Video Games can be an addiction
This guy had an interesting blog post about his addiction to World of Warcraft. It's well written and a decent read even though it's quite lengthy. It generated >700 comments and counting, so it's definitely a spike in the guy's blog. Here's a choice quote: "From my vantage point as a guild decision maker, I've seen it destroy more families and friendships and take a huge toll on individuals than any drug on the market today, and that means a lot coming from an ex-club DJ."
He even did a follow up post with the highlights of the comments thread. Also, there was a post today on the same blog from a different viewpoint, that was pro Warcraft. I bet he wished he had enabled Ad Sense!
Which brings up a point about blogs and commenting. I wonder what the ratio of blog views to commenting is. I take a wild guess that my blog has been recently about 10%...ie about 10% of the readers leave comments (see all those posts with no comments?). And what does it say about the readership if they left more comments than average or less? This would probably be an easy statistic to calculate if one were so inclined. Unfortunatly, I can't figure out how to track views through the rss feed...can someone help me?
He even did a follow up post with the highlights of the comments thread. Also, there was a post today on the same blog from a different viewpoint, that was pro Warcraft. I bet he wished he had enabled Ad Sense!
Which brings up a point about blogs and commenting. I wonder what the ratio of blog views to commenting is. I take a wild guess that my blog has been recently about 10%...ie about 10% of the readers leave comments (see all those posts with no comments?). And what does it say about the readership if they left more comments than average or less? This would probably be an easy statistic to calculate if one were so inclined. Unfortunatly, I can't figure out how to track views through the rss feed...can someone help me?
posted by Nelson at 9:13 PM
9 Comments:
It's an MMORPG. Period. But I'd like to make a comment, after having read what this officer went through and having met someone who's been a guild leader, I can come to understand the stress the game can create. However, this is but what we call newsworthy... There are approximately 7 million accounts, yet UNSURPRISINGLY, we only hear about the detrimental effects of WoW (and other games) - who cares if person A becomes good friends with person B in a game, or that actual useful conversations occur in game (ie assignment questions, cooking instructions, etc.)? That won't draw any attention... Also, while I don't know what you guys read, but I find the gaming/social aspect is different in NA vs Asia. TO ME, North American gamers are more self-centred while Asian gamers are more guild oriented (which may have alleviated some of this officer's problems). The truth will be seen in the stats of who plays Archlord, which is basically purely guild/team oriented instead of self-oriented. Guess that's the + and - of wow - Blizz did such a good job of making it fun for everyone that... it indeed, drew everyone...
10% is spot on, 1% of the people make new content, 10% participate
You can track RSS usage and clicks if you burn your feed using feedburner, but it is pretty much impossible to get all your existing feed subscribers to switch over when you're using blogger.
Oh I happen to just come across the source for my stat http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
Yet another strike against Blogger.
Kev, that article is a good read and they make it easy to remember...the 90-90-1 rule. Looks like I made a really good guess! Thanks for the link!
Keith, I totally agree that the western attitude is completely different than the asian attitude. It' also unfortunate that it's so very negative in the western media. Just check out the unwarranted coverage on Bully.
I also agree that there's more of a social aspect to gaming in Asia...which is a good thing. Personally, that's what really attracts me to gaming nowadays - it's like killing two birds with one stone - you can socialize and hang out with friends and also play games for fun. I can recall countless hilarious conversations on b.net as well as planning for RL social events.
It's especially galling when it's obvious that the newsmedia haven't not even played the game or considered it's gameplay and they are already all over it. Bah.
BTW you should've ended your post with "it indeed drew everyone in the world........of Warcraft"
I'm not too fond of the site's analysis of wikipedia. There are just some sites where the contributors vs "users" aren't meant to be more equal. I mean, do we seriously want tons of random ppl to put up (possibly false) information that needs to be verified? The contributors should really be the professionals of the field. And how does one consider that after a topic has been created, for example, that there may not be much more editing for that topic needed? Taking the list of most expensive cities in the world based off of some magazine - well, after it's been created, it only needs to be updated when the magazine publishes the stats again a year later.... Basically, for wikipedia, it's more like a resource area instead of a social area - most ppl go there to look things up, not to contribute.
Wow funky wording, but u get the point, heh
Yes, the numbers for wikipedia are skewed, and appropriately so, b/c most ppl will be just looking up content....BUT there are always opportunities for users to contribute. I have contributed on several occassions just to clean up vandalism or formatting issues. Power to the wiki! We even use it at work now, for all our projects, which is quite cool!
There's always opportunities to do anything, but does that make it recommended? And as for contributing, I was thinking, how can one separate contribution to something like a wiki vs contributing to something like a blog or article, etc. Can they be sure that a "contribution" on a wiki does not have for example the same usefulness/"contribution" as some blog, in which case, once merged together, suddenly a lot more % of ppl are contributing. Another thing that should be taken into account of their stats of just blogs vs internet users is that some people either a) don't publicize their blog or b) use paper diaries, write material for paper print - they're still contributing, but not necessarily online. So how do ppl across the world access it? Do they look at online journal publications? e-books? I dunno, just stuff like this kinda irks me - stats can prove anything :/
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