Retrospective - 10 Years: From Gamestay to Busy Gamer Nation

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On September 22, 2003, I published the first item on Busy Gamer Nation. Only, we weren't Busy Gamer Nation then. We were Gamestay.

Gamestay

I wanted it to be Gamewatch to match the newspaper column I was planning to write and syndicate, but some opportunist had camped on that name and I couldn't afford to pay a premium for it. I had this idea that I could write up the week's gaming news in summary form and include a quick read game review, bringing videogames to a mass audience that quietly craved them in a format they found familiar.

GameWatch

I spoke with my former journalism colleagues and even met with some similarly minded writers in Seattle, all intent on their own syndication concepts, and then abandoned the plan. No one would buy it. Instead, I built a site around the concept that busy gamers needed a place to keep up with the latest gaming news without having to scour sites and lengthy articles for the few nuggets they cared about. Some of the regular content areas included The Buzz, Stupid Marketing Tricks, Misery Loves Company, and the occasional Rant. There have been 3038 site posts (including this one) and 11,349 non-spam comments to date.

This went on for several years and may have aided me in landing my first game industry job in 2006, first as product planner and then online community manager for Big Fish Games. I won't say much about this chapter except that the work was invigorating. Every day was action packed, and I never worked so hard in my life (well, until recently). Alas, the job didn't last as long as I thought it should. However, it got me thinking about rebranding around busy gamers so I relaunched as Busy Gamer News on October 31, 2006 with my wife, GrrlGotGame, officially joining the content team on December 29, 2008.

Busy Gamer News

I don't even remember that design, but that's how it looked for a short spell as we developed the new format. We even printed postcards, which you might have found at PAX Prime if you attended in the early years:

Postcard

We also introduced the Busy Gamer Review with our first one looking at Test Drive Unlimited from the perspective of someone without a lot of time. It was short, focused, and highlighted what matters most: what the game's about, learning curve, family factor, how game saves work, and whether to buy, rent, or skip. We've posted about 60 Busy Gamer Reviews to date, not counting audio reviews (more on that in a minute). Highlights include our BGN Games of the Year reviews for Fallout: New Vegas and Portal 2, two games we agreed were amazing and very playable for even the busiest gamer.

We also coined "Free Stuff Friday" (now a popular web sweepstakes term) back in 2008, but after several years the weekly prizes became too costly without sponsors. That said, we do have some giveaways in the works. In fact, the first 20 people to comment on this post will get a $2 free DLC code for Xbox 360 courtesy of Harmonix - and there's more where that came from! (Just be sure to use your email address when registering to comment; don't put it in the body of the post unless you want it harvested by spam crawlers.)

Busy Gamer News logo

Anyway, dubbing ourselves a gaming news site meant we were obligated to round up as much useful news as possible. This was fine, because we track this stuff anyway just for fun. We tried to go deeper than the press release regurgitators, finding and surfacing the most useful details whenever possible. But in the past year, it became just too burdensome to manage. But for several years, we provided weekly game release and DLC round-ups that were as comprehensive as we could make them (honestly, I never found another site that came close). But that didn't seem to be what busy gamers wanted, at least not the ones coming to our site. And, as our paying work (including game industry consulting!) picked up to unprecedented heights, we had to let some of it go.

In 2009, we launched Busy Gamer Podcast in a format that, again, we thought would best meet the needs of our audience: weekly news and short features in 15 minutes or less. We even included a young kid's perspective, drawing on the insights of our son, The Pikachu Fan. For some reason, gamers seem to prefer the hour or longer chatter fests, often polluted with inaccuracies, so after two years and 67 podcasts we ended that too.

But not for long.We really enjoyed doing the interviews and researching features and reviews, which seemed to be approaching radio grade despite our limited resources. GrrlGotGame's Music of Fallout: New Vegas (MP3) is probably the pinnacle, though we've had many that were similar in quality and depth. So we've converted our "Best of" feed into its own podcast featuring our top individual segments, which we resumed recently with PAX coverage and a music feature on BioShock Infinite. We'll be hitting Busy Gamer Nation #200 shortly and have big plans to produce audio on some highly entertaining topics, so stay tuned to our feed!

Along the way, we developed an ear for busy gamer issues and - seeing our needs very nearly drowned out by the core gaming crowd - drafted the Busy Gamer Manifesto. The hope is that it can expand where needed (just tell us what you think) and, perhaps, awaken the industry and fellow gamers - many of whom will eventually join our ranks! - to the issues that matter most to gamers with a life.

This year, we decided that the news and longer podcasts were too heavy for us to maintain on our own, so we relaunched again as Busy Gamer Nation. Our hope is to provide more frequent updates and perspective for likeminded gamers who - despite being weighed down by life, and work, and obligations - crave inclusion in a community that gets them and advocates for their needs.

We hope you will share our mission, join in when you are able, and - most of all - have fun.

34 Comments

1.

Congrats on 10 years!

2.

Congratulations on 10 years guys! Hopefully there'll be many more to come!

3.

10 years is impressive!! Congrats :)

4.

Congrats that is a huge achievement.

5.

Has it been 10yrs already? Wow, congrats!

6.

Thank you very much Gamewatche​r

7.

Happy 10 years busy gamer wow

8.

wow 10 years is a very long time in this business! Congrats & here's to another 10 years!

9.

congrats on 10 years!

10.

As you know, been following you a long time. Still a fan, it has been fun watching the evolution over the years.

11.

I'm in Congrats on 10 years thanks for the help

12.

Congrats on ten years, that's a lot of hard work in this kind of industry. Good job, and cheers to more years ahead!

13.

Congratulations guys 10 years that's quite a milestone.

14.

Many things come and go in this day and age of ours.
As the tides rise, they also crash and with the ebb of time we grow.

Congratulations on making it to a decade of doing what you enjoy and love. Glad that there are those still moving forward with their desires and making the world a better place by contributing to it.

Keep it up!

Cheers

15.

Congrats on 10 years, I only just heard about your site today though, from a member on another gaming related website. Good work again, I may stay for awhile and check your site out. :)

16.

Congrats on 10 years.

17.

Congrats on those double digits!

18.

Wow, thanks for sharing your look back and kudos on reaching the 10 year milestone. I hadn't realized that your site has been around for nearly so long.

19.

congrats

20.

Awesome.now thAt I know about this place ill b checking often

21.

Congrats on the milestone. You could even call it an achievement. Little bit of game humor there...

22.

10 years is a long time for any organization to survive! Congrats!

23.

Congrats on the big milestone

24.

Wow, congrats on ten years! That's an incredible milestone. Here's to the next ten!

25.

Congrats on ten years! I enjoyed reading about the changes with sites, formats, etc you've been through over the years. Wish you two many more great years to come.

26.

Congrats 10 years is a amazing accomplishment. May you have 10 more at the very least lol

27.

That's a great accomplishment! Here's to another decade!

28.

CONGRATS ON 10 YEARS

29.

Congrats on the 10 years !! :)

30.

Early congrats on 11 years! Being a fellow gaming writer, it is interesting to see how you have evolved over time. It is hard to find time to game lately, but I still love it after all these years doing it. Cheers!

31.

I had no idea that the site/you guys had been around for so long. I've only ever known it as Busy Gamer News, which I heard about from CAG a few years back. Congrats on lasting so long, hope to see you continue to change and improve over the next ten.

32.

Is it bad that I tend to like the older look of websites to the new all flash sites that are everywhere? Some good old text and pictures was all you needed. And it loaded relatively fast, even when you're stuck with dialup. Try using dialup now. Never gonna work. Anyways, glad you guys are still around. Websites are like restaurants, they hardly ever make it past year 2 or 3.

33.

Happy 10 years busy gamer wow

34.

Congrats on ten years nice blog to read news about my fav games

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Gamewatcher published on September 22, 2013 12:01 AM.

Busy Gamer Nation #198 - PAX Prime 2013: Neverending Nightmares was the previous entry in this blog.

Busy Gamer Nation #199 - PAX Prime 2013: Troubadour is the next entry in this blog.

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