 So, I set up the World of Gamer Zone site a short while back, and on the 25th I got around to setting up the stat tracking system for the site. It rolls over past midnight, and about 4 AM I’m talking to my wife online, and there’s a bunch of hits on the site.
Gotta be an error, stat tracking hasn’t been online very long, and no one knows about the website or the show really, right? So I start digging and checking and testing. I look at where all the traffic is coming from – uh, all over. US, UK, Germany, Denmark, Canada, etc. Since the software gives me the client ip dns info, I get things like wsip-70-182-241-39.ks.ks.cox.net – basically, not just an IP address, but readable (if you know what you are looking at) information.
Uh – what the fuck? I have no idea what happened, and it’s not random traffic. They hit the main page, and hit the “Watch Episodes” button – they know what they are after – they’re here to see a show online. Oh holy crap. I really wasn’t expecting this much traffic this quickly – sure, I’m not serving up 10,000 pages a day or anything, but it looks like online there’s already a “viewing public” waiting for this thing to happen.
I’ve also got the World of Gamer Zone forums up and running, so anyone who happens to be keeping tabs on the blogs (seems to be a slowly growing amount of random traffic there) can hop on over there and start askin’ questions or yackingÂ
The first real episode was shot, and has been edited. There were some er… unique challenges involved in this one. First off, there wasn’t enough footage – we discovered we were using a bad methodology for watching the time on the show, and when we finished all the edits we were at 25:45 – about 3 minutes short of our target length. I showed the episode off to the station, and they had no problems with the being a couple minutes short – they just padded it with a couple of extra commercials.
I’ve put up te ebay auctions for the ads for the online version – yes, there will be ads in the online version. Two 30-second spots midshow, plus a 15 second ad for Midnight Ryder Productions (who handles producing World of Gamer Zone). Basically, just enough to generate some revenue streams, but not enough to be a horrible string of ads for online viewers.
The first “test” version of the stream for the show is being released to the ESRB tonight, so that they can see the show, know what we are up to, and let us use thier trademarks at the end of our show reviews (IE, the big “T” for Teen, that sort of thing).
One thing I can definitely tell ya – I need one o’ the Dual Core based Mac minis for the show some day. It takes HOURS to meld all the soundtracks, etc. for making a DVD version of the show, and for the web version of the show (yes, the episodes will be on sale for $10 on DVD, estimated price. I hope to get Me, Harmon, and Meredith to set down and do a post show “directors commentary” for the show too, so that we can add that little bonus to the DVD version. And probably some of the stuff that didn’t make it on the showÂ
As it is, I spend more time waiting on effects to render than actually DOING the show. This is going to have to change at some point – but for now, I’ll suffer along with what I’ve got. Considering the cost of a Mac mini, I’ll definitely need income from the show before we start buying real equiptment.
All things considered, I’m pretty happy with the show – I don’t like the gaming news segments. Meredith and I do pretty well with the game reviews – I lead the conversations, but she contributes a lot to it, and it makes it an extremely conversational style, which was the goal. The “Breaking Into Games” developer segment is pretty one sided, just me talking for the most part – but it still works ok (but we’ll be changing that for this next episode.)
We also managed to work in some user review stuff – and hopefully we can do the same for the next set of reviews we do. But just wait until episode 3 when we do a review on Guitar Hero – we’re gonna do some cool ass shit for thatÂ
GamerZone it’s self has been rockin’ – we’ve broken all sorts of records. We’re still limited as hell for capactity – but we’re workin’ on that too. The second monday of July we should get approval from the Historical Society to put in the secondary exit, and away we go  But there’s second limit to what we’re doing – after the fire escape we need more computers, XBoxes, TV’s, etc. I need two new projector bulbs ($$$$!), and a 60″ HDTV fixed. *SIGH* Make more money, and things have to go and break.
The DDR setup is a complete mystery – someone brought in a metal pad for us to check out and use, and after plugging it in, the computer died. Crap. So, time to do yet another rebuild on it – I’m tellin’ ya, the whole DDR thing is cursed, but I’m still gonna do it!Â
So, overall it looks like life is improving – soon I’ll actually have enough money to pay off my bills I’ve acrued getting GZ to this point. I hope.Â
Davis,Â
Gamer Zone
World of Gamer Zone
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
1) Check your email
2) Burn that cursed computer (Stepmania)
3) I forgot O_o
Posted 6/29/2006 12:29 PM by Aur0raXXBorealis – reply
1) Oh, crap – sorry, I forgot to email ya back. Harmon and I looked at it – looks good, but when we see ya on Friday, be there a little early – Harmon is going to show you some tricks to get some more punch out of that pic. One bad bit of news – actual taping won’t begin until ~ 9:20 PM, basically when the sun goes down. Luckly, this time it won’t be nearly the chaos of last timeÂ
2) This is actually the THIRD computer for the Stepmania setup. Two have died, and one had to go back out on the floor as a “normal” client machine.
3) Blonde momentÂ
Posted 6/29/2006 4:03 PM by GamerZoneCenters – reply