gamerDNA.com | The Blog

There’s no rest for the wicked, or for intrepid start up companies. When the start up company is wicked AWESOME, forget turkey-induced comas – GamerDNA is on the job. I hope all of our readers in the USA had a good feast. For the rest of the world, today is just another day, and we’re not serving up leftovers – here’s your fresh Trends column.

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Hi everyone. Sorry for the delay in the notes. With the database craziness and everything yesterday I didn’t have a chance to really iron these out. So here we go… all the changes from Monday.

This was mainly an infrastructure week. We moved a lot around on the back end, both in our main environment that you all use and in our development environment. But we did get some pretty cool new features and tweaks in. Check them out.

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A special thanks goes out to everyone that joined us this past weekend for our Gears of War 2 Community Night.  I think it’s safe to say everyone had a good time, I know everyone at gamerDNA enjoyed playing with our community and getting some frags in over the weekend.

Now, it is time to announce the winner of our Gears of War 2 signed book:

The winner is Theo!  Congrats!

The following gamers also won Golden Hammerbursts:

• FrequentBeef
• Disbron
• poopfartballs
• yungindy501
• gam3fr3ak666

And the following gamers won Golden Lancers:

• highsimsim
• Iguana Asesina
• CBurntonrun91
• kraid117
• t369uk smiley

Congrats everyone!

To commemorate the newly dubbed fastest selling game of all time, gamerDNA is launching a brand new, dynamic World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King custom signature!

The signature automatically updates with your character stats, and it even tracks events in the game! Did you just hit level 80? Did you just score an awesome item? Let the world know with the gamerDNA WoW:WotLK signature! Want to get your own?  More after the jump

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2.8 million box sales in one day. I guess that means Wrath of the Lich King did pretty well. Of course, the only other team crunching harder than Blizzard is your own GamerDNA team, so our cross game comparison is going to have to wait one more week. So let’s take a look at the basic numbers we’re seeing for the World of Warcraft expansion, and throw in a little GamerDNA flavor.

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Hey guys! Just a reminder - gamerDNA is giving away a whole bunch of Razer gaming hardware to any players deep in the throes of Wrath of the Litch King - check out the original post here.

Here’s what you can win:

1. A Razer DeathAdder™ mouse, with an 1800dpi sensor for precise control
2. A Razer Lycosa™ keyboard, with fully programmable keys for macro creation
3. A Razer Destructor™ mousepad, optimized for gaming grade mice
4. A Razer Piranha™, with pristine sound quality and comfort for the long hours in voice chat

Runner-ups can get one of 5 Razer DeathAdder™ mice! 

Good luck everyone! 

Join gamerDNA for a Community Night Weekend featuring Gears of War 2 multiplayer, in high definition bloody glory! Make sure you’ve got your lancer locked and loaded, if you play with us you are entered in to win a Behind the Scenes Gears of War 2 book signed by the development team.

Join us on Friday November 21st or Saturday November 22nd for our gamerDNA Community Night to play Gears of War 2 multiplayer. We’ll be playing on Friday from 7:00- 9:00PM EST and Saturday 8:00-10:00PM EST.

For full details on the Gears of War 2 Community Night, complete with pictures of the signed art book go here: http://gamerdna.com/r/gears2-community-night

In our continuing quest to make sure that gamers are well prepared for long hours with the Lich King, gamerDNA and Swag Dog have teamed up to offer gamerDNA guild leaders a chance to grab a customizable guild t-shirt from Swag Dog. Of course, the apparel is fully licensed from Blizzard. Keep reading for more details

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Do you like playing with fire? Well, our theme designer Zel does, and she’s crafted a theme for all of you flame lovers out there - Pyromaniac. This time, it’s got one sub-theme, but don’t feel short-changed, because the theme itself is fully customizable (seriously, check out the theme’s Advanced Properties!)

Want to start using Pyromaniac for yourself? Give our 100% free group hosting features a try! Got any questions about our themes or anything else on gamerDNA? Let us know!

Drum roll please!  The winner of our Gears of War 2 Banner contest is ready to be announced….

The winner is Golden138!

Congrats Golden138, you have won our 8′x5′ Gears of War 2 banner signed by the Gears development team.

So what does this banner actually look like?

Many thanks go out to everyone that participated in this contest.  A special thanks go out to our friends over at Microsoft and Epic Games!

Please stay tuned to gamerDNA and our blog for more contests in the future.  We’ve got a Gears of War 2 event coming up this weekend…announced shortly!

This latest release was a pretty big one for us. It introduced another major system that will lay the foundation for gamerDNA as we move into 2009. I have mentioned it in the past, but this new system allows us to start getting at the "WHY" behind what you like as a gamer. All games are not created equal. Just because you and I play the same games and like the same games, does not mean that we like them for the same reasons… and when it comes to your gaming identity, this is an important nuance that we as gamers want to recognize.

Read on for the full release notes. We will be producing some more blog posts and materials through the week that call out many of these new features and give you specific help in using them.

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You may remember when we announced our Warhammer Online signature generator for anyone on RealmWAR in North America. Well, good news - with the launch of the European RealmWAR site, gamerDNA now supports European Servers and players! That’s right, so all of you who felt left out when we rolled out the signatures can now show off their faction, rank, renown, and guild anywhere on the internet. Here’s how to get your own 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!

That’s it! If you have any questions please feel free to contact gamerDNA support.

You totally expected to see something about Wrath of the Lich King, didn’t you? Well, listen, GamerDNA is for all gamers, not just MMOG nerds like… um… me. And second, if they had launched on a Tuesday like EQ2 and LOTRO are going to, giving us enough time to pull data, maybe we would have.

Okay, seriously. Gears of War was THE shooter hit of 2006 in many ways. Three million copies in ten weeks is pretty awesome. To date, the title has sold over five million copies. Microsoft is currently predicting that total sales of the Xbox 360 will hit 25 million at some point this holiday season, with 22 million having been sold at the end of September. If no one buys a single copy of Gears of War from this moment on, and if Microsoft hits their goal, more than one of every five Xbox households will have a copy of this game.

Expectations for last week’s launch of Gears of War 2 were pretty high, you might say. Two million copies have already been sold. One week! Two million! Man, it must feel good to be Epic right now.

Can the data tell us anything we didn’t already know? To the numbers!

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Hey guys, I’m sure every World of Warcraft fan is waiting with bated breath for the release of the hotly anticipated World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack, which is why we here at gamerDNA are getting together with Razer™ to offer some gear that’s sure to ensure that you’re ready to take on the ruler of Northrend.

Here’s what we’re offering to you:

One Grand Prize Pack, featuring a complete Razer desktop set that includes:

1. A Razer DeathAdder™ mouse, with an 1800dpi sensor for precise control
2. A Razer Lycosa™ keyboard, with fully programmable keys for macro creation
3. A Razer Destructor™ mousepad, optimized for gaming grade mice
4. A Razer Piranha™, with pristine sound quality and comfort for the long hours in voice chat

In addition to the grand prize, we’re also offering five Razer DeathAdder™ mice to winners who didn’t get a chance to nab the grand prize!

Now, onto the big question - How do I enter?

Well, most likely, you already have! Here’s the deal -

First, you have to make sure you’ve got an account on gamerDNA.

Next, between now and the end of the contest -Wednesday, November 26, 2008 - you can enter by performing one of the following tasks:

• Adding your World of Warcraft character to your gamerDNA - your character on gamerDNA will automatically update as you climb to level 80!
• Adding an image and associating it with World of Warcraft - show off your new gear or just prove to the world that your guild just accomplished the impossible - anything goes as long as it’s World of Warcraft! (Note that only one image entered during the duration of the contest will count as an entry).
• Adding a World of Warcraft experience - tell the world about your favorite World of Warcraft memories.
• Playing the Game! As long as you have your Xfire ID listed as an AKA - you can enter the contest by simply playing WoW!

You can have a maximum of three entries, so get to it! 

We’ll announce the winners on Monday, December 1st - make sure you keep an eye on your private messages, we’ll be contacting you through there.

Just to clarify - you don’t need the expansion to enter, but if you’re a serious WoW player, you’re probably going to get it anyway!

Also, please note that the contest is limited to North America.

This week we worked on some new features at gamerDNA, most of which we will deploy NEXT week. We want to run them on the live site for a week to tweak them before we unleash them on everyone… so everything else is more of a bug fix.

I will say that the new features next week are about breaking down why you like the games you like. Just because you and I play the same game, does not mean that we like it for the same reason. As you build your gamerDNA, this nuance is important so you can accurately convey your gaming identity. We also hope it adds a fun dimension to your game list and provides all new ways to explore games played and enjoyed by people like you.

So look for that next week… this week, here is the full list:

Group Hosting Enhancements/Changes

• Added a new "HELP" link on the group management tab to help members with functionality. The docs are hosted on the company blog.
• New AION theme for group hosting!
• Added new documentation for lots of various parts of group hosting. Go check it out.
• Images in the group forum have a max width supplied so they do not break the layout.
• Made some tweaks to the filmstrip gadget for groups to be clearer when images are approved or not.
• In the Home page configuration of group hosting, when you configure an order for the homepage gadgets, they will now display in the correct order.
• Fixed an issue where guild applications were still pending, even when the user has applied.
• Fixed some IE7 cross-browser issues with the group recruitment configuration page.
• Trying to create a group event will now prompt you to enter a game, if you attempted to create a game event without one.
• When you remove yourself from a group, you are now redirected to the homepage after confirming, instead of refreshing the same page.
• When we display the games that your group plays, we now show the platform.
• Renamed the tabs on the group management interface so we could fit more of them.

Profile Enhancements/Changes

• All quiz behavior trait widgets are now shareable to various social networks sites. Click the "get & share" link in the widget for a list of networks.
• [next week] Built out a new homepage for gamerDNA that focuses on discovery.
• [next week] Built a new page for adding games to the system.
• [next week] Built a new page for helping you explain WHY you like the games that you do.
• [next week] Created a discovery page that runs off why you like the games you do.

General Enhancements/Changes

• Build a query that inserts traits and pre-populates the system.
• Tweak some settings that will allow caching of javascript and css to work properly.
• The most anticipated section on the games landing page shows the games by individual game/platform combinations.
• Adding some new caching configurations to make things go faster.
• The quiz results all use caching now, which is a big performance boost.
• Added new content to the results of the RTS quiz that better explains the buckets.
• Full caching put in on the Message of the Day component.
• Visual tweaks to the DNA panel pages with the new game type-ahead.
• Converted the games landing page to use lots of caching to increase speed.
• Fixed some CSS issues for the game typeahead on the games landing page.
• There were some strange redirect issues with the DNA panel pages. This has been repaired to behave correctly.
• Fixed a performance issue with the first step of group hosting due to the new game data.
• Fix the game type-ahead so that it handles ":" properly and provides better match results.
• Added some data to the individual game pages for platform in the game title, other platforms, and release dates.
• when adding a game using the type-ahead you will get a cancel link when you are entering platform in case you made a mistake.
• Cleaned up some CSS issues on the guild recruitment pages. Most of it was IE7 issues.
• Cleaned up some spacing in the gamerDNA panel around the game type-ahead.
• When clicking the Add Game button from a specific game page, it now jumps your directly into adding the game.
• Fixed an issue where the home button on the nav bar was not clickable in some instances.
• Fixed an issue that was preventing preloading of backgrounds in Css that was contributing to performance issues.
• Fixed issues where the nav bar was still wrapping due to some lengths of user names.
• When you are picking a game using the type-ahead and the game is selected, the platform now displays to enforce your selection.
• There were some errors being created by spam bots trying to submit the give-respect form. They have been blocked.

See you next week with all-new and improved stuff!

Gears of War 2 has swept the nation(and the World!) with the release arguably one of the best first person shooter games out to date.  The reviews are in, the buzz is buzzing, and the word is this:  Gears of War 2 is awesome and you must get it!

At gamerDNA we’re excited about the game as well, so that’s why we’ve announced our Gears of War 2 Banner contest.  All you have to do is get 195 GamerScore by 11:59pm PST November 17th (next Monday) and you can be entered to win our 8′x5′ banner.  It’s not just any banner..no no..it’s a banner signed by the Gears of War 2 development team.

If you’re interested in all the details, check out our announcement from last week about the contest.  There is still plenty of time to get that 195 GamerScore, many have reported that they already have well over 200 GamerScore in just a couple days of devoted play to the game. I know what I’m doing this weekend..playing Gears of War 2!

Finally, many thanks to the following people for spreading the word about the contest:

Married Gamers Podcast - Great gaming podcast and community for married gamers out there.  Great stuff, check it out!

XBLRadio Podcast - Fantastic Xbox 360 podcast

Good luck!

It has now been a couple weeks since the release of Fallout 3 and by most accounts the game rocks.  At gamerDNA we’ve heard stories of the great adventures people have had, the great story in the game, and just how freakin’ cool it is to blow stuff up with tactical nukes.

Last Friday our Fallout 3 contest ended and we had to choose a winner.  After all the ballots were cast, the electoral votes counted, gamerDNA News announced that Quilon was the winner. After Quilon’s acceptance speech before hundreds of thousands of survivors and vault dwellers, I was honored to give him the prizes that he deserves.

So what did he win?

1- Large Fallout 3 T-Shirt
1- Fallout 3 Survival Guide  (only available at PAX!)
3- Vault Boy Stickers

Congrats Quilon!

For those that didn’t win, make sure you stay tuned for more contests coming your way at gamerDNA around your favorite games!  Make sure you check out our Gears of War 2 contest to win a banner signed by the Gears development team!

After our infant son goes to bed, my better half and I have a few precious hours of Adult Time with which we pursue any number of pastimes. Admittedly, we often choose sleep. But we also watch movies together, or we play games together.

We used to, anyway. I haven’t laid eyes on my spouse during Adult Time since October 28th. He’s been blowing the heads off mutant zombies. That’s right, I’m a Fallout 3 widow. I’m not bitter. The sooner he’s done, the sooner it’s my turn.

You’ve probably heard the reviews. “Oblivion with Guns.” “Post-apocalyptic Oblivion.” “The spirit of Fallout, not the sequel.” All that made Steve the Data Man wonder… what is the gaming background of people who are playing Fallout 3? Since 15% of GamerDNA members have tried it so far, and the number continues to climb, we’ve got a terrific sample to draw from! To eliminate any possible inaccuracy due to self-reporting errors, we’re just talking about the Xbox players. If you add in the PC players, I suspect the total is even higher than 15%. But we’ll take the 15% and run with it.

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Gears of War 2 is coming out Friday November 7th and gamerDNA would like to celebrate the highly anticipated release with a Gears of War 2 contest.  All you have to do is get 195 GamerScore in Gears of War 2 by 11:59pm PST November 17th and you can be entered to win a Gears of War 2 event banner signed by the development team.

Here are the details:

Grand Prize:  1- Gears of War 2 8′x5′ banner featuring Marcus Fenix, signed by the Gears of War 2 development team.

(Controller shown for scale. Xbox 360 Controller is not part of the prize package)

To participate in this contest, all you need to do is:

1.  Register for a gamerDNA account
2.  Add your Xbox Live account name to your to the AKA section of your gamerDNA Panel.
3.  Get at least 195 GamerScore in Gears of War 2 and sign in to Xbox Live between November 7th 12:00am PST and November 17th 11:59pm PST.  (A great way to do this is beat the game’s single player campaign on easy mode!)
4.  You must be at least 18 years old.

On November 18th we will take everyone who played the game and achieved enough gamerscore, give them one entry each, and randomly draw a winner!

Remember, if you are already a gamerDNA member AND have your Xbox Live name in your AKAs, all you have to do is play the game and get 195 gamerscore in Gears of War 2.  Everyone on gamerDNA is automatically entered in to the contest.

Good luck!

This week’s build was pretty massive. We expanded our game data to include over 40,000 titles plus all sorts of game information that you will begin to see trickle into the product over the next few weeks. We had to go through some pretty old code and change how we relate everything to games… so if you see something weird, let us know! Here is the full list of changes:

Member Profile Changes

• Adding games using the gamerDNA panel now uses a type-ahead.
• Changed the game selection when adding a new character to use the type-ahead.
• Changed game selection to a type-ahead when adding or editing an image.
• Changed the game selection to a type-ahead when adding an experience.
• When using the game type-ahead in certain places, such as your gamerDNA panel, you can add games that we don’t currently have in our database.  Type in the game name, and select the "Create ???" option.  Then a select box will appear that invites you to choose a game platform. Choose a platform, and bam! Your new game is created!
• Fixed a bug that was causing logout requests from the profile pages to throw a 404 error.
• The LFG (Looking for Group) functionality for individual users has been removed from the site. It was never utilized, and the feature never lived up to expectations. We will revisit this in a much lighter-weight method in the future and focus on guild recruiting in new ways shortly.
• Fixed the DNA Panel profile like to point to the correct new profile location.
• Fixed the badges page layout to show the badges at full size in your member profile.
• Changed the social media feed link for adding a game to go to the user game page instead of the user profile homepage.

General Site Changes

• In the news section, you now choose the game filter, by typing in the game name of the game you want to check out news for, and then choosing the game from the dropdown that appears.  If no news exists for your game, you can submit the news you find interesting!
• The games landing page has been updated to reflect some of the new awesome games data.  Of note, anticipated games, and new releases are highlighted.  Expect to see more in future builds!
• When filtering groups by game while in the group directory, choosing a game is now done via a type-ahead.  Enter the game name you want, then choose it from the list that appears.
• All manually entered games have been merged with the new games… if you see duplicates, let us know and we can correct them.
• gamerDNA is busting at the seams with a massive influx of game data.  This data has been integrated with current games, and we have added thousands of new games.  We also have added platform, and genre classifications to the data model, and in the coming weeks you will see this data manifest itself more on the site.
• Added caching to the first page of the quiz to speed up the user experience and reduce load.
• Caching has been added to the quiz API that displays results to reduce load.
• Now preloading the background image for various menus to make appearance/hiding smoother.
• Now preloading large background images on the front page of the site, for smoother transitions.
• Caching the summary of the company blog where we show it, to improve page loading speed.
• Switched the individual game pages to use box art where we have it.
• Documentation added about the Curse WarDB content that can be added to the group forums.
• Fixed a small CSS bug in the forums that was the result of another hotfix.
• Fixed issues where the type-ahead for games was bleeding through some of the backgrounds on the pages.
• Fixed an issue with launching the DNA Panel from the navigation.
• Removed some duplicates from game type-ahead
• Fixed an issue where caching was preventing the avatar and other quicklinks items from displaying. they should now appear correctly despite the cache.
• Fixed the company blog summaries to pull more consistently across the site.
• Cleaned up how the login pop-up box renders for some browsers to clean up the design.
• Cleaned up some CSS design on the registration page.
• Added better caching to quiz, trait, and guild signature badges to reduce server load.
• Fixed a broken image on the homepage.
• Fixed an issue where some Javascript libraries were not loading correctly.
• Added some missing Javascript files to the header as required by some site features.
• Added back some missing content from the quiz landing page. It no longer causes performance issues.
• Made more changes to the global nav header to prevent wrapping for really long names.
• Fixed the case of gamerDNA on the dev blog call to action.

Group Hosting Changes

• New guild theme, Gears of War! Get it while it is hot!
  When creating a new group, the game selection now uses a type ahead to properly pick the game and platform.
• When managing your guild(or clan)’s games, you now choose the games you play by entering them in a type ahead.  Enter the game name, then select the game from the list that appears.
• Cleaned up the invite form a little more to differentiate between the two options of inviting people via email or using a join link.
• Fixed a bug that was causing the Shaiya theme to appear blank.
• When creating new guilds, the custom pages were being set to UNDEFINED preventing them from being edited.
• The games tab of the group management now uses the new type ahead for picking from all games.
• Fixed an issue on the guild image pix strip that was preventing scrolling.
• Changed the text on the group creation confirmation page and corrected a typo.
• Fixed issues where certain games were not working for recruiting.
• Cleaned up some styling that was conflicting with the button colors for certain guild themes.
• Fixed an issue where you could nuke your entire guild site by resubmitting a request from a browser that was closed right after a POST comment.
• If you have been invited to a guild, but you have not accepted the membership, you can now go to the Group’s page > Settings and there is a link at the top that lets you know you were invited but not a member and a link to remove yourself or respond to the invite.
• The group HTML editor no longer allows script blocks/tags in the editor. It converts them all to comments for security reasons.
• Fixed an issue where the guild story gadget was not displaying content when the shortname was in use instead of the guildID.
• Fixed an issue where removing Bartle score from the group signature images also removed the recruiting text.
• Added a caching message to the group signature configurator for leader and members. It can take up to 10 minutes for everywhere your signature is used to properly refresh any changes.
• Fixed image scrolling on group pages.

As we like to say around here… this is only the beginning. The first step was getting all of the game data in… now we have to add the special sauce! Look for that in a couple weeks.