When I was younger, I remember my dad telling me, “Just you wait… soon you’ll be looking at your life in terms of decades instead of years.” Although great things have happened to me in my thirties — I got married to the love of my life, adopted a beautiful Rottweiler, bought and sold two homes, and lived in three states — they were certainly a blur. Some things are humorously coincidental, like the fact that exactly ten years ago, I was in a similar situation: between jobs, living at home, catching up on games, and thinking a lot about the future.
And here I am, already two months into writing this little blog of mine. It’s been a great experience so far, and it’s cool to see how it’s growing.
Since last month, I’ve added 22,798 words in 25 posts, for an average of 911.56 words per post. Some entries have definitely been longer than others, but I’ve tried my best to maintain some semblance of sanity with their length. Total content has increased by 61.72% over the past month.
I’m not sure how effective subscriptions are these days since most folks stay connected to website content via news aggregators and social media, but I saw an increase of 62.5% from 3 to 8. Not all that significant, but something to point out nonetheless.
Top keywords continue to be consistent from last month: game(s), like, time, good, just, and really. I just really like spending time with good games.
An all-time total of 1,146 views and 52 comments also seems low, but I haven’t done much to promote the blog. I might start looking at ways to broaden my audience soon, but I’ve wanted to stay focused on content up to this point.
Anyway, thanks again for visiting and reading GHG, as well as for the support you’ve shown on the various social media sites. The journey has just begun!
Hey Mike. I’m using feedly to follow the blog. Looks great in that interface, not sure how that is tracked on your end. But I assume it gives you a “hit” when i scroll past and read the post.
This post lead me to do some thinking back as well. 10 years ago, I was working on my 2nd testing assignment. Over-time on Incredibles GBA. This assignment would eventually lead to me spending a week testing onsite at Helixe games in Boston. That was so cool. “A Real developer!” The lead programmer had worked at and programmed 3D0 (on a 3D0 and had stories about keg parties at the 3d0 offices with trip hawkins) the sound deisgner was a Japanese guy who had been working on games since the late 90s. He had an ikea beno shelf with all his games in boxes. All the way back to some NES games.
I’m not sure what you could do to promote the site, but I think you have a unique voice and would love to see this blog really build a dynamic active readership.
Those are some cool memories for sure. I hadn’t had the greatest experience in PD prior to being laid off the year before, so I was definitely in a worse spot back then. I think I was listening to Tom Leykis a lot at the time for advice. LOL There’s nothing quite like working directly with a developer, and I’m glad you have such positive memories from that time.
I appreciate the kind words about the blog, and I do look forward to growing it. I had to make sure this was something I’d stick with first, and since it seems like it’s becoming a full-time gig with each passing week, it might be time to look into more serious ways to broaden my audience.
Just wanted to leave a comment to let you know how much I look forward to my daily dose of GHG. You’re doing great work, Mikey. Your passion for gaming really shows in your writing. I’m sure that I speak for all the readers when I say, we appreciate all of your efforts.
Thanks so much for that, man! It means a lot to me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in doing daily writing, is that I need to consult with a thesaurus more often. I keep using the same words… sometimes in the same sentence! 🙂 Again, glad you’re enjoying the blog. I have another Interplay entry incoming this week!