I finished Braid last night. Finished is objective in this case; I read the entire story and read every castle message. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that I was not going to roll up on the all the puzzle pieces any time soon, and the story really grabbed me. So yeah, played that. Seriously, that story is sad. Sobering, I guess. It's also completely immpossible to fully understand. It might be the best game I've played this year, and that's saying a fair bit.

On a different note, I embedded music into my profile. Does it bother you? Let me know.

No, not the thing with cars, I mean web traffic. I'm kind of a data nerd, so every once in a bit I look over a bunch of site traffic data, and play analyst. Here's my take on the numbers.

GiantBomb - GameSpot




 


 













So, It might be hard for you to see GiantBomb on that graph, but it's there. You just have to squint. Seriously, how preposterously tiny is that traffic?
This tells us that while in some people's eyes, (myself included) GameSpot lost money when they fired Jeff, and GiantBomb is seriously affecting them, that couldn't be farther then the truth. Currently, GameSpot is holding at .6 of all internet traffic, and as shown by the graph below, GiantBomb occupies only .006 percent of all internet traffic. (Just in case you're interested, Yahoo.com is the leader, with 28 percent.)

GiantBomb





















So, long story short, GameSpot is not in trouble... yet. Here's a weird little anomaly for you; starting June 15 - July 15 GiantBomb traffic went up, but GameSpot traffic went down. If this was timed somewhat differently (in conjunction with the launch of the real, still a threat GiantBomb) then I would say with confidence that indeed, a fair amount of people had completely stopped visiting GameSpot all together, and were now exclusively visiting GiantBomb. However, it makes more sense to interpret it this way:

Kids get off from school in late May, early June. Traffic on both sites go up. Lack of content and lackluster E3 content drive traffic on GiantBomb down in July, while some technical difficulties plague GameSpot's  E3 coverage as well. In the end, E3 was not kind to either sites. Traffic on GiantBomb reaches it's peak right around when it launches, and descends somewhat after that. Interest in games goes down a while after E3, so GameSpot's traffic slopes downward. GiantBomb, on the other hand, pulls in more traffic based on the new site appeal, although the sites are so shockingly different in size, it's hard to find any correlation. Really, it's like comparing apples and oranges, and comparing them (in terms of traffic) will be pointless endless they ever near each other in size.

IGN - GameSpot - 1up





















Here's some thing a little more interesting; the numbers for IGN, GameSpot and 1up. Look at that! IGN and GameSpot are mirroring each other almost EXACTLY! 1up, on the other hand trails a distant third. I think this is interesting; whenever I think of these sites, I think of them as being somewhat equal, but the divide between IGN/GameSpot and 1up is shockingly vast. I think this also says a lot about IGN's other components (music reviews, movies stuff, etc.)... It's obvious no one Is going to IGN solely for that content. I say this because of the amazing mirror that GameSpot is to IGN... When game X was released, everyone rushed to either site to get info, so they are almost always identical. However, no one rushed to IGN when the Dark Knight was released... IGN's traffic is just like GameSpot's on July 18th.

Well, I'm sorry to have bored you... And please, excuse the sloppy writing. I haven't slept in like two days. 

All graphs and data pulled from www.alexa.com

Yeah, I downloaded the demo for Rearmed on XBox live arcade, and it's totally not doing it for me. The first console I bought was a PS2, so it's not like I have any fond memories of it, and I don't like a lot of platforms, so... 

Shedding tears, because I bought Black instead.