2012 in Review

Another year has come and gone.  As I reflect on a year of blogging, gaming, and industry events, I’m full of mixed emotions.  Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog in 2012

We had more traffic this year than ever before!  We started blogging in February 2007 meaning we’re almost six years old.  I’m extremely proud that last year we grew our daily readership by 53%.  That’s insane!  I can’t believe so many more people now visit us daily compared to the start of 2011.  We didn’t hype any major MMO releases, come up with any new phrases adopted by the industry, or receive any magical exclusives to drive traffic.   I think the biggest increases came from two blog posts that were done simply to help people:

Each of the above brought in hundreds of thousands of people.  Maybe this means we should go into tech support instead of musing about games all day?

I’m always fascinated by how I wrote during the year.  Some years I’m hyped up, others I’m negative.  Some years I feel full of ideas and inspired to share my thoughts on how games should be made, and others I just analyze what’s happening.  This year was really ‘matter of fact’.  I commented a lot on the state of things.  Although this isn’t my favorite style (I prefer sharing ideas I have for how games can be made) it was needed, and fit the events of 2012.

‘Sandbox vs. Themepark’ and ‘Old school vs. A New Trope’ were extremely hot topics that came up in some form every month.  I didn’t debate F2P as much as I did in 2011 because that topic took a back seat to analyzing why games are 3 monthers, or why MMOs die.   I think we really dug into what MMOs are doing to deserve their classification, and discovered together what makes them fail and succeed.  I’ve had a wonderful time learning from what you have to say in the comments.  Keep it up!

Check out more of my 2012 in review including my year-end thoughts on specific MMO’s after the break. (more…)

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