products?

Retailers, what information would you like to have?

During that time, over 100 companies have run campaigns with us. To date, we’ve served over 725 million banner impressions and recorded over 1.7 million clicks. That’s the sample size…

… Here are the best performing banners, each receiving more than a 1% CTR.

(10) The Imperial Gazetteer (Open Design)

(9) Ancient Warfare Magazine

(8) Galactic Empire (Castle Games)

(7) Fear the Boot

(6) Gaming Paper

(5) Gnome Stew

(4) Noble Knight Games

(3) Great Victory Widgets

(2) Chez Geek (LocWorks)

(1) Roleplaying Tips

The average click-thru-rate for display advertisements on the network is 0.24%. Each of these banners received at least four times the average response.

Why do you think these banners performed so well?

I have a mountain of things on my plate; it’s easy to get overwhelmed just thinking about them. When I look at my In Box and see 47 non-SPAM messages, I grow weary. When I add to that the appointments on my calendar, and the monumental list of unfinished items on my TO DO list, I sometimes find it hard to even start work – much less accomplish anything.

Lao Tzu, the so-called Father of Taoism, once said “The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.” In the West, we often translate this as “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” However you look at it, the truth is unchanged:

You can’t get anywhere if you don’t start somewhere.

In an effort to ‘get something done‘ every day, I’ve stopped standing before the edifice of my unfinished work. Instead, I choose a small number of things I must accomplish each day. Most days, I choose no more than three. This may seem like a small number, but the reason is practical: more things are always being added to the list.

My goal isn’t to put everything to bed. Instead, my goal is to not fall further behind.

Before I go to bed each night, I choose a couple items from my TO DO list. These are the things I will accomplish on the morrow. When I wake up, I check my email. If there is something there I can take care of right away… I do. It doesn’t go on the list, it gets done. If I can’t accomplish the task immediately, I add it to ‘the list’. By the end of the day, that list is empty.

I used to use Post-it Notes to track my list of tasks, but that didn’t work out very well. New notes were put on top of old ones, and I never seemed to get to the bottom of the stack. Sure, there was the small reward of being able to crumple up a note after a task was done, and through it in the bin. Unfortunately, those victories lacked perspective, as I couldn’t see my list of tasks getting smaller.

I switched to a cork board. This worked for a while, but it soon became a jumbled mess of paper, spiked to the wall in a haphazard manner. I still had the joy of throwing away paper when a task was done, but now I was getting overwhelmed with a chaotic forest of pages, screaming for my attention.

In the end, I switched to a dry erase board. Nothing goes on the board except the list of tasks for today. Everything else is in a simple text file on my desktop – the list I go to each evening. This regime works well for me. I have a simple, clear visual aid to show me what is on the docket each day. As a task is complete, I erase it from the board. This isn’t as gratifying as crumpling up paper, but it is still tactile, and also allows me to see progress relative to a confined set of goals. What’s more, I’m not killing trees – an added bonus.

I don’t care so much for unfinished business anymore. I take one day at a time.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34)

Icon courtesy: Open Clip Art

I didn’t know what I’d do after leaving, though.

I knew I didn’t want to go back to my old life as an auditor. I knew I didn’t want to leave home before my wife woke up and get back after she went to bed. I didn’t want to wear a suit, spend over two hours in my car every day, and sit in a cubicle all day developing a bad back and pressure sores on my derriere.

What was an auditor turned soldier to do?

After discussing the situation with my wife, and ‘running the numbers’, I decided to build a business of my own. Since then, I’ve managed advertising for a virtual television station and a gaming magazine, provided contract consulting services for various publishers, and started a media company with a friend. Over the last three years, I’ve beat the odds-I’ve successfully provided food and shelter for my family, growing my business, even in the face of an economic downturn.

I’m tired, though.

When you have a ‘real job’, there are no guarantees. You can trick yourself into thinking you are safe, though, and that gives you peace of mind. When you work for yourself, particularly when you’re starting out, you are always aware that you are one lost customer (or two) away from red ink. You work twice as hard for twice as long, and try to ignore constant calls from head hunters, beckoning you into that nice cozy cubicle like spiders sweet-talking a fly. It can be a mentally, and spiritually, draining experience.

I’ve been long distance sprinting for a long time.

Lately, I’ve been taking steps to streamline my hellish schedule. I’ve started being smart about how I check email, and I’m slowly chipping away at my huge TO DO list. This isn’t something I’m doing because I’m oh-so-smart. It’s a matter of self-preservation. There’s no way I can keep up this pace anymore.

At Deloitte & Touche, they harped at us to establish some work-life balance. I’m hoping to slide more and more life into the equation by the end of the year.

Do you work for yourself? Do you run your own business? How do you balance your schedule? What skills have you developed to help you run your race with endurance?

Icon courtesy: Open Clip Art

Still, I wonder why Chase required me to enroll in this program. Why did they not just enroll all card holders in the program and inform them of the fact? According to Chase, enrollment was necessary in order to properly distribute bonuses. That seems specious, since they know everything I do with their card. How else would they bill me?

Clearly, Chase gets more loyalty out of customers who know they are getting an added bonus. You can’t really make that your message to your community, though, can you?

Or can you?

Could Chase have told people the reason, the real reason? Could they then have used that as an opportunity to encourage those customers to tell their friends and family about Chase VISA?

One problem with hiding your motives is that you can’t talk about them. Being transparent about your motives frees you to follow up with a clear call to action.

What do you think?

In 2007, I became aware of the One Laptop Per Child project. Of particular interest to me was the mobile ad hoc networking technology the it employed, allowing each laptop to act as a node, routing packets to other laptops in the network without a need for a base station. Since then, I’ve been wondering how such technology could help our mobile communications networks.

In September 2007, the BBC reported that Swedish company TerraNet AB planned to use mobile ad hoc network (MANET) technology to create a “new way of making calls directly between phones, for free.” While free telephony is certainly attractive, what excites me about this development is the move toward a ‘living’ telecom backbone, once that can survive catastrophic events like the attacks of 9/11.

All systems have weaknesses. Take the power grid in the United States, for example. “Our analysis indicates that major disruption can result from loss of as few as two percent of the grid’s substations,” said Reka Albert, assistant professor of physics at Penn State, who led a research team studying the issue in 2004 (source).

Our telephony infrastructure certainly has similar weaknesses. I wonder how initiatives, like those undertaken by TerraNet, would revolutionize the way we communicate. I wonder how the broad dissemination of MANET technology would effect the survivability of our telephony systems. And I wonder why we’re not seeing more of this technology from major operators and providers.

TerraNet’s founder, Anders Carlius, had this to say to the BBC back in 2007: “One of the biggest things against us is that the big operators and technology providers are really pushing against us, saying this technology doesn’t work and it doesn’t have a business model.” I hope they’ve changed their minds over the last three years.

What do you think?

Image (c) One Laptop Per Child

When I’m on the road, I rely on my Flip. You can get a Flip UltraHD Camcorder (Affiliate Link) for under $150. I’ve even seen the non-HD ones for under $100 at Walmart and Target. When I compare this to the $500+ I paid for my Marantz recorder, the Flip is a steal.

I love the Flip for a number of reasons:

(1) Compact. You can fit it in your pocket. You can’t say the same for more robust, specialized equipment.

(2) Audio Quality. The Flip has a directional stereo microphone. You record what’s in front of you, and don’t have to worry too much about background noise leaking in from the side or behind.

(3) Ease of Use. The Flip comes with video editing software on it. You don’t need it on your computer. Just pop out the USB port, plug it into your laptop, and you’re good to go.

I especially like the Flip for audio podcasting. When I’m on the road, I record my audio using the Flip, strip the audio into an MP3 using Format Factory (freeware), then add in intros and bumpers using Audacity (freeware). FileZilla (also freeware) is my FTP program of choice, in case you’re wondering how I get the finished audio up to the web.

So there it is: Flip + Format Factory + Audacity + FileZilla. Podcasting that can fit in your pocket, and almost any budget.

As an aside, I’ve also used my iPhone as a mobile podcasting platform. The Voice Memo feature is decent, in a pinch, and you can run the audio through Format Factory and Audacity if you want to pump out MP3s for your podcast. An iPhone is a little more expensive than a Flip, though, so while it qualifies as ‘more compact’ it doesn’t win on price. And… you can’t do video (yet) with your iPhone.

Guest:

Mentioned:
* http://chattydm.net/
* http://www.perf.etsmtl.ca/
* http://twistimage.com/
* http://www.paxsite.com/paxeast/

There are over 2,000 Third Tribe accounts right now. When you have that many highly motivated entrepreneurs in a closed community, the one thing you will not lack is conversation. Third Tribe is new, but I can already see that the volume of ideas and opportunities can quickly overwhelm.

Chris Brogan said it himself, when he wrote, “I can’t keep up.” (NOTE: Chris was not talking about Third Tribe, but about the demands on his time in general.)

$47 for access to people with “big brain” seemed like a good deal, so I became a member and tested the Third Tribe. Some of the classes have been interesting, but I do not think I will renew my membership. The community is just too large for me.

I fear it may be too large for the founders as well. If the goal is to create a self-helping community with some guidance from on high, they may succeed. However, if the goal is to give meaningful attention to Third Tribe members, I do not think the Tribe will live up to expectations, regardless of how talented the founders are.

I wish the Third Tribe was smaller. I’m sure I am not the only one that would pay $150 per month, if that meant being one of 500 people with direct access to the people at the top. I might even part with $300 per month, if that meant the Tribe was half-again as small – because it would likely then be twice as useful for me.

One of the features I use extensively within Gmail is Groups. By creating these lists within my contacts, I can track who I met at Gnomedex, or who listens to RPG Countdown. I can easily see if someone falls into multiple categories, which helps me when I’m in contact with them. This is important if, like me, you have over 10,000 people in your address book.

The one thing I haven’t had – the one thing I’ve been looking for – is a way to see where my contacts are in my social graph. When I’m talking with a fellow podcaster, it’d be nice to know if they are on Facebook so I can attempt to connect with them there. Until now, I’ve been playing this game by ear, relying on my ability to spot holes in my social graph and plugging them manually.

Today, I found rapportive.

When I open an email from someone, rapportive allows me to see which social networks they participate in. It easily allows me to note if I am connected with them, so that I can take steps to reach out if I am not.

Rapportive isn’t perfect. It relies on plumbing account data based on the addresses in your contact list, so if you don’t have the right email on file you won’t get all the data available on someone. Likewise, if your contact hasn’t maintained their social profiles, the data you get may be out of date. Still, this is a wonderful, and free, tool to help with CRM.

Example URL: http://ephealy.com/sample-blog-post

Let’s say I want to tack on a tracking code for Facebook before feeding it to a Facebook page so that traffic resulting from Facebook can be tracked. Example Facebook URL: http://ephealy.com/sample-blog-post?tid=12345

And let’s say I have a different code for Twitter that I’d like to tack on before bit.ly takes over and the update feeds to a Twitter account. Example Twitter URL: http://ephealy.com/sample-blog-post?tid=67890

Is there a service that can handle this type of thing? I’d love to hear from you, if you know the answer.

I’m tired of this up and down, connected and unconnected, lifestyle. I just spent 5 minutes staring at my screen, considering it’d feel to take a baseball bat and smash it all: computer, desk, lamp, white board… everything. Unfortunately, smashing my computer isn’t going to solve anything.

Service providers are the bane of my existence, and the current culprit is Comcast. When AT&T can provide better coverage for my iPhone than the company that has a static line running into my very home, there is a problem. AT&T, the company that can’t seem to provide consistent coverage for an hour drive to Seattle. And don’t get me started on Verizon and their willingness to sacrifice years of customer loyalty over stupid billing errors.

I don’t want your day of free service. It does me no good when there’s no service.

I don’t want $15 or $30 off my bill for the next six months.

I want to pay the full price and have internet access.

Read The Article: How Not to Hurry

It reminds me of a song by Poi Dog Pondering called The Ancient Egyptians. (like launches iLike preview)

My grand mother once told me that she liked to keep life simple. I balked at her then, but learned the wisdom of those words as time went by. Lately, it seems I’m forgetting the lessions I already learned.

Another song to mellow me out…

In January 2009, I had the same problem. Instead of trying to figure out which ones to keep and which to ditch, I killed them all and started from scratch. My current bookmarks all grew naturally over last year, and I even tracked the sites I visited most often during 2009.

It’s 2010, though, so I’ve decided to refine my list again. Here’s how it looks:

* http://ephealy.com/: My home page. I have to verify that it’s working and that my new posts make it up, so naturally it’s on top.
* http://gamecryer.com/: My game review site, which I update every third day, or so.
* http://www.warpigradio.com/: My radio station, which I update weekly.

* http://www.timeanddate.com/: I obsessively check this, watching the days tick down until I’m free and clear of the Army. Come 15 November, Uncle Sam won’t hold sway over me. Until then, this link gets checked far more often than I care to admit.
* http://twitter.com/: I still use the website just as much as my Twitter client (twihl).
* http://www.facebook.com/: Outside my own sites, Facebook is my primary outreach tool. Very powerful. Very important to me.

* http://www.google.com/admanager/: For administering my advertising network.
* http://www.google.com/analytics/: For monitoring my sites.
* http://feedburner.google.com/: For monitoring my feeds.

* http://www.hulu.com/: Where I waste time and burn brain cells.

* http://atomicarray.com/: The bi-weekly gaming podcast I co-host.
* http://rpgcountdown.com/: Casey Kasem meets Roleplaying Games.

* http://www.rpg.net/
* http://www.enworld.org/
* http://paizo.com/
* http://www.geekdo.com/
* http://www.niftymessageboard.com/
* http://werecabbages.com/
* http://www.koboldquarterly.com/

* http://dupontchurchofchrist.org/

Everything else gets deleted. Who knows what sites 2010 will bring to my attention; I guess we’ll find out in 12 months!

If you would like to advertise in either of these great periodicals in the future, you will need to contact Wolfgang Baur and Joseph Goodman, respectively.

I want to thank everyone here that I’ve been able to meet because of my time representing these magazines, and I especially want to thank Wolfgang and Joseph for their friendship and the opportunity to work with them.

Google Local is important for website traffic for local businesses. If you’ve already submitted your shop, good job. If not, make sure you’re listed.

IDEA: Sponsor game days at the local library. Bring in some games and demonstrate them. Don’t sell anything, just give people fliers with directions to your store (and the website) and a coupon good for a small discount. The flier will remind people where you are and help them get there. The coupon will help you track how many people came to you via the library.

While at the library, put a sheet so that people can sign up for updates from you about future events, both at the store and elsewhere. The important things you want are name and email address. With the email address, you can find out if they are on Twitter and Facebook, and invite them to join your fan page if they are. Don’t spam these people, just let them know you will keep them informed and do just that.

Bring games that are easy to learn and easy to play without a lot of explanation (FLUXX, for instance). You can bring an RPG if you like, but I would focus on family-friendly games. Leave the hard-core stuff for game conventions.

This idea was influenced by a talk I had with Scott Nicholson from Board Games with Scott. You can hear the whole discussion here.

IDEA: Find out if there are game clubs at local schools. Talk with publishers about sponsoring these clubs through you. Ask them to donate a couple copies of their games for this purpose. Put your store logo and website, etc on the boxes (a big sticker on the inside of the of the lid _and_ the back of the box / book would do fine) so people can find you. Treat these clubs like you do the library game days…

Ask the club leader to offer members a special discount card that gives them a small discount at the store. All they need to do is come to the store and pick one up – in exchange for their name and email address, of course (see above).

Keep in touch with the groups. Invite them to parties at the store. If you have two or three, maybe have club-on-club tournaments or competitions. Encourage the members to come in and demo games in the store so that they can breed new gamers for their clubs (and new customers for you).

IDEA: People that live in your area visit websites from time to time. Consider purchasing advertising that is only targeted to people that live in your area.

Victoria Comic Convention (Victoria BC)
http://www.victoriacomicconvention.com/

NeonCon (Las Vegas, NV)
http://www.neoncon.com/

Emerald City Gamefest (Kenmore, WA)
http://emeraldcitygamefest.org/

OryCon (Portland, Oregon)
http://www.orycon.org/

There is.

Step #1: Click on the Home Page

Step #2: Hover over the right hand side of one of the updates in your news feed until you see the Hide option

Step #3: Click on on the Hide option and select the option to hide the person whose update you’ve selected

Step #4: Select ‘View Live Feed’ (Upper Left)

Step #5: Select ‘Edit Options’ (Bottom Right, near Footer)

Step #6: In the dialog that pops up, unhide the person you ‘hid’ in Step #3 (above), and then change the number of friends in the bottom left.

That’s it. You’re done.

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames005.MP3

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames004.MP3

John,

At some point, we should have a little chat about ‘boring business stuff’—stuff like how we’re going to handle money, whether we’re going to pay for any contributions, or whether we’re going to look for people to share profits. Before we bring someone like Jess on, we should figure out, at least in part, how we’re going to split dollar bills.

Any thoughts on this?

- Ed

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames003.MP3

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames002.MP3

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames001.MP3

My girls went to the dentist today—and loved it. They came home telling stories about ‘the fun dentist’, and asking when they could go back.

What can we learn from my girls’ dentist?

(1) First impressions set the tone: When I was a kid, the waiting room at my dentist included a windowless paneled wall, a couple chairs, and a Mr. Potato Head (missing most of the pieces). As soon as my girls walked into their dentist, they were greeted by a huge fish tank—not doubt inspired by Nemo—and a cache of toys, surrounded by a bright, colorful, warm environment. Where I was off balance and on edge, their waiting room said, “Get ready, kiddo. It’s time to have fun.”

(2) Establish rapport: When it was time to bring the girls in for their check-up, they weren’t sent down a creepy hallway to a lonely room where they had to sit all alone for 20 minutes. Instead, a dental hygienist sat them down and, pulling out a tray of multi-colored nail polish, proceeded to paint their nails in rainbow hue. For a young girl, what’s more fun than having a young woman spend 10 minutes making you feel special?

(3) Involvement removes fear: Familiarity may well breed contempt, but it can also allay fears. After getting their X-rays, the girls were given miniature version of the X-ray photo to keep. When the dentist looked them over, she had the girls follow along on their own copy. All those machines and strange tools were, all of a sudden, not as scary.

(4) Entertain: The lights at the dentist have to be bright. They are really really bright. It’s one of the most annoying things about dental visits. Not here… the girls were given—to keep—special flowery sun glasses to wear while they were in the chair. They pretended to be at the beach.

Oh, and before poking around in their mouth, the dentist brushed glitter on their now-dry nails and let them pick out sticker highlights as well.

And when they came home, they were sent off with a bag full of cavity-fighting lollipops, gum, ‘special toothpaste’ and new Dora toothbrushes.

The extra attention may have added 15 minutes to the visit. The gifts may have added $5 to the bill. The joy and excitement in my girls’ after experiencing something that terrified me as a child?

Here’s a peak at the madness:

This Just In…From GenCon 2009! Pre-show #2:
On the second pre-show episode of This Just In From GenCon 2009, I joined Ryan Macklin to talk about convention survival.

Diana Jones Awards: I was proud to sponsor this year’s award. Dominion walked away with the well-deserved recognition.

Day 1

Atomic Array: Gen Con 2009 Special Edition I: Paizo Publishing, 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming and Mongoose Publishing.

I took some nifty videos as well. If you’d like to check them out, hook up with me on Facebook.

Day 2

Atomic Array: Gen Con 2009 Special Edition II: Mongoose Publishing, Terra/Sol Games and Paizo Publishing.

Pathfinder RPG (Atomic Array 029): Jason Bulmahn talks about the new rules. James Jacobs and Wes Schneider talk about Council of Thieves, the first AP using the new Pathfinder RPG.

Day 3

Atomic Array: Gen Con 2009 Special Edition III: In addition to our normal coverage, Brandon Hodge continues to get us interesting ‘gamer at the con’ quotes.

This Just In…From GenCon 2009! Saturday 5pm: I cohosted an episode of This Just in… with Ryan Macklin and had a blast. Guests Eddy Webb (White Wolf Publishing) and Brennan Taylor (Indie Press Revolution) were awesome.

Day 4

Atomic Array: Gen Con 2009 Special Edition IV: Paizo and Mongoose and Fat Dragon Games and more quotes.

RPG Countdown: Best of 2008 Special: We’ve counted down the 100 hottest selling digital RPG products of 2008 – 25 each day. On Sunday, we reached #1!

If not now then when
Tracy Chapman, “If Not Now…”

On a recent episode of Atomic Array, we featured Geist: The Sin-Eaters, the new storytelling game from White Wolf Publishing. I like many things about the game, but the one I keep coming back to is the tag line: “A Game of Second Chances.”

Part of the intrigue in Geist: The Sin-Eaters surrounds the question, “If you came back from the dead with a second lease on life, what is the most important thing you’d want to accomplish?” This is the very question we posed to the Atomic Array audience for that episode’s giveaway. The responses we’ve received vary from comical entertainment to open-hearted introspection, all very good. While we’ll be announcing the winner on our August 14th show, there’s another question that grew out of my experience with this game, and my review of the entries, that I can’t shake:

Why wait?

If you can put your finger on that one thing you’d like to accomplish—that one task as yet undone that you would focus on if given a second chance—why not go for it? You’re not dead. While you still draw breath, you have time.

This is your second chance. The past is dead and gone; you cannot change it. Today is a new day and the beginning of your new life. This is your second chance. Use it.

We mention:
* Pathfinder RPG from Paizo Publishing (Check out the video preview of the book!)
* Eclipse Phase from Catalyst Game Labs and CthulhuTech from WildFire LLC
* Geist: The Sin-Eaters from White Wolf
* Fantasy Flight Games
* Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG)
* Days of Wonder
* Hero Games & Champions Online

If you want to bring me some Girl Scout Cookies, I’ll be at the Saturday 5pm show. Bring Tagalongs! (Tip: Dairy Queen has Girl Scout Cookie Blizzards. I’m just sayin’…)

It’s easy to see how iPods and file-sharing services are killing off the market for hard copies of music CDs. But, RPGs are books. They play more by the rules that govern that industry and the fact remains that most people still like to hold their books in their hands. Stacks of sliced-up dead trees aren’t very portable – you can’t fit 1,000 of them in your pocket – but ‘screen resolution’ is never an issue. And while the new ebook readers will certainly solve this issue eventually, for now there is no way to replicate the experience of holding a book in your hands. Most people simply prefer printed books.

For RPG publishers intent on reaching more than a few hundred gamers, this means that local retailers are very important. They represent – for now – the easiest way to get in front of a large number of potential customers. Some publishers are experimenting with direct-to-consumer sales, but most cannot replicate the reach they get when utilizing the network of gaming stores.

Given the current market, it seems that playing at a local retailer would be the best way to interest new people in a game. So I wonder… How many people actually play at their local retailer as opposed to somewhere else?

Third Eye Games: http://www.thirdeyegames.net/

A companion article to this episode can be found here:
Reviews: The Good the Bad and the Frustrating

The importance of reviews

There are two schools of thought when it comes to reviews. One regards them as an essential marketing tool, though one not without risk, and the other thinks they’re an unnecessary distraction.

Part of the problem is that it can be extremely difficult to correlate reviews with sales. But Adamant’s Gareth Michael Skarka has another perspective on why reviews might be overrated.

We’re a small, niche-market entertainment business. Gamers will pick up stuff that interests them—even if there are reviews that say a product is poor. They’ll pick it up to see what they think of it themselves. They don’t invest much in the “authority” of reviews, preferring to keep their own counsel. Gamers are opinionated and amplified by the internet. If there is a review that says it’s poor, there is bound to be another that says it’s good. Even in the face of ‘internet conventional wisdom’—for example, “this game is nothing but poorly designed power-gaming”—sales of the ‘poor’ products are largely unaffected. Gamers purchase what interests them.

So why do so many companies chase reviews? The most obvious benefit of having your product reviewed is the opportunity to let gamers know it’s out there, and to build buzz. It never hurts to have someone respected in the community endorse your product. Such an endorsement helps to separate you from the competition. Even if the review hasn’t convinced the reader to buy your game, when he comes across it in his local store, it’ll already be familiar—even if the review was less than positive.

For unknown companies with few products and little capital available for marketing, reviews offer a relatively inexpensive option. Thankfully, reviews are also more useful to companies with less brand recognition. As a company grows, and with it their reputation, customers are more willing to take a risk on it’s products, even in the absence of reviews. This is not to say that reviews do not benefit more established companies—only that reviews are proportionally more effective as a tool in the hands of those without an established customer base.

Reviews can benefit companies beyond tracking customer interest; the review itself can tell you a great deal about your product. It is easy to dismiss one bad review as an outlier. It’s a lot harder if the majority have concerns about your product. If this is the case, it might be time to take a second look.

You can also use reviews for marketing in less obvious ways. HinterWelt’s William Corrie uses reviews from retailers to open discussions with other retailers about his products.

Often, the hardest thing about contacting retailers about your product is the opening statements. With a review like those provided in industry magazines, you get a third party resource to reference. You can say things like “Scott Thorne of Castle Perilous said the Squirrel Attack books will sell well” or reference what a customer is saying as an independent reference. It is always difficult to just say to a retailer that your product is good… because. Whether it is a customer review, a retailer review or more informal reference to the comments of another industry professional, it can open doors.

So how do you make the most of the whole review process?

Useful reviews start with the right reviewer

To start, you need to find someone willing to review your products. It’s an accepted practice to offer a complementary copy of the product, and you can usually find any number of willing amateur reviewers. But remember, at the end of the day, you want a useful review, and that means a few things:

First, it means someone who’s going to actually analyze the product. Just listing off the table of contents may tell the reader something about it, but it doesn’t give you any information about what the reviewer thought. Similarly, a review that just says, “It’s great” or “It’s terrible” doesn’t tell you much about what’s working and what’s not.

Second, you need to take into account the reviewer’s audience. Are they the type of customers you’re trying to reach? If you publish board games, a model train forum isn’t likely to expose you to the right audience. More than that, any comments the review generates aren’t likely to be helpful, because they’re not coming from the demographic you’re targeting.

Preston DuBose, from 12 to Midnight, explains:

Seek out reviewers who prove, through other reviews, that they know how to analyze and review a product based on its merits. There’s nothing wrong with a reviewer expressing personal opinion, but good ones back it up with reasons why.

Audience is also important in other ways. Are they the type of audience that typically engages in conversation about reviews? If so, you’re much more likely to get useful information, whether or not the review is a positive one. And then, of course, there’s audience size to take into consideration. As Joseph Goodman says:

’Quality of the reviewer’ takes on a new meaning when it’s a reviewer with a well-read blog.

Finally, you don’t want to overlook the credibility of the reviewer.

…it’s not just his grammar skills, but his stature in the industry. An endorsement from Monte Cook can drive a direct increase in sales.

Once you’ve found a few people you’d like to review your product, setting up a review is very simple. Finding the right person and the right audience… that’s the trick.

What to do if you get a “bad” review

Now, of course, eventually, you’re going to get a bad review. It might be because there’s a problem with the product, or it might be because the reviewer had a fight with his girlfriend. The important thing is how you handle it. The last thing you want to do is to turn a bad review into a bad reputation for you.

Fred Hicks, of Evil Hat Productions, puts it all into perspective:

Thank your detractors. Yes, it may appear that a man possessed of little more than a simian intellect has just reviewed your product in some sort of strange moon-language, but the point remains that he invested time in writing something about your game. He probably has readers, too, some of whom will disagree with his opinion. Let them take on that job. Your job, as a publisher, is to be gracious in the face of any critique. Say thank you, perhaps offer a factual correction or two, stated neutrally and calmly, and make your exit. Exposure is exposure. Leave a link to your product behind, and you’ll probably net a few sales no matter what this joker said.

Besides, your goal here is to get useful information from the review, so in that respect, negative reviews are actually MORE helpful, because they point out ways you can get better. Maybe it’s too late to change this product, but there’s always the next one.

Just remember: many gamers don’t even read reviews

Reviews are just one tool in your arsenal—one you should use in conjunction with other marketing tactics. “Gamers purchase what interests them.” Reviews might help lead gamers to your product, but in the end it helps to remember that they can be more helpful to you than they are for your customers.

RPG Review Resources:

• DriveThruRPG
• Flames Rising
• Gamerati
• Out of the Box
• RPGnet

A companion podcast to this episode can be found here:
Eloy Lasanta (Third Eye Games)

NOTE: This article was researched and authored with Nick Chase.

At the core of my iPhone infatuation is the ability to access and maintain my contacts, email and calendar in real time. Personally, I use Google services for all of these things – Gmail and Google Calendar, to be precise. There are thousands of iPhone applications, many of which may be great, but I rarely use more than a handful.

These applications are not deeply integrated with my phone.

An illustrative example: Skype

The Skype iPhone application is nifty. I can chat with my Skype contacts and, if I’m using wi-fi, make phone calls as well. Unfortunately, I have to have the Skype application open in order to use it. This is a pain.

Skype instant messages are, in effect, SMS/MMS. It would be nice if, instead of having to log into the Skype application, any IMs I get sent via Skype would push through the native iPhone Messages application. The same would be nice for phone calls. Let my Skype contacts see that I am mobile, but logged in, and let them call me even if my Skype application isn’t open on my iPhone. When I get a call, have my phone ring like a normal phone call.

Deep integration of iPhone applications would make my life easier – and make those services more useful to me, as a mobile user.

Shel’s Blog: http://blog.holtz.com/
For Immediate Release: http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz/

gamerati: Shel Holtz (FIR)

I met Dana at ConQuest NW in January. Through email, we’ve been discussing the art of terrain sculpting. Below is an editing version of that conversation:

EPH: Tell me a little bit about yourself, your business and what you do in broad strokes.

DMD: I have been building terrain since I was in 6th or 7th grade, and started building a lot more complicated pieces when I started playing Warhammer in high school. I am a big believer in turning hobbies into careers, and so I came up with a modular system of building houses so that I could produce them quickly and keep a high level of quality. We use plastic resin to make the houses, which picks up fine detail well and is very durable. With this system I am able to make many different houses, and it allows me to rotate new designs in often. I also do custom orders, if my customers want large castles or entire villages built with different houses and walls, etc… I do the house building and my wife does most of the painting and keeps the houses on eBay and our website.

EPH: What scale do you usually produce in? Do you produce terrain in different scales, or are they all the same? If you have a default size, do you produce different scales for custom orders?

DMD: I build my houses for the 28-30mm scale and I haven’t branched out to other scales yet. As far as custom orders go, I normally stick to whatever I can build with my modular pieces which keeps the scale the same, but it does make the custom orders much more affordable, while still allowing them to be unique. I would be willing to do custom orders in different scales, but because I would have to sculpt new pieces and make new molds the turn around time would be much longer and the price much higher than my standard scale. Normally, I charge only a little more for a custom order house than I do for a standard house of the same size.

EPH: So what’s the process for a custom order? What do you need to know from a potential customer and how do they go about asking you to make something for them?

DMD: The process for a custom order is as simple as emailing me with a request or idea of what is wanted. I don’t have any formal method for custom orders large or small.

Some custom orders I receive are large orders of 15-20 houses, where the customer ordered multiple of the same house, and all they need is for me to swap out a few pieces and change some colors on the roofs so that all of their houses are unique. Those custom orders are easy to take care of, especially because usually the customer is more concerned with variety than they are with specific designs.

Sometimes the custom orders are very specific and I need a description and drawing. Or something I have done recently, when I need to get a more specific design approved, is have them download Google Sketchup, which is a 3d modeling program for the computer, and I do a prototype model and send them the file. The prototype model doesn’t have any color or detail, but it is the exact shape that the final model would be in 3D, and it allows them to turn it around and view it in perspective from all sides. Or if they don’t want to do that I can send a movie file of a turnaround of the design. This process enables me to get a very clear idea of what they want and prevents any real miscommunications.

EPH: So you use 3D modeling in your design. How has your experience in the video game industry helped make your terrain modeling work better?

DMD: I would have to say that in the beginning it was more the other way around, and my experience with building terrain influenced my choice of career and my ability to do it well. And now I am able to take my ability with 3D modeling and use that as a tool to prototype ideas and figure out appealing designs quickly. It works very well to be able to build 3D models in just a few minutes and be able to get a feel for how it will look when it is done with my pieces, and that helps me be more creative with the end product.

EPH: If I want to build my own models (real world, not virtual), what skills do I need to have? What skills would it be helpful to have?

DMD: I believe a couple of the most important aspects of building good terrain are less about skill and more about craftsmanship and attention to detail. No terrain you build will end up looking good if you used a cardboard base and it warps up around all of the edges so you have a half-inch gap between the base and the board. Always use a good base. You need to take measurements and make straight cuts with sharp X-acto knives and rulers. You also usually need to use putty or plaster to cover joints and make clean transitions between different elements on your terrain. Basically if you want to make good terrain, the most important thing you can do is take the time to do it well, and good terrain always takes a lot of time to build. On top of building the terrain well, attention to detail is then what makes it shine. Take the time to make little rivet heads for where you need bolts. Use jewelry chains or make your own miniature chains (tiny chains are almost as good for making something look like a cool detailed miniature as skulls and spikes are for making something look evil!). When you have the transition from an object, like a rock or a house, to the base, don’t just run your turf straight up to it. Use tiny rocks and other materials to make it look like there is gravel, dirt, or weeds. When you are done with the main aspect of whatever piece of terrain you are building, take half again as much time, or more, to add the little things that will bring it to life. The great thing about building terrain is that while it is an art, it doesn’t take any particularly special skills or talents to build pretty good terrain. You just need to get good instructions (like how to build terrain books or articles) and then pay attention to the advice above.

Being able to sculpt with clay is probably the most important extra skill for making terrain. One of the turning points in my terrain building is when I went from trying to find real world items that had the right shape and texture for what I needed, to sculpting my own out of clay (usually sculpey). I used to spend hours wandering around in craft stores and hardware stores looking for just the right pieces and parts for my projects, and now I just sculpt exactly what I need, and if I need lots of the same thing, I make a mold and reproduce it.

In my opinion it ruins the effect of terrain if an observer can figure out what materials you made it out of. You shouldn’t be able to tell if something is made of Styrofoam or cardboard, or be able to figure out what objects you just grabbed and painted for the details. That is where being able to sculpt with clay, or use other raw materials to get the effect you need, really sets the best terrain apart.

What would really help my work is having the necessary equipment to make more complex molds and cast the miniatures. Right now it is a little bit too expensive to justify the cost for me, but it will open up a world of possibilities when I get it. The other thing I would love to have, but it will probably be a long time before I get it, is a 3D printer so that I can sculpt my original pieces on the computer and print them out. I will still have to make the molds, because even if you have your own printer 3D printing is still too costly for production, but it will make everything else much easier.

EPH: I’m sure you use your terrain in your own games. What do you play?

DMD: I have played Warhammer Fantasy since I was about 14, and I have recently picked up Warmachine.

On yesterday’s Marketing Over Coffee, Chris Penn said he’d been able to look into the developer docs for Wave. What he discovered was that Wave was more than just IM on roids – it’s a federated protocol, apparently using XMPP, that allows for synchronous real-time streaming of information between multiple platforms.

If this is true, then Wave is potentially a game changer, allowing information to not just flow into a conversation, but back out of it to update outside sources; bi-directional exchange. Bi-directional interfacing of services will allow us to break down the silos that keep media channels independent.

Twitter, Today: I post an update and followers A & B see it. If follower A replies, I can see it. If follower B is not following follower A, though, follower B can’t see follower A’s reply to my initial update.

Facebook, Today: I post an update and my friends can see it. If anyone replies to that update, all my friends can see it, regardless of whether they are all friends with each other.

Twitter + Facebook, Today: I can dump my Twitter stream into my Facebook account. This means that my Twitter followers and my Facebook friends can both see my updates. Unfortunately, at this point the conversation fragments. When my Twitter followers reply, my Facebook friends don’t see that side of the conversation. This is true of replies on Facebook as well – they don’t push out to Twitter.

Google Wave and Microblogging: With Wave, if I’m understanding it properly, you can post to Twitter, populate your status updates on Facebook, and any replies from any sources can be seen by all participants in the conversation. It won’t matter where people enter a conversation from, they will all be able to exchange information with each other. Twitter and Facebook, Plurk and Seesmic, it won’t matter which account your using – as long as you’re added to a wave, you’ll be able to participate with individuals on different platforms, using different services.

Conversation portability. Very cool.

UPDATE: I was totally wrong about what Wave is. So what. I want my version!

The commercial starts out with a guy tooling around in his garage. He’s working on something, but you’re not sure what it is. At first, I thought I was watching something about home improvements – a Craftsman, or maybe Sears, commercial.

A third of the way in, the scene switches. Now the guy is driving down the road in a truck. I’m not sure what he’s built – an electric wheel chair, or maybe a spiffy weather measuring device – but he’s bringing it somewhere. Off to the beach he goes, the tailgate sporting CHEVROLET is big white letters. Huh. Maybe this is a Chevy commercial, I thought.

So half-way into this minute-long commercial you get near the point. The wheel chair weather station rolls down onto the beach and we find out it’s a sophisticated Frisbee launcher.

I’m thoroughly confused at this point. What is this commercial about!?!

The only vocal in the commercial: “I dream of being my dog’s best friend. What’s your dream?”

I still don’t know why I’m watching this. Who is speaking to me and what do they want me to do?

Three seconds from the end, the logo for the Washington State Lottery graces the screen, followed by the question: “Whose world could you change?”

This is a well-made commercial – nice music, nice video. If I were grading it on cinematography, I might say “cool.” It’s a commercial, though, and its purpose is to communicate with me, the audience. I spent 90% of this commercial trying to figure out who was talking to me. That doesn’t make for a very positive audience reaction.

If you’re making a commercial, or placing an advertisement, don’t make people guess about the most important things:

(1) who is speaking to me?

(2) what are they talking about?

Sears and GM should thank Washington’s Lottery for the lovely marketing.

I asked a number of industry professionals to join me for an informal chat about board games. We talked about a number of things, from the apparent strength of the current board game market to ways all levels of the industry can help each other bring more games to more customers.

gamerati

Hans Isaacson: President of Uncle’s Inc, with five retail locations (Uncle’s Games, Puzzles and More!) in Washington State. He started out in the industry in 1990 as a retail clerk (the store’s “game guy”) for the former parent company of Uncle’s (Book and Game Co.) and worked his way into a partnership position when the two founding owners parted ways in 1999. The “Game” in “Book and Game Co.” became Uncle’s Games. He is partnered with Shannon Ahern (founder of Book and Game Co.) and Karen Stephens.

Scott Nicholson: Host of Board Games with Scott, a video podcast about board games, and participant on the On Board Games program. An associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, Scott researches gaming in libraries as the director of the Library Game Lab of Syracuse. His upcoming board game, Tulipmania 1637, is due out from JKLM in 2009.
* Twitter: @snicholson

Jeff Tidball: Independent writer and game designer, and a co-founder of Gameplaywright. He has served as Vice President of Product Development at Fantasy Flight Games, worked on staff at Atlas Games and Decipher, and done freelance writing and design for a cast of thousands.
* Personal Home Page: jefftidball.com
* Twitter: @jefftidball
* Facebook: Jeff L. Tidball

Mike Selinker: President of the game and event studio Lone Shark Games. Some of his recent games include Pirates of the Spanish Main, Key Largo, Unspeakable Words, Link 26, and Stonehenge. Before that, he was a creative director and game designer at Wizards of the Coast, helping to relaunch Dungeons & Dragons and Axis & Allies, and writing such games as Risk Godstorm and the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game.
* LiveJournal: The Most Beautiful Things
* Facebook: Mike Selinker

Board Games (gamerati)

Bulgaria was an opportunity for me. We had very low expenses while living overseas and so I was blessed with a chance to build my businesses without having to worry about paying too many bills.

In April, I ran across an article by Chris Brogan entitled ‘Social Media for Your Career’. Chris mentioned a lot of things in the article, but I focused on his mention of LinkedIN. Based on his recommendation, I decided to take LinkedIN for a spin (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ephealy).

One thing I noticed was that you can sort potential connections by geographic location. I decided to see how many people were in my neck of the woods: Sofia, Bulgaria. Right now, there are almost 5,000 people in the Sofia metropolitan area with LinkedIN profiles. At the time, though, there were far fewer – 41 to be exact. With so few people to choose from, I decided to scroll through the list and see what popped out.

On the second page was a rather generic listing for ‘CEO of Haemimont Games’. I had no LinkedIN connections who knew this person, so I had no way to contact him via the service, so I relied on another useful service: Google. What I discovered was that Haemimont Games produced some pretty cool products. Even better, their offices were two blocks away. I called, gave them my credentials as a gaming professional, and asked if they’d like to get together. As luck would have it, they were having a company outing at the local bowling alley the next day and asked me to drop by.

As it turned out, Haemimont was looking for people to help write for their first Xbox title. I’d worked on various game products and Rone, my business partner, had sold screenplays to MGM – we had the skills they were looking for, and I told them as much.

The meeting went well, as did the next one. By the end of May, Moonstew Games was knee deep in our first computer game project (to be released this Christmas).

And that’s how social media helped me land my first Xbox gig. Thanks to Chris Brogan (blogger), I learned about a networking site for professionals (LinkedIN), which pointed me toward a potential business partner. Without those two first steps, I would never have met the good folks at Haemimont Games.

Social media won’t do it all, though. It’s great for making connections and sharing ideas, but it took a real-world connection to seal this deal. That’s just as an important a lesson – something I’ve learned time and time again. The internet is great, but it’s no substitute for face-to-face communication. Instant messages and a webcam can’t replace a living, breathing person.

Likewise, nothing replaces experience. If Rone and I didn’t have a resume to back us up, I doubt Haemimont would have given me more than an invite to go bowling again.

Be professional with a solid track record, be prepared to show that record to others, and strike when opportunities arise – you’ll do fine. Social media can help you find those opportunities, though.

For instance, I have a new podcast coming out this week. It’s a show about game design and game mastering, for people who enjoy roleplaying games. I could announce the show at any time, but why not make the announcement at a time when people are most likely talking about RPGs and podcasts already? Furthermore, why not release each episode during that ‘sweet spot’, if one exists?

Let’s see if one does.

Mentions of the terms “rpg” or “roleplaying game” by day of the week:

Fridays are a good day for RPGs – with 20% more chatter than on Thursday. RPG discussion appears to taper off steadily thereafter, with a nice little spike on Wednesdays.

This makes a lot of sense. Most roleplaying happens on the weekends, when people have more free time. If I wanted to give them something to talk about, I might want to do it just before the weekend, so it’s fresh in their minds before they get together with friends or chat about their gaming experiences online.

I looked at what time of day people are talking about RPGs as well. 9 AM and 6 PM PST see definite spikes in RPG conversation. Whatever the reason, those are the times I need to remember when deciding when to talk about my RPG-related news.

Mentions of the terms “podcast” by day of the week:

Unlike RPGs, there doesn’t appear to be a definitive spike in chatty about podcasts on any given day of the week. The weekend is slightly more active, but the percentage of chatty on a day-to-day basis stays pretty consistent.

Likewise, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference in volume of chat during the day. Podcast discussions seem to be a little more popular in the morning than the evening, but not enough to make any real hard judgments.

The Verdict

I’ve decided that I’ll release my new show on Thursday afternoon. This will give people something to talk about on Friday, and it will be fresh in their minds as they go into the weekend. On Fridays, I’ll post on various forums and news sites about each episode, driving conversation about the show so I can take advantage of the Friday spike.

On the Wednesday before each episode releases, I’ll pre-promote the show on forums in a similar manner, riding the mid-week wave of RPG conversation to remind people that a new episode will be coming out the next day.

I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be an advertising salesman. I certainly never expected to run ads for a network of sites. No, my expansion into the world of online advertising was by chance. When someone waves a large chunk of money in your face and asks you to take it, you don’t say No. You find out how to earn it.

That was how I started. An advertiser wanted to place ads on the Kobold Quarterly website – more ads than I could handle. I didn’t want to turn down the money, so I had to find sites to put those ads on. That’s how it’s been ever since. My expansions come when I outsell my inventory. Necessity is the mother of expansion, at least in my case.

The first nine months went well. The average effective CPM (eCPM) across all the site in my network was $2.00 – and that includes wasting 30%-50% of our inventory on AdSense. Come the New Year, though, it was a new game. Nobody – at least nobody I was talking to – was buying ads. Our eCPM dropped to $0.50 and I was not happy; neither were the owners of the websites I represent.

Since late April, though, there’s been an explosion in advertising. This month, 87% of the impressions on my sites are sold, and we’re looking at $2.50 average eCPM. No warning came, only requests for advertising space.

So what’s changed? Will the online advertising market continue to weaken, or will marketing budgets recover soon, and with them the size and frequency of online advertising purchases.

I don’t know.

It’s a fun industry, though. If I ever figure out the whys, behind the whats, I’ll let you know. In the meantime:

(1) If you use online advertising services, which do you use?

(2) How’d your average eCPM change recently?

(3) How do you diversify to guard against sudden network failure in a commodity market.

The Open Design Podcast will be available via the Kobold Quarterly website, your subscription service of choice, and will air on War Pig Radio.

OK, so now that you know what it is, let’s talk about what gaming companies can do with it.

Privateer Press could imprint unique icons on the bottom of each Warmachine mini. When held up in front of your webcame, two things could happen: your account could be updated to note that you own that figure and an animation of that figure, moving and posing and ‘doing things’ could appear on the screen. Privateer could tie that animation to a set of keystrokes, allowing you to dictate which action or pose your virtual figure takes.

Your turn. What cool ideas can you come up with?

What you’ll be doing (to various degrees)

• Contacting publishers to learn what products they plan to release this year.
• Contacting retailers to learn what products are selling.
• Helping design podcast shows, including format, pacing and tone.
• Managing data for existing marketing projects.

Requirements?

• Gamer.
• Have an interest in the business side of games.
• Not scared of numbers.
• Not scared of talking on the phone.
• Available at least 5 hours per week.

I have 603 more days. You would think that, after those 603 days are up, I’m free and clear, right?

It’s amazing the things you realize after it’s too late to do anything about them…

Army enlistment contract (C)(9)(c): “In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless my enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States.”

–> Thankfully, Congress hasn’t issued a formal declaration of “war” since World War II. I’m not sure if that is how this contract uses the term, but I hope so. Otherwise, everyone enlisting in the US Army is technically on the hook until the end of time.

Army enlistment contract (C)(10)(b): “If I am a member of a Reserve Component of an Armed Force at the beginning of a period of war or national emergency declared by Congress, or if I become a member during that period, my military service may be extended without my consent until six (6) months after the end of that period of war.”

–> After leaving the Active component of the US Army, I entered the Reserve component (603 more days to go). Unlike a Declaration of War, Congress declares states of national emergency all the time – about one every nine months since 1976, most of these for the purpose of restricting trade with certain foreign entities under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Most recently, in 2008 Congress declared an emergency citing North Korea and the risk of proliferation of weapon-usable fissile material. Thankfully, these states of emergency can only exist for two years. However, since Congress seems to declare a new one every nine months, cascading “emergencies” can effectively lock any soldier into perpetual service. It’s not that I think this will influence my term of service, or that I will be called back to Active Duty at any point. I could, though, and that is disturbing.

There are other clauses similar to the one above. But I think this last one is the most disturbing. In effect, once you enlist in the Army you are never technically free.

I don’t regret enlisting. OK, a little bit of me does. I really want to see my kids grow up, and after two tours in Iraq I think I’ve earned the right. Anyway, I don’t really regret it. Even knowing everything I know now, I’d still do it again. I enlisted to serve and that’s what I did. I’m proud to have had the opportunity. It’s the almost insidious nature of the contract that weighs a little on my soul right now.

I’ve written and erased a couple dozen paragraphs in the last hour. I can’t really put into words what’s going on inside me right now.

The world is a dangerous place and I thank God for all the people working to keep me safe while I throw birthday parties for my little ones. What’s more, I loathe the evil in the world that requires brave young men and women to sacrifice so much so I can do it. The thought that the evil won’t subside, or these guardians of our way of life won’t get their well deserved rest…

603 days just can’t pass fast enough.

Jason’s Home Page: http://jasonfalls.com/
Jason’s Blog: http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/

gamerati: Jason Falls (Doe-Anderson)

Jason Henderson is the world’s leading expert on search engine optimization for the Miva Merchant shopping cart. We spoke about landing page optimization and email marketing.

Stan! (Super Genius Games) talks about market research, and treating your business like… a business.

Steve Russell talks about how the patronage model changed everything about the way he does business at Rite Publishing.

Related: Atomic Array 023 (Rite Publishing)

Some people really seemed to get kicked around by life. They may do well in some way. People may even look at them and think they lead charmed lives. Their blessings may be real, but for some… suffering the slings and arrows thrown at them has really taken a toll.

I have a friend like this. Someone whose company I enjoy and with whom I share many ideals and dreams. Unfortunately, I stepped on a land mine today… I poured salt into an unhealed wound without really understanding what I was doing.

If I had thought more with my heart than my head, I might have avoided causing them pain. I don’t know.

Cause pain, though, I did.

Have you ever been in this situation? Ever hurt someone without realizing it and then wondered whether you should have known better and/or what you can do to mend bridges?

I don’t know how this will shake out, but it makes me sad to know I hurt a friend.

War Pig Radio broadcasts great programming 24 hours a day so you don’t have to search for something interesting to play over your store speakers. Industry news, product reviews, and interviews with the people who create the things we love—you can find it all on War Pig Radio.

On March 21st, Gamers everywhere will be playing Dungeons & Dragons and War Pig reporters will be bringing their stories to you live via internet radio.

War Pig: Radio for the Gamerati
Home Page: http://www.warpigradio.com/
POC, Ed Healy: warpigradio@gmail.com

Today, I’m thinking about online banner advertisements. Why? Because, for all their faults, online banners are one tactic that allow the advertiser to gather hard data on their effectiveness. When I place a banner on a site, I can tell how many people respond – allowing me to make better advertisements. I can even measure the quality of the response once people click thru to my site – allowing me to develop a better mousetrap on the other end.

If you purchase online advertisements, I’d love to read your answers to these questions:

(1) Why are you buying banner ads? What is the purpose?

(2) Branding: Do you place any value on the fact that people may see your advertisement, but never click on it? How much value?

I’d be interested in this study: What percentage of people actually notice a banner advertisement, regardless of whether they click on it?

(3) Response: What Click-Thru-Rate is acceptable?

What am I trying to figure out?

If I buy 1,000,000 banner impressions at $1 CPM (easy math), I’m paying $1,000. If the CTR is 0.3%, then I’m getting a response from 3,000 people (assuming one person doesn’t click on my ads more than once, though that’d be another interested study). In essence, I’m paying $0.34 for the opportunity to communicate with each person that clicks on my banner. How does this compare to other forms of marketing?

And related to this… Let’s say my 1,000,000 banners are seen by 30,000 unique individuals. Do I place any value on the branding that happens when someone sees my advertisement, but doesn’t respond? How does this compare to other forms of marketing?

Right now, I pay $0.10 per kWh. With this plan, I’d pay $0.1125 per kWh. A 12.5% increase.

I asked the PSE advisor what the average monthly power consumption was for homes of my size in my area: 1,000 kWh. Mine: 579 kWh (yay me). So my average monthly bill is $57.90 right now, and would be $65.15 under the Green Power Plan – a $7.25 per month increase.

Not that big of a deal, really. I can go to Starbucks or Jamba Juice two less times each month and pay for that. I can safe Mother Earth _and_ lose weight. Good deal, right?

That’s not why I’m doing it, though. I’m not known for being an environmental champion, but I do recognize that developing alternative energy sources is important for us. It will not only help the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy, but it’ll also push the technological envelope in ways we don’t (and can’t) realize right now.

Will it have a measurable effect on pollution in my area? I doubt it. Washington State is already fairly green – we are the “ever” green state, after all! Besides, to really solve the global environmental challenges we may face in the future, we’ll need some influence over the second and third world countries ( *cough* China *cough* India *cough* ). I doubt that me switching to wind power will accomplish that. What it may do, though, is add a little more incentive to solving the green energy issues domestically so that we can export that technology to our less advanced friends.

It worked in Africa with cell phones and cable TV. Why can’t it work with renewable energy?

You’re probably asking… “So what’s with the ‘Kill A Tree’ thing?” Here’s the rest of the story:

So I sign up for the plan and the adviser says I’ll be getting a confirmation in the mail. I ask him if that is necessary. I mean, why do I need them to kill a tree to thank me for saving the planet, right?

“If I don’t send you out a confirmation, you won’t receive the quarterly program reports that detail the progress we’re making.”

“You mean, if I let you kill a tree to thank me for saving the planet, you’ll continue to kill more trees every three months to tell me how other people are saving the planet as well?”

Thankfully, he allowed me to opt out of both the confirm and the newsletter.

Before launching War Pig, we contacted a number of our fellow podcasters, inviting them to contribute content for the station. Most of our initial contributors are now in place, including:

* Atomic Array
* Family Night
* Fear the Boot
* The Game Kennel
* Ogre Cave Gaming New Update
* Print & Play
* RPG Countdown
* Wapcaplets

We also have some new content launching shortly, including contributions from:

* The Escapist
* Sy Fy Radio
* Voice of the Revolution

With our current line-up we have great content, but not as much new material each week as we’d like. We’re looking for more.

War Pig is designed for a broad, public audience—including game stores—so we’ve determined a number of things we’d like to see from any shows we add.

1. It must be informative and entertaining.
2. It should be safe for listeners of most ages. No swearing or adult content.
3. It needs to be short-form. We prefer content that runs less than 15 minutes and will not likely be adding anything that runs more than 30 minutes.
4. It should offer something new—something that our current content doesn’t cover.
5. It should contain no irrelevant, divisive topics such as politics or religion.

If you have a show you’d like to submit, or a show idea you’d like to see us develop, contact us at warpigradio@gamerati.com.

Our other major objective is to increase the number of places where War Pig is available. We recently made it possible for webmasters to add War Pig Radio to their websites by embedding a special widget using only two lines of JavaScript. The widget pops-up a player that can be custom branded to your site. Even if you don’t administer a website, you can help by encouraging your favorite ones to add the War Pig player.

We currently have twelve gaming shops playing War Pig Radio over their speakers. We’d like to quickly increase this number. If you are a retailer and playing War Pig in your store, let us know so we can tell people about you.

There are hundreds of stores that don’t even know about War Pig Radio yet. Please help us get their attention by telling them about us. If you don’t feel comfortable asking your local shop owner, let us know how we can contact them, and we’ll do it for you.

Website: http://www.warpigradio.com/
Contact: warpigradio@gamerati.com

(January 28, 2009; DuPont, WA)—Moonstew Productions launched RPG Countdown today. Sponsored by RPGNow, the world’s largest source for digital RPG products, this bi-weekly show highlights the ten hottest selling RPG products, combining product descriptions with quotes from publishers and creators.

“We are jumping up and down, I can tell you. Moonstew has put together a very cool production,” says Sean Patrick Fannon, RPGNow marketing director. “We are looking at the 21st Century marketplace for games, and this is a strong part of our new market strategy.”

RPG Countdown combines the hottest sellers from online retailers, such as RPGNow, with sales figures provided by hobby game retailers. The show is available at the RPG Countdown homepage, and at RPGNow.

ABOUT MOONSTEW PRODUCTIONS: Moonstew Productions produces custom media programming for publishers. Moonstew produces advertisements, promotional spots and programming content that supports and integrates with greater marketing programs. POC: Ed Healy, ephealy@moonstew.com .

ABOUT ONE BOOK SHELF: The combination of RPGNow and DriveThruRPG represents the largest source for digital RPG products in the world. POC: Sean Patrick Fannon, sean@onebookshelf.com .

I was checking out the list of people attending today and noted that Ed Gentry will be sitting across the table for one of these sessions. I’m pretty excited; I’ve been wanting to meet him for some time.

Ed Who? Pick up his novel Neversfall.

Link to MyBrand: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mybrand

Paul Colligan’s Explanation of how to set up MyBrand and Why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIHNjzkWLyI

Last week, Feedburner told me I needed to port over to Google. Matt Dickman has a nice little video about the transition here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcy74J72W40

Alas, while I followed Google’s advice, my feed was still broken. I tinkered around and, Eureka! I figured out what was wrong. I even made a video about it: http://ephealy.blip.tv/file/1686705/

HERE’S THE BAD PART

I get up today and check to make sure my feed is still healthy. No dice. I go to Atomic Array and click on my RSS icon – this is what I get:

HTTP Error Code: 502

Detail: There was a problem retrieving the feed: Error getting URL: 502 – Bad Gateway

I’m desperate here. If you can get me out of this mess, please don’t be shy. Send me an email. If you have my number already – call.

Thanks.

At least, it will be. We have a couple kinks to work out, and we need to work up some more killer content before we’re ready to really move on it, but it’s live.

The idea? Provide entertainment and information to the gamerati 24 x 7. As we add more content to the line-up, we’ll also be developing players so that webmasters can embed War Pig on their websites. I’ve also been in touch with a number of the people at your FLGS, asking what they would like to hear so that they can play War Pig in their stores.

Listen Now using Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media Player.

Are you a gamer? What type of content would you like to hear on War Pig?

Are you a webmaster? Send me an email; I’ll let you know when our flash player is ready.

Are you a publisher? We’d love to help you promote your products.

Are you a retailer? Let me know what content you’d like to hear over the speakers in your store.

Veteran game designer David “Zeb” Cook will also contribute regular reviews of wargaming products. David’s name graces the credits of too many products to list. We’re excited to be working with him.

This is great for websites, but how long will it take for this same ability to translate into other platforms?

Assume for a moment that I publish an eZine. I decide to sell a PDF edition and offer advertising space to companies who want to reach my readers. If I’m a speculative fiction rag, I might sell a full page to TOR, but I’m not going to be able to land one for the local book shop. It’s not economically feasible for the local shop to purchase advertising that will only be relevant for a small subset of those it will appear in front of.

What if I could geo-target advertising, though? What if I could allocate a single page for ads relevant to the subscriber’s mailing address? I could then offer a low-cost advertisement to a number of local stores. Each store would only appear in those issues that were sent to subscribers living in their local market.

The same logic could be used for POD as well, with ads being determined by the demographics of the purchaser.

Geo-tracking would be very cool. Taken a step further, you could have an HBO advertisement that changes based on age or gender—Sally sees one for Desperate Housewives, while Sam sees one for Deadwood.

So tell me, is this technology available today? If so, point me at it.

For those of you familiar with Second Life, a rez day is not a foreign concept. For the rest, a rez day is your Second Life birthday—the day you signed up for an SL account and became a resident.

How was my first year in Second Life? Let’s take a look…

On 04 January 2008, Michael Stackpole posted a blog entry about Second Life. He announced his upcoming appearance on SLCN’s “Meet the Author” (now, “Meet an Author”) and encouraged people to come join him as a member of the live studio audience. I’d been meaning to get in touch with Mike for some time, so I decided to see what this Second Life thing was all about.

SL was intimidating at first, but not prohibitively so. I skipped most of the orientation as soon as I figured out that you could pull up a map and teleport to anywhere you wanted to go. Unfortunately, I didn’t know where anything was! Thankfully, Mike has posted a SLURL on his blog which brought me directly to his Second Life home: Third Life Books. After attending the taping of “Meet the Author,” I stuck around and chatted with Noble about his speculative fiction workshops. (Noble Charron = Michael Stackpole in SL)

SLesson #1: There is a ton of stuff in Second Life. It’s impossible to do or see everything. Thankfully, there are a number of communities that form around common interests. If you’re into music, you’ll find dozens of music communities filled with aspiring and established artists. If you prefer books, there are groups—like Third Life Books—that can help you meet like-minded people. Community is at the heart of Second Life. If you want to get anything out of your experience, finding groups of people who share your interests is key.

After the recording, Noble introduced me to Jilly Kidd, the host of “Meet an Author.” Jilly introduced me to a number of people from the Written Word, a group of authors in Second Life. I spent the next couple months attending writing groups and poetry readings, while getting to know some of the members of the SL writing community. I was still a n00b, but it quickly became clear to me that there was a lot of creativity going on in this virtual world.

SLesson #2: People love to express themselves. SL residents are no different. Creativity manifests in many ways in Second Life. There are novelists and playwrights, musicians and fashion designers, podcasters and entertainers. Second Life is filled with very creative people and experiencing the creations of others is one of the biggest draws.

By April 2008, I was comfortable in my virtual skin. In fact, I had a new one. Noble’s business partner, Kat, graciously took me shopping one day. I now looked like a veteran, and not a new immigrant, fresh off the rez.

It was about this time that Jilly told me that her television network, SLCN, was looking for someone to help them with their advertising sales. She knew I handled advertising for Kobold Quarterly and asked if I’d like to hear what SLCN had to offer. I didn’t have anything to lose, so I took the meeting.

I met with Starr Sonic, SLCN Executive Producer. Starr’s an energetic and optimistic person. It was obvious, from talking with her, that she really enjoyed her job. It was also obvious, from my experience watching SLCN, that the network had a solid product. What they didn’t have, according to Starr, was a reliable advertising manager. We exchanged a couple emails and had a couple meetings and, on 17 April 2008, I was the new SLCN ad dude.

SLesson #3: There are career opportunities in Second Life, but you have to treat them seriously. It’s hard to find people you can rely on, just like in real life. If you’re a competent person, and have skills coupled with drive, you’ll do well. Companies will not want to let you go.

For the last six months I’ve been working to establish SLCN’s advertising department. As the network has grown (from 8,000 episodes delivered in 2007 to 2.2 million in 2008), so have the opportunities. We film eighteen regular shows in Second Life which are aired 24×7 on seven network channels. Each month, more than a third of Second Life residents view our programming. The growth is phenomenal, and so are the opportunities.

SLesson #4: Second Life is not dead. I missed the SL hype from 2007. I came into SL at a time when, according to some of the pundits, virtual worlds were on the down swing. I’ve learned that the reason so many people were disconcerted with Second Life is that they didn’t understand what it was. SL is a community of creative people. If you understand the community and you engage it in meaningful ways, you will create opportunities.

I’ve enjoyed the first year of my Second Life. I’m hoping my second will be even better.

Drop in and say ‘hi’. Look for Normal Rayna.

SIDE NOTE: Ryan Dancey and I sat on a panel at GenCon this year. Entitled “Virtual Worlds: Making Imagination Come Alive,” we discussed virtual worlds, from Second Life to MMORPGs like EVE Online. It was a great talk, during which we explored how these platforms can build community, provide unique services, and facilitate commerce. Have a listen.

OK, I cheated. The siphonophore is not a creature, but a colony of jellyfish-like creatures, called zooids, all acting in concert. Anyway, I think the video speaks for itself. Enjoy.

Times have changed.

For years, I hosted my ephealy.com domain with a small service back in New York. I used to have an online journal, what would now qualify as a blog I suppose, but took it down when I deployed to Iraq. Since then, I’ve only used my domain for email.

Last week, I decided to change that – to make an actual site where I can talk about all the nifty things I’ve been up to. To do that, I wanted to move my domain, but was concerned about the transfer. Sure, I don’t have a site right now, but I was worried about losing access to my email account for days or weeks. It had to be done, though, so last night I pulled the trigger.

Man, was a surprised, and pleasantly so. Not two hours later, my domain was transferred and my email was working at the new mail server. I think I may have experienced 20 minutes of down time in the middle of the night. That’s it.

I’m in awe of how far internet technology has come. Not only can I buy domains for a couple dollars (as opposed to the $30 I paid back in 1997), but the maintenance of these basic building blocks of internet communication is now fluid and easy.

What a difference a decade can make.

The campaign is over. Even though he lost, I’d like to talk about one of the items in McCain’s plan. Here is the pertinent quote:

“Families should be able to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines.”

At first, this sounds like a great idea. Why shouldn’t I be able to take my insurance from New Jersey to Washington? It would sure make life easier, right? Just ask those folks that live near a state border and have to constantly tune out 50% of the ads they hear / see since the products aren’t available in their state.

But then I thought about the idea, and the ramifications of implementing it. What would portability mean in the long term?

For one, the federal government would take on the role of regulating which companies can offer health care. States currently fill this role. This would make it easier to get coverage, especially for those living near state lines. It should also free states of the burden of managing the insurance companies. But…

Would it hurt states that lose licensing revenue? If, on balance, it results in net savings for the industry then I’d be tempted to think it’s a good idea. The states may not agree, though.

My big concern here is that removing the state barriers will likely result in consolidation in the health care insurance business. Right now, small regional firms can survive because they have marginal protection behind the artificial barrier of state lines. Without that protection, we’d likely see larger insurance companies swallow up smaller ones, much the same way banks consolidated in the 90s. Is that good?

Of course, opening up the system would also kill some of the near monopolies that exist out there. Well, for a time… until the consolidation results in us only having five insurance companies in the whole country.

Portable health insurance sounds like a good idea, at first, but I think it would have a net negative effect on the industry. Without other reforms, it would certainly hurt the consumer in the long run.

So why bring it up now? McCain lost, right?

Alas, the first part of President-Elect Obama’s Health Care Reform Plan states:

“Give all Americans access to affordable, comprehensive, portable health coverage.”

I hope that, when the new President and Congress sit down to talk about health care, they carefully consider the ramifications of consolidating health insurance regulation in Washington. Breaking down the state barriers may seem like a good idea, and may be publicly popular, but I don’t think it is the best move.

Not yet. (And I’m not sold on the idea that it’s necessary, anyway.)