Disqus - Latest Comments for JRSherrod

Re: I heart X-Play. I hate Xbox customer service

JRSherrod — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:57:12 -0000

Don't be a snooty idiot: it's good for people like Sessler to discourage fanboyism. If Sessler managed to discourage a single person from fanboyism, it was worth it.

Re: I heart X-Play. I hate Xbox customer service

JRSherrod — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:52:07 -0000

Don't feel old. I feel somewhat old and that's because my first game was Super Mario Bros when I was four years old in 1989. That's nothing compared to folks from the previous generation who can remember the dawning of Pong clones.

Re: I heart X-Play. I hate Xbox customer service

JRSherrod — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:09:55 -0000

In your shoes (ha, sorry) I would've just went with the PC version of the game. Microsoft customer service is a problem? Take them out of the picture! I'm sure you can even use your 360 controller with the game.

Re: Dan Sock?

JRSherrod — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:33:06 -0000

You don't know who John Davison is? For shame!

Re: Sore Thumbs

JRSherrod — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:08:12 -0000

Not at all to knock it, but what Shoe described was essentially the working process behind any quality publication. I would have loved to be lucky enough to have a second team of people to look at my PDFs as a luxury step after they were laid out and filled with content. My mind can barely wrap around the concept of having a separate art team. Four-digit budgets for freelance art? What a wet dream! I always had to solicit whatever art I could get for free from struggling artists who wanted the exposure. It wasn't even a budgetary issue. In order to cut a check I needed to get approval from three consecutive asleep-at-the-wheel bureaucrats, which just won't do when you need art this week for a publication next week.

I disagree somewhat with Shoe's comments on web articles' immunity to the editing process until after the fact. You can submit an article for editing and commenting by several people (at the same time) with Google Docs' sharing features, and GDocs handles revision history in case someone screws something up. As well, all quality content management systems (CMS) include a 'draft' feature. There's no excuse for errors in evergreens or feature articles; only rushed news articles and low-traffic blog entries that aren't worth the eyes. CMS tools have preview features which show what the article looks like on the website before it's live. The infrastructure is available: it's up to brave, dedicated journalists to actually make use of it.

Re: Sore Thumbs

JRSherrod — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:19:06 -0000

I like taking the email interviews to the next level of internet and doing them over voIP: skype, ventrilo, whatever the interviewee is up for is fine really. I record the interview, and then transcribe it. While there's no face-to-face in that, it allows the interview to produce blocks of text that are stylistically more conversational. If I could get some sort of webcam video-interview thing going, that'd be even better...

Re: Cut Scene

JRSherrod — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:12:08 -0000

I sent Nick an email, hopefully we can help with the technical problems.

Re: Goodbye Sore Thumbs. Hello...?

JRSherrod — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:07:40 -0000

I'm glad to see that you guys are making plans, pulling dollars, and building momentum! That's a veritable hall of fame's worth of games journalism talent you've got on your hands, and I hope that everything goes swimmingly. If you guys ever need any back-end technical support for getting things running, you have my email.

I recommend you have Crispin continue working his Peggle in the shadows: clearly he isn't -interested- in the Sore Thumbs limelight. Perhaps he should write a stylebook for news, previews, reviews, and features to help everyone get things started? I mean sure, his articles are entertaining, intelligent, and downright suave: but if Crispin doesn't find them fulfilling, who are we to solicit his genius thus? Minds should be left to the work that comes to them most naturally. Maybe for Crispin, this consists of some serious Peggle. Only time (and Crispin) will tell.

Re: 2008 Ex-EGM Awards: The Most Overshadowed Games of the Year

JRSherrod — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:14:34 -0000

Shoe, my email is jrsherrod@gmail.com.

Sorry to hear about your friends' loss in the UGO sale. Did you know this was coming? A lot of people are waiting to hear what you have to say about this whole thing...

Re: 2008 Ex-EGM Awards: The Introduction

JRSherrod — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:56:20 -0000

http://www.echoecho.com/htm...

That will help you shrink the donate button to a nicer size. I recommend making it about the size of the (welcome) link and putting it just to the right of it, which is what I think you were saying you wanted to do anyway.

I'm going to visit a web-developer buddy of mine for dinner, so I'll ask him where in the source to put those buttons so they work, and about shifting that paypal button to the side of the header.

Re: 2008 Ex-EGM Awards: The Introduction

JRSherrod — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:16:34 -0000

I had a sneaking suspicion that you weren't HTML guys. It's nothing to be ashamed about: you're wildly talented at producing and editing good content, and nobody can be good at *everything*. No worries Shoe, this stuff is easy copy/paste just like Google ads and Disqus.

Believe it or not, the easiest one to install is the donate button, as Paypal walks you through the whole thing:
https://www.paypal.com/us/c...

If you don't like the idea of using Paypal and want to use a competing service, Google has one called Checkout: http://checkout.google.com/...
I have no idea whether being disqualified from Google Ads affects your ability to register for this... but you can always just skip it and use Paypal.

The social media buttons are only slightly less simple to install, because you have to put the code in the right place, as opposed to anywhere visible. All you have to do is put their code in the portion of your source-code which displays each article. Even if you're not going to put them up right away, save these links for the next time you let someone tinker with the site:
http://digg.com/tools/integ...
http://www.reddit.com/buttons/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/...
http://technorati.com/widge... (at the top, it's the favorite button)

As for something you can do sometime when you're bored to pull more traffic from Facebook, check out Facebook Pages: http://www.facebook.com/bus...
This one requires zero coding knowledge. Once you have a Facebook Page set up, link to it with an image of the Facebook favicon somewhere near the top of the page, or at least in a blog post letting people know that Sore Thumbs is on Facebook. People can then declare themselves to be fans of your site to their friends on their Facebook pages, which will boost traffic.

Even though I've not met you, if you wanted to let me do this stuff for you I -would- gladly do it, however I am pretty inept at this stuff as well. If you needed anything beyond very simple modifications like these buttons, I wouldn't be able to do it. The extent of my HTML knowledge is formatting text, inserting links, and inserting pictures (which I know how to insert as links, which is all a button really is...). If you can do these things, you can probably handle these buttons.

Re: 2008 Ex-EGM Awards: The Introduction

JRSherrod — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:46:32 -0000

I don't know about ad networks, but your blog is hardly lowly, and you could easily pull something similar to what ViolentAcres is doing and sell ad space independently: check out http://www.violentacres.com... to see what I mean. Make sure to utilize popularity farms like Technorati, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. There are extensions (like digg and reddit buttons) available from all of these services that integrate with your blog to not only help track traffic, but actually generate it. You already have respectable traffic, and you do next to nothing to advertise.

In a couple minutes I'm going to submit your ex-EGM awards and introduction to Digg and Reddit, just because I love you to pieces and I've been reading you since I was ten years old. I'll link to them here so you can see what I'm talking about, and hopefully people will like what you have up, even though all you've had to do is solicit emails from your friends. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR THOUGH: Link to part 2 of your awards in part 1, and link to part 1 of your awards in part 2. As you add articles in a series, ALWAYS make them refer to all the other parts in the series. This miniscule effort keeps people on your site for longer and generates more traffic, and it makes reading your features easier on readers.

You don't need to be a part of an ad network so much as you need to convince people to purchase ad space from you. Ad networks pay less than that does because they're doing the work for you, but if you're popular enough (and you guys already are, people just don't know about your blog), the sales generate themselves if you have a page up like ViolentAcres does. For another example, take a look at what Penny Arcade does and just think: that could be you.

Want to generate a hype paragraph for an advertising sales page like Violent Acres'? Get mentioned in a few places where people love you: not just in Jennifer Tsao's blog but also in Penny Arcade, any Ziff pubs if it's not a legal conflict of interest, and plug the relevant spots you've already been syndicated/employed.

You dropped the ball a little bit when you wrote all that awesome industry insider content over the past couple months and didn't add anything to the following pages:
http://www.reddit.com/domai...
http://digg.com/search?s=so...§ion=all&type=all&area=all&sort=score

The hits you already have are (to my knowledge) only from word of mouth on your own blogs, and look at the number of people that not only read your site, but actively comment. It takes only a few minutes of effort per article you write to pull in a lot more traffic, and as a result a lot more money.

Also, don't think of a donations button as asking for a hand-out. Think of it this way: you're already providing free subscriptions via your RSS feed, and free content whenever you post it. Some people take these things and feel that they're worth investing in and want to send you money. These are people who previously paid for EGM subscriptions because it was YOU producing the magazine. This is the same thing. Previously, it was Ziff Davis collecting subscription fees and turning maybe some of that into salary for you. Just think of the donate button and the advertising space on the sides as replacing Ziff Davis in that transaction. There was a time when you didn't mind getting paid to write about games, and you don't seem to hate writing about them now, so quit with the 'weird feelings' shit and take the goddamn money. Please.

Re: 2008 Ex-EGM Awards: The Introduction

JRSherrod — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:28:55 -0000

Did I mention ads and syndication? I did. What about a donate button? Shoe, Crispin: when your readers are asking you to allow them to hand you money, who are you to say no?

Re: 2008 Ex-EGM Awards: The Introduction

JRSherrod — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:27:04 -0000

...as though it would be -hard- to throw a few ads on the site and thereby obtain and throw a little booty at your faithful comrades!

I think all your other RSS subscribers out there will agree that there's nothing wrong with a little shameless pimping of the site if it fuels additional content.

Furthermore...

You guys have a truly unique opportunity as well-recognized freelancers to monetize and milk success from this blog. What else are you doing with your work-time that could possibly surpass the realization of such a brilliant dream?

Hell, if you could come up with a decent enough regular column here commenting on the industry, you may even be able to sell syndication out to a few print magazines.

Get paid!

Re: Two links...one quick, one not so much

JRSherrod — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:52:26 -0000

Games journalism supergroup interviews itself about its primary money-making function? So hot. I'm glad Shawn got around to this.

Re: Life after gaming journalism: The top 6 career paths

JRSherrod — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:10:46 -0000

Don't you know? These guys wrote EGM. That's what they did together on one big project.

Re: Life after gaming journalism: The top 6 career paths

JRSherrod — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:23:55 -0000

It's all extremely interesting to journos in college and under-exposed to all except editors and people with 'zines who can't afford the maga. I was kinda crossing my fingers that you'd like to write a post about all that. Ad direction et cetera does a lot to shape a publication even though it doesn't immediately stand out to most.

Re: Life after gaming journalism: The top 6 career paths

JRSherrod — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:04:06 -0000

Stay meta-journalism, it looks good on you guys. If comments successfully solicit frequent posts, my keyboard will remain lubed up and on its knees for Sore Thumbs. If you guys take requests, I'd love to know anything about how much financial control of a publication you got at a big magazine like EGM when you were running the editorial show. Can you mandate equipment purchases and fancy promotions (like pack-ins, foil covers, ads, etc), or are you strictly dealing with content on the page? How much does Ziff hand over the reins, and how much do they hold on? ...Or is this kinda stuff off-limits for some legal reason?

Re: Sore Thumbs

JRSherrod — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:56:58 -0000

Looks good if he follows through. I'm glad to see so much ex-Ziff appear in the blog format and outside the restrictions of 1up. Free-form journalism that remembers its roots is always refreshing. Yes, I know 1up was relatively free, but not quite like this.

Re: Shit lit

JRSherrod — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:19:47 -0000

My problem is that potential employers are looking for a person to fulfill one of the roles I am capable of. I do that, tell them I am capable of an order of magnitude more, and people who do not want me to replace them marginalize me and I end up having to leave over office politics. I've had the misfortune of not finding a single down-to-earth publication to work at since community college.

Re: Shit lit

JRSherrod — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:26:07 -0000

"Too many hats."

Seriously. No one will hire you after you add Photoshop, InDesign/Quark, ad sales, network administration, marketing, and distribution (physical, HTML/CSS) to that list. No company wants one name scribbled on so many vital organs of their publication unless it's famous.