August 2024 in review

 August (or should I say Blaugust) 2024 has ended so lets take a look back.

The Blog

 Blogger provided number (last 30 days graph so a bit off a full month): 30,300

 This is up about 1,000 from July.  I do not know what the big spike was in late August as I could not zero in any posts that had that much traffic.

 

 In other metrics:

• Posts:
  
• Target: 31 (Blaugust Rainbow Award level)
  
• Posted: 32
• Difference: +1 because I can't let a reward go unclaimed!
  
•  Search Trends
• "new world roadmap 2024" surged to the top spot this month.  Ironically it appears so often that I created a post for those exact terms with the 2024 roadmap which is just continuing to gain traction.
  
• "best battlefield game", "best battlefield", "best battlefield games" still all are near the top but not the top dog anymore: Best Battlefield!?
• Once Human searches filled out the third spot with searchers looking for more details around the season resets.  This makes sense as the first launch servers recent changed over.  Unfortunately searchers will find nothing of value on the blog as I've not gone through myself or commented about the actual mechanics of the resets... yet!
  

What I Played

 Once Human dominated my August playtime as I made it to level 50 and set up my Frost Vortex build.  I also built a proper base finally (it looks like an airplane hanger).  I posted about none of these accomplishments because I had other ideas for Blaugust posts that took up my blogging time.  I have had to take a break from gaming for the past week due to real life stuff (trip, work, kids stuff) so I have yet to transition from my first scenario into a new one (likely moving to a PVE hard mode server with some folks on Sept 8th).

Years Ago

1 Year Ago

 August 2023 brought my introduction to Blaugust (check my Blaugust 2023 tagged posts) and I jammed the month full of posts.

 The most notable game launch was Starfield (early access started late Aug) and it's hard for me to believe that was already a year ago.  Too bad that game landed like a dud, but they finally added vehicles a year later so I guess I should fix my old post.

5 Years Ago

  Aug 2019 was in the 'no blogging' era and nothing comes to mind.

10 Years Ago

 In Aug of 2014 I was not blogging regularly but I was thinking about it as evidenced by: Long time, no post.  My nonexistent heart was warmed by all the commenters that stopped by though!  6 comments; probably the most of any post in the last 10 years... ha!

15 Years Ago

 August of 2009 was the month I became a father and my life was forever changed.  That kid is now 15 and about to start learning to drive.  He may, and this is a BIG may, also be better at video games than me now.  Speaking of comment counts; this post garnered 40+ which was heartwarming but it also shows how much commenting on blogs has died off over the years.  I'd have a crazy smile on my face if a post these days hit 10 comments; let alone 40+!

 Also some loser named Brett Farve (don't you dare spell check me) signed with the Minnesota Vikings in August of 09.

 20 19 Years Ago

 Technically I have 20 named years on my sidebar, but mathematically 2005 is only 19 years ago.

 In Aug of 2005 I was posting on Google Videos (before this thing called YouTube).  Sadly I think the video "CS:S video released - Two of the gReatest things eveR" and "Battlefield 2 Video - Lets go!" are lost to history as I am not sure I have copies anywhere and they did not make its way to YouTube when that took over for Google Video.  It is crazy to think had I just stuck with videos in that early era I could have been a YouTube content creator instead of annoying my team at work about getting stuff done. 

 With that said; one video from that Google Videos era did get saved to YouTube.  A World of Warcraft video I made while playing with the guild behind the Taverncast podcast: The Pod People invade Westfall.flv

Deadlocked No More

 I finally got my invite to play Deadlock.  More thoughts to arrive tomorrow!

Deadlock Invite Problems

 Deadlock is Valve's new hotness(mess?) available for testing, but only if you can get an invite from a current playtester.  For some players the invites happen almost instantaneously.  For others, like me, the invite never arrives.  The entire invite system is a bad idea and getting worse.

 At face value the invite system for Deadlock appears to be a way to limit how many testers are playing the game.  This makes sense and is not uncommon in testing phases of games.  The difference here is that other play testers have control of the invites and that, along with other issues, is where problems are starting.

 The first obvious issue that arises is "pay for invite" and the even more obvious "scammers will scam" that comes with it.  While many of the communities across Discord and Reddit for invites are banning anyone trying to pay for invites; inevitably someone was bound to get scammed.

 Next comes the behavior of "creating alt / second accounts" in the hope of getting a stuck invite to go through.  While I didn't create an alt account I did get my son's account invited and his invite came through in about 45 minutes (I've been waiting 5+ days now with dozens of invite attempts).

 With alt/second accounts comes the inevitable "selling account w/ Deadlock" access.  This is not my cup of tea and I can wait (or just play on my son's account when he is not playing anything).  However, there are some in the community that won't wait and will buy those second accounts which brings in it's own level of scams.

 Fear of missing out (aka FOMO) is also a huge part of the equation that drives the above.  Playing a game close to it's launch and during it's test period is a one-time affair.  If you miss out; you miss out.  Some players can't stand missing out so go above and beyond to get access.  Thus the situation becomes ripe for scammers.

 The question is whether other methods of test invites would avoid these problems?  Not exactly.  Steam does have "request test access" processes built in that many other games use.  At minimum this eliminates the "get scammed asking for an invite" from other players and does reduce how easy it is to get a second account set up to then try and sell.  It does not reduce FOMO.

 Personally I think Valve would have been better suited going the same way they have other games enter testing on their own platform. At least then players could confirm their invite status by simply going to the store page for the game.  End of day I just want to try the game and not miss out on the chance to learn the game while everyone else is learning it.

/signed "a frustrated Valve fanboy"