Quiet time :o

Apologies for the lack of posts at the moment, I am back to being self employed and rooting about for projects at home, and have just not been keeping up to date with interesting tech news, gaming etc.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandera came out yesterday, cant say I am remotely phased. WOW to me was a social game, and with no social community that I am attached to, and my wife being to busy to team up with me - I find myself uninterested. Besides, I have a load of games to play through yet, in addition to my let's plays. If I play at all, it will probably be to get my rogue up to 90 in order to PVP in Alterac Valley over christmas (As is tradition for me :p )

What else...

Borderlands 2 looks cool, I have been watching let's plays of that and could be interested. The only other game that is out just now is Torchlight 2, and I am not sure what to make of that one yet.

Anyway, more posts down the line - just in a rut at the moment. (And now I have food poisoning so sleeping for the next few days seems a good idea.)

-V

The hunger Games, book and movie

A few nights ago, I seen The Hunger Games for the first time. I had a vague idea of the plot but the movie had never really caught my attention when it was in the cinema. Since its release, I decided that the idea of the combat survival interesting. (The Yogscast's Survival Games videos on You Tube might have also gotten me interested... I think Battle Royal may be on my to do list :D)

**Warning, potential spoilers**
So I watched it... and I must be honest, I found it very intriguing, I have always been a fan of the idea of survival stuff - couple it with the Gladiatorial theme of fighting to the death and the intricacies of the Political and hierarchical aspects it was cleverly weaved together. If you were not thinking it could easily be seen as a pretty simple plot, but the acting, the script, the behaviours, all of it carried varying connotations as to other things that were going on, feelings (or non) etc. It reminded me a lot of V for Vendetta, Equilibrium and that sort of dystopian future where governmental rule is absolute, and cruel. I watched it Friday night whilst my wife was working as she was not interested in a futuristic gladiatoral movie... Well, after watching it I identified a number of themes that she will like. We both studied psychology to some degree, have an interest in history, (in my case, especially the Roman Empire and gladiators), and the general depth the movie felt like it had I thought she would like so we both watched it Saturday night, and she enjoyed it too.

After watching I felt that I wanted more... The film covered most of the book very well, and I think added some very good elements via commentators, and the control room and watching the political interactions, none of which is directly shown in the book, only hinted to (It is written entirely in first person. Im glad the movie was not like this lest it may lend itself to a Twilight feel, and I hated the commentary there.).

I decided to pick up the book on Sunday. having watched the film and knowing the plot and what happens, etc etc I did not need to study every word in the book in detail, but I did read it quite thoroughly and it took me about 6 hours to read. The book includes some extra detail on the country, its history, details behind different things such as wildlife, character (and other tributes) histories and it gave me the info surge I was looking for. Overall I must say it was a great read, I am not sure if I preferred the book or the movie, but I definitely think they compliment each other very well. A few plot details are different to make the movie more dramatic/cinematic, but the book has more gory details :D


To this end, I would recommend both of them. I feel they compliment each other well rather than one detracting from the other like many films... I am left with one dilemma now.. Read Catching Fire, the sequel, before the second movie comes out next year... or watch the movie first... I have had bad experience of reading novels right before the movies come out (Return of The King, I am looking at you!), but doing it the other way round - the movie left me with questions, and the book satiated that appetite nicely.

-V

Farmville 2: Mini review

So, Farmville 2 got released today.

Upon initial inspection, this game looks pretty good. The graphics are pretty and smooth and there is quite a lot of detail in the game. Having played it for a while, there is also a pretty good tutorial system that takes you through the basics: planting, watering, harvesting, selling, making feed, feeding animals, expanding, buying - you name it. Frequent goals and objectives will keep players occupied and learning the game mechanics, as well as it being needed to expand into some areas. As an added bonus, when you level up all your crops and animals become harvest able , and all your resources like water replenish.

There are various facilities added in Farmville 2 that give the game more scope, for example the kitchen. Here, instead of selling what you harvest, you can create items like apple pie, lemonade, and the sub components that make them. These can then be sold for a lot more money. An excellent addition for the crafting community.

The interface is a LOT less cluttered than in previous games. There is a friends bar, and then 3 buttons:  Tools that contains things like screen rotate options. Shop where you can buy resources and equipment, and inventory where you can view what items you have collected or farmed. This greatly simplifies the gameplay experience and I can see it hitting out at everyone who was a fan of Farmville, and possibly some of those that were not.

Another nice added bonus is that there is no irritating music (Well, there is a burst when you start but I would not say it;s that bad), just the chorus of birds... Sitting with headphones in its almost like sitting outside in the countryside relaxing :D Save the periodic pop and scrunch as resources replenish and crops grow.

From a free to play perspective, it is as it has always been; no need to spend money but it makes things smoother. sitting in game you spend a lot of time waiting for water to refill and crops to grow. If you are an infrequent gamer you wont have this wait time but chances are you will run out of resources like water when planting your field, so it is all a little bit more restricted than if you were willing to spend cash.

As always however, Zynga comes running at the in game purchase side of things with a flick-knife and a lecherous smile... the in game cash is about the same price, but they have added a significant amount of purchase options, most of which will seem quite appealing. If it works it works, but the price tag is a bit high for my liking. I have always been a believer that there should be a balance in these games, and set a price tag that I would be willing to pay for a game as a budget for in game spends. This is another blink and lose £20 jobs I think.

That's it for now, I may edit in more later as I play and learn! Thanks for reading. If you have not tried the game, I recommend at least taking a look - if nothing else, the Farm Expansion animation is So Cyoooot!

:D

-V

I Phone 5 revealed Sept 12th

Found this article...

Curious! That's very short notice, although in todays market, an earlier announcement is not likely to do much good, simply slow sales of the current devices...

I think the iPhone 5 is the first Apple product I have actually considered getting my hands on... almost purely because from what I have heard they are breaking the mould that their past iPhones have followed. If it has a break-resistant screen, I may very well consider taking the dive into the Apple world outside of work/uni!

Anyway, as the title suggests, and the link states - it is being officially revealed on Sept 12th, so expect an update closer to the time with a bit more critique on the device. I wonder when it will be released... in time for Christmas I would hazard a guess at.

-V

Making money from the web - in fun ways. Possible?

Disclaimer: I in no way claim to be an expert in the following matters, this is merely a thought/discussion piece going over my own experience and research ;-)

Having a job that involves me doing a lot of research into advertising and monetising products, I have taken quite an interest to it. I spend a lot of time online, and as a result I have take an interest in playing around with the potential ways to make money doing this. As far as I can see there are several aspects that need to be addressed in order to have a chance here. Subject, Spreading the word, monetising and retention.

I spend a lot of time making let's plays and maintaining Blogs. I do these primarily because I enjoy them, but the amount of time I spend on them can be quite vast. To this end I have been trying to figure out how I can get this to work in my favour so that I can see some monetary return, as much of them require regular scheduling and content to be produced and is not too far off being a job.

So, lets take the Blogs to start with. Without a good way to spread the word, you need to make sure that the content you are providing is of interest to potential user bases, and is well worded so that users can find it. This is still something I am working with and intend to post about later, but my understanding is that the title, tags and content will all be parsed with search engines and the more it can find to use to match search keywords, the more chance there is of your blog being randomly stumbled upon. Apart from this, share your blog where you can. Find groups on facebook, forums, twitter #tags - everywhere there is potential readers and hope you made a good post ^.^

Monetisation for blogs is a bit restricted - there is Google Ad Sense adverts that most bloggers (even me) have around their page, but the CTR (Click Through Rate) for these is atrocious, although the monetary returns is pretty good per click. An issue that can arise here is many users 'abuse' the system by clicking adverts repeatedly or tying in with their friends for a click exchange system. Analytics from Google is designed to identify these behaviours and your account will get blocked doing this, so if you put up ads, be careful, but also don't expect much return unless you have attained a large viewer base and number of views per day. I am not well versed in other methods, but I will update this with any other methods I come across.

Blog retention. Retention is basically the ability to hold onto your readers, and having them return. In order to do this you need to post quality content, and post it regularly. This could be daily, weekly, whatever you intend to do, but if you make a habit of posting at certain intervals, your users will know when to look for it. Good examples of blogs that do this are Wow Insider - there are multiple articles posted daily, from numerous guest posters. This means that if you have them on RSS feed, you always have something new to read and can return again and again to indulge.

Retention example (Warning, confusing maths ahead!) of a YouTube channel: If you produce some good videos and get on average a 5% conversion rate, with 200 views a day then you are getting 10 new subscribers a day. After 10 days, this is 100 subscribers, yes? Well, there is also subscriber drop off. Retention rates dictate how well they are kept around. If you have a weekly retention rate of 95% from that point, then after 1 week you would in theory have: 95 of your original subscribers, plus another 70 new subscribers, so 163 with dropoff of those subscribers over the time period. Give it another 10 weeks (70 days, easy maths) then you will have gained another 700 subscribers - and lost (5x7 = 35) 35 of those, giving a total after those 11 weeks plus ten days: 665 + 163 = 798 subscribers. Sadly this is not as reliable a calculation as it sounds. Only so many people will be interested in your product and the more you have subscribe, the smaller the pool of potential subscribers there are - but very good content makes for a larger potential subscriber pool. I hope that is all clear, cos it did not type like it did...

Moving onto YouTube... YouTube is similar to blogs in terms of getting the word out, generating money and retaining viewers. Some YouTubers are able to put a video up that gets a huge number of hits, often because it is cure or humerous. If the adverts shown on the video are monetised this can bring in quite a lot of money. In my experience the click through ratio is about 5%, with each view that counts giving a couple of pennies to the poster of the video. On videos with that many hits, that is a LOT of money (as in thousands of £/$'s) but I think that there are diminishing returns on a video. For example, my first minecraft lets play which currently has just over 4,500 views - was returning about 50p/day from ad revenue with about 200 viewers a day. Now I am lucky to see 5p/a day from it.

If you wish to get subscribers to your videos - you need to make them interesting, and post frequently! I currently have just over 100 subscribers so I am no expert here. I attribute this partly down to them not being great videos (It is me playing a game and yacking away, and Im not as charismatic as many of the successful let's players.), and that I have not tried to 'get the word out'. Many you tubers will send messages to other you tubers, or post video responses to popular videos in the hopes that someone will click on their video and view. There is no doubt that this works to an extent, but I feel awkward doing such things. (Maybe I should, since to maintain the Let's plays I will probably need to start increasing viewer numbers to increase the odds of ad-clicks. To my knowledge all Google ad's and YouTube video ad's are safe and screened (Especially true of YouTube ad's as the videos can only be put on YouTube by a select few ad providers that need to go through a rigorous registration and screening process with YouTube.) I personally, am more than happy to follow links or videos that interest me knowing that I am helping the content creator out whilst doing what the ad;s are designed to do - but one needs to be careful not to be abusing this feature or they may get the content creators ad-sense account banned!).

Ok, I am rambling... but to summarize, I think in order to be successful at getting people to see the content you have created and to make money from it you need to have a plan that gets the word out, methods for monetization and try to make your submissions high quality, and frequent so that you can retain viewers whilst attracting more.

One final tip: If you want to get big numbers then take advantage of surges of potential viewers. Create videos or blogs that are on the ball and up to date. 50 Shades of Grey suddenly become a huge topic of conversation? (be it good or bad) - then any content that addressees some aspect of it has a huge potential viewer base (fans and haters alike, depending on the content). A good example from my experience would be my let's play videos on Minecraft. For the first month I was producing low quality let's plays as I was not used to the video recording, or the commentary. After this month of practise, I had about 30 views on my video with the highest hit count... Minecraft version 1.3.1 was released, so the day it was released I started a lets play. I had 1000 hits in the space of 2 days. I got a surge of subscribers and many of them are frequent viewers even now, a month down the line. Their feedback is what inspires me to keep producing videos as naturally my own wanes a bit over time - but a little community is starting to form and it feels great :-)