The Gaming Gang State of the Union

Ok Chunky… I’ll tackle these in somewhat reverse order:

Best new game? Hmmm… As far as RPGs I have to say the English translation of Shadows of Esteren really looks impressive and the Iron Kingdoms RPG has a solid setting to work with although I didn’t have a chance to get too close a look. Cubicle 7 had the new 11th Doctor edition of their role playing game make its first appearance in the States too.

Card games? Android Netrunner flew off the shelves at FFG and I saw loads of people with copies of that and Smash Up on Thursday morning. Honestly, there were quite a lot of other companies with new titles but with only four days to work with (three in my case because I actually took an unsanctioned break in the middle of one of my trips – shhhhh – and had to leave Saturday night) there’s only so much you can cover; I wish we had a week to see all Gen Con has to offer and have a chance to talk with everyone we wanted to get in front of a mic. Legendary from Upper Deck could turn out to be a nice little deck builder, especially with the Marvel license, but we only demoed the game and what we played with is far from the finished product. A few tweaks here and there and Upper Deck may surprise us. Rather Dashing Games has some interesting looking family friendly fare in the card game genre too. And let’s not forget Smash Up as we’ll have a review of that and the Doctor Who card game on our next show. Oh, and Mage Wars was finally available!

Board games had some nice premieres as well as Level 7 [Escape] caught Elliott’s interest – horror you know – but we didn’t get much more than a cursory look at that. I’ll say that was probably the hottest board game at the show from what I could tell.

Lots of minis too and the X-Wing game looks mighty fine, if a bit over priced for the minis, and we saw the next wave which include Slave One and the Millennium Falcon. Privateer had a lot of new minis too including their Colossal and Gargantuan lines and they are, well, gargantually colossal.

I know I’m forgetting loads of games that just aren’t on the top of my head. I don’t know if I can narrow it down to one game which looked the most impressive so I’ll just say the titles above really caught our eyes. I’m sure Elliott can add loads more that I’m forgetting at the moment.

As for the daily news show, I had fun doing it and I know Elliott got a kick out of it but the truth is it was a lot of work. Elliott even talked about how just tackling a fifteen or twenty minute Monday show was draining. The funny thing is it wasn’t the actual recording and editing of the shows as I could normally get that done in around an hour or so. The problem was having enough content to fill those fifteen or twenty minutes five times a week. Some companies can’t even update their own websites let alone give us the heads up when they have a new game in development or getting ready for release. We ask companies to add either Elliott or I (or both) to their press email list and I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been told they don’t have one and that we should just check them out on Facebook or visit their website.

It’s funny but even some of the biggest names in the industry don’t send out media blasts. You’d think they’d want to get the info out to the public.
I can’t say we won’t see some form of a daily show return at some point in the future but it certainly isn’t on our list of things to do in the remainder of 2012. If something like that did come about it would more than likely be along the lines of a show focused on gaming but with more crossover stories as well. Yet it isn’t a high priority as I mentioned in the OP this really is a two man operation and there are only so many hours in the day we can devote to the site. Plus, and this is something I’ll go into a little more detail about at the end, practically no one gave us any feedback. I think I received all of one or two emails from people who were listening. Obviously, we saw the numbers and knew people were listening but we just didn’t really hear from people outside of what they thought we were doing wrong…

Ok… Funding. This was a topic I bounced around including in the “state of the union” which, by the way, I only went with that title simply because it was the first thing to pop into my head and not to imply we’re some huge deal that we have to give a yearly briefing of where we are. Plus I thought it would be nice to share some thoughts with people who stop by all the time because we really try to be as transparent as possible. The way I look at it, and I’ve touched on it a little on the show from time to time, is we didn’t launch The Gaming Gang because we thought we’d make money. In the internet world, for every one person making a living through their website there are tens of thousands more who only sink money into a site to keep it alive – even if they’re only paying a few bucks for hosting alone.

Anyone who takes to the web with the goal of getting rich, or even paying their monthly bills, must be out of their mind. When you consider our main focus is a rather niche hobby then the prospects of turning a profit become even lower. Of course there are exceptions to every rule and I’m sure there’s a site or two making some dough from covering the industry, or having their visitors cover the industry for them, but mainly the people who are doing the sorts of things we do are in it because they love gaming.

As for going the Kickstarter route or any other avenue of soliciting funds from our audience? I’m not interested. My opinion of Kickstarter has turned a bit over the last year and I see it in a more positive than negative light but I surely wouldn’t use it to ask folks to pay for the upkeep of TGG. Nor would I ask for anyone to kick in to finance our travels to cover conventions or but upgraded equipment or any such thing; to me that’s just wrong. I’m not here to talk about how any other website, podcaster, or video provider goes about their business; that’s their business and not mine and I think by now visitors understand I don’t pay much attention to what other people are doing. We’re not in a competition and we have no plans for global domination.

I use the same model for how we go about keeping the site alive as any television or radio station would: We will sink or swim based on our advertisers. You own a TV and you own a radio so you’ve made the necessary investments to be entertained. Granted, you have the option to subscribe to cable or satellite TV and radio but no one forces you to subscribe. You might be inundated for ads asking you to subscribe but no one is going to twist your arm. I look at operating TGG the same way although we don’t have any sort of donation page and the only thing even asking for support is offering something in return.

Sure I could plaster the site with Google ads, which I could tweak to insure being fairly relevant to our content, and earn a few cents for every thousand visitors and possibly make two or three hundred bucks a month but it’s not something that interests me either. I prefer to personally work with our advertisers as opposed to simply letting some algorithm determine what people see on a website we take great pride in. We already get emails from people telling us we have too many ads already when the reality is we only have three spots running at any one time.

In the end the most surefire way to keep things humming around is more visitors. That way when we send prospective advertisers to third party websites and they compare our traffic to websites they’ve assumed garner more traffic (which don’t) and they’ll be more apt to get their message in front of our audience – as long as it’s something we’re willing to have appear that is… Or, in other words, it’s all about the Neilsons.

I’m not asking for everyone to line up so they can pat us on our backs as I understand we’re an acquired taste and we’re not looking to be all things to all people. Our gameplan was, and still is, to provide our take on the gaming scene as well as other things that peak our interest and if visitors like what we do we’re extremely happy and the numbers we see day in and day out make us very happy. We’re very proud of what we’ve been able to do in a relatively short time. Yet we mainly hear from people when they don’t like what we’ve said or done – usually through email – or feel we should change our approach to satisfy that one person. I know we live in an age where the majority mind set is “I exist so I deserve” or every individual walks around as if they’re the cure for cancer but we’re old school. When I receive an email or read a comment effectively telling me we “need” to do something, the first thought which pops in my mind is “F&%@ you… Go start your own website if you feel that strongly,” or if someone says we “need” to change something otherwise that specific visitor won’t come back my reaction is, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out…”

We really are some of the nicest guys you’ll run across; Elliott especially, as he’s the finest person I’ve ever known as he would have to in order to put up with my schtick for over thirty years… And I’m all for creating a dialogue and agreeing to disagree, so if we mess up a rule in a review or have a differing opinion than yours on a certain game or topic by all means comment and we’ll be more than happy to discuss. Yet we’re not a forum and there are plenty of other places for people to be hyper-critical, negative, or to wind someone up just for the sake of being an irritating gnat; this isn’t one of those sites. Our skin is rather think but our tolerance of BS is rather low.

To paraphrase Ghandi, don’t come walking through our minds with your dirty feet.

Finally, and I’ll touch on this a little more than I did in the OP, spread the word about The Gaming Gang. Tell your friends and anyone else you know who likes the sort of things we cover. I’ll be very up front and say it’s a bit disheartening to have a website which thousands of people visit each day and look on Facebook to see we have somewhere around 240-something “likes.” Or to produce over 150 audio shows, and see them downloaded thousands of times, while having only 22 reviews on iTunes. Or rarely get a mention anywhere else online.

In the end though we’re still going to keep our noses to the grindstone, do our best to provide honest and reliable info, and have fun while doing so. As long as people like yourself keep coming back to TGG we’ll keep providing what we hope will be something interesting to see, read, or hear.

And I’m sure I have gone into WAY more detail than Chunky Soup, or anyone else for that matter, needed (or wanted) but I just thought to follow up on what was asked even if it was long winded.