gamerDNA.com | The Blog

This Saturday, October 4th at 7:00 PM EDT, gamerDNA invites to our second Team Fortress 2 community night! All are welcome, and gamerDNA admins will be on staff to make things a bit more … interesting (those who remember the last community night will know what I’m talking about!).

So come on down! We’re hosting it once again on gamerDNA’s TF2 server.

We’ll see you there!

Just moments ago gamerDNA launched our Warhammer Online API service, one of the first services that is a part of our gamerDNA Helix Platform.  The Warhammer Online web service gives community developers access to character data information from Electronic Arts’ RealmWAR website.  This is the same API that gamerDNA used to create our Warhammer Online signature generator that we launched last week.

The character data API gives developers access to every character that has be inputted into the gamerDNA system through our  Warhammer Signature generator page on our website.  A player’s character name and server name, along with your unique gamerDNA API Key, gives you access to the Warhammer Online API web service.

Today we have also opened up a new section of our forums called "Helix Developers/API", which will become a central hub for all discussions about the gamerDNA APIs we currently provide and all APIs we roll out in the future.  Community developers are encouraged to use this forum to collaborate on projects, ask questions, and give feedback on our APIs.

How to get your gamerDNA API Key

gamerDNA Warhammer Online character API web service information and documentation

If you are a community developer and you have built something exciting for the Warhammer Online community, please email us at community@gamerDNA.com for a possible feature on gamerDNA.com

Female gaming isn’t some kind of nebulous concept somewhere out there in the ether of Barbie Horse Adventures and The Sims, it’s everywhere, and this time we’re highlighting some of the coolest experiences on gamerDNA for this edition of the gamerDNA Experience Roundup.

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The answer to last week’s question: I’m crazy.

Okay, I might not be, but the data isn’t going to back me up, here. (Last week, I said “I have a hypothesis that there’s a generation gap here, as well as a number of people unaccustomed to MMOs and DRM in general.”)

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Hi everyone. This week was a pretty big build for us… as it brings us closer to our mission of providing a unique gaming identity across a growing alliance network of sites using OpenID…

It is also pretty cool that your gamerDNA profile is available from xxxx.gamerdna.com!

Here are the full notes from the build:

Profile Enhancements/Changes

• All members (and guilds) can access their pages by going to xxx.gamerdna.com! Share with your friends!
• Contacted the final set of members that need to change names due to conflict with guilds.
• The badges have been changed to use a .PNG extension, so that they are more versatile and behave with their transparency correctly.
• Fixed an issue where the member name was not displaying on sub profile pages.
• Google maps have been removed form the profile due to the new domain name scheme not allowing for a google map license per sub domain.

Guild Enhancements/Changes

• We changed the layout of the guild image page to use larger thumbnails so that they are easily visible and fixed some IE7 browser issues.
• Corrected more issues in the editor that were causing lots of extra spaces and broken links. We continue to fight the battle on this.
• Found an issue where some themes had the wrong default values specified causing background images to not appear. Also repaired some small issues in the theme switcher that would cause blank values to be saved.
• Fixed an issue where the image gallery on the guild page was not obeying the size of the page and breaking the layout.
• If a guild is disbanded, you will no longer be able to access the old pages by guild id number or short name.
• Any older guilds that were never given short names, have been back-filled to have them as required by the new sub domain requirements.

General Site Enhancements/Changes

• New Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning signatures launched at http://www.gamerdna.com/warhammer-signature/
• OpenIDs are now supported for registration. If you want to create an account without a password and use an existing OpenID that you have, you can now do that at gamerdna.com
• OpenID is now supported for login. If you have an existing member account, you can login and associate your openID to that gamerdna account.
• New forgotten password page implemented. It no longer uses a popup.
• Quiz result pages have their content added back in, with a new flag to flip them off for performance reasons.
• We had to remove the DNA Active strand from the homepage for performance reasons. We moved a few elements around until we can implement the new homepage design.
• In some cases, using spaces in your name would break registration validation and cause user confusion. This has been repaired.
• Fixed performance issues around uploading an image.
• Fixed performance issues around selecting an attitude.
• Until we can properly populate games into the list with enough information, the search bar in the upper right is restricted to only finding "Tier 3" games. These are games we have specifically promoted within the system for use with guilds.
• If you try to submit the first answer of a quiz without an answer, it no longer breaks.
• Corrected some typos on the registration page and quizzes.
• We are now truncating the game name on the character DNA panel to prevent strange wrapping issues in the small list space.
• Changed the help text on registration to explain that hyphen are allowed.

That’s it this week! We have a really ambitious week, hoping to get some pretty serious and awesome enhancements to your member homepage in for Sept 29th. Look for those on Monday!

Today we are excited to launch our Warhammer Online signature generator.  Warhammer Online players now have the ability to create dynamic signatures that display live up to date character data based on the North American Warhammer Online RealmWAR character page.

Here are examples of our two signatures, one for Order and one for Destruction.

How you can get your own free Warhammer Online Signature:

1. Sign up for gamerDNA.com (if you do not already have an account)
2. Sign in to gamerDNA and go to the following link Warhammer Online Signature Generator
3. Put in your character name and server name for that character and click submit.
4. Now you have your signature with the provided HTML and BB Code so that you can instantly use it as a signature anywhere!

*Note* We currently do not support European Warhammer Online servers due to the fact that a European RealmWAR website has not be created by Electronic Arts/GOA.  If/When a website is created by the publisher that publishes this data we will support European players ASAP *Note*

Edit: We now support European Servers!

All our Warhammer Online signatures display your character name, your class, rank, reknown rank, server name and guild name (if applicable).  This is all done for free for all members of gamerDNA without the need to download any client that watches your gaming.  Just plug in your character name and server name and you’re ready to go!

Finally, don’t forget that you can win one of five 60-day free game time cards for Warhammer Online if you take part in our Warhammer Online contest that ends this Sunday.  All you have to do to win is add Warhammer Online to your profile or play WAR via Xfire, add a screenshot or experience to your profile.  For all the details check out our Warhammer Online contest announcement.

Check back in the near future for some more very exciting announcements for Warhammer Online players as well as more contests.  Make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed or our email notifcation so you can know as soon as anyone else does!

If you have any problems with the Warhammer Online signature generator please fill out our support form

Even if you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that despite one of the best-executed marketing juggernauts in history (and a legitimately awesome game), the big story around Spore has been the Digital Rights Management kerfluffle. Sure, every major media outlet has been trying to carry the carefully pre-packaged drama about how Wright wants to make you into an atheist’s Intelligent Designer. Something like that. I dislike wasting my precious time with choreographed controversy, so I’ve barely paid any attention to that meme. You can find that “story” in Time Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and more.

A more authentic story is that customers are a raging ball of hate for the way EA chose to handle the DRM issues.

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Updated: 2:07am EST Saturday

Today has been a very exciting day with our announcement of gamerDNA hitting 500,000 quizzes being taken on our site.  Along with that announcement, we’ve been receiving some great write-ups on various gaming press sites.   The most recent write-up that we received was up on Kotaku, which had many great things to say about gamerDNA.  Welcome to gamerDNA Kotaku readers!

Earlier today we had some trouble keeping everything up and running because our servers were getting slammed from Kotaku readers checking out the site.  Right now it looks like everything is running well and the site is holding up, so please feel free to check out all the features on the site that you may not have been able to reach earlier due to site issues.  We’re very excited about our 500,000 quizzes milestone and we’d love for you to check out the quiz system enjoyed by so many people.

In the future you can monitor our gamerDNA Twitter account to keep up on any news and announcements we have from gamerDNA, as well as any site issues that we may encounter in the future.

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We made an announcement today about passing half a million quizzes taken on GamerDNA.  Here’s what we put out on the wire this morning:

GamerDNA, Inc. Quiz System Reveals Gaming Preferences of 500,000 Gamers

Quizzes to become a key element of company’s gamer identity and discovery platform

CAMBRIDGE, MA – September 18, 2008 – GamerDNA.com, the social platform for videogame identity and discovery, today announced a milestone 500,000 quizzes have been completed on the site by gamers looking to define their gaming preferences, interests and unique gaming identity. To celebrate the initial success of the quiz system, GamerDNA will further expand their gamer identity platform in the coming months with the addition of new quizzes, aggregation of more gameplay information, and new tools for discovering games.

“The quiz system is central to the identity defining capabilities of GamerDNA.com and we are thrilled with the positive response that it has received thus far from the community,” said Jon Radoff, CEO of GamerDNA, Inc. “Our goal was to have quizzes on the site that are fun to take and that also help us to define what we, as gamers, find interesting. The quizzes not only enhance our identity platform, but also help us to draw unique insights from the collective intelligence of people involved in the culture of gaming.”

The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, a quiz that classifies the personalities of massively multiplayer online game players has quickly become the most popular on GamerDNA.com. Additional quizzes on the site measure the play styles of other gaming genres, such as first-person shooters and real-time strategy games, as well as a quiz that measures which decade gamers feel have had the greatest impact on their game preferences.  After completing each quiz, a “facet” system shows participants a set of personality traits that represent their unique “fingerprint” as a gamer. Gamers can participate in these quizzes, as well as view current result summaries, by visiting www.gamerdna.com/quizzes.

GamerDNA aggregates each member’s gameplay history from popular networks including Xbox Live, Xfire and Steam.  When this-real time information is combined with feedback about game preferences and quiz results, it enables a member to define their unique “gamer identity,” a lens for discovering new games, showcasing experiences and exploring the experiences of others who love games.

About GamerDNA, Inc.
GamerDNA is building a social platform to unite the worldwide ecosystem of passionate gamers, game communities and game developers. At GamerDNA.com, PC and video game players can share information about their experiences and discover the games being played and enjoyed right now by other people with similar interests. Cambridge, MA based GamerDNA, Inc. is funded by Flybridge Capital Partners and led by a team of online media and computer games veterans.   Additional company information is available at: http://www.gamerdna.com/alliance/about.php

#  #  #
Contact:
Elicia Basoli
360 Public Relations for GamerDNA
617-585-5777
ebasoli@360publicrelations.com

Today marks the release of the highly anticipated Warhammer Online, and everyone here at gamerDNA is ready to celebrate! Part of that celebration is bringing the party to you with gamerDNA.com’s WAR week. From Friday, September 19 to midnight Eastern Daylight Time on September 27 we will be giving you the opportunity to win one of five 60 day Warhammer Online prepaid time cards.

This is available to all gamerDNA members, so if you haven’t joined the gamerDNA community make sure you sign up for gamerDNA right away!

You may ask, "How do I win?" Well, it’s easy, all you have to do is perform up to two of the following tasks between 12:01 AM EDT on Friday, September 19 and 11:59 PM on Sunday, September 28:

1. Add Warhammer Online to your gamerDNA
2. Add a Warhammer Online related Image to your profile (make sure to associate the image with Warhammer Online)
3. Add a Warhammer Online related experience post (make sure to associate the experience with Warhammer Online)
4. Play Warhammer Online on Xfire during WAR week (make sure you have your Xfire ID listed as an AKA in your gamerDNA panel)

At the end of the week, we’ll go through the data and randomly pick five winners. Remember, you can do as many of the tasks that you want - but only two will count as entries in the random drawing. We’ll announce the winners on Wednesday, October 1st.

This week, the much anticipated MMORPG, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) hits store shelves and subscribers all over the world will be getting their new MMO fix. GamerDNA is not alone in this endeavor, as a bunch of us are going to be playing Warhammer after work when when the game launches this Thursday!

If you enjoy playing with us, you can even hop onto our Warhammer Online guild - GamerDNA-War! It’s sporting a fancy warhammer website theme courtesy of our free guild hosting.

Our Warhammer guild leader, Fattychubs, will be playing on the Volkmar server as a member of Destruction.  The gamerDNA-WAR guild is open to any and all gamerDNA community members who would like to join a casual Warhammer guild that is looking to have some fun in the game.  You’re welcome to jump in the guild with the gamerDNA community and stay in the guild as long or as little as you would like, it’s all about having a fun group of gamers in Warhammer Online.

If you are interested in joining the guild go to the gamerDNA-WAR guild website for all the information you need!

So we’ll see you this Thursday, August 18th evening/night EDT !

Oh, and if you want to learn more about creating your very own warhammer online guild page, check out Sam’s article on warhammer guild hosting!

Lots of bug fixes this week, focusing in on cross-browser compatibility with the guild themes… so if that is a drum you have been beating, there it is.

Also, we emailed roughly 10,000+ people who have names that will shortly not be supported by our move to a member subdomain at xxxx.gamerdna.com. This means only numbers, letters, and dashes are allowed… underscores, spaces, punctuation, etc all have to be removed.

We completely understand how painful this is for some people, but for our ultimate vision of where we want the site to be, it is something we just have to do… so we are pulling the band-aid off in one pull. We ask your patience as we continue to work through all scenarios that allow you to have the user name that you prefer. As always you can contact us with any issues directly.

Here are the notes from this week:

Profile Enhancements/Changes

• All members with invalid member names (according to open ID sub domain needs) have been contacted to rename their user to meet the new standard.
• Character avatars in your profile will link you to the image, if one is used… or the link will be disabled if no character exists, preventing a "not found" error.
• Cleaned up some button positioning in the DNA panel.
• GTalk added as an AKA to your profile.

General Site Enhancements/Changes

• We made some performance enhancements to the registration page to make sure it loads faster by reducing 30% of the page weight.
• Made edits to the notification system that we used to notify people of their required user renames.
• On the player page, trying to filter by type-ahead game was resulting in a fatal error. This has been resolved.
• Fixed another issue that was causing the search bar to wrap into the nav bar in 1024×768
• Repaired a javascript error on the Registration page. It wasn’t causing any problems… just annoying.
• The Search Forums page has been added to the drop down for FORUMS on the main nav… to make it easier to find.
• Installed a new racing theme font for the new racing-based theme.
• Fixed a few game icons that were showing as not found.
• An event calendar page for managing the GamerDNA game servers.
• We took a pass through the quiz system and cleaned up some grammar issue.

Guild Hosting Enhancements/Changes

• To prevent situations where the logo was breaking the guild layout, we are truncating auto logo generation at 24 characters. Beyond that guilds are being instructed to use a custom logo.
• Repaired issues with the GuildCafe Wide theme an IE7.
• There were reported situations where the guild editor was not loading in IE7. This should be fixed.
• The Liquid theme for guilds had a broken shoutbox layout in FireFox 3. This has been repaired.
• In some cases, new guilds were not getting a banner created until they went to the theme chooser. This has been resolved.
• Changed the functionality for managing the time that you play and ensuring that it appears correctly in the guild directory.
• The guild logo generator now supports an apostrophe correctly.
• When creating events, the default for a new event will be today’s date instead of Jan 1 2006.
• Changed the behavior of the editor to support the built in firefox spell checker.
• If a thread in the guild forums is too long for the display, it will truncate after 30 characters.
• Fixed an issue where previewing the post was blanking out the post title.
• If you put multiple spaces in the editor, it will not replace them with * marks.
• Fixed issues with the cross browser display of form buttons on guild themes in IE7 and Firefox.
• Reversed the order of the guild themes to be newest first in the theme choose for guild hosting.
• Fixed the list-time-zone links on the guild setup page to correctly launch the pop-up.
• If you accept a guild invite, the PM comes from the PM of the member who accepted not the Guild Bot.

That’s all for now. Lot’s of big things in the works… targeted at enhancing the "single-player" experience of the site and making your guilds/groups/clans easier to share and advertise… look for more news and maybe some screen shots as we nail it down.

Are you a Call of Duty 4 PC clan in need of a server to host your own clan matches, practices, or other events? Well, you’re in luck! We here at gamerDNA are now offering timeslots on our gamerDNA.com Call of Duty 4 server where we will give you (for a specified amount of time) full control over the maps, settings, and gametype on the server so that you can play Call of Duty 4 how you want it!

You should use this if you:

• Have a big clan match that you want to have a speedy server to play on
• Want to use a server to test out the remote console commands
• Want to have a place to practice map layouts privately
• Want to have a server that you can call your own!

Best of all, all of this is totally free - because we love you!

How does it work? Well, first take a look at our Community Calendar and see if anyone has the server reserved (the Call of Duty 4 server requests have “COD4club” prefixing them), then send a  request to reserve the server, and we’ll let you know when we update the calendar! We’ll also hook you up with an rcon password and we’ll even help you out with the basic server commands!

Finally! We’ve got another gamerDNA group spotlight. Last time we had an interview with Elilane, leader of the Fyredraek guild in World of Warcraft. This week, we’ve got a spotlight on a Call of Duty 4 clan on the Xbox 360 – Elite Assassin’s Legion. We’ve got the leader, Danpipster, here to talk about his clan.

gamerDNA: So why don’t you introduce yourself and your group - who are you, what is your group, what game does your group play?

Danpipster: Right, well, my gaming name is Danpipster, co leader of the EAL, which stands for Elite Assassin’s Legion. We are a CoD4 Clan on the Xbox 360.

gamerDNA: What motivated you to create your clan?

Danpipster: Well, having played on my own in ordinary ranked matches (online), it frustrated me to see how unorganised teams were. I thought, if only teamwork was used and everyone worked together we could really win games! Especially if we had a talented squad of players,which is something I am trying to build up, as the name suggests (Elite).

Communication is another factor. I noticed how in games I found that if I found a useful piece of information, such as enemy locations or something similar, if we were a team, we could share this information and really gain the edge over the enemy.

More after the jump….

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I’m told that last week’s feature was something you guys enjoyed. More importantly, it was something you guys forwarded to everyone and their dog, which meant ZOMG TRAFFIC for this blog. My conclusion last week, underneath the torrents of verbosity, was essentially “boys and girls are different but not as much as you might have thought.” Here at GamerDNA, we like to go a little deeper than that into topics that our players find interesting. This week, Data Man Steve decided to go looking for games that the same proportion of men and women find appealing. He pulled (from our Xbox data) a list of games played by the same percentage of men and women. And boy, did we identify some awesome opportunities for the gaming industry.

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Warhammer Online is launching in mere days now and the drums of WAR are beating quite loud as Order prepares to battle Destruction.  gamerDNA would like to give you one last weapon before you head out in to the Empire by announcing our Free Warhammer Online Guild Hosting.  By signing up and creating a guild at gamerDNA you now have access to six free Warhammer Online guild themes, 3 themes for Order and 3 themes for Destruction. 

Creating a guild at gamerDNA gives you access to a full featured free guild host with 150,000 members and thousands of gamers looking for guilds to join right now.  On top of all that, creating a guild on gamerDNA takes less than a minute!

Click Here to create a FREE Warhammer Online Guild Website

Destruction Guild Themes:

Order Guild Themes:

gamerDNA free guild hosting includes the follow features: Recruiting System, Roster Management, Event System, Custom Themes, Private Forums, Custom Sub-Domain, Guild Event System, a Member Submitted News section and personal gamerDNA profiles for all guild members.

All of these fantastic guild themes are available to everyone who signs up for our Free Guild Hosting.  Sign up today and get your guild ready for WAR!

Now that it’s been a full week since we got back from PAX and we’re fully recovered, we thought it’s time to wrap up our experience at PAX and share some of the good times and good stories.  If you don’t remember, gamerDNA invaded Seattle for the 2008 PAX that took place on August 29th through August 31st.  Little did we know what gaming bliss awaited us.

Incase you don’t know what PAX is, Wikipedia has your back:

The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is an annual gamer festival held in Washington state, USA. PAX was created by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the authors of the Penny Arcade webcomic, because they wanted to attend a show that gave equal attention to console gamers, computer gamers, and tabletop gamers.

Every year PAX has grown in numbers by an order of magnitude and this year was no exception.  The gamerDNA crew had the pleasure of spending the weekend with over 58,000 other gamers that arguably took over downtown Seattle.  The Seattle Convention Center was filled to the brim with gamers of all types checking out the booth floor, attending the many great panels and concerts, and of course…playing games.  If you’re a gamer of any sort, PAX is the place to be if you pick any gaming convention to visit.

Friday afternoon kicked off with the official start of PAX and the initial rush to get your badge and swag bag for the event.  After picking up our gear and badges and taking a stroll around the show floor, we decided to hit up lunch at the Microsoft Xbox "Meet ‘n’ Eat" at Red Mill Burgers.  There we had the pleasure of meeting all the folks behind the Xbox Live community team, including Trixie360 and Major Nelson.  Not only that, but the food was fantastic.  If you ever need a burger in the Seattle, Red Mill is definitely the way to go.

They also had the best wall of bacon we’ve ever seen.  So much so, we had to take a picture of it:

The highlight for all of us was the gamerDNA PAX Party which turned out to be a smashing success.  Gamers of all types showed up, ranging from industry folks, TV celebrities, journalists, podcasters and bloggers.  I think it’s safe to say everyone there had a good time playing Rock Band and hanging out, talking about games.  The party ended up rockin’ for several hours and by the end of it we were all very happy with how it went, but very tired.

Saturday and Sunday were our chances to finally spend more time on the show floor, demo some games, and check out some of the panels that we wanted to go to.  Jon also had the opportunity to interview with various press at the event (which by the way you can check out Jon’s interview with Massively here). 

On Sunday we made a point of checking out the "Giant Bomb Reunion Panel" which was a great time and very entertaining.  Turns out Jeff Gerstmann is a big fan of 360Voice so it was neat to get a chance to talk to all the guys behind Giant Bomb about PAX, games, and what they are doing at their company.  If you haven’t already, make sure you check out Giant Bomb for a great wiki all about games.

After Sunday it was time to make our way back home and catch the 6 hour flight to Boston.  All in all PAX was an awesome time for all of us and we can’t wait to go back again next year in 2009.  We would like to thank everyone who came out to our first gamerDNA PAX Party, it was great to meet you all and spend a weekend of gaming nirvana with you all.  Next time around, expect a much bigger presence at PAX from the team at gamerDNA.  We’ll be seeing you at the 2010 PAX in our home town of Boston too

Last evening we gave a presentation at the Boston Post Mortem (a local meeting of the International Game Developers Association) about trends in gaming.  If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve probably enjoyed a number of Sanya’s articles on the subject of market trends based on what we’ve observed through the lens of GamerDNA. This presentation captures a lot of the trends we’ve found over the last couple of months.  Of course, you’ll want to read through the Market Trends category on the blog if you want all of the detail–but we hope you’ll enjoy flipping through the slides and learning a thing or two.  We plan to release new versions of the presentation every once and a while to capture our latest knowledge.

First there was the FPS Experience Roundup, then there was the MMO Experience Roundup, this week’s roundup ditches the acronyms and puts us in the “thinking man’s (or woman’s)” genre - Strategy games! We’re talking about the games that you take a step back from the menial rigors of the battlefield and embrace a higher sense of control. So click through, because a bevy of strategy experiences await after the jump!

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Yeah, we know it’s short notice, but what better way is there to break in a brand new Call of Duty 4 server? So, here’s the skinny: This Saturday, September 13th at 7:00PM gamerDNA will be hosting a community night on our CoD4 server. Everyone knows how much fun we had on TF2 night, so let’s do it again with CoD4 night!

So just to recap, the event starts 7:00 PM and it will be located on our Call of Duty 4 server, with information below:

Don’t forget to check out our Steam Community and our Xfire Team!