Archive for January, 2009
January 26th Release Notes
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!
Off To the Races: 70 to 80 in World of Warcraft
(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.
gamerDNA in the News
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.
Death Knight Data Goodness
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:
January 19th Release Notes
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! 
Win TrackMania United Forever 30 Day Keys!
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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!
January 12th Release Notes
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!
gamerDNA Member Newsletter Issue #1
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.
