Unfettered Blather

On May 31st, 2009, I will be pulling the plug on Unfettered Blather. This is not a decision I entered into lightly. In its heyday, this site used to draw over 500 unique visitors a day. I have been linked on Instapundit and was linked once by Major Nelson. I’ve never had the most popular or renowned website, but for a brief period it was doing exactly what I wanted it to do. The purpose of this site was always a means to foster discussion. Unlike a forum, by posting topics of interest to me I was able to be exposed to instant differences of opinion, and sometimes validation of my beliefs. I primarily talked about videogaming here, which is my primary hobby. I love discussing games. As a software professional with a decade of experience, videogaming is interesting to me from the perspective of both design and business, and I was always interested in talking about either aspect. I’d much rather discuss the storytelling approach of Fable II or the design decisions that went into it then discuss whether or not the game was “good”. Sure, I’ve had some discussions on what is “fun”, but sometimes a game can be very good and still not bring much joy with it.

Without too much effort, this site easily draws 200 unique visitors a day, which is enough to get the occassional comment and rare real discussion going. I seem to bring in an inordinate amount of spammers as well. A lot of bloggers scratch their heads over how to increase traffic, but it’s really not that hard, it is a lot of work. To me, an audience was important because this was a place to interact, sometimes be told outright that I’m wrong. I was sanguine with differing opinions. I’m willing to have my mind changed. However, getting that audience and maintaining it? I just can’t do it right now. Without that interaction, this place is just a digital soapbox for me, and I lack the sense of self importance to post routine rants about how wise I am and how messed up the world is. Let me break it down like this.

Games or blogging?
If I mostly talk about gaming, what good does it do for me to blog instead of play games? I’ve been in this situation before and it led to a year long hiatus. You can’t write about what you love and not do what you love anymore. Between the longer hours at work and studying for my certification I know I’m going to be looking at a choice once more. I play games to relieve stress. I write to clear up the clutter in my brain. I have other means to accomplish both, but I’d rather spend the time playing games then writing about games. I could write here and there, but that’s only going to drive my numbers down and turn this place into yet another digital soapbox, another voice adding to the cacophony. No thanks.

I need to focus on my career.
I spent most of my time at my previous employer leading software development teams. Not as a manager per se, but usually the guy right below. I loved this role and it helped me decide how I wanted to proceed. I knew I would end up in management some day, but I got there about five years earlier than planned. Now that I’m here and the economy sucks eggs, I really have no choice but to plow forward. I need to focus on getting my Project Management Professional certification and maybe after that I might try to learn more about .NET so I can share more common ground with the team I lead.

People are more important.
While I want to focus on my career and enjoy my hobby, the other distraction is my team. I made a commitment when I became the manager of this team that I would set and example, be honest about ways I could improve myself, and look for ways to grow them in their jobs and careers. I care about these people. They are not my friends, but I don’t think of them as employees. They are my teammates, the people who I rely on everyday. I owe them my best. Focusing on blog articles, formulating ideas, trying to schedule with Buddy, these are all activities that take my focus away from people who rely on me to lead them and stand up for them. We had a layoff this month and I take it personally that some members of my team lost their jobs. Did I really do my job to the best of my ability? Was there anything I could do to make our business better? I don’t know that there was anything I could have done to prevent what happened, but I do know that I have an obligation to make sure my team is always doing there best, because their jobs depend on it.

Family is the most important
I’ve routinely put my family before blogging, this was never a choice. Certainly they are not causing me to give this up now. However, I won’t lie and say that they are not yet another reason I need to give up this site. All told, not counting domain registration costs, this website costs about $14 a month. Pocket change compared to my gaming budget. Still, with the economy being what it is, every expense we don’t need is simply a drain. I want to be out of debt this year, I don’t know if that will happen. At best we’ll be done by November, at worst we’ll be done by February. Once we’re clear, I will have an extra $800 a month to fall back on. That is a huge chunk of change to me. I need to get this financial pressure off my family. It’s not good for my wife because she stresses. I’ve been out of work before and with the recent layoffs at my company it makes her more nervous. Mentally, I need to focus some of my energies on the house in addition to my career and my team. I haven’t been writing as much because I simply lack the concentration.

All that said, I am not turning the website over to Buddy Pine. While Buddy is a good friend, his business is booming and he has about as much time as I do. We talked at length about this last week and both agreed that neither one of us can continue the site.

I’d still like to write about games, but I can’t do it as a one man show. I’d consider a writing gig on the side, guest blogger, volunteer work, whatever. I just can’t do it five times or even three times a week anymore.

I loved running this website, I loved writing, and I loved it when a real discussion cropped up. I’ll miss doing this. I won’t promise that this is my last post on the site, I’ll see if any follow-up is needed. However, if this is not the last word here, it will be even lighter than normal until May 31st finally arrives.

For those that care, I am going to chronicle the best and worst of entertainment I sampled last year. Just keep in mind that I don’t limit my lists to things released in 2008. The order is as follows.

Jan 6th - Worst Books of 2008
Jan 7th - Best Books of 2008
Jan 8th - Worst Movies of 2008
Jan 9th - Best Movies of 2008
Jan 12th - Worst DVD’s of 2008
Jan 13th - Best DVD’s of 2008
Jan 14th - Worst Games of 2008
Jan 15th - Best Games of 2008
Jan 16th - Games we missed last year

Since that ties up two solid weeks I’m probably going to abandon my strict one post a day rule. In fact, I’m abandoning it altogether this coming year. That worked fine for what I was trying to accomplish last year but this year is different.

Statistics without context are meaningless. That is a phrase I use often and wholeheartedly when people throw statistics at me. As I have toiled to bring comprehensive statistics around my spending habits this year for my favorite hobby I know that I do certain things behind the scenes that may not paint the whole picture. While I have enjoyed journaling my “Gaming Journey” this year it has been a lot of work. I have attempted this in the past but using slightly different metrics and reporting metrics. While the “Best” and “Worst” are largely subjective the statistics I generate every month are done with a very precise methodology. However, the numbers only tell part of the story.

Repurchases Count-
Titles that I have played before and purchased again this year are not eligible for the top or bottom 10 lists. They do count towards total titles purchased and also for the price averages. This is because the price averages and title counts are supposed to reflect purchasing habits for the year.

Game Platforms Excluded-
Games my kids purchase with their own funds or DS games, purchased by me or them, are not included. I justify this because I will never play these games myself and I have other associated costs with gaming that I don’t track. The price averages I report every month are supposed to represent what I am spending on my hobby. There have been a handful of games purchased for the kids that I have never even attempted but included because of the potential of a play session with these games when the kids are present.

Bundled Games Not Tracked-
Any game that is bundled with something as an actual zero cost or does not have a strong price point associated with it not included in the average. In other words, a game like Wii Sports is not listed with any price and not averaged into the monthly statistics. It counts as part of the title count, but is omitted entirely from the price average. So, in other words, I may report 14 titles purchased for the Wii this year but for the price average I only include 13 titles. Some bundled games that have no particular discount and can be purchased as a separate retail product are counted. For instance, even though I purchased the Rock Band 2 Special Edition for $190 I went ahead and put the actual game down as $60. This is because I can buy the game stand-alone for that much while everything else is a “Hardware Purchase”. On the other hand, the Arcade Games included with my X-Box 360 are considered bundled even though they are sold separately because they were discounted and the cost of the whole unit is too tightly interwoven to really identify a strong price. Overall I realize this somewhat skews the data but I believe it evens out.

Hardware Purchases Don’t Count-
I have made significant hardware purchases this year but I don’t include it because what I am really interested in is cost-per-game. This is one of the reason I don’t count bundled sales for games like Wii Sports because the game is secondary to the hardware purchase. On the other hand, when the hardware purchase is secondary to the game then I don’t count the game as “Bundled”. Thus, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Rock Band 2 are calculated using a new release price of $60 each even though in both cases they were purchased with additional hardware. The cost of the hardware does not count towards the cost of the game. While it might be interesting to see what I spend on hardware and peripherals these are not established trends and I suspect that the numbers would fluctuate too much for 2009 to make any good comparisons.

Tax is exempted -
In the past I have tried to capture every last penny spent, but I realize this is not always helpful. To prevent gaming the system I have decided to simply track the retail price. This simplifies the information I have to track, keeps me from having to refer to receipts, and since sales tax is near universal in the United States of America I figure paying it is just par for the course. If it wasn’t for videogames I’d just be paying sales tax on something else.

Played on Dates Used for Calculations-
Some games are purchased prior to when they can actually be played. A game that is purchased towards the end of the month may not be reported until the end of the month. Some games reported in December were actually purchased in November. When titles sit for sufficient time they may never show up in the Top or Bottom 10 but I may add them to the title counts and price averages if I feel I’ve owned it long enough that I should have played it. Take some comfort in knowing that even games I never quite got around to have been played by the kids. No game goes unopened in my house! This may throw off the monthly averages somewhat but I feel better about calculating the statistics for when a game is actually used rather than purchased. This just keeps all the record-keeping tidier for me.

So this is where we arrive at over 10 months later and the end of the year is nigh! I want to talk more about the emerging trends at a later date. I certainly think I’ve accumulated enough data even though the year is not up to make some assertions about my spending habits and how the various platforms have done for me. What most interests me is to look at the amount of money I spent this year on games, which is not an insubstantial sum, and realize that the money for a PS3 was definitely there and yet I never quite bit. Again, a topic for another day but my lack of every platform of this generation is certainly not due to a financial limitation. As I have always said, if you want something badly enough you can usually find the means to acquire it.

I almost always robo-post the night before. Thus anything you read is done the previous day and then set to publish itself at 7am the next day.

Well….

War World was finally released on X-Box Live Arcade and I love me some giant robot action. Thus, no post.

Friday and Monday were the only two days to go without a post all year. When I made the commitment this year to write every day, which I meant as “write every weekday” I upheld that commitment whether it be through my own efforts or from Buddy backing me up on off days. I made that commitment because I really wanted to improve my writing style. I still see problems with the way I write, I still want to improve, but I have also seen some improvement this year in how I write. I was thrilled when someone at work noted how much better I communicated in e-mail compared to our customers or most of the staff. That actually meant something to me. I do have my shortfalls though and it’s tough to overcome the bad habits that I developed over many years. In fact, the excercise of the this year may have reinforced some bad habits even while it helped improve my writing style. That is a pitfall of writing everyday.

I hated missing those days but I was just out. I didn’t even have the motivation to do a “Hey, I’m here post”. I couldn’t see the point. I’ve had a lot going on at work and, well hell I’m not going to cover it here. This isn’t MySpace! If you want angst there are plenty of other places for it. In short, I would rather miss my commitment by a couple of days than do a “Woe is me post”. Hell, even when I nearly drowned I felt like I was fairly optimistic afterwards. I’m a firm believer in no one wants to hear my drama. It would be different if I were a woman, because then opportunistic lonely men would use my hard times to hit on me regardless if I were already in a relationship or not and then mask it as concern. Fortunately, I suppose, I am a rather average and slightly overweight man and thus I get to avoid some of the more awkward comments some of my contemporaries might get.

If 2008 has been my search for improvement, then 2009 is going to be my search for relevance. I am questioning the very existence of this blog, especially as gaming blogs become more common. I just don’t have it in me to become a political punidt, and there aren’t many other topics that I feel I have enough expertise in that people will actually read. I enjoy talking about technology theory and success management, but these are topics that are part of a tiny niche. In truth, I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but I have some ideas.