Gaming After 40 - One Year In!

The Gaming After 40 blog was officially launched on April 16 of 2009, so today marks its one-year anniversary.  I'm going to use this post to indulge in a little progress review and invite you, the reader, to let me know how we're doing.

So far, we've published over 300 posts, including 28 video podcasts.  Since late 2009 I've managed to post something every day, and intend to continue doing so, though I may change up the topic mix a bit.  We established a Facebook page, which echoes the blog in a potentially more convenient format, and there are YouTube, iTunes and blip.tv distribution channels for the video podcast.  I don't do as much as I could to  publicize the blog, so I truly appreciate all the friends and visitors who have linked to it this past year.  We got stumbled upon once, linked to as a reference from a Wikipedia entry, and referenced by NPR and several of our fellow bloggers.

Looking at what brings visitors here, the most popular topic seems to be adventure games.  The Great Scott Project in August of 2009 covered an even dozen of Scott Adams' classic text adventures, and was popular enough to launch the ongoing Adventure of the Week feature.  Eventually I'll get to Mr. Adams' Adventure #13: Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle and beyond to the QuestProbe series, I promise.

The video podcasts originated when I ran across an old multimedia game in a dollar store and decided the best way to cover its ineptitude was with video footage.  My early efforts were pretty poor in terms of sound and video quality, but I'm happier with the more recent episodes.  The show has also become more ambitious, and more time-consuming to produce, as time has gone on, so I may start doing an episode every OTHER week instead of on a weekly basis.  The videos seem to reach a different audience than the blog, and even the old episodes continue to draw a few new viewers each week.  And I enjoy producing them and learning the tools and techniques involved, so I definitely intend to keep the podcast going.  But I have scripted several ideas that will take more than a few days of writing, shooting and editing to put together, and if I'm going to pull some of those ideas off I may have to cut back on the frequency a bit, or find some "cheater" topics I can cover more quickly now and then.

The weekend ad posts will continue as long as I can come up with vintage videogame advertisements at which to poke fun.  Every week I think I'm hitting the end of the line, but research into the archives continues to be productive.  And of course, I'll continue to cover unusual and/or interesting games -- such articles continue to give me a reason to sit down and spend some time with great (and not-so-great) games of all vintages.

So that's where Gaming After 40 is at.  What I have to figure out next is where it should be going in its second year.

So... whether you're a regular reader, or a new visitor randomly running across us, please leave some feedback in the comments for this post and tell me how YOU think we're doing.  I'm particularly interested in knowing which features you enjoy and which you could do without.  I get some information from the traffic statistics, but genuine reader feedback is more valuable.  I'd like you to have a reason to stop by at least once a week and see what's going on here.

And thanks very much for reading and watching and stopping by from time to time.  Your time and eyeballs are greatly appreciated.

YOU even read the whole post.  Kudos!