We’re giving away a $25 Amazon Gift Card to the winner of contest we’re running right now on GamerDNA.com.

All you have to do to enter is make a game post or activity that lists the Top 5 games that were most influential to your gamerDNA. Make this post and link it to us on the designated game post (linked below), or send it to us on Twitter, and do all this by 5pm EST Friday October 9th – and you could win!

For the complete rules and information, please check out our contest page on GamerDNA!

Today I’m going to start a new gamerDNA blog article series called “Community Connection”.  The goal of these posts will be to surface cool stuff from the community by pointing out various games and game pages that are active right now, surfacing some great Game Posts/Screenshots/activities and conversations, or even some gamerDNA member spotlights.

Most recently the new-hotness in terms of game releases have been a handful of games: Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Beatles: Rock Band, Halo 3: ODST, and the newest MMORPG on the block, Aion.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

To start with Batman: Arkham Asylum, I’ve definitely got to point out Vice_Destroyer.  He’s been playing the game almost every day since release, and most recently unlocked  all achievements in the game, giving him the full 1,000 gamerscore points possible.  Hats off to that!

One of our more active PS3 community members has been MartB64, who has unlocked 54% of the trophies for the game.  He gave Batman: Arkham Asylum a Five Star rating, saying “Wow, I was totally blown away by the depth of this game. It’s the best game so far this year! I can’t say enough good things about it”.

The Beatles: Rock Band

The Beatles: Rock Band has been getting a lot of attention lately, and for good reason.  The game brings together the biggest band of all-time, with one of the biggest video game paradigm changes of all time (Music Gaming).  The result is something pretty special, and the community at gamerDNA has responded to it very well.

MrVista360 has been working his way through the achievements on the Xbox 360 version of the game, unlocking 15 in total so far, even playing the guitar on lefty mode specifically to unlock an achievement.

Halo 3: ODST

Halo 3: ODST is the newest addition to the Halo universe…and while we’re only a couple days into the game being available for play, results look promising.  The game has shot up to the #2 most play game spot on GamerDNA (2nd only to Halo 3), and the community is buzzing about it!

Tothcjt gave the game 5 stars, saying in his review: “This is a totally different game then Halo3. You can imply stealth to get around with The Rookie and then stealth around building to not fight hunters or other big enemies. Firefight mode is great and addicting, if it had matchmaking it would be a lot better but I guess playing with friends can be more fun.” Check his review out to see the interesting discussion that followed!

Aion

Aion is an MMO that is coming over to the  West from Korea, where the game has been out for a year and has already been quite successful.  NCSoft has made a very high polished/quality MMO with Aion, and many gamers are playing away this week as they try to level up as fast as possible in this PVP oriented MMO.

One of the more interesting things about the Aion community at gamerDNA is their love of sharing screenshots from the game.  This could be a reflection of the high quality graphics in the game, which result in some fantastic looking scenes. To date we have over 400 screenshots of Aion from our Community – a number that is growing daily!

KornCob has been very active in Aion, sharing many screenshots with the GamerDNA community.  One of my favorites is KornCob’s screenshot of the Sanctum, a beautiful looking castle that the Elyos race get to see in the game.

One of the top players of Aion on GamerDNA is LotusTheFallen, who has been playing the game while also sharing screenshots and game posts with the GamerDNA community. Check out their profile to see some great shots of the game, as well as to keep up with the ongoing story of LotusTheFallen’s journey in Aion!

That wraps it up for this GamerDNA Community Connection – If you have any feedback or thoughts on this post, or ideas for future Community Connection topics, please post them in the comments below!

See you in game!

Sam “QforQ” Houston

GamerDNA Community Manager

Last week we asked for your questions for the 2nd Edition of the GamerDNA Townhall, and you guys came through big time!  We took all of your questions and answered them in the Townhall that we filmed on Tuesday.  We broke up the Townhall into 10 minute sections, with each video having a theme of questions.

Below are all the videos/segments:

Segment #1 – All about the new content/comment systems

Segment #2 – Questions related to the new gamerDNA Profiles

Segment #3 – Questions about features that we have mentioned/discussed in the past

Segment #4 – Questions and Requests for new Features

Segment #5 – Townhall Wrap Up, with questions about new features, community, and gamerDNA as a business

We appreciate and are thankful for all the questions submitted by the community. We look forward to doing more of these in the future, and we encourage you to stay tuned to our blog for more updates from gamerDNA!

Thanks,

Sam “QforQ” Houston

gamerDNA Community Manager

We will be broadcasting live the 2nd edition of GamerDNA Townhall tomorrow, Tuesday Sept 15th at 3pm EST.  Last week we asked for your questions, and in this Townhall we plan to address as many as we can for the video.

We will also be recording the video, so if you can’t watch it live – Don’t worry!  We will have video up later in the week for everyone to watch, so if you miss the live broadcast just make sure you stay tuned to our blog for updates on when the video is up for viewing.

To watch the live stream, please click “Continue Reading” below, or go to our uStream page. See you tomorrow at 3pm EST!  (To see what time it is at the GamerDNA offices right now, please check out the Boston page at TimeAndDate.com)

Cautionary Disclaimer: We plan to stream the show live in its entirety, but if for some reason our internet drops and the video broadcast stops – there isn’t much we can do.  We *will* have a recording up to watch afterward, though.

Join us in the chatroom below!

This past July we did a video called “GamerDNA Townhall”, which was a platform for the community to ask questions, and ChangeAgent and I would answer them. (Here is the first Townhall, for reference)

So to kick things off for the 2nd Townhall, we need something very obvious: Your Questions!

These can be questions or feedback on GamerDNA, features that you would like to see, asking us how we do things at GamerDNA, or some of the features that will come down the road. Basically anything you want to ask the gamerDNA staff, please ask it!

We need these questions to be posted on this page by 3pm EST (Noon PST) on Monday, Sept 14th, 2009. That is this coming Monday.

We will answer as many questions as possible, so please post your questions in the comments below, or on our GamerDNA Post!

-Sam “QforQ” Houston

GamerDNA Community Manager

The biggest consumer game show in North America known as Penny Arcade Expo is this weekend, and we’re very excited about it! Seattle PAX this year looks like it will be a lot of fun, and we’ll be there at the show!

GamerDNA’s Community Manager, Sam Houston (that’s me!) will be at PAX all weekend and he will even have some gamerDNA swag to give away.  Sam will be at the show wearing a gamerDNA shirt, so he should be fairly easy to spot.  Here’s a picture to help you out:

Sam is on a panel on Saturday at 1:30pm at the Unicorn Theatre, and we would love to see you there.  A special bonus for attending will be receiving a gamerDNA Sticker, which Sam is handing out after the panel.  Here is the description of the panel:

Saturday, 1:30pm – 2:30pm, Unicorn Theatre

Twitter and Beyond – New Game Communities Online

Online game communities are changing rapidly as social media is being used more and more by gamers. No longer are people primarily congregating on official game forums. They’re talking with each other on Twitter, Facebook, and in other types of online communities about games. For this reason, Community Managers are actively leveraging social media tools to keep online communities informed and engaged with their games. This panel will discuss the exciting transition of game companies using social media to build, communicate with, and engage with players as well as highlight the macro-trends that impact all online communities. Panelists include executives from both the game development and social media side of the fence.

Panelists Include: Michelle Broderick [Moderator] – (Marketing Director and Community Manager, Yelp.com), Morgan Romine (Fragdoll Team Captain, Ubisoft), Jaap Tuinman (Director of Social, Community, & Online Marketing, EA), Sam Houston (Online Marketing Manager, GamerDNA), Meghan Rodberg (Senior Manager of Online Community Relations, Turbine)

If you see Sam outside of the panel make sure you “hey” when you see him.  He will be giving out gamerDNA stickers all weekend to community members, and it would be great to meet members of the community!  Here are the new gamerDNA stickers:

I hope to see you at the show, it should be a lot of fun!

-Sam “QforQ”  Houston

gamerDNA Community Manager

Editor’s Note: This blog post is written by Adam Krebs, gamerDNA’s Summer Intern who helped out with all of our data input goodness.  We salute Adam as he sails off to college and we wish him luck!

As GamerDNA’s summer data intern, I had the all-important job of keeping the game data up-to-date and the traits on topic while the guys on the product team built the cool new features of the site. I had a lot of fun and learned a great deal, and got to help out with this website we all know and love. My first day happened to coincide with the opening day of E3 and the launch of TweetMyGaming. In fact, one of my first assignments was to live-add the games to GamerDNA and TMG as they were announced. It was especially cool to watch the tweets fly by showing how excited people were about Metroid: Other M just moments after it was demoed on stage.

The guys here have been absolutely relentless about improving the product, and I was consistently impressed at the extent of their knowledge of website design and user experience. I always looked forward to the opportunity to sit in on the design meetings, where each team member provided input into the progress of the latest features. What does that x in the corner do? Why are there two arrows highlighted? How do we communicate enough information without being overwhelming? These conversations gave me a real insight, as a GamerDNA user and aspiring web designer, into how much effort it takes to make a great product that people find useful.

It wasn’t all seriousness, and working at a video game website definitely does have its perks. Whether playing Battlefield 1943 at lunch, or a particularly memorable debate about the Monty Hall problem, the guys approached it with the same level of fun and intensity that I saw them put into the production of the GamerDNA website. Almost every desk has video games or action figures of some sort, and even I managed to amass a collection of Star Wars and Starcraft-related paraphernalia (and an awesome Zombie Hulk, which I got for my birthday). One of my favorite days was going out with the guys to IHOP for lunch, and immediately raiding the comic book store afterwards.

This has been an amazing learning experience and an incredibly fun summer and I thank everyone at GamerDNA for the experience. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to go back to civilian life after working at one of the coolest summer jobs ever. But hey, there’s always next year!

-Adam Krebs

Thanks for doing a great job Adam!

-GamerDNA

Earlier this month we asked our community to submit questions for us to answer about GamerDNA.com.  We received quite a few questions, and all of the answers are contained in the video below!

>

We apologize both for the length (48 mins!) of the video and the blurriness.  Since this is our new video we had some learning to do about what the best way is to do this!  Future videos should be much better quality.

Thank you all for your questions, we really appreciate it!  We plan to do this more in the future, and we continue to take your questions, feedback, ideas and praise on our Feedback page:  http://www.GamerDNA.com/feedback

Thanks!

Sam Houston

GamerDNA Community Manager

Last week we ran a contest around our new NOW page and our Facebook/Twitter integration…and now it’s time to announce the winners!

The two winners of a $20 Amazon Gift Card are…. ForteV4 and Celestian!

We’ll be doing more contests and announcements over the coming weeks, so I encourage everyone to stay tuned to our blog to keep up with what is going on at GamerDNA.  In the mean while, make sure you check out the GamerDNA NOW page and our new Facebook integration!

ForteV4 won our GamerDNA NOW contest, congrats ForteV4!

And that leaves us with Celestian, who won our Broadcast contest!

Congrats to the both of you!

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!

Rules:

• Only one entry per person
• You are entered in the contest by private messaging QforQ on gamerDNA and telling him what your favorite racing game is within the private message.
• All entries must be in by 11:59pm EST January 26th, 2009
• Winners will be chosen at random and contacted through gamerDNA private message when they have won.

Some information on Trackmania United Forever:

TrackMania United Forever is the ultimate TrackMania edition thanks to the numerous additions and innovations it has to offer. This version brings together all the environments of the series and comes with a huge, enriched single-player campaign including 4 different modes and 265 progressively difficult tracks.

You can check out more information about the game and even try it out for free at TrackMania.acclaim.com

Thanks and good luck!