Five Things About the Office

I’m back from Boston, and boy, are my arms tired. I mean, wow, it was great seeing the GamerDNA HQ. There were a few details that really stood out for me that I thought you’d enjoy hearing about:

› Continue reading

Short Outage For Today’s Build

Edit by Trapper, Jun 17 2008:

Sanya is traveling, so I am going to throw the notes up here… and make a few comments:

1. Advertising added to GamerDNA.com
   You knew this was coming… we have bills to pay and ads are one of those ways!
2. Wowzorz Horde Theme
   Check out the new theme from our theme-ace Mellisa!
3. Game icons
   We added over 20 game icons in our pursuit towards game-icon nirvana.
4. Guild event scheduling not working correctly.
   It is “semi-working”… more about this in a second.
5. Fixed issue of duplicating experiences on import.
   When using the experience RSS import (Experience Imports tab in the DNA Panel), they were duplicating. This is now solved.
6. Character Boxes Remain Greyed out
   When you go to add a character of game type “Other” it will now behave correctly
7. New theme: MapleStory
   A new theme for Maple Story is right around the corner…. the files are there and the theme should be activated shortly.

It is a smaller build than normal, but this is because we did builds on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and hot fixes on Tuesday and Thursday… so in short we have been building non-stop since the launch last Monday. 100,000+ pairs of eyes are more powerful than 6 pairs of eyes… so we are doing our best to keep up with the bug fix madness… It would be great to not have any bugs, but we are moving forward at a pretty blistering pace… and although we remain ever vigilant, sometimes the speed gets the best of us! We want to do better though… and will get there.

OnHollywood

I spent the last couple of days at OnHollywood, a conference for digital media and entertainment companies.  While there, I sat on a panel moderated by Kara Swisher (Wall Street Journal writer and co-producer of All Things Digital) where we discussed the intersection between social media and entertainment.  I’ll post a copy of the video once it is available.

I also gave demos of the new version of gamerDNA.com … Here’s the official announcement we made at the conference:

HOLLYWOOD, CA AND CAMBRIDGE, MA, June 12, 2008 – At OnHollywood, GamerDNA Inc. launched GamerDNA.com, a new crossroads for gamers, games and the websites they hang out on.  GamerDNA is a platform for gamers to join forces with friends, preserve their experiences and share the stories of what they’ve discovered in games.  The site builds upon the technologies developed for the popular 360voice and GuildCafe websites.

“As we developed GamerDNA.com, we discovered that we could be so much more than yet another destination website for gamers,” explained Jon Radoff, CEO of GamerDNA Inc.  “When we realized that we could become every player’s portable gaming identity—complete with a history of gameplay, experiences and preferences—it changed everything about our roadmap.  It isn’t just about our own properties.  We want to make every game and every gaming website more personal and rewarding.”

The company benefits from an initial registered member community of about 250,000 derived from the 360voice and GuildCafe websites.  In addition, the company has already secured exclusive distribution agreements with other Web publishers to deliver GamerDNA-enabled content and applications to over two million users per month.

“OnHollywood is showcasing the companies that are creating new opportunities in entertainment technologies including games, video and music ,” said Tony Perkins, CEO of AlwaysOn, the event host for the OnHollywood conference.  “GamerDNA is an innovative business that combines disruptive technology with a unique distribution model.”

The GamerDNA platform (which includes Web-services that allow games and websites to incorporate gaming histories, preferences and identity into their user experiences) is currently in closed development with a limited number of partners.  However, anyone may now take part in the community that’s being created by visiting: http://www.gamerdna.com

About GamerDNA Inc.

GamerDNA is building a community for the millions of people around the world who are passionate about the immersive, engaging experiences that can be found through games. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, GamerDNA is funded by Flybridge Capital Partners and led by a team of online media and computer games veterans from Eprise, New York Times Digital and Electronic Arts Mythic. More information is available at: http://www.gamerdna.com

Say “Frostmourne”!

You may have missed the press release. We’ve ordered a Frostmourne sword, and we’re going to give it to someone who uses the GamerDNA panel to upload an image of their character.

Log in. Open your panel. Upload an image (screenshot, stick figure drawing, a photo of yourself in costume) of your World of Warcraft character. Go to http://www.gamerdna.com/saycheese. Choose that image from the dropdown list in the upper right hand corner.

That’s it.

If you went to more trouble to create your portrait than a stick figure or a screenshot, you’ll automatically be entered into a drawing for WOW game cards when you enter the Frostmourne contest.

Tell your friends

The aftermath

I just wanted to chime in and let everyone know that we are aware of a few issues following the cut over to the new GamerDNA.com site.

1. Guild event scheduling is hurting
   We have a known bug that is making the scheduling of guild events not function correctly. Something is causing the dates to change after submitting them. We are working to track down the issue. It turned into a bigger snare than we had thought it would be, but we are getting there.
2. Browser support
   Unfortunately, our support for Internet Explorer 6.0 is degrading as we move forward. This is mainly because all of us use Firefox 2, and IE 7 for development… and we double check in Safari. So outside of those three browsers, We are a small team and we simply don’t have the resources to test all pages and functionality in every browser. We will be continuing to work to improve support in some areas and making the site more friendly to as many browsers as possible, but using the latest version of your browser will always help!
3. Profile page appearing too wide
   Speaking of browsers, in Firefox 3 RC, Safari, and Opera 9.x the profile page, member home, and game pages are stretching beyond the screen width. This is due to the picture strip at the top of those pages not behaving the rules of layout! We are aware and working on a fix.
4. Performance
   We have seen complaints about site performance and will be continuing to tweak servers and pages to get things running smoothly. From our side things seem to be running fairly well with a few moments of weirdness. We are looking into the weirdness.
5. Login issues
   A few people have reported that they are getting logged out of the site at random times… or that they are unable to log in. We are investigating this as well, but it is hard to recreate so the going is slow.
6. Search Engine
   Our site search engine is still turned off as we look at higher performing alternatives. The one we were using throughout our closed beta up and died when we went live with it. But we will raise it from the dead as soon as possible.

We understand some of you are upset with the bugs and we are doing everything we can to get them understood, fixed and deployed. We are doing another build today to get a few fixes in and will continue to do builds and hot fixes all week as we track things down.

That is it for now! A special thanks to everyone sending in positive feedback too… we dig that… keeps us smiling over here when the flood of bugs becomes unbearable! Everyone at gamerDNA is a gamer… and just wants to build a fun service and community that we ourselves find compelling. With all of your help submitting bugs and being patient, we will get there!

Any comments can be sent through the Feedback & Support form.

Have You Checked a Games Page Lately?

The relaunch has made some of our features better than ever. One of those features is the game page. Take the 300 pound gorilla, World of Warcraft. Rather, take the GamerDNA take on WoW: http://www.gamerdna.com/game/World-of-Warcraft

The world doesn’t need another WoW news site, and so we didn’t make one. Instead, this page weaves together all the strands from our members who play the game – the experiences, the screenshots, the profiles, and a quick list of the news stories our members have voted up as being important to them. Personally, I enjoy the Stories the most.

I have a friend, we were coworkers for years, and she had me over to her house one weekend. I was telling a story from a old online game – the gist was that my guildmates had played one hell of a practical joke on what amounted to the entire freaking server. She stared at me, and called her husband in. She told me to repeat the tale. Yep, you guessed it – they had been there. Small world.

It’s a silly story, maybe, but it’s one more tie binding us together, one more common thread. How many more stories like this will I find, especially if I put that story into my profile, and it feeds into the page for that old game?

Looking for your guild site?

We are having a few issues with our domain forwarding that should be pointing old addresses to our new address. So if you have a guild site hosted with us under the guildcafe.com domain, it is currently not accessible at that location. Please use GUILDNAME.gamerdna.com. That should get you to your site for now. Eventually they will all redirect automatically, but for the moment, that is not occurring.

Sorry for the inconvenience… we are working to solve the issue. Thank you for your patience!

EDIT: Fixed! Thanks for your patience! Your old guild links (XXX.guildcafe.com) should redirect properly to XXX.gamerdna.com now.

We’re Back!

GamerDNA is off and running! Of course, with the sheer number of tasks we had to accomplish, we do have a few technical issues. The guys are going to be up all night getting things put in shipshape order. If you encounter any problems, please use our brand new ticketing system: http://www.gamerdna.com/support