T w e n t y S i d e d
Several people have asked when the Champions Online series will end, if I’ll do anything next, and what that might be:
1) The Champions Online series will end with part 15. This should go up the last week of December or the first week of January, depending on how much time I take off for the holidays.
2) Yes, I’ll be doing another Let’s Play series after this.
3) I can’t tell you any more than that right now.
Now, those of you following my Twitter feed know that I’ve been voting for The Escapist in the latest Web 2.0 popularity contest at Mashable.
Despite my mocking, this sort of thing is actually really important to web companies. Nobody ever talks about it because it would be unseemly, but scoring awards like this can give a publication a lot of clout when attracting advertisers and also in dictating what they can charge those advertisers. Winning stuff like this can help improve the fortunes of a company, particularly younger ones. Since I’ve hitched my wagon to the Escapist, I’d love for them to reap those rewards.
I’d also love for them to win because of the nice counterbalance they provide to the review-score hype mills that usually get all the attention*. I think a lot of us here like thoughtful articles as opposed to fanboy-driven ego-stroking, and so it would be nice if we could lift up the stuff we value.
Which is all a really roundabout way of me begging for votes for my friends at The Escapist, which is a thing you could do by clicking on this link. It’s all done through Twitter, so you have to have a Twitter account to vote. I’m sorry. It’s a web 2.0 thing. Didn’t you know? Web 2.0 is about connecting every social media site to every other one in a giant clusterfarg of account names and logins until the whole network collapses in on itself and forms a CSS-compliant singularity.
I’ll make a deal with you: If the Escapist wins, I’ll post a burning, hate-filled screed on everything that totally bugs me about the Mashable awards.
But not yet. Don’t want to tip our hand just yet.
But if you dig what I do over there, or over here, then please consider voting.
* And by “attention” I mean “money”.
The Plot-Driven Door
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
This Scene Breaks a Character
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
What is Piracy?
It seems like a simple question, but it turns out everyone has a different idea of right and wrong in the digital world.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
Any chance one of the upcoming things will be that Mount & Blade review? You haven’t mentioned it for months, and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
So basically, web awards are about money rather than quality? I can’t say I’m shocked.
As for the LP, I know I’m not the only one hoping for a certain game that has been mentioned in every comment thread somehow. (Dwarf Fortress) CO was humorously bad even without your commentary, but DF gives you a beautiful blank slate for your writing, really. In any case, I’m eager for the new series from you, and I wish you luck on it.
I was registered for twitter at one point, but I found it impossible to say anything in 140 characters, and I dislike having to spend time trying to work out if someone is saying when they replace whole words with random letters, so I deleted the account… Wonder if twitter would let me open it back up just to vote? I’d hate to have to register again just for something as trivial as voting for something(Which could be done so much better).
I’d vote, but I’m trying very hard to stay away from Twitter (and Facebook, incidentally). I don’t really have a valid reason, other than stubbornness…
I actually bothered to get twitter for the express purpose of a StarCraft beta contest and haven’t been back since.
edit
…oh wow, singularity is nearly achieved “Twitter is Over Capacity.”
Oh, you’re eligible to vote with a Facebook account as well.
“Web 2.0 is about connecting every social media site to every other one in a giant clusterfarg of account names and logins until the whole network collapses in on itself and forms a CSS-compliant singularity.”
Thats why I love programs like Trillian, it condenses a great many services and sites that all do the same basic thing into one. Web 3.0, ho!
I’d vote, but I don’t like allowing anything accessing my Facebook. My policy is to not allow anything external to connect to my Facebook account: no 3rd-party website, no apps, no nothin’. I don’t care who makes ’em. Not that I don’t trust them (okay, maybe I don’t completely trust them).
I have a Twitter account I made ages back and never used so I figured I’d use that, then noticed they had a Facebook option which saved me remembering my Twitter account details.
Should’ve mentioned that in the post, might’ve scrounged up a few more votes :P
I was tempted to register on Twitter just to marginally increase the probability of reading your “burning, hate-filled screed.” Luckily Facebook allows you to vote too.
I would have though advertisement companies base their prices on visitor counts, number of page/banners displayed, search engines pages ranks or similar data. Not on yet another ‘best website’ award. Maybe they do on a limited degree, but it doesn’t seem very reliable. Does it really give leverage in the negociations with ads providers ?
A note to people who want to vote at the mashable site thing:
If you connect using Facebook, and then tell Facebook not to let Mashable post to your wall, then you can still vote for sites without spamming all your friends.
I don’t know if something like this is possible with a Twitter account, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Unrelated: I would also love some content on Mount & Blade.
Okkkkkk!
BUT Shamus, if you want me to remember to vote again tomorrow (and every day until the contest ends) then you better make sure that you mention it in at least one of your posts each day.
It isn’t that I don’t want to vote, just that I will NOT remember on my own, can pretty much guarantee it!
I voted with my Facebook logon with no probs. Yay for still not having anything to do with Twitter :p
All I want to know is when you’ll get around to L4D2. I miss playing with competent people…
RedClyde: I noticed an L4D2 d20 group server running a while back…
I’m sorry, but I hate Web 2.0.
It’s buggy as hell and hardly ever gets patched, and rare is the friend invite that’s actually from a friend and not just some random dude who likes your profile pic or a spam bot.
Plus, letting everyone who cares know what you’re doing all the time seems more annoying than anything to me.
So, yeah, don’t have a Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter account, so I can’t vote, sorry.
I’ll vote if you do dwarf fortress.
I’m still looking forward to hearing your thoughts on VtM: Bloodlines.
Ok so just for you and the escapist I have joined Twitter. Now I must go wash myself with bleach.
Ok, so I made a never-to-be-used-again Twitter account, voted, and discovered to my chagrin that my full name was used instead of my screenname, leading to the second, third and fourth time since internet began that my name has been posted. But I voted. So there.
“CSS-compliant singularity”
… That, that sounds so beautiful. In Web 3.0, there’ll only be 1 website and one user account and it shall be glorious!
@zel: I would have though advertisement companies base their prices on visitor counts, number of page/banners displayed, search engines pages ranks or similar data.
The tricky part is to get those companies to even talk to you. That’s where awards and whatnot really help – advertisers are always eager to hop on this hot new web 2.0 thing all the kids are talking about these days.
Personally, I delete the twitter post that the Mashable site makes as soon as I vote, and I hope the people responsible get sent to the special hell reserved for spammers and fake anti-spyware programs.
I’d love to vote but I see Twitter and Facebook as the next black death, so… sorry. :(
I have two Twitter accounts and at least two or three Facebook accounts but I will be honest… my life is short and my obligations are many.
I voted for you twice, once from each system. I might, but probably will not vote for you on other days. So you get two from me. Maybe more. But at least two.
CJA
Can’t wait to see what you
skewerenjoy next.Just for you, I’ll go sign into my unused Facebook account and vote for the Escapist (well, okay, also because I enjoy the content over there and want it to continue).
Sorry Shamus, I’d love to help you out if only
1) I could do so without touching Twitter/Facebook with a 29 1/2 foot keyboard; and
2) I could vote for portions of the site (particularly your column/comics) without voting for others. The attitudes of certain persons at the escapist (some on staff, others in the community as a whole) have reallly turned me off of the site, and I only venture there anymore when following links from here.
Not that there’s really an appropriate place to say this, but the CB RSS feed seems to have stopped at #13. Someone should fix that.
Nathon: The feed at:
http://www.shawntionary.com/chainmailbikini/?feed=rss2
Goes all the way to #30 for me. If you’re using a different feed, can you post the link? Or are we seeing different things at the same URL?
Nathon: I was having the same trouble. I was following the old Chainmail Bikini RSS (I already removed it from my reader, I don’t know the URL).
I had to go out and find the new one (that Shamus just linked to).
http://www.shawntionary.com/chainmailbikini/feed/
is the link I got by clicking the subscribe button on the page. Oddly, that is not the adress it shows. Fixed for me!