Hi all,
It was a fairly small build this week. We are putting in a pretty massive new feature around game activity in the next two weeks and are hard at work on that. We may or may not have a full build next week depending on progress…
There are a few small things in this build… nothing major. We have been getting great comments and feedback via the support form, so keep that coming!
(Note to readers: We will be updating this blog with this kind of column every other Friday for the foreseeable future. Thanks for hanging in there with me while we figure out the best plans of attack!)
If you play WoW, chances are that you know someone who stayed home from work or school on launch day for Wrath of the Lich King, just to make progress on the brand new levels. You may even see that person in the mirror every day, and you know you should be embarrassed but you’re totally not.
We took a look at a sample of our WoW players from the launch of Lich King until now, just to see how the leveling went. Come along and see how the ponies ran.
This week gamerDNA has had the pleasure of getting some press around what we’re up to at gamerDNA as well as the interesting game-play data that we can surface from our community of gamers. I’d like to pass on these articles to our community and ask for your thoughts and invite discussions on what you read.
First off, this week we had a fantastic article on Kotaku which featured an interview with our CEO Jon Radoff where Jon talked about the future of gamerDNA and how we can help the game industry make better games.
Here’s a quote from the article:
When a company has information on nearly half a million gamers’ tendencies, its value proposition back to the publishing industry sounds pretty obvious. But, approaching the second year of its present incarnation, GamerDNA is showing signs that it can offer a similar value for gamers, too: it’s building up the “wisdom of the crowd,” to provide a gamer voice back to publishers that can speak louder than sales figures, and one that becomes a greater part of the conversation of game development.
If you’d like to read more please check out the full article on Kotaku here.
Yesterday we also had the pleasure of having our Xbox 360 game-play data featured in Gamasutra . Over the coming days Gamasutra will be writing a series of articles which are based off of data that gamerDNA provided. The article on Thursday was all about Gears of War 2 and games that were sequels:
Looking more closely, Weathers says 12 percent of the sampled audience who played Gears 2 never played the first one. And just slightly more than 50 percent of original Gears players haven’t yet tried the sequel.
Back in October, we ran a couple articles that gave you a snapshot of the kind of person who played the various classes in World of Warcraft. (I know, in internet time, that was ages ago. If you want to frolic down memory lane, the links are http://blog.gamerdna.com/blog/2008/10/17/bartle-gender-and-wow/ and http://blog.gamerdna.com/blog/2008/10/24/horde-vs-alliance-data-smackdown/ - enjoy!)
Now that the Death Knight class has been out for nearly three whole months, we figure the flavor of the month kids have had their turn at bat, and the real fans of the new class are settled in. The sample for today’s column is a little more than 500 people, all of whom were active WOW players before the launch, and actively playing their Death Knight. “Actively” as measured by playing sessions – just having one of the new class in the character list isn’t enough to count here.
On with the show:
It is that time again… Release notes!
All of the screens you use to update your gamerDNA has been moved over to the new DNA section and out of that floating panel. You can always edit your DNA by clicking your name in the nav bar and selecting "Edit my gamerDNA" or by hitting this link when logged in:
http://www.gamerdna.com/dna/home/
Definitely check out your new game list. You can now rate games and you can individually control which ones appear in your public profile:
http://www.gamerdna.com/dna/games/
As always, we are interested in feedback on where things are headed… positive feedback to as we get quite a bit of constructive stuff! 
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gamerDNA is excited to launch our TrackMania United Forever contest which is open to all gamerDNA members! We’re giving away free 30-day trial keys for Acclaim’s TrackMania United Forever to 15 people that private message QforQ on gamerDNA and include the name of their favorite racing game. That’s all you have to do and you’ll be entered in!
Click Read More for all the Rules and details on the game!
Happy New Year everyone!
This is our first build of 2009… we haven’t had one since Dec 22nd… so there are a lot of small tweaks and fixes in here, but also some pretty big changes that mark the start of some big ongoing enhancements.
We are in the process of relocating where you fill out your gamerDNA. Long time members know we have this thing called the "DNA Panel"… well… that is going away bit by bit. We started that process this build and will hopefully have it complete by the end of the month. Next week almost everything will be moved over to the new "Manage your gamerDNA" section:
http://www.gamerdna.com/dna/home/
In the coming weeks, we will be significantly revamping the "experiences" and how they work, so that will be the last thing to move from the panel.
The other big changes this week were the addition of new Player and Game directories. Go play around with them. You can discover some fun stuff!
Greetings and Happy New Years gamerDNA community!
Last year brought a lot of great things to gamerDNA and we’re hoping to continue that trend in 2009. In the coming weeks and months you can expect the same kind of dedication to new features and polish that you saw from gamerDNA in 2008.
To kick things off right in 2009 we decided to start the gamerDNA Member Newsletter. Each month we will feature news and information for the gamerDNA community that we hope you enjoy.
By now we’ve all seen the sales charts. Games make great holiday gifts – easy to wrap, and the recipient vanishes from underfoot for days afterwards. No one even pretends that video games are a niche market and strictly for pasty-fleshed young males, especially now that WOW is a firmly established mass market success – over the holidays that title was being advertised on For Better Or For Worse’s website, for crying out loud. (FBOFW is a “domestic” comic strip detailing the adventures of a young stay at home wife with two small children. X-Men, it is not.) EVE’s flashy ad peeked out at me this morning from the Washington Post’s opinion section. Facebook wanted me to try all kinds of games in the waning hours of 2008.
Anyway, under the tree or the shrub or the menorah or whatever were all kinds of games – many of which were bought by people who do not actually play games. Holiday sales are therefore often the triumph of advertising and end cap display tactics. If BigPublishingCompany can convince Aunt Myrtle that everyone is dying for a copy of “Big Guns Go Blooey: Electric Bugaloo,” never mind that it’s a hunk of derivative and badly scored crap, they will win the sales chart game. And their investors will love them. And the whole scam resets and plays through again.
But if you’re reading this, you know better. Real success is what people actually play past that first post-holiday morning. Those titles pick up word of mouth and come to own the coming year. Look at Call of Duty 4 (specifically, look at the chart from the last column). That puppy launched in November of 2007, and picked up serious steam as the year wore on. I don’t know if we can call the next COD4 based on one week of data, but what the hell, ya’ll, it’ll be fun to try. Let’s see what we’ve got!
GAMERDNA ANNOUNCES CHILD’S PLAY COMMUNITY CONTEST WINNER; DONATES BUNDLES OF GAMES TO CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
14 Leading Online Communities Spread Good Cheer –
And 12 million Virtual Badges – During the Holiday Season
CAMBRIDGE, MA – January 6, 2009 – GamerDNA.com, an online community and social platform for video game players, today announced ElitistJerks.com, a site dedicated to online discussion of World of Warcraft, as the winner of the gamerDNA and Child’s Play Charity Online Community Contest. The contest attracted 14 participating communities and over 12 million virtual badge views to raise over $5,000 for the Child’s Play Charity. For their achievement, Elitist Jerks will receive six bundles of Nintendo DS systems and games as well as 80 Electronic Arts games to donate to University Medical Center (UMC) in Las Vegas, Nevada, the charity of their choice.
“Being in the hospital is especially difficult on kids, and we look for any chance to take their minds off their injury or illness through fun activities,” said UMC Pediatric ICU Manager Cindy Jones. “Studies show that kids get better faster by using diversional activities in the hospital. This generous donation will certainly help us in getting kids back…to being kids!”
With the goal of helping to gather donations for children’s hospitals across the globe this holiday season, gamerDNA teamed up with the Child’s Play Charity to launch an online contest during the month of December. GamerDNA secured the participation of 14 online communities including Elitist Jerks, GameDaily, ZAM, Piczo, Gaming Angels, College Humor, Six Apart, and IMVU, among others. Community members were challenged to share unique virtual badges in as many places as possible online, while representing their community and helping to spread the word about Child’s Play.
“We jumped at the chance at participating in such a fun and worthy contest surrounding the holidays and it’s been great working with the gamerDNA team on this,” said Andrew Hunn of ElitistJerks.com. “We are so glad that our community joined together and that we’ve helped spread some holiday cheer amongst kids at our local hospital.”
“We are thrilled with the response we have received from the participating communities and the awareness raised on behalf of Child’s Play,” said Sam Houston, Community Manager at gamerDNA. “The level of engagement has been even higher than we originally expected and our efforts will not end here – we look forward to continuing to encourage the growth of online communities via contests, widgets, quizzes and the like in 2009.”
“We’ve raised over $1,000,000 in total donations this year, which is a huge milestone for us,” said Kristin Lindsay, Project Coordinator for Child’s Play. “We are so pleased that the gamerDNA Online Community Contest played a role in that and are grateful for all the communities that took part in the contest on our behalf.”
About GamerDNA, Inc.
GamerDNA is an online community for sharing game experiences and discovering new games being enjoyed by people with similar interests. GamerDNA aims to know gamers better than anyone in the world and is led by a team of online media and interactive entertainment veterans out of Cambridge, MA. Additional company information is available at: http://www.gamerdna.com/alliance/about.php
About Child’s Play
Child’s Play is a non-profit organization begun in 2003 by Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, the creators of the Penny Arcade comic strip, as a way to help sick children and show the world the softer side of people who play videogames. Through the generosity of gamers and the videogame industry, Child’s Play has raised over three million dollars in toys, games and cash for sick children through an ongoing online toy drive and annual charity auction. Now in its fifth year, Child’s Play is developing a worldwide network of beneficiary Children’s Hospitals in order to brighten hospital stays for children internationally. For more information go to: www.childsplaycharity.org.