A community game night I help run has hit a milestone. I hope you won't mind if I ramble and reminisce a little.
On November 5th, 2009, a couple of American car fanatics on Giant Bomb, inspired by their European brethren, started a private lobby in Forza Motorsport 3. The turnout was mild but promising, and so began a weekly ritual of racing and generally screwing around with virtual cars we could never hope to afford in real life.
Hazard5040 and FlipperDesert duel in one of the first Race Nights. It's now November 4th, 2010. 52 weeks have passed since "Giant Bomb Private Race Night: Yanks and Canucks Edition" began. What started as a whim amongst dedicated Giant Bomb users has turned into what is now known as Giant Bomb Forza Race Night, with the potential to attract full lobbies each week.
Needless to say, I'm thrilled that Forza Race Night has easily survived an entire year. The attendance and dedication is amazing, and I still don't think there's a single other game night on Giant Bomb that's lasted as long as ours (although I'm still more than willing to be proven wrong). Before I begin to write my lengthy thoughts on Forza Race Night's accomplishments, though, I'd like to thank a few people critical to the success of our game night.
Thank You
First off, my greatest thanks go to mattjam3000. He was the originator of the idea of a private race night in Forza, albeit for European time zones. He proved there was enough interest in Forza, and helped inspire a North American Race Night. He's certainly one of, if not the founding father of Race Night, and we've always appreciated that. Also thanks to FlipperDesert for being one of the few other dudes to stick with the idea.
My second bit of thanks goes to the North American founder of Race Night, Pax. While I was sitting around with a thumb up my ass, hesitant to start an American Race Night, Pax took the initiative, and rallied together a great group of people for racing. He'd eventually get sick of hosting the lobbies, and turned the responsibility over to me, but to say his influence was that limited would be an outright lie. Pax picked the right time for Race Night, he gathered enough people to make it work, and he's done his damnedest to bring us all together as our own little community. I tried to replicate his success when I started Friday Night Blur, and quite frankly, I failed miserably. Often we joke about Pax being the force that holds Race Night together, but it's true: If it weren't for Pax, I highly doubt we'd have made it a year. He's a great dude with a hilariously brash attitude, and he has my utmost thanks for starting what I could not.
I also have to thank Keval N, Forza Race Night's best damn driver, for all he's done for Race Night. There was a time when participation dropped to dangerously low levels, but despite this, Keval showed up every week. He's rarely ever complained about a race choice, he's never started shit with other players, and he's a stand-up fellow. Keval is the rock that has kept Race Night alive in good times and bad times, and the numerous close races I've had against him are some of my favorites.
I have to thank all the other Race Night regulars, as well. Blarg joined us in our darker times and saw us into our current thriving days. Jugnutts, Beef Daddy, and the rest of the Nebraska crew also have provided us with loads of competition, as well as full lobbies. Slowbird's one of the few guys to give Keval constant competition, which is completely stunning in itself. Hay4z has...well, he's always been the quiet one, but we're starting to hear more of him and appreciate him joining us for so long, as well (even if he's the hardest damn guy to pass).
Of course, everyone else who's joined us over the weeks, especially in the early days, has my gratitude. I want to name a bunch of you, but I know I'll forget a name or two and hurt someone's feelings. Just know I'm very appreciative that you gave us a chance to succeed.
In that same note, I want to specifically thank gpbmike for being the only Whiskey Media staff member to attend Race Night. We probably seem like creepy stalkers at times, but we're always humbled and thankful when one of the Top Men acknowledges our game night.
Speaking of acknowledgment, I must thank ZombiePie for all the mentions he's given our events over the year. To my knowledge, we haven't gone out of our way to ask him to mention Race Night in the Community Spotlight, and yet he's noticed our little shindig and noted our accomplishments. He's supporting what I feel is a truly crucial part of Giant Bomb's community, and I'm glad he's given Race Night its due so willingly.
Finally, to anyone who's ever joined us for a race or two, thank you for contributing to a wonderful event. I hope you'll consider joining us again sometime in the future.
Rest assured that I could continue to drone on with my thanks and gratitude, and accept my deepest apologies if I didn't mention you.
Theory of a Race Night
I suppose that to truly explain what a year of Forza Race Night means to me, I first need to discuss my past involvements with auto racing and racing sims. I don't intend to sound like a crazed lunatic, but there's certainly a few reasons I've willingly dedicated so much time to this weekly affair.
I grew up a fan of auto racing. My father raced in Formula Ford, Can-Am, and briefly in Trans-Am, and my mother belonged to the Corvette Club in her youth. Racing and cars have always excited our family. Considering my dad's also been a tech geek most of his life, it's no surprise that I'd get into computers, and eventually, racing sims.
We've always put fun over traditional racing. Fast forward to the era of broadband Internet, where reasonable online multiplayer racing finally became a decent possibility outside of select online services. I began to dabble somewhat in the multiplayer of various titles, from the NASCAR Racing series to Live For Speed. It's here where I began to notice an unsettling trend in online racing: People get damn serious about their racing most of the time. I'd turn away from racing leagues because of their strict punishments over even the most accidental of crashes, and people who spent hours every day running the same track over and over would laugh and look down at my more casual devotion to racing sims.
Perhaps I neglected to find fitting leagues or teams through ignorance, pickiness, and anger, but I knew very quickly the kind of group I wanted to roll with was rare, a cadre of players dedicated to enjoying themselves in casual competition. Racing is a wonderfully tense sport, but when your cars are mere polygons rather than expensive machines tied to your livelihood, I feel it's best to focus on the delightfully fun aspect more than the bitter competition. I didn't fit in well with a lot of racing sim communities for this reason, typically deemed as an immature joker, and I knew in the future I'd want to attempt to find like-minded people for fun, clean racing. I considered racing in public servers and lobbies, but after witnessing so many crashes and general dirty racing, I became disinterested in the idea. I needed to find a crew to roll with, damn it.
Naturally, that's where Forza Motorsport 3 and Giant Bomb come in. Eventually.
The Evolution
A photo of the original Buick Death Race in Forza Motorsport 2 I had toyed with the idea of a special type of racing in Forza Motorsport 2 with a friend, where we'd pick Buick Regal GNXes, paint them up like they were entering a demo derby, and racing them wildly around a track for giggles. While fun, we never could find enough people to join our venture, and the "Buick Death Race" was tabled for at least a year or so.
Not along after, Giant Bomb launched. I believed in the site's potential, and hoped that I might be able to find some like-minded people for good racing action. To be honest, I was hoping to find groups of people to play random Xbox Live games each week, as well. I'm a person who sincerely believes a community can strengthen and flourish when given the opportunity to game together. I still think Giant Bomb could benefit from more community game nights, perhaps organized through a site calendar to make their mere existence seem less intimidating.
...but I digress. Anyways, I never went through with any of the game night stuff because I'm a damn coward with social anxieties, so instead, I waited and lurked on the forums for years.
We've always been a little wild, too. Enter Forza 3. Finally, a new racing game with loads of options and potential. My online social anxiety (and yes, that should baffle you) had subsided somewhat after I spent hundreds of hours hosting and organizing freeburn challenges with public groups in Burnout Paradise. I wanted a good private multiplayer experience in Forza 3, but I knew finding people for clean, fun sim racing was much more difficult than asking idiots not to crash into each other and just hit a ramp. Again, I hesitated.
This is the part of the story where mattjam3000 and Pax come in, helping to create Race Nights I was still too cowardly to step up and try. I've devoted myself each week to joining in and helping create interesting events for people who aren't tremendously serious about sim racing, but like having douchebag-free fun. Thankfully, countless like-minded folks have joined me for this cause.
At least I was right about the Giant Bomb community. It would've been much harder to find a group of humorous, casual, and competitive players in a sim racing community, as counter-intuitive as that might sound.
One Year
So it was to stand, that every Thursday Forza 3 players and Giant Bomb users from around North America would join us for loads of random races and events. We've cracked loads of jokes, created tons of Race Night memes, and taken part in strange events that could probably define us as mentally imbalanced.
Car Soccer is quite popular during Race Night. Consider the GB100, where we nearly ran 100 laps around Silverstone and Le Mans in the span of 6 hours (nearly killing FlipperDesert in the process). Consider the Miatathon, in which we spent hours in hand-numbing races dictated by smooth driving and fuel mileage. Consider the American Heritage Event, which...no one attended, so never mind that. Consider Car Soccer, an event inspired by YouTube footage that's become a weekly staple of knocking a Lotus Elan around. Consider Clunker Pushing, an original idea of ours based on pushing a Datsun up an otherwise unclimbable mountain.
Consider that we've taken all these ideas and more, spread them out and repeated them over 52 weeks, and consider that many of us are still not bored with this game. Forza 3 is a powerful tool to bring together racing fanatics, and our continuous nature shows just how tight this group's become. Many of the regulars are people I'd consider friends in as much of a sense as online phantoms can be friends. Hell, I'm still trying to talk several regulars into attending PAX East with me. We are like-minded. We are brothers and sisters that love a good diversion from racing just as much as a great race. We are Race Night.
If that's not a sign that a game night can create a tight community of gamers and friends, then it's a sign that a game night can turn people like me into fucking lunatics.
Week 53
Touring cars during pre-season testing. In under 20 hours, the Forza Race Night crew will begin our 53rd week of racing and whatever else we decide to do. This includes a new touring car mini-series called Giant Bomb GT, and several "throwback" races designed to celebrate the year of racing we've had. One of our regulars has even split off to start fielding the idea of a complementary Gran Turismo Race Night, and that's not even considering a potential NFS: Hot Pursuit race night in a few weeks. All this progress from our humble origins makes me feel pretty damn good. There's been times where I thought we wouldn't last, but the last few weeks have given me faith that we have to power to sustain a crowd of interested players without trouble. Even if we somehow don't last the year, I feel we've proven the value of dedicated game nights in the Giant Bomb community.
It's now November 4th, 2010, and tonight is one year of Forza Race Night. To everyone who has ever supported us, I thank you. I hope that when November 3rd, 2011 comes around, I'll have more reasons to be thankful for what the Giant Bomb community can help create in two years.
(Pax has also written his thoughts here, and it's a great read about what keeps Race Night rolling.)
I feel it's only appropriate to add this montage of some of our best racing as a footnote to this long post. Thanks for reading, and I hope we're able to continue bringing the Giant Bomb community great Forza action for a long time to come.
Hooray for controller-less technology! I'll admit I want the Kinect. I just don't want it for $150. For me, that means sweepstakes and instant win contests up the wazoo for a while. I'm cheap like that.
My thriftiness has nothing to do with the community quest, though. We've got this fancy new quest this week, with a lofty 4,000 completion goal we've had trouble hitting in the past. Even before I collected any data on this quest's progress, I made a wild prediction that we'd fail and only accumulate 2,500 completions total. Will I be proven wrong? I sure hope so! EDIT: Yes.
Here is your final graph.
Kinect Four Final Progress In honor of the new dashboard, I added a bit of pizazz to the graph. It's basically the same, though: The gold line at the top was our 4,000 completion goal, the red line was the pace we needed to exceed to succeed, and the green line was our progress over the course of the quest.
So yeah, my plan to stay awake until 3 AM and capture the final data point? Totally failed. I probably need to work on that. Regardless, I'm not sure exactly if this community quest will stop giving out bonus XP past its deadline or not. Therefore, I don't know if I should keep recording data until the box vanishes. I'll figure that out. In the meantime, I apologize for my lack of verve in tracking the end of this quest. I'll work on a better system for these community quests where everyone completing them gets bonus XP, regardless of hitting the goal or not.
Anyways, here's the final numbers, using my 12:01 PM data point from today:
In the last 24 hours, our completions increased by 124, roughly 3.1% of our total goal. That's about a 51% drop-off from yesterday.
In total, we accumulated 2,944 completions. That's 73.6% of our 4,000 user goal.
Our overall rate of progress for this quest was 24.9 completions per hour. In the last twelve hours, it's been closer to 4.5 completions per hour on average.
Considering all the user completions at this point, this quest has doled out 2,060,800 in bonus XP. That's roughly 23.5 times my XP as a level 30 user.
This quest's progress is still almost exactly between the Halloween and Fallout: New Vegas quest sets in its pace. Take that as you will.
As always, let me know if you have any questions, comments, or criticism. I'll be back with more data for the next community quest to show up. Maybe I need to look into an automated data collecting method, too...
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Well, this week was a bit of a trainwreck of awesomeness. Status quo, one might say. Let's give out the...
Happy Hour Three Stars for October 29th, 2010
Third Star
Norm, for being the drunken Force master and taking a ping pong ball to mind-lifted heights never seen before.
Second Star
Sara, for sacrificing Rorie to the zombie horde after a terribly botched costume change which she got hilarious sassy about. Almost gave this star to Brad for his amazing zombie impression, but pushing Rorie into an angry pack of zombies? Memorable.
MVP of the Night
It should be no surprise that my MVP award goes to Will, for costume zaniness with (a very impressive and cardboard-y) Minecraft and Norman Chan, getting the Jedi ball to actually hover in the first place, and saving Norm. Alcohol gives you Force powers. Also thinking about boobs. These lessons are more than worthy for being the showstopper of the night. Showstealer? Stopper? Hell, I don't know.
As always, thanks to the Whiskey Media people for making my Friday nights interesting.
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Hey, kids! Count PsEG here, and boy, have I got a spoooky story for you tonight. It's so scary, even...even Luchadeer's gonna have goosebumps! Ooooh, it's enough to make a ghost scream! You know, more than they already might. Ahwoooooo!
It's the scariest story we've ever seen, I tell you! Forget approval from the Midnight Society, they'll all run in fear! It's...
The Statistics of the Community Quest that Took 3,000 Souls!
Oooooh! I'm-a gettin' the shivers just standing here. Let's get to the meat of the story, shall we? I hear it's....quite bloody! Ahahahaha. Awooo.
First, there was a community quest, and some nerd came around and he wanted to make some sense of the quest's crazy numbers. He was driven so mad, he made....a graph! Monster Mash Final Progress Ooooh, isn't that so scary! That green line, representing the pace of our completions, is hovering over a sharp red line made of BLOOD! Ooooh! The red line's the pace we needed to exceed to succeed, at risk of bloody beheading! Even worse, since the green line reached the gold line at the top, that means 3,000 of us completed the quest and succeeded! That means bonus XP...in exchange for our very souls! We'll all turn into zombies, I tell ya!
Also, you'll note that this quest started off differently than previous quest. Because the quest set was up a day before the community quest started, about 105 people completed it beforehand, which means the red and green lines get a bit of a head-start. But never mind that! Back to the spooooky story!
...what? It's pretty spooky, isn't it? I tell you, I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight after reading this, and that has nothing to do with the insomnia! Awoooo!
Next, the nerd, driven mad by the call of beasts from the netherworld, created a list of stats and numbers, now permanently locked in stasis! It's almost as if.... they were haunted! Oooooo!
Our Final Stats:
We completed this community quest in around 76 hours. No witching hour for us -- the bell's a long way away from tolling! 59 hours away, in fact.
Our final average rate of completion was 38.1 completions per hour over the course of the quest. In the last two hours, it was about 18.4 completions per hour.
In the Unrealistic Dimension of Horrors, if our overall pace remained steady, we'd have the chance to accumulate a total of 5,245 souls before Halloween.
In the Only Slightly Unrealistic Dimension of Lost Souls, based on our pace in the last two hours, we'd gather about 4,088 completions of DOOOOOOOM before the Hollow Ween.
Compared to prior successful quests, Monster Mash was...a little slow. Have a look at the following graph: Quest Comparison Graph as of Monster Mash The ghost-white line represents this quest. In fact, you'll note that out of all successful quests, Monster Mash took the longest time to succeed. Is this a sign that the community goals are closer to their proper amounts, or a sign that people are getting sick of quests? I'll let you make the assumption there.
Until the next community quest, I hope you enjoyed Count PsEG's Scary Stories! Ahwooo! AHWOOOOOOO!
If you have any questions, criticisms, or comments, please feel free to let me know in this thread! No refunds if you weren't scared!
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I guess some big game about the end of the world's out this week, huh? I've never gotten around to actually playing a Fallout game for more than thirty minutes, save for the multiplayer in Fallout Tactics. My loss? You bet! Here we are, though, digging up the past of this series for the chance at bonus XP. Let's see our percentages.
Here's the final graph:
Post Apocalyptic Vacation Final Progress The gold line at the very top was the 4,000 user goal for this community quest, the red line was the average pace we needed to exceed to succeed, and the green line was our progress over the course of the community quest.
There's a chance you'll be seeing this quest's progress bar on the site for another day or two. However, the window for this quest has expired, and we're nowhere near finishing. For that reason, this will be my final update for this quest, though I may continue tracking it so that I can compare its progress to future quests.
Some final stats:
In the last 27 hours of this quest, we gained 191 completions, a 39% drop from yesterday's numbers.
As of yesterday, we needed to exceed the average pace of 64.67 completions per hour to succeed.
Our overall average pace ended at 29.3 completions per hour. in the last two hours, the rate was closer to 8.2 completions per hour.
Considering our overall pace, we'd need at least another 58 hours to have a chance at success. Taking our completion rate from the last two hours into consideration instead, we'd need another 189 hours, or roughly eight more days.
From eyeballing my stats, it seems 4-5 PM EDT and 8-10 PM EDT had the slowest rate of completions during the quest. The fastest rate of completions typically occurred either just after midnight EDT or closer to noon EDT. EDT EDT EDT.
Of all the quest sets I've tracked, Post Apocalyptic Vacation is the second best set in terms of completion rate to have failed. Observe the comparison graph below as evidence. Quest Progress Comparison as of Post Apocalyptic Vacation
If you have any questions, comments, or criticisms, please feel free to lob them at me in this thread! I'll be back next time a community quest shows up, as always.
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Consider this a random blog of no importance or entertainment value whatsoever. You've been warned.
Needless to say (thanks to the gold medal draped on my avatar), I'm a yearly subscriber, and I love watching the subscriber-only Happy Hour live. There's a certain site's chat room I hang out in, and generally I have a damn good time watching the controlled insanity unfold while making the occasional remark or three.
One comment I like to bandy about is saying someone at Whiskey's the "MVP" of the hour if something amazing's just happened. When Brad busted out unexpectedly good rap skills in Def Jam Rapstar, or Jeff dropped the most out-of-place Mexican accent in a Comic Vine Preview Theater, I was probably saying they were totally MVP of the night in the chat. It's my way of virtually standing up and yelling, "THIS IS WHY I PAID YOU PEOPLE. THIS." It's my appreciation for moments of greatness, if you will.
This MVP talk got me thinking. Granted, I was talking to myself, and this sort of thinking's why I record community quest stats and other practically irrelevant or unnecessary information, but stick with me here. I wondered if maybe I should go about making my MVP of Happy Hour declaration each week a bit more...well, official. Set in stone. Written in a blog no one reads. Just for the hell of it. So yeah, I'm probably doing that from here on out, either in blog format (on this site and/or another Whiskey site) or in status updates. I'll announce my personal MVP, and why in a brief statement that's not long enough to spoil anything significant, but enough to make it clear that crazy shit goes down on Fridays. I don't expect anyone to read or care, but hell, I need to write more often, even if it's just a sentence or three, and it'll be more incentive for me to catch every Happy Hour.
I change my mind pretty frequently during the rough hour this special video broadcast goes on, though, and one person as MVP each week doesn't lend itself well to useless statistics. However, the three stars system hockey uses? That totally works! Kind of! I'll name the MVP, and the second and third star based on who made me appreciate my investment in the site the most each week. This is all weird, overwrought, and highly unnecessary, but damn it, that's how I roll. I'll track this behind the scenes, and maybe have stats I'll break out occasionally on this very subjective matter.
So, that said, how about I post this week's honors?
PsEG's Three Stars for the October 15th Happy Hour
Third Star
Ana, for nailing a Russian accent out of nowhere on Comic Vine Preview Theater. Talk about bringing class to the joint, and breaking out a pretty good accent out of nowhere!
Second Star
Will, for the most intense five second of Shakeweight use ever seen on the Internet. It's already in images and .gifs around the webs, I'm sure, and for good reason! The man is a beast.
MVP of the Night
Tonight's MVP award goes to Vinny & Drew, who knocked out more insanity in the video front with spontaneous explosions, fire, and enough special effects to make the hour not only feel rightfully fucking insane, but highly amusing. I always enjoy well-timed insanity in live video editing, and this week, the back room nailed it.
For future stats purposes (as if it matters), any video editing antics worthy or stars or MVPs will be charged to both Vinny & Drew, while any on-camera appearances by either dude worthy of merits will be charged to the individual.
Just to fill out some stats, I went back to past Happy Hours, and tallied up what I thought my three stars would have been for each night. Yes, I wasted that much time on this silly idea, just because the thought intrigues me.
Past Three Stars
9/17/10
MVP: Norm, for his Fushigi magic and terrible quadricopter flying, including at the only pole in the room 2nd Star: Vinny & Drew, for putting Ryan on Brad's lap and a David Bowie clip during Fushigi madness 3rd Star: Brad, for trying to kill the quadricopter and almost Double Bradding™
9/24/10
MVP: Dave, for the birthday awkward reaction to an awesome birthday gorilla 2nd Star: Brad, for amazing and unexpected falsetto rapping skills 3rd Star: Ethan, for the terribly racist Indian supervillain accent
10/01/10
MVP: Jeff, for his Mexican accent that brought down the house during Preview Theater 2nd Star: Tony, for the horrible Catwoman clip and even worse Preview Theater accent 3rd Star: Will, for unveiling the giant Minecraft phallus with a bit of wordplay
10/08/10
MVP: Vinny, for hilarious singing during the Rock Band 3 training songs and decent pro guitar/washboard use 2nd Star: Tony, for a terribly hilarious voice of Woody in Preview Theater 3rd Star: Jeff, for rocking the one-handed keyboard while nursing a beer
No clue if I'll blog about this at all in in weeks to come anywhere on the Whiskey Media network, but I might make the occasional mention of it, especially for stat purposes. Any future blogs about this will be a lot shorter, as well, now that the backlog and rationale is out of the way. I already think this idea's pretty stupid, but that hasn't stopped me before.
What you should gather from all this useless blathering: Happy Hour. It rocks.
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Ahh, the fond memories of close games, basketballs on fire, and shoving Isiah Thomas halfway across the court because the dude is friggin' tiny. Let me dust off the spreadsheets (yes, they're somehow dusty) and get some stats up for the latest community quest!
Here's the final graph...MONSTER JAM!:
He's On Fire Final Progress The yellow line at the top was the 3,000 completions we needed, the red line was the pace we needed to exceed to succeed, and the green line was our progress over the course of this quest's lifespan.
Thankfully, the final 5-10% surge helped ensure this quest didn't last all day. We finished up quickly, like dunking from half-court while on fire! I'm impressed, and not a Danica Patrick fake im pressed. Wait, that's a Blur reference. Shit, I need to just wrap up the stats and call it a week.
Our final stats:
We finished He's On Fire at 11:10 AM EDT, 64 hours into the quest. 87.8 hours remained on the clock, so we finished with plenty of time to spare.
Over the entire span of this quest, we averaged 46.9 completions per hour. In the final two hours, the average rate was around 23.2 completions per hour.
If the long-term pace held, which it never does, we could have attained 7,112 completions over the week. Using our short-term paces in the last few hours, the most conservative estimate of potential completions was 3,570. I could believe that, though a daily drop-off would lead to a lower possible total like 3,200.
In short, all that jibber-jabber above means 3,000 completions was a pretty good target, all things considered. 3,500 or 4,000 may have been more challenging, but it's also far less likely we would have succeeded.
My final Arbitrary Estimation of Success is 99.9994%. ...wait, what? We're at 3000. That should be 100% now. I guess that means there's a 0.0006% chance one of you will un-complete the quest set and nobody will notice in time to make up the lost completion. Oh, faulty statistics formulas, you're so wacky~!
Finally, here's the comparison of He's On Fire to previous quest sets. You'll notice it didn't progress all that quickly compared to past scavenger quests. Was it because people had trouble figuring out gimmick characters and old basketball games, much like they did with soccer stuff in Lovin' Cup, or was it due to a general downturn in quest interest? I leave that speculation in your hands. Quest Comparison as of He's On Fire
If you have any questions, criticisms, or comments on my wild and crazy numbers, please don't hesitate to ask!
I'll be back the next time a community quest pops up, as long as the demand's there. Thanks for reading!
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Looks like we're back to challenging the community! The lovely games this set features make for a nice pair, I'd say. At the very least, they're a dent in the wallet.
You don't care about my yammering, though, you come into this thread to care about silly amounts of stats. Here you are!
Here's the final graph:
The Odd Couple final progress The yellow line was our goal of 3,000 completions, the red line was the average progress we need to exceed to succeed, and the green line's the progress over the course of the community quest.
We win! Why do these victories always come when I'm sleeping? Still, thanks to some descriptive users who posted about how close we were, I managed to fill in a few data holes. Minor success!
Final stats:
The Odd Couple took us about 42.5 hours to complete.
We averaged 70.3 completions per hour over the course of the quest.
If we had this average pace and the rest of the allotted time with this quest, we could have attained 9,383 completions. Of course, that assumes a straight-line rate, which isn't realistic. Using a decreasing rate, I personally predict we might have been able to attain 4,191 completions.
The Pessimist's Estimation assumed we would complete this quest eight hours from my last update. The quest completed around 8:11 AM EDT. That's eerily accurate!
The Odd Couple's progress compared to previous community quests looks a little like this: Quest comparison graph as of The Odd Couple Note that I did away with the legend, and elected to put the name of every quest at the end of its line. Hopefully this works for you, because Office 2007 has crappy legends!
If you have any questions, comments, or criticism, please don't hesitate to let me know in here!
I'll be back with more crazy stats the next time one of these community quests start up.
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Hi, Giant Bomb. You mind if we have a little talk? I'll keep it to my little corner here, since the forums are kind of frightening and full of irrational vitriol and conspiracy theories at the moment.
Are we cool to do that? Awesome.
So let's discuss this whole Bombcast split. Sure has been a lot of heated talk about it, hasn't there? Not to mention Mike Tatum, Whiskey Media's resident...well, I think he works in sales in marketing, maybe finances, but I'm not sure. Essentially he's one of the toppest of men. Anyways! Mike Tatum, on the suggestion of a certain user, decided to offer up an alternative to splitting the Bombcast: Get 5,000 subscriptions of any type by 1 PM EDT on September 10th, and Whiskey Media and Giant Bomb forget about the idea for good.
We'll get into detail about that a little later, but that sounds like a community quest, doesn't it? I think I've worked with those before. Maybe? Yes. STATS INCOMING.
Subscriptions Graph as of September 10th, 10:00 AM EDT The yellow line represents the 5,000 subscription goal, the dark red line's the old pace we needed to exceed to succeed, and the dashed orange line's the old deadline before it was increased to the 15th. The bright red line's the pace we need to exceed for our new deadline, and naturally, the green line is the number of subscriptions so far.
Some quick stats:
We're currently achieving an average pace of 130 subscriptions an hour. We needed 31.9 per hour to succeed.
From this point forward, we need 4.88 subscriptions per hour to succeed.
Our current short-term pace is 45.5 subscriptions per hour.
If this pace continues, we'll either succeed in the next few hours, or by around noon tomorrow (EDT).
My Arbitrary Estimation of Success is 99.98%. My Pessimist's Estimation says it'll take as long as tomorrow afternoon or evening to succeed.
OK, graph and stats aside. It looks like we've got a good chance at succeeding, but let's get back to the real discussion here, yeah?
There's been a few misconceptions on how this whole matter's gone down, to the point that certain users are painting this as some sinister conspiracy theory to grab at our money and hold all that we love hostage. Let's look at just how this challenge started.
Obviously, users were flipping out at the idea of a split Bombcast as soon as it was announced. A mixture of knee-jerk flippancy and genuine concern, I'd say. Solutions were proposed to convince the staff to keep the Bombcast as it is, and around 12:04 AM on September 9th, Giant Bomb user Llama tweeted the following to Mike Tatum:
"@whiskeymedia ill pay 60 dollars if you keep the bombcast intact"
This was a shared sentiment by a lot of users, and Mike Tatum responded with the following:
"Thanks for the thought. It's a good one. I'll make this deal with you and the community. If u like it, please tell everyone[...] If we get 5,000 subscribers by 10amPST on 9/10, the Bombcast goes free for everyone. Forever. Deal?"
Thus began this subscription drive. You'll note that none of the Giant Bomb crew were involved in this decision, and Ryan would admit during the Big Live Live Show that Mike came up to him afterwards to mention this deal, to which Ryan basically responded, "OK."
I'm already dragging on, but let's dispel rhetoric here, point by point.
They're holding the Bombcast hostage!
Nope. The idea of splitting the Bombcast certainly isn't ideal, but the Bombcast is not being held hostage. Users who have listened to the subscription podcast already know some of this, but it's basically been said that any time-sensitive features, like discussion of news or Wii/DSi releases would fall into that first hour available to everyone at the same time as usual, and the second hour would be less dependent on the time of its release. To me, that would potentially indicate deeper discussion of what everyone's been playing and that sort of thing.
Furthermore, this wasn't an evil scheme planned from the get-go. When Llama noted that the Bombcast deal was clever marketing, Tatum replied, "God, I wish we were that clever. Honestly, we're just trying to figure out an honest way to make a living. It's taken 3 years and [...] a lot of our own money. Now we have to make some money to keep the party going."
They're in dire straits, and need money!
Well, businesses do need money, but Giant Bomb's not in trouble. If anything, this is simply the transition from start-up to finally utilizing options to monetize the site in the best manner possible. Accepting money from the users is one such way, and unlike a donation feature, this allows Whiskey Media to give something in return.
Plus, Whiskey Media's run by Shelby Bonnie, the dude that brought C|Net to life. With that and the investment capital Whiskey's attracted over time, I'd say there's enough money to keep the sites afloat for some time. It's just time to start making money so that Whiskey can grow based on its userbase and not have to woo more and more investors.
There's also been talk about this subscription drive being about the new building and its related costs, but that doesn't appear to be the case. According to Tatum, "The short answer is we are paying less rent here than we were in Sausalito. The landlord is a GOOD friend!"
They could just put ads all over the site and we wouldn't need this!
How many ads have you seen recently? Those of us from the US have seen only a few, while international users see even less. Truth is, Whiskey's been relatively picky about who they'll take ads from in the past, as has been evidenced by the lack of any marketing and the constant questions of "how do these guys make money?" that used to inundate the forums.
The quality of ads has been relaxed somewhat since Whiskey signed a deal to have Sixapart grab most of their ads, but overall it's been stated that the only way to make enough money off of ads alone at this point would involve annoying dick pills ads, along with a bunch of pop-ups, pop-unders, eye blasters, and all those horrible ads we either hate or use Adblock Plus or another blocker to avoid. It's been stated that the staff loathe these ads, and generally they'll do anything to avoid them. Those that listened to the podcast also know Dave would rather work on fun stuff on the site instead of working of ways to deliver ads to users. Oh, and advertisers aren't willing to invest enough into the Bombcast to make that a worthwhile venture.
Key is, if you want a site you could enjoy visiting, ads are almost certainly not enough to keep Giant Bomb going at this point.
They lied to us about not changing anything!
Not really. This is a matter of quotes being taken out of context or simplified. Dave Snider has said in the past that he hates putting up paywalls, and that the site as we know it wouldn't take away anything already available. Yes, people will say the Bombcast split does exactly this, but the Bombcast will still be available to everyone over time, and the most crucial features will be in that first hour. Free users aren't losing the Bombcast. Plus, all the "Enhanced Community Interaction" stuff isn't so much putting up a paywall as it is giving dedicated users a chance for silly, meaningless interaction with the staff they enjoy. Free users can still enjoy the site and look at the rest of us for being weirdos (except for Lemon).
Of course, considering the odds the Bombcast won't be split based on subscription numbers, this really might be much ado about nothing. At the very worst, it's much ado about piddling semantics, as far as I'm concerned. People who say their trust has forever been shattered by a company trying to figure out ways to create incentives for a subscription program due to a few missteps are, quite frankly, people who almost certainly had little trust to begin with (and from the people I've seen dragging out this accusation, it seems accurate thus far), and that's unfortunate.
Giant Bomb and Whiskey Media are conspiring against their users!
Honestly, if you've dealt with the Giant Bomb staff for this long and you think their actions are intended to scam or con the userbase, you're completely ignoring Whiskey's business and marketing plans. Their plans are to create niche groups of dedicated fans for each subject that can relate to the staff and work with them to create a passionate and involved community.
Hell, that's the whole point. You get a bunch of devoted users, and they'll appreciate when a game company with good games decides to market directly to them, rather than the fodder of a general game site that covers everything. Of course, that also means they'll shit on really bad games marketed to them, but such is the risk with a business plan like this.
However, if you can't fathom anyone on the staff working on anything in your best interests, and consider them your enemy, it might be best to find another site to use. That's really an unhealthy, negative relationship that no one needs.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed our little talk. If not, hey, I'm sorry for wasting your time. I just hate to see communities get all irrationally angry, you know? This happens all the time in MMOs. Every major patch would set off a whirlwind of hatred and threats to leave or unsubscribe from the userbase, but nine times out of ten it wouldn't amount to anything. I'm hoping (and relatively sure) that's the case here, as well.
11 Comments
Here's another strange set that the staff have all but admitted doesn't make for a good community quest. Still, it has created the strangest surge of conversations I've seen in quite some time. As forced as the discussion might be, I've talked to a few decently cool dudes who I wouldn't have had a conversation with otherwise. Then there's the whole profile views situation, and people discovering that Brock Lesnar's finisher is also a great way to complete that quest far too quickly.
It's all very strange. How about we step away from that stuff and discuss some stats?
Here's the final graph of our progress:
Final Progress for Stalker Status The gold bar at the top represents the 2,000 user goal. The bright red line is the average pace we needed to exceed to succeed, and the green line is the progress we made over this quest's duration. The dashed orange line is the beginning of the "danger zone," at which point the quest could have technically ended any day, as Friday could be considered the end of the week (and has been once in the past). The dark red line represents the accelerated progress we would have needed were the quest to have ended on Friday.
Not a strong finish, but completely within reasonable bound of estimates. Regardless, I made a new friend or two on the site with this quest, so no major complaints on my part. Here's hoping that the next quest set is either not a community quest or something the community can work together on with a more reasonable target. I could use a break from these 3 AM posts on the weekend! Yes, I know, I bring it upon myself. What of it?
Our final stats:
We needed 2,000 completions to succeed. We failed, and only attained 254 completions over the week.
Our final average was 1.9 completions per hour. We needed an average of over 14.87 completions per hour to be successful.
Funny enough, my ballpark estimate of 255 yesterday was closer to our final number than the Pessimist's Estimation of 244-247 completions. That statistic might begin turning into a sometimes feature, even if it does produce more realistic numbers than a straight-line estimate.
The Arbitrary Estimation of Success predicted 0% success of chance correctly all throughout the week, as if that was actually hard to predict by day 2.
The last quest, Welcome Wagon, had about another 18.5 hours before I stopped tracking it. However, at 134.5 hours in, it had 483 completions. That means we had slightly more than half of the completions Welcome Wagon did. ... SUCCESS! Here's a comparison graph of all the quests I've tracked thus far: Quest Comparison Graph as of Stalker Status
It's getting a little crowded, isn't it? I'm going to have to deal with that matter before much longer. I'm running out of good color choices here!
If you have any questions, comments, or criticisms, feel free to ask or let me know! In this thread. Don't worry about my wall. It's been properly overwhelmed by now, thank you very much. (Though if you want to write a message on my wall, I'm determined to reply to most wall posts this week. Just know that it won't benefit me at all, since I've already completed this quest set thanks to the kindness of others)
*The Arbitrary Estimation of Success is based off of somewhat faulty formulas, and is subject to change drastically if the completion rate changes drastically from one day to the next.
**The Pessimist's Estimation is based off of an estimated daily decrease in completions, including a drastic estimated decrease between the first 24 hours and the first 48 hours. It is subject to change wildly if user completions drop off far more or less than expected on a daily basis. 65 Comments
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