NBI
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9 entries. 6,159 words.
2014-04
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NBI – Support Your Local Blogger!.
2014-04-25.
I first heard about the Newbie Blogger Initiative last year, sadly just as it was ending. I thought it was a great idea then, and I still do, so I’m supporting it this year in whatever small way I can.
New bloggers need all the support they can get, because it can be pretty discouraging at the beginning. I’ve been writing and blogging about various things for years, so I know all about how daunting it can be to find and build an audience. (Honestly I only know about failing miserably at it.) Blogger communities like the NBI help tremendously.
- Blog
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Trying New Things In May.
2014-04-30.
The Newbie Blogger Initiative runs through May, so, to celebrate, I thought I would try a couple of new things and see what happens.T-Day StreamingI’m going to do a regular stream during the month of May. The stream will run Tuesdays and Thursdays at roughly 7:00 PM Eastern Time for about an hour, starting on May 1. You can find me at http://twitch.tv/endgameviable.Why would I do such a crazy thing? Well, everyone else is doing it, and we are all slaves to trendiness. I often talk to myself or the game while I’m playing anyway, so I might as well click on the “broadcast” button while I’m doing it. Also, I want to create an example of the kind of stream that I prefer to watch.What kind of stream is it going to be? Well, it’ll be MMORPGs, obviously. And pretty casual. Possibly informative and/or amusing. My target audience won’t be hardcore gamers.At this time I am planning to stream ArcheAge, because it’s all the rage. Other possibilities include ESO and … well, that’s about it. ArcheAge or ESO. Maybe I’ll alternate between them.NPC FictionI saw that one of the topics for this year’s NBI is “Creative writing articles and guides.” I wouldn’t presume to try tackling the vastness of a guide on creative writing, but a while back I had an idea for some writing exercises, and this seems like the perfect time to give it a try.The goal of my project is to write very short pieces of fiction, perhaps as little as 1,000 words each. The inspiration for the fiction will come from a random NPC in an MMORPG, preferably one who doesn’t otherwise have a part in a quest. You know how you sometimes run across an NPC who doesn’t seem to do anything but add atmosphere to an area? He or she may not even have any lines to speak, or may not even have a name beyond something generic like “Pact Soldier.” Those are the ones I mean. Why are they there? What are they thinking about? What are their dreams? If you could interact with those NPCs, what would they say? What quests might they give out?So I will try to publish a short fiction related to those NPCs every Sunday during May. (I suppose technically it would be “fan fiction.”)
- Administration
- Stories
- Streaming
2014-05
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Know Why You’re Blogging.
2014-05-05.
There’s a lot of great advice going around about blogging this month for the NBI, and if you are new to writing or blogging (or not), you should read all of it. Thankfully many of them are summarized in the Newbie Blogger Initiative Week #1 Roundup, so I don’t have to. The only thing I can add is my own personal philosophy on this blog.
But first, if you want to start a blog, just start it, and do whatever you want, and to hell with everyone else and what they think. It’s your blog and nobody can tell you how to run it (unless you violate the terms of service, that is). I mention this only because a lot of “how to blog” guides tend to focus on the “business” aspects of blogging. They tend to assume you want to blog to make money through advertising. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not the only reason to blog.
- Advice
- Blog
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Scheduling Posts.
2014-05-08.
I saw this excellent post from Belghast a while back: Thumper Logic.
The first part of his post got me thinking about my own publishing schedule, and as it is NBI month I thought a meta-blogging post would be a good topic.
I too have tried to write one post a day-in the past. I applaud the effort, and anyone who can do it is far better at this than I am.
- Advice
- Blog
- Musings
- Responses
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Blogging The Hardest Way Possible.
2014-05-15.
In honor of the Newbie Blogger Initiative, in this post I’m going to talk about “how” I blog for Endgame Viable. That is, the actual process. I don’t recommend doing it this way. :)First, I play some games. Usually they are MMORPGs. This typically happens on weeknights and weekends.After I’m done playing games, the next morning I often go to a place where I can’t play any games, which is a place that rhymes with the surname of a famous Star Trek captain. There, if I have time, I read some blogs and tweets about what else is going on in the gaming world.By this time I have some ideas of things I want to write about. I might want to make an observation or vent about something that happened in my last play session. I might want to report about something new I did. I might have an opinion about something I read on the Internets. Most of the time, these are not particularly earth-shaking thoughts, and quite possibly not in any way unique or unusual.I open a plain text editor window and resize it to be fairly small. It usually stays open throughout the day. (At this time, I’m using WriteMonkey, but it doesn’t really matter.) I prefer writing in plain text like this because it’s unobtrusive on the screen and I’m a software developer by trade, so I’m very comfortable using text editors.
- Advice
- Blog
- Responses
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Tuesday’s Stream – ESO’s Shadow of Sancre Tor.
2014-05-21.
Tuesday night’s stream of Elder Scrolls Online, wherein I completed two whole quests, including the level 40 story quest “Shadow of Sancre Tor.”
Link updated.
- Streaming
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PvE, PvP, and Racing.
2014-05-23.
The topic of discussion from the NBI Talkback is whether or not PvE and PvP mix in MMOPRGs. At long last I have some time to write about it, now that everyone else has moved on.
The answer is no, they don’t mix. Thanks for reading.
But seriously, we’ve all seen the sharp divide between the PvE and PvP communities within any given MMORPG. In my opinion, it’s not because of the games or the players. The problem to me is that PvE and PvP require two entirely different competitive mindsets.
- MMORPG
- PvP
- Responses
- Discussion
2016-06
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NBI 2016 – Thoughts On Blogging.
2016-06-02.
The first rule of blogging is not to blog about blogging. However, June is the Newbie Blogger Initiative here in the game blogging community, so this is the month where we throw out all the rules, talk about the craft of blogging, and try to recruit and encourage new bloggers.
I technically started blogging in 1998, when I put some random notes up on my first ever web site, unless you count some Quake match updates I posted on the clan’s page in 1997. I didn’t really start blogging with any regularity though until about 2002 or 2003. The point is that I’ve been at this hobby for a while now, so I have at least a little sense of the landscape.
- Advice
- Community
- Writing
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NBI 2016 – Kill Hippy GIFs With Fire.
2016-06-07.
The topic of animated GIFs came up in the NBI Discord this morning so I thought I’d write a little bit about it.
I hate animated GIFs.
That is all.
No, really, I hate them. I lived through the 1990s World Wide Web, so I have vivid memories of the days when every advertiser put obnoxious blinking animated GIFs in every web ad, making every web page into some crazy dystopian night-time Las Vegas scene with blinking neon signs in every direction. (There was an early Futurama episode that captured this very well-I think it was A Bycyclops Built For Two.) It was horrible. It was so bad it birthed the entire ad-blocker industry.
- Blog
- Musings
- Opinion