Another 31 days down, another #RPGaDay is in the books.
There's three reasons why a blogger would jump onto a community based event like this
a) It's fun
b) It's a community effort to help enhance readership, and hopefully, daily followers.
c) Discover other interesting folks in the hobby.
Let's cover the bad news first. On a blog-based format, #RPGaDay with basic social media support has not driven in views. In fact, compared to the last two previous views, activity went significantly down this year... again.
A few qualifiers. Data for 2018 and 2019 is all-in, not just August, and there was a nice spike for the tail end of last year's project. And just for the record, views from 2017 and earlier were way higher.
To speak about the three peaks. Humor/Fun is always a big draw so Day #24 Humour made sense. My only mention of my Mousling campaign on Day #14 caught a lot of eyes as well.
But I wouldn't have bet my post on Day #5 involving actress Kim Cattrall would be the most popular for the month. I also don't gamble often.
I don't pose the obvious question, because it's hypocritical if I don't acknowledge part c. I really didn't discover any new folks through #RPGaDay. It felt quite insular, the collective group of us that liked each others links on Facebook and Twitter. There's nothing wrong with that. This is a celebration of the hobby we love, not necessarily a recruitment tool.
And to address some certain type of participants:
To the person who won't finish #RPGaDay until mid-September. Great job! I've fashioned my general gaming blog as a daily part of my life (and many times, like this event, I finish most days ahead of time). Daily writing is difficult and time-consuming, and your after-action report or your recent painting is already time consuming (and definitely preferred over a participation project).
For the people who hit a a few topics here and there. I get it. The one-word prompt nature of #RPGaDay really drove me nuts this year. Not all of the posts are "good enough" in my eyes, and skipping those days might have been a better option. Here's hoping for a revised hybrid option of prompts and readily answered questions. (I'm still a huge fan or recycling questions from 2014 or 2015 at this point).
And finally, for those who don't participate because they specifically post "I don't have the time." You physically tweeted that response to the event. There are plenty of respondents who answer the prompt with even fewer characters. Plus I can see you retweeting and commenting on other topics on Twitter all day. I'll critique the endeavor, but I won't troll it with zero effort. A simple "Not up for doing #RPGaDay (this year)" would be easy enough. I was hospitalized and was recovering from surgery for most of the month, and guaranteed dozens of other participants had it worse than me. Let's not compare stories, shall we?
I stick with my annual recommendation that we recycle previous years questions, even if we tweak it as a "Where are they now" format where even new participants can say "I play xxxxx so many years ago (or didn't play at all), now I play xxxxx! It's awesome." Slightly more direction that figuring out for a month which version of "Close" I wanted to use.
No matter what, I'll see everyone next August for the next list.
There's three reasons why a blogger would jump onto a community based event like this
a) It's fun
b) It's a community effort to help enhance readership, and hopefully, daily followers.
c) Discover other interesting folks in the hobby.
Let's cover the bad news first. On a blog-based format, #RPGaDay with basic social media support has not driven in views. In fact, compared to the last two previous views, activity went significantly down this year... again.
To speak about the three peaks. Humor/Fun is always a big draw so Day #24 Humour made sense. My only mention of my Mousling campaign on Day #14 caught a lot of eyes as well.
But I wouldn't have bet my post on Day #5 involving actress Kim Cattrall would be the most popular for the month. I also don't gamble often.
I don't pose the obvious question, because it's hypocritical if I don't acknowledge part c. I really didn't discover any new folks through #RPGaDay. It felt quite insular, the collective group of us that liked each others links on Facebook and Twitter. There's nothing wrong with that. This is a celebration of the hobby we love, not necessarily a recruitment tool.
And to address some certain type of participants:
To the person who won't finish #RPGaDay until mid-September. Great job! I've fashioned my general gaming blog as a daily part of my life (and many times, like this event, I finish most days ahead of time). Daily writing is difficult and time-consuming, and your after-action report or your recent painting is already time consuming (and definitely preferred over a participation project).
For the people who hit a a few topics here and there. I get it. The one-word prompt nature of #RPGaDay really drove me nuts this year. Not all of the posts are "good enough" in my eyes, and skipping those days might have been a better option. Here's hoping for a revised hybrid option of prompts and readily answered questions. (I'm still a huge fan or recycling questions from 2014 or 2015 at this point).
And finally, for those who don't participate because they specifically post "I don't have the time." You physically tweeted that response to the event. There are plenty of respondents who answer the prompt with even fewer characters. Plus I can see you retweeting and commenting on other topics on Twitter all day. I'll critique the endeavor, but I won't troll it with zero effort. A simple "Not up for doing #RPGaDay (this year)" would be easy enough. I was hospitalized and was recovering from surgery for most of the month, and guaranteed dozens of other participants had it worse than me. Let's not compare stories, shall we?
I stick with my annual recommendation that we recycle previous years questions, even if we tweak it as a "Where are they now" format where even new participants can say "I play xxxxx so many years ago (or didn't play at all), now I play xxxxx! It's awesome." Slightly more direction that figuring out for a month which version of "Close" I wanted to use.
No matter what, I'll see everyone next August for the next list.
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