Tonight I finished going through the first batch of 1,000 new URLs for my scan list. I also started going through the list of 3,000 that I added after that. The list of 3,000 was whittled down automatically to 2,400 by the software I’m using. I’ve made it through the letter “A” links in that list.
Tomorrow night I hope to take a moment to post some more actual game news and perhaps a final Origins 2010 report.
Here’s the first sample of news for game-related accessories from my (in progress) updated database. I’m expecting each of the headings to be a single post in the future with a larger bulleted list of the news items for that topic area, to make it easier for you to filter out the items you don’t care about.
Gaming Accessories:
Board Games:
PC Strategy Games:
Role-Playing Games:
Wargames:
I’m still collecting my thoughts and energy after Origins 2010. I had a good time, as always. I also learned a lot, both about the games I played there and about writing fiction. I had the privilege of learning from two New York Times Bestselling authors, Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston. These two guys do a great job of communicating what it takes to turn decent fiction writing into really good fiction writing. I hadn’t heard from Aaron Allston before, but I’ll definitely attend his seminars in the future. Michael Stackpole’s seminars have always added to my writing toolkit, and I’m grateful for any chance to learn from him.
Right before Origins, I set out on a quest to increase the number of game sites I’m monitoring for the news items I provide here on the site. The quest was rather insanely effective. I started with around 400 sites I monitored regularly. The list is now well over 4,000. In fact, it’s so large that it’s choking the software I use to help me monitor the sites. I’m currently breaking the list down into smaller chunks based on subject matter (e.g., Miniatures makers, Wargame publishers, Board game publishers). Once I’ve managed that, I’ll start providing a lot more news than you’ve ever seen from me in the past. Until then, it may be a bit quiet. Sorting through 4,000 links is not a simple or quick task, especially when you load each one and try to assess both the site’s main focus and the best pages on it to monitor for newsworthy items.
In the meantime, the updates may be smaller and more sporadic. Bear with me, though, as I think the end result may surprise us both. I’ve got one MASSIVE database of game-related sites now. Once it’s properly organized, I’ll be able to turn it into news…
The following was submitted recently, and I wanted to share it with you:
(Plant City, FL) – Fans of the award-winning, multi-million selling The Settlers of Catan™ will have new lands to settle soon. To celebrate the 234th anniversary of the United States and the 15th anniversary of The Settlers of Catan™, Mayfair Games is proud to announce that Catan Histories: Settlers of America, Trails to Rails™ is set to be released in the United States on Thursday, July 15 at hobby and game stores around the country. Designed by Klaus Teuber, this new Catan adventure uses a map of the United States, along with the familiar Catan hex-tile grid.
The game focuses on 19th Century Americans as they head west. Wagon trains are formed up and sent out to settle new lands and build new cities. The new cities need railroad lines to bring in necessary goods. Players link these cities with rails of steel and operate their railroads to supply the townsfolk with goods. To do the players will need to gather and trade their resources wisely.
Settlers of America, Trails to Rails™ debuted at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH (June 24-27, 2010); it will be available for sale at hobby and game shops on July 15, 2010. For those who have played The Settlers of Catan™, this game is as accessible and fun as the original. There are trades to be made and cities to be built; are you ready to leave the island of Catan and head towards America?
Mayfair Games, founded in 1981, is an independent publisher of high quality games designed for gamers and family play.
Unfortunately, I have yet to play Settlers of Catan in spite of owning a copy. I also didn’t get the opportunity to try Settlers of America at Origins 2010, but I hear that a lot of people did and they enjoyed it. I’m sure Mayfair has another hit on their hands.
Today I checked in at Origins and picked up my admission badge and tickets.
At 11am, I played Steve Jackson’s Munchkin card game with three other adults and a child. As is typical for my experiences at conventions, the child won. Her prize was a Munchkin coin.
I spent a lot of the afternoon reading a book. I had wanted to sign up for some games, but didn’t really see any that interested me. The book I was reading (James Frey’s “How to Write a Damn Good Novel”) DID interest me, so I made a bit of progress with it.
At 6pm, I sat down with some others to play Fantasy Flight Games’ Middle Earth Quest. The game is based on the fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien, and depicts a part of the story not seen in the books or movies. The game pits up to 4 players against a fifth player who assumes the role of Sauron. Sauron’s objective is to gain influence throughout the land, which allows him to advance his “plot” to the “finale”. The players are simultaneously trying to prevent that from happening and keep their own story advancing along. They do this by completing quests, collecting favor, and defeating Sauron’s minions. It took us about 4 hours to play through, with only a few short “bio breaks”. The pace of the game feels a bit slow, but this is primarily due to the amount of strategizing involved for both the “hero” players and the Sauron player.
On balance, I found it an enjoyable game. With a group of experienced players, I suspect it would be very challenging, though it feels like the game is weighted a bit toward Sauron winning. The artwork on the box, the cards, the board, and the plastic miniatures is all very beautiful and high-quality stuff… as I’ve come to expect from Fantasy Flight Games in the past. I’d definitely recommend checking the game out if you have the opportunity.
My brother Matt, who is also attending Origins this year, spent the evening playing Fantasy Flight’s Battlestar Galactica board game. Matt is very fond of the Battlestar Galactica board game. I believe he signed up for every available session at Origins 2010. I enjoy the game myself, though I wanted a bit more variety out of my experience this year, so I signed up for only one session of BSG.
The Exhibit Hall isn’t open yet. It kicks into full swing tomorrow from what I understand.
Several of the eating places in the Greater Columbus Convention Center near the gaming areas are also not open yet, which is understandable given that the convention is just getting started.
Last night, I put my scripting skills to work and created a script to compile a list of game-related web sites from a variety of lists on the web. As a result, the list of sites I’m able to scan for news is now INCREDIBLY larger than before. I had been scanning around 400 sites for news items. The script built a list of around 5,000! To be fair, there are duplicates there, dead links, and probably quite a few non-game sites picked up in there. It will take some time to sort all that out, but I’m excited to consider how much more info I’ll be able to bring you now.
The bad news is that I had a bit of an accident today. I fell off a ladder and dislocated my left shoulder. I also managed to bruise, scrape, and twist various other body parts. Spent much of my Father’s Day in an emergency room. But the shoulder’s been put back in place and the rest will heal. In the short term (a few days, hopefully), I’ll be making only modest posts since one arm’s in a sling and I’ll be on prescription meds.
Today’s scan found the following news items:
I’ve added War Torn Worlds and Longbow Games into my scans. I was surprised neither one was in my list. I’ve spoken to representatives from both companies at past game conventions and was impressed with what they had to offer. War Torn Worlds produces game accessories from recycled rubber. Longbow Games produced a really sharp-looking PC game (Hegemony) they previewed at Origins (I think) a few years ago. In any case, as these companies update their sites, you’ll be hearing their latest news here.
I started this site several years ago, after visiting the Origins Game Fair in Columbus and wanting to do something to give back to the community. I thought it would be nice to collect and report on information from all the game manufacturers and retailers I knew of.
My original intent was for this to be a daily news site, with postings about every single game news item I could find. That proved to be too ambitious once I got married, had a home to maintain, and other responsibilities. I scaled back a bit and dropped my coverage of gaming areas I wasn’t personally too familiar with, like roleplaying. Then my mother became ill. She died of melanoma in 2008. Two weeks after her funeral, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. This site became the last thing on my mind. Things at work also heated up. The entire management chain above me was changed. My job responsibilities changed. There was a lot to learn, and again, this site became the last thing on my mind.
Now, I’m past the cancer. The job’s still pretty intense, and it probably will be for a while. Things are busy at home, too. So I’ve adjusted the site’s focus again. Daily gaming news is still much too ambitious. However, I’m planning to post at least twice a week during the “non-convention” weeks of my year. Each of these posts will be a sort of “headline news” update of what I found out in the gaming world since the last update. During the “convention” weeks (specifically Origins and Gen Con Indy, but there could be others someday), I’ll post much longer narratives, game reviews, and other items of interest.
With Origins coming up next week and Gen Con in a couple of months, I thought it might be good to look at Gamer Hotsheet’s visitor stats. After all, it might not be worth updating this site if no one out there is reading it… right?
Fortunately, it looks like you ARE reading it, for which I thank you. According to the server software, there have been 24,078 unique visitors since I brought the site online on this server. There were 1093 unique visitors in May 2010, and so far this month 935. Those (roughly) 1,000 unique visitors in May looked at a total of 10,000 pages (or about 10 pages each). Several hundred people seem to be subscribing to the RSS feeds, which is one of the reasons I switched to WordPress a while ago (my previous server software didn’t offer those).
This site’s busiest days so far were in September 2009 and early April 2010.
Here’s a breakdown of the visits by a variety of categories (since the site was brought to life on this server), as accumulated by the StatPress plug-in:
Operating System Visits Windows XP 65803 Windows Vista 41322 Windows 2000 10334 Linux 10022 Windows 98 6644 Windows NT 4 5870 Windows Server 2003 5735 Mac 4648 Mac OS X 3752 Windows 95 2566
Browser Visits Internet Explorer 6 50074 Internet Explorer 5 17814 Firefox 3 15553 Internet Explorer 7 10297 Thunderbird 7128 Internet Explorer 4 6496 “Generic Gecko” 5075 Firefox 4712 Opera 3453 Internet Explorer 8 3136
So, the breakdown of visitors to this site along operating system lines is about 88% Windows, 6% Linux, and 5% Macintosh. The variety of older Windows versions was surprising to me. I expected XP and Vista, being two of the more-current releases, to be high on the list. I didn’t expect to see Windows 95, 98, or even NT 4 on the list. Windows Server 2003 was also a surprise, though it could be that this is how Windows 7 is being reported.
Browser-wise, it was much the same. Internet Explorer clearly dominates the numbers, but Firefox makes a strong showing. It’s possible the “Generic Gecko” is Chrome and/or Safari.
The most-active domains referring people to this site (apart from search engines) are podfeed.net and longbowgames.com. I remember seeing Longbow’s Hegemony game a while ago and being very impressed by the demo. It appears the game is available from them now for $29.99. I may have to add that to my wish list…
Now that updates on the site are getting more regular, I’m hoping the traffic will increase along with it. If you enjoy what you’re seeing here on the site, here are a few of the things you can do to help (and to encourage me to keep doing it):
That’s all for now. Time to do a check to see if I can find any interesting news for you…
If you have tried to visit this site in the past 24 hours, you’ve probably noticed it was down. I decided to upgrade the WordPress installation from 2.8 to 3.0. I used the automatic upgrade feature, which… well…. didn’t. It got part way done and conked out. I’ve since repaired it, and the site is back up and running again.
I was really pleased to see all the great comments that have been posted recently, or at least the non-spam ones. (It was about 50/50 spam to non-spam.) I’d considered turning comments off because of all the spam, but since it does show there are folks out there reading the site, I’m going to leave them active for now.
Here are all the news items I found in today’s browsing:
If anyone knows the folks at Schutze Games, you might want to tell them their web site has been hacked.
There doesn’t seem to be any content there, but if you go to the price list and certain other pages, you’ll see a message indicating that the site has been hacked by people claiming to be Indonesian hackers.
The following game news updates were found today:
Following are the news items I picked up today:
Some additional news items I found today:
The following news items were found on the web today:
