The Historian

On the 26th Acclaim Games Inc. officially shut down its sites and games. I have to admit that part of me is very sad about this. I loved my time there and I had the pleasure of working with many very cool people.

More importantly I’m rather disappointed with Disney in the way things with the players were handled, but then the players of Acclaim were in many ways my best friends and family. I didn’t always agree with them and I was, at times, put in to situations that didn’t allow me to be soft but the most important thing I learn was this:

Your loudest and most obnoxious critics are ultimately on your side. They want things to be better, but they just can’t always communicate this in a way that is constructive. As a Community Manager you have to set aside any emotional response and see what it is that is getting them so riled up.

2Moons, aka Dekaron, has a home with its original developers, 9Dragons is going to GamersFirst, Spellborn is just dead, Bots/Bout is gone forever except on hacked servers and the rest of the games went back to their respective owners.

To everyone who ever played a game with Acclaim, I want to personally thank you. You helped me find a dream job and allowed me to learn a great deal about Community Management, myself and the gaming industry.

I was fortunate. That is really the only way I can say it. In High School I was fortunate to have a group of friends that helped define who and what I am today.

In the past month, we have started to reconnect thanks to the power of Facebook. It is odd how easily we slip back into the comfortable patterns of old times. Our conversations seem to have picked up right where they left off 20+ years ago. We’ve changed and grown, but we are still the same in many ways.

They are my family.

I didn’t know how much I missed them until they came back.

I continue to play in the world of convenience retail, working third shift. I get to see many characters late at night. It is like there is another world that exists outside of the house of light. I see people headed for home, people starting their days. People seeking late night food, the poor purchasing ungodly amounts of lottery tickets and the fringes of society beginning or ending their days. While there is some happiness, seen in those coming from the bars after they close, most of my patrons are scraping by. They make such odd choices… the $7 pack of cigarettes and a lighter with $3 going to gas.

As for me, I continue my search for a Community Manager Position, though the picking are slim. There are just so few gaming companies out there that the number of jobs is less than the number of skilled workers. I have branched outside of gaming but those jobs are even fewer and further between. Still it is something I love and when you get paid to do what you love then you have truly succeeded and so I will continue to search.

Funny how we as humans think we can fully understand the complexities of how our world works. All this just proves that we don’t know as much as we think we do.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.” - Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” – George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” – Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” – New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” – Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” – Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” - Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” – Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” - Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” – Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” – Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.” – Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” – Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” – Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” – Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

First let me tell you about Xomba. It is a web site where you can make money online by writing articles or posting bookmarks to web site. You earn a 50/50 share of the money made through Google Adsense, but you have to have an account with Adsense.

Here are my thoughts on how Xomba can increase its the number of users and thus increase its profits.

1.) Better Integration with Social Media Sites

Like most site these days Xomba has all the buttons to help users and visitors link to various social media sites, however it does not allow its writers to integrate their accounts in to their profiles on the Xomba site so that when an author makes a post it is automatically posted to their twitter, facebook status or other social sites. This simple addition will instantly increase the exposure for the writer as well as Xomba. Additionally if Xomba were to add its own URL shortener it could show click through statistics for the writers.

2.) Help Users Maximize Their Profit Potential While Using Xomba

Xomba was created to allow users to easily earn money on things they post. This brings in people with little or no experience in writing and even the use of keywords and other way of self promoting online. Xomba can add weekly, bi-weekly and Posts, Podcast and Webinars to help their users learn to be better at what they do. They can even leverage their top users to assist in these by doing interviews and having them make additional posts on being better at Xomba.

3.) Promote their “Best of the Best” and Featured Writers

The front page of the site shows Xomba Features, these are articles that seems to have received a fair bit of votes over the past few hours , however it does not mention the author and there doesn’t appear to be any place that truly promotes individual writers. Perhaps this could be integrated with the little used “Contests”. And maybe featured writers could up for special weekly, monthly and yearly awards? Who wouldn’t want to win a “Xombie of the Year” award?

Xomba also has a twitter account (@xomba) that is currently updated a few times a day. This feed could be used to instantly promote articles that get a “Featured” status and to point out writers that are really contributing to the Xomba Community. And speaking of community…

4.) Add Real Forums and Build a Community

Admittedly Xomba says it has “forums”, but really they have a feedback and suggestion tool that they are calling forums. Add some real forums and allow your users to build their own Zombie community. These forums can be used to distill ideas, collaborate and to assist new Xombites in getting familiar with Xomba. This alone can help with retention of those users who sign-up but then never make more than one or two posts. Create a “Welcome Team” and have them contact new users to see if they need help.

5.) Catch the Details

There are some things on the site that I just don’t understand and I was unable to find any info on them.

1. What are the “Points” for?
2. How does one get into the Hall of Fame?
3. Who is in the Community Think Tank and how do I contribute.
4. Contests, where are they?
5. Why not advertise that you are on Facebook and Twitter on your homepage?
6. And finally, and this is me being nit-picky, can someone please fix the broken image on the main Help page? 

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Full disclosure: Xomba, a local Jacksonville startup, is looking to hire an Online PR Associate. I’ve tossed my hat in to the ring but wanted to go one step further and offer some of my thoughts on increasing the user base for the company.