After the recent controversies, the number of daily visitors to this blog have increased around 50%.
Even on those days that I post something game-related or not at all dramatic or particularly entertaining. Even on those odd days that I don't even post.
I've heard from a few other bloggers that they've experienced an increase in visitors lately as well.
I can understand visitor spikes during controversies, because everyone loves a good car wreck. But why would the visitors keep coming afterwards?
Perhaps the blogs have become a daily stop for people in hopes of yet another soap opera breaking out, and they hope to be in on it from the beginning.
Or maybe, just maybe, people are looking past the shitslinging, see that there is some substance to this whole traditional gaming thing which inspires such passion in the first place, and are sticking around for that.
Whichever. Welcome, new people! Start or join a gaming group! And try the Death Frost Doom... er, the veal!
Even on those days that I post something game-related or not at all dramatic or particularly entertaining. Even on those odd days that I don't even post.
I've heard from a few other bloggers that they've experienced an increase in visitors lately as well.
I can understand visitor spikes during controversies, because everyone loves a good car wreck. But why would the visitors keep coming afterwards?
Perhaps the blogs have become a daily stop for people in hopes of yet another soap opera breaking out, and they hope to be in on it from the beginning.
Or maybe, just maybe, people are looking past the shitslinging, see that there is some substance to this whole traditional gaming thing which inspires such passion in the first place, and are sticking around for that.
Whichever. Welcome, new people! Start or join a gaming group! And try the Death Frost Doom... er, the veal!
Not just visitors but new followers as well. I've got 70 in my sights, and I note that you're not far shy of the 200 mark. At least one of mine has found me through the Bring Back Chgowiz phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteYou know what they say - there's only one thing worse than being talked about and that's not being talked about.
Well, I usually check out a few blogs each night, but I had to check all of them to find out about the latest 'controversy', then recheck all of them to find out why this was considered a controversy.
ReplyDeleteOnce I found out that it wasn't really shocking or exciting, I went back to the usual visits.
Keep up the good work, anyway.
I would guess it has something to do with people reporting the drama on popular message boards.
ReplyDeleteFor my part, I just discovered this and the other OSR blogs slightly prior to the recent controversies.
ReplyDeleteI'm just getting back into RPGs after a 25-ish year hiatus and I naturally gravitated to the OSR because AD&D and B/X are the games I know. I've read through 3.5 and it's not for me and from what I've read of 4e neither is that.
I'm here daily, "looking past..."
ReplyDeleteIt could just be a coincidence. I basically 'found' the OSR community completely through happenstance. Someone on a web forum I frequent posted a thread about West Marches and from there I found a ton of OSR blogs. I spent several weeks absorbing information from them and hadn't really even heard of TARGA until the meltdown. Then I went to some others just to find out what all the fuss was about. But, being in the process of creating a sandbox style game and trying to figure out system stuff that will work for what I want to do, I'll be hanging around for a while. I'm even blogging about it too. I've never DMed before so all these blogs (yours as well) have been really helpful.
ReplyDeleteI had a huge spike (my biggest day ever) when I posted about the TARGA stuff and have added blogspot followers, feedburner subscribers (a 50% increase), and visits. Since that post I've had over 100 visits a day and every day I've posted over 150. Before I ran 40-50 with peaks of about 100 when I posted.
ReplyDeleteNow, I did post 5 days straight last week, which is unusual for me historically.
Echo-ing @Amanda, MY visitation is purely coincidental. Roger and myself were chatting about our old buddy "Jim", and I took my bi-annual peer into the gem of seeing (Google) to find out. Glad I did, far more compelling and relatable to me when your efforts focused untold hours upon the death metal scene.
ReplyDeleteAs for drama and flame wars, you bloggers LOVE it.
More like many people who were viewing one or two blogs suddenly became aware of the interconnected nature of the OSR bloggings due to the shitstorm.
ReplyDeleteI keep coming back because I just discovered the OSR. I have been playing with the same group for years, and then I read a MSM blog that mentioned Grognardia.
ReplyDeleteI am so happpppppppppy!
(and it was a stupid controversy)