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Everybody loves statistics

Posted Aug.08, 2011 under Let's Play

Hi! Remember me? I am Qieth, and I used to run a moonkin blog here. These days, this blog seems like a graveyard, but I’ve been thinking about getting back to blogging. Of course, these days my focus have moved from writing blog posts to recording videos for Youtube.

When I ran the blog, I was quite obsessed with statistics for views, referals, time spent on the site and the like. And it’s no surprise that this is a major source of motivation to continue doing what I do. After all, anyone posting anything on the internet does this with the intent of having it seen. Preferrably by a lot of people.

Now, Youtube is an odd sort. There are some of the very big channels that post relatively few videos, who gets massive amounts of views. And there are small channels that post way too much content to ever be seen. Of course, over saturating your channel with crappy videos isn’t excactly going to put you on the front page.

As an LPer, I post at least a video a day, which is fine for the kind of content I do. With some series running up to 30-50 episodes, it translates into 1-2 months of solid uploading, and if I slacked on that, it would take even longer to finish a series. Viewers might lose interest in the content, or at best they would get lost in the storyline.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how to approach my Youtube statistics. There are three factors with hard numbers that one could look at: Subscribers, comments and views.

Most people, especially the small channels I suppose, focus a lot on subscribers. There are all these sub4sub channels with no real content or personality, and these box4box dudes that aren’t really getting their moneys worth, because none of them are getting any traffic anyways.

Comments gives a bit better representation of your traffic and a good insight in your viewers thoughts and feedback. Unfortunately, very few viewers actually choose to comment on a video, so it is in no way any sort of measure of success.

In my book, the figure that really counts are views. These are the people who are, in one way or the other, choosing to watch your content for any period of time. Some are the die hard fans, some just happened to click a related video, and some find your videos because they were looking for that kind of content and your video might result in them checking out your other stuff.

Until now, I used to evaluate my videos based on how many views they got after the first 24 hours. I simply assumed that after 24 hours, my videos was probably pushed away from peoples subscription boxes, and I would upload the next episode anyways. I had sort of accepted that I would get around 10% of my subscribers worth of views on my videos after a day or so. But then one day, just a couple of days ago, I was fooling around with Youtube’s Insight tool, and while new videos were getting 2-300 views, it turns out that my entire channel, all 400+ videos, were accumulating over 80.000 views.

What? WHAT? Where the hell does 80.000 views come from all of a sudden? Sure, I looked back a couple of days, and some of the videos from a couple of days ago may have reached 4-500 views, but that did not in any way account for 80.000 video views. As I looked deeper into the statistics, I realise that a lot of the views are coming on old, completed LPs. Obviously, one of the biggest magnets for views are coming from the Portal 2 videos – my first Portal 2 video is at the top of page 1 if you search for “Let’s Play Portal 2″. But even looking back at other series – Alice, Amnesia and so forth, they are pulling in quite a lot of views still. Enough, apparently, to mount up to over 80.000 views per month.

As a blogger, I was very proud of my site getting some 30.000 views per month during its peak. I thought that was immensely well considering its short lifespan of 1½ years and the relatively small community of moonkin players out there. Getting 80.000 video views per month on Youtube trumps that more than twice, but there is a lot more work time put into making the content. After all, there’s a huge difference between typing for 30 minutes and running a spell-check, and recording for an hour, editing and cutting for half an hour and then leaving the computer to render for another four hours.

I expect views to fall as Portal becomes less attractive, and I expect them to rise as new games spring to life. Such is the nature of the internet. I am still a bit puzzled at how I am coming up at the top on certain Youtube searched – that might just be good SEO, or it could be the beginning of becoming search engine friendly. If more people are finding good content on my channel, I’ll move up on searches, even as partners and 100.000k subscriber channels are doing the same. Quality over quantity, I suppose ;)

Still, I’ve been doing LPs for just about 10 months. It’s quite a nice start so far :)

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People are assholes

Posted Jun.03, 2011 under Random

It’s a warm day today. It’s like 22° C which, by my standards, is pretty fucking warm. I can’t deal very well with the heat, so the 30 minute trip between my air conditioned workplace and windows-wide-open apartment was like torture. I was looking forward to getting home and getting out of the damp clothes.

My stop was up next, and I stood waiting for the bus to come to a halt. Out of the window of the bus, I noticed a very old man. He was struggling to get his Walker over the curb to the sidewalk. The Walker was filled to the brim with the old mans groceries and bags were hanging off the sides. His whole upper body was nearly horizontal, and it looked like the Walker was doing everything it could to help his legs keep him standing.

I got off the bus, walked over to the man, and asked him if he needed any help. He asked me if I could help get the Walker away from the bike-path, and we quickly got him to safety. I bid him farewell and walked in the other direction, towards my home. I turned around and felt a stab in my heart. He was still struggling to push the Walker, even as it was on the sidewalk. I walked a little further and looked again, and to my relief he was moving at a slightly faster pace now. I often put on a hard exterior, but in reality, I’m rather soft on the inside, and I feel a strong urge to help people who can’t help themselves.

“So what, do you want a medal?”

No no, of course not. That’s not the point of this post. I helped an old man, just like anybody would. Right?

WRONG! While I was walking the mere 300 meters from my bus stop to the old man, no less than 11 bikers drove straight past him. Young and old, but all in a perfectly fit condition to stop for 20 seconds to help out the poor fellow. But by god, wouldn’t it be terrible if they had to delay their rush to the park, the beach or the bar? And what an ungodly strain it would put on them to drag an aluminium frame half a meter over a 5 cm curb. Godness no, please, go on ahead, I’m sure survival of the fittest will take care of him!

I was relieved to find that my sympathy for the old man was quickly replaced by fuming rage, hotter than the burning sun above me. What kind of self-centred universe do you live in, if you can’t take out a few seconds to help an old man who is left to his own devices? Is it really the kind of world we live in?

FUCK, that pisses me off!

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Portal 2

Posted Apr.19, 2011 under Let's Play

It’s been nearly four years in the making, but today, Portal 2 was finally released. And what a release. The ARG that Valve has been running for the last couple of weeks has been massive, and there has been so many people involved in the project.

From clues hidden in indie games, to poweing up GlaDOS with potatoes and CPU’s in order to release the game sooner, there has been such a massive hype about the game. And for good reason!

The game released around 6.30 in my timezone – the time I usually get up for work. I was hoping that I could sleep a little bit longer, but because of the ARG, and all of the work a lot of people have put into it, it meant an early release in Denmark.

Thankfully, I had a day off, not because I TOOK the day off, but because I’m working over Easter and my work place decided that it was probably unhealthy if I worked 7 days straight. So it was a happy chance that I just happened to have my day off on the release of Portal 2!

And what a game it was. Man, it has been absolutely amazing to play Portal 2. The writing is brilliant, the puzzles are genius, and the whole experience is just awesome.

Naturally, I’ve started a Let’s Play of the game, and this is where you come in. Oh, of course, I want you to watch it, but I’d also love it if you could help spread the word a bit. I feel like I’m at a point where I’m making pretty good content, and I want to spread the word about my channel a bit more. At the time of writing, my video comes up on page 2 when searching on Youtube. You can help out by viewing, commenting, liking and/or favoriting the video on Youtube. Share it with some friends too, perhaps. Go on. That’s the spirit!

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Super Meat Boy

Posted Apr.10, 2011 under Let's Play

I remember back, way ago, when I found a little flash game on Kongregate.com (flash game in the link). It was about a tiny little man – well, boy. This particular boy was made of meat. We called him Meat Boy.

Meat Boy was intent on saving his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, who had been kidnapped by the evil Dr. Fetus who is, incidently, a fetus in an air tight suit covered suit. Dr. Fetus is a real ass, and time and time again he steals away Bandage Girl and sets up tons of traps to kill off Meat Boy.

Meat Boy, the flash game, was a brilliant playthrough, although not overly difficult. Years later, actually last year, Team Meat, the creators of Meat Boy, finally released Super Meat Boy! It took me a few months to actually pick it up, because I figured “I would probably be too frustrated to enjoy it”. Eventually, I did pick it up, and as it turns out, I do get very frustrated about it, but I am enjoying every step of the way.

Super Meat Boy is an insanely challenging game. You get three levels with tutorials, which explain running, jumping and wall jumping, and then you’re left on your own for the remaining 300+ levels. The learning curve is steep, starting off at “difficult” and ending somewhere around “OH MY GOD I WANT TO DIE!”, and that’s when you complete the light world, and realise that there is a dark world counterpart for every single level you’ve just completed.

Super Meat Boy is probably one of the best games released in 2010 for a number of reasons – it has an amazing atmosphere despite the simple graphics, it has challenging gameplay despite using just the movement keys and two more buttons, and it has some of the most awesome soundtracks ever made.

I’ve been doing my LP of Super Meat Boy for a couple of weeks, and recorded most of my failures for your pleasure. But by no means, don’t take my word for it. The game is cheap, only 14 EUR (and I believe there is a 50% discount on it on Steam right now!) and it will give you hours and hours of enjoyment. It will probably also shorten your life a bit.

- QQ

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Post-quitting thoughts

Posted Apr.07, 2011 under Random

I’ve been tumbling with a lot of feelings after quitting WoW, and especially after shutting down the WoW-portion of this blog. It’s been a weird experience to come home from work and not immediately log on to WoW. I still find myself checking MMO-Champion, and I still hang out on my guilds forums and Ventrilo at times. But I find that the general routine that I’ve been used to for years has suddenly been broken. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have the extra time, but it’s still difficult to completely detach myself from the memories.

The comments that I got after I announced my leaving WoW, on the blog, on Twitter and on e-mail, surely warmed my heart a lot. Naturally, I’ve been following the progress and visits on my site, but a lot of my readers has been silent throughout the years, and while I’ve had a clear idea of the direction I wanted to take the site, it’s been difficult to gauge if I had any sort of success with it. But judging from the comments I’ve seen in the past week, I think the end result was fairly good.

One comment really struck home. I’ve been harassed on Twitter by @Oestrus for quite a while, and she recently launched a brand new WoW podcast, the Double O Podcast. In the first episode, they dropped a sort of a tribute to the blog, and it’s nice to hear that people saw my blog in the way that I had meant it to be: Low key, accessible and easy to understand, with a bit of humor thrown in there from time to time. I’ve wanted to be a front figure for the fight for moonkins, and I’ve wanted to influence the community in a positive way, especially in the times where everybody has seemed to view moonkins in a very negative light. It’s nice to hear that at least one person thinks I’ve been fairly successful at that.

All in all, I’m feeling pretty good about my choice to quit World of Warcraft. I don’t hold any resentment to the game, as I feel that many does after quitting, and I can’t say with absolute certainty that I’ll never be back in the game, but for now, it feels like it’s time to focus on the things to come, and not what once was.

- QQ

Oh, you should definitely check out the Double O Podcast. Two cute ladies talking about games – what’s not to like?!

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Let’s Play with Qieth

Posted Mar.26, 2011 under Let's Play

Last year, I started to get serious about doing Lets Play’s (LPs). My previous attempts at some Starcraft and Modern Warfare commentaries were generally a massive failure. As it turns out, I’m not really fit for commentating a game that I suck at.

But when I started doing LPs of games that I was at least decently good at, such as the random Minecraft videos I put up, it actually turned out alright.

I’ve been doing LPs for a good six months now, and I’ve tweaked the process a lot. Going from recording 15 minutes videos at each sitting, to being able to produce 2 hours worth 6-8 episodes in a single sitting, I’d say I’m well on my way to succes.

At the moment, I am uploading at least a video per day. And despite work and real life, I manage to get ahead on my videos, so I can easely continue to upload at least once per day. Obviously, different peolpe like different games, so some of the series might not cater to the individuals interests. I hope, though, that there is a bit of entertainment in watching my fails and frustration anyways.

I figured I would post the completed LP’s and give you a chance to check them out, if you haven’t already.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Amnesia was a very interesting game to play. I am not good with horror. Some might say that I outright hate horror. I’m not good with the movies, and I’m definately not good with the games. At least with a movie, I can cover my eyes like a coward until the danger passes, but in games, I am forced to take action myself.

Amnesia was especially bad for me, because every action and every step had to be done by me. Walking through corridors, peaking around corners, slowly opening the creaking, wooden doors. It was terrible!

But at the same time, it was an incredible experience. The game affected me on so many levels, even after I turned off the computer. After the first week, I was mentally exhausted, and was easely starled. It was only after I completed the game that I got back a measure of self control. And if a horror game can do that to you, then it has been a massive succes.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman was a nice change of pace. It was more of a hack-n-slash with lots of action, and that really suited my wants and needs. I had a rough start in the game, because I generally suck at remembering controls, and take quite a while to get used to combos and skills.

In the end, though, it turned out to be an enjoyable game to play through.

Heart of Darkness

Going back to a game that was so dear to me in my younger days, Heart of Darkness was a rather quick LP. That is, the whole series was rather short, after I cut out most of the massive fails. There were a lot of them, after all.

Still, it was a good game to go back to, and I enjoyed the process a whole lot!

Dead Space 2

I never played Dead Space, so going into Dead Space 2 was to me like going into the womens locker room. – I somewhat knew what to expect, but most of it was in my head. Dead Space 2 was very different from Amnesia, because while both of them are horror-like, Dead Space was more of a BUGGAWUGGA-scare-the-shit-out-of-me.

Never the less, I very much enjoyed playing through the game. It had a lot of character, and a bit of humor, and while I didn’t really enjoy the scares, it was satisfactory to finally complete it.

Those who didn’t make it

I have started a few LPs which I eventually decided to stop again. Either because I never got around to boot up the game again, or because they didn’t really fit the style of LPs. I’m talking about Trine and Darksiders of course, and if you want to check them out, then go ahead – just don’t expect any sort of closure on them.

If you want to follow my current LPs, then you know where to find them!

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Qieth Quits

Posted Mar.24, 2011 under World of Warcraft

You have probably noticed a lack of posts these last few weeks. There has been several reasons for this, mostly due to the lack of really interesting moonkin changes, but also because I seem to have been suffering a rather bad writing block. This has happened before, so I figured, no biggie.

The other day, however, I started contemplating my relationship to World of Warcraft. Long story short, I decided that I was going to call it quits. I am generally only logging on to raid, and while I really enjoy that, I figured it might be the time to move on after playing the game for over six years.

Seeing as this is a moonkin blog, and that I won’t actually be playing a moonkin anymore, I would be sorely pressed at doing writeups for a class and a game that I no longer play. So as far as that goes, this ends an era in the life of Qieth’s Quips.

As for the moonkin guide, this will obviously not be updated beyond it’s current state, and will – eventually, I guess – be taken down. I’m trying to sort out something with another poster on MMO-Champion to take over the moonkin guide in some form or another, so moonchicks still have a place for a good moonkin resource.

Waaaait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I’m not done!

So what’s going to happen to qieths-quips.com? What am I going to do from here on out? Well, don’t worry, I’ve got some things planned. I wanted to take this time and let you know what’s going to happen around here, so you can decide if you want to abandon me forever, or if you have a reason to ever check back.

This blog is going to magically turn into a sort of gaming/personal blog. For the last ~6 months, I’ve been publishing a lot of videos on Youtube, sometimes several videos each day. I have been doing commentated playthroughs of various games, and this is a project I would like to continue. And while I haven’t completely decided which direction I’ll take the blog, I reckon it will be a mix between talking about games and posting my Lets Play’s, while throwing in a few personal posts from time to time.

You can expect some changes as time goes by, and hopefully you will enjoy the content here and on my Youtube channel. Who knows, you might like it. For good measure, seeing as a lot of things are going to go down on my Youtube channel, it would be prudent to post a link here – go ahead and subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/qieth.

I would like to thank each and all of you for sticking with me during these 18 months. All your comments, feedback and support. It has been really enjoyable to blog for you and talk with you, and part of me will really miss that.

Best regards,
Dan Poulsen

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