As the internet has evolved over the course of my life, it has become a much more interactive as social media has become a staple of every day life. As the internet becomes more interactive, the possibility of others being able to increase the viewership or following of my blog comes into play. Viewers of my bog are free to share material on my blog freely, however, I feel that the best way for them to share my material is through outlets that focus on communities. This includes online forums and Facebook groups. I feel those two outlets in particular will help my blog the most because the nature of those sites imply that everyone who visits those pages are all interested in the topic. I also feel that it is something very feasible, especially with the content on my blog, being related to competitive gaming, which have very active communities on online forums and Facebook groups.
QR codes
<img src=”http://qr.kaywa.com/?l=1&s=4&d=http%3A%2F%2Fkaywa.me%2F859wr” alt=”QRCode”/>
The QR code I decided to use for my blog is a link to the arcade stick controller that I use, the Hori Real Arcade Pro VX SA. I decided to use this one because URL QR codes seem to be the most practical for my blog. Through my blog, I want to share with people what I personally think is the best arcade style controller on the market and what I use and have traveled with to tournaments across the east coast for the past year and a half. The URL is the Amazon address for the arcade stick. I want to have my readers learn more about the controller I use and see if its one that they would be interested in using themselves.
Social Media Promotion
For my blog, social media promotion can help boost the viewership and following of my blog greatly. I personally think the best social media tool to promote my blog would be Twitter. Twitter has become one of the more active social media networks over the past couple of years and seems to be better for promoting than Facebook is. Twitter allows people to search hashtags and do many other things to have a Twitter page’s name be exposed to their followers, such as retweeting and mentioning in a post. Facebook on the other hand I feel is a very poor promotional tool. I have used Facebook in the past to promote my old band in high school and our exposure was very minimal, regardless of having over 1,000 likes. A very small percentage of our Facebook following had our posts show up in their news feed according to Facebook insight. In order to have them appear more often on people’s news feeds, you have to pay a fee to promote posts. Twitter also has paid promotion, however, tweets, trends and pages that are promoted through Twitters system target people who do not follow a certain page and could possibly be interested based on region, interest, age or gender. I feel that Twitter is the number one best social network to be used as a promotional tool.
Go Animate Movie Scene Recreation
For my Go Animate assignment, I decided to recreate the scene from American Psycho where Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) asks his colleague Jean (Chloë Sevigny) out on a date. I chose this scene because it is not very demanding on actions and is suitable for the limitations of Go Animate and was simple enough to recreate with no experience in animation prior to this assignment. While using Go Animate, I realized that it was a very simple program that is great for entry level animation and simple animation projects that don’t require anything out of the ordinary. However, the biggest problem that I had with it was that the program does not tell users what is available in the free version and what you need to upgrade to a premium version for. Users are notified that they have used features that are not available to free users when they attempt to save their project, forcing them to go back and go through a long process of trial and error in order to find out what exactly is available to them using the basic free program. After messing around with my video for a couple of hours to try to save it, I decided to just screen capture the preview and upload it using Jing because I completely ran out of ideas of what could possibly be a premium feature that is preventing me from saving my project. What the developers of Go Animate should do instead is have premium features visible to free users, but they are notified that they are required to upgrade to premium when they click on said features when they attempt to use it. This lets free users know right away what they can and cannot do with a basic account and does not require a long process of trial and error after completing your project to save it
My Go Animate scene can be watched here. The original scene from American Psycho can be watched here.
Creative Commons Media
The piece of media I used for my blog on the Creative Commons search engine is a promotional image for SoulCalibur V released by Namco Bandai shortly before the release of the game in early 2012. I chose this image mostly because I found it very difficult to find appropriate media for my blog on the Creative Commons search engine. As far as gaming related media goes, there is very little on the Creative Commons search engine, even fewer when narrowing it down to specifically competitive gaming. SoulCalibur V was the first game i took seriously competitively so I found the use of the image to be appropriate. I first tried to search for a tournament match video that I was playing in, however none were on the Creative Commons search engine, although there is usually at least one video of my uploaded to YouTube every week.
This image is safe to use under fair use according to the Fair Use Checklist mostly because of the nature, amount and effects of the use. The image is a publish work by Namco Bandai games and the portion of the media is not a significant size or crucial to the game, it just features a selection of characters of the game behind the SoulCalibur V logo, which is a small amount. There was no licencing mechanism used when I posted this image and it has no significant effect on the market of this work.
Internet Fight Meme
The meme I chose for my blog was the all famous “Internet Fight” meme. I chose this one because not only is it one of my favorites, the concept of an “internet fight” is a staple of the fighting game community. The largest rivalries in the fighting game community are based on region, these being east coast vs west coast, southern California vs northern California and New York vs Atlanta. These rivaling regions only meet face to face a few times a year, and in between the events where they do meet, regions are relentless, talking all sorts of trash to each other. Players are really passionate for the game and the respective scene that they are a part of and will always back up anyone from their scene regardless of what the circumstances are and how ridiculous their claims are. Another example of the concept of an “internet fight” that is common in the fighting game community comes up when discussing the technicalities of the games. Players always debate and “theory fight” as we call it to try to get their ideas/points across. However, gamers are no different than regular people, and a lot of them have a hard time admitting that they are wrong or are very close minded to others’ ideas and tend to speak very aggressively or defensively. Lastly, “internet fights” come up in the so called politics of the fighting game community. A lot of drama goes around in the fighting game community, between event/tournament organizers, streamers, top players and even viewers at home. A lot of this is very random and unpredictable, like someone having an issue with another person and not bring it to said person in a face-to-face setting or players having problems with how an event was ran. Almost every month, there is some sort of drama going on in the fighting game community that ensues an “internet fight”. The terms “keyboard warrior” or “keyboard Katie” get thrown around all the time when talking about certain people in the community. As much as I hate the concept of “internet fights”, I guess its just the nature of us being nerds arguing online all the time.
For more information on the “internet fight” meme, check out Know Your Meme!
Creating my header with Pixlr!
Using Pixlr to create my header was a short process of trial and error. I’ve had little experience with photo editing software in the past, having used Photoshop in class in high school briefly. I was familiar with the basic terms, such as layers and cropping but I had little experience actually putting those terms into practice. I started with my banner by looking for an image of a road and putting a picture of Deathstroke on the road. I chose this because I have been traveling to compete in fighting game tournaments for the past couple of years and the game that I have had the most success in is Injustice: Gods Among Us. The character I use in that game is the DC Comics villain, Deathstroke, who the popular Marvel Comics character Deadpool is based off of. I also threw on the title of the blog “The Road Warrior” on there as well in white text so that it is easy to read. The part that I had the biggest trouble with was being able to find images that were appropriately sized for each other. I had trouble when downscaling my completed image for the size of the header. My images would get blurry and I would have a very low-res, pixilated Deathstroke on a ver low-res, pixilated road, with text that was perfectly legible. It took me a few tries to be able to edit the image down to the size where I needed it with a certain standard of clarity. I would say that photo editing certainly isn’t my expertise but it was great being able to learn the basics of Pixlr as it seems to be very similar to most other photo editing software.
Traveling to Final Round 17 in Atlanta!
Later today, I will be leaving New Jersey with a car full of my gaming buddies to head over to Atlanta, Georgia for Final Round 17. Final Round, ran by Larry “Shin Blanka” Dixon, is held every year in Atlanta and attracts international competition for a wide array of fighting games. The event will run Friday through Sunday. For the past couple of weeks, I have been prepping for this event, not only as a competitor but also as a volunteer, making brackets for the Soul Calibur V event and also will be running the pools of that tournament as well as capturing various matches to upload to YouTube. This will be my second Final Round, and I can’t be more excited!
When attending my first final round last year, I saw some of the best matches I’ve ever seen in competitive fighting games. I was also able to meet a ton of people from different states, regions, countries and even continents. One of the more notable competitors that I was able to talk to was Xian from Singapore. Xian at the time was sponsored by MadCatz, a company that specializes in video game accessories, most notably their high quality arcade style controllers. Xian is known for having a positive attitude towards competition and is always trying to help others improve their overall gameplay. While having a cigarette with him, I was able to get some insight on the fighting game community in Singapore. The community there is much smaller, but is very strong and largely plays in internet cafes and Arcades. In the US, people usually have sessions in at their homes or hold tournaments in any business that will allow them to. It is also much more accepted in Singapore to be a competitive gamer. Later that year, Xian went on to perform very well at the Evolution Championship Series, which is the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, winning Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition v.2012 and placing 5th in the King of Fighters XIII.
Crowd shot during the finals day Final Round 16. Can you spot the hot dog?
Also, Final Round is known to be the “hypest” tournament on the East Coast. Everyone in the audience while watching matches are all deeply engrossed in the matches and are always talking smack to each other, whether it is to the people they are playing or in the background supporting someone from their region or a personal friend. Finals day at Final Round is one of the “hypest” days of the year on the East Coast for the fighting game community. As seen int he picture above, there is a sea of people watching the top 8 placers for multiple games. Although many of thee people look like they’re constipated, they are actually just extremely excited watching the high level play.
This year’s Final Round will be different from my experience last year, as my group Avylon is running the Soul Calibur V event. Avylon is a venture I started with a group of friends which is to be a home for “all things gaming”, however we are starting with an emphasis on competitive gaming, since that is where most of our backgrounds are in and we are pushing for more mainstream attention in this area of gaming! At fighting game tournaments, Avylon is usually running brackets for Soul Calibur V and sometimes will offer a hand in other games. At the last even, Winter Brawl 8 in Philadelphia, the group ran the Soul Calibur V and Dead or Alive 5: Ultimate bracket as well as lent a hand to to run the brackets for Killer Instinct and Tekken Tag Tournament 2. We also capture matches that do not end up being broadcasted on a live stream on twitch.tv using a product by Avermedia called the Live Gamer Portable (LGP). The LGP allows us to record a direct feed from a console (PS3 or Xbox 360) and save directly to an SD card without the need of a computer. This allows us to have a number of LGPs in our inventory and capture over 100 matches at every event we attend.
While prepping to run Soul Calibur V, I was involved with the generation of pools, which is always a very stressful process. The community is always on your ass asking when pools will be posted and tell you not to put them in a difficult pools and so on. After the 3 day process of generating pools, we submitted them to the Final Round staff, only to have them changed on us. Players were swapped out of their pools and created several problems. LoloMX from Mexico was swapped out of his pool for MysticBill, who was not a seeded player, so there was a pool that had 3 seeded players and another that only had 1. Also, I was swapped into a bracket that had someone who is local to me, which is also to be avoided at all costs when someone is traveling to compete. Nobody wants to travel down the East Coast, just to play the guy that they play at every single local event. However, after talking with the Final Round staff, we eventually were able to have them revert to the pools we originally sent them after being pestered by the community to have them changed for 48 hours.
However, at this event, most of my competitive focus lies in Injustice. Since the game’s release in April, I have been actively competing and have fallen short of placing into the post pools finals. At larger events, I have almost always been eliminated in the qualifying match of the losers bracket. As of late, I have been putting in a lot of practice to hopefully get passed my competitive road block and make it out of pools!
Overall, I’m VERY excited for Final Round and have almost gotten a little too carried away with it! I’m planning on blogging about my experiences at the event when I return!
Screen Capture with Jing!
My experience with Jing was very quick and painless. I have never used Jing before, but I have some familiarity with screen capture software because I have streamed on twitch.tv before using a program called XSplit. I decided to use Jing over XSplit because Jing has a much simpler design and is more practical for the assignment than XSplit is, which focuses on live streaming and gaming, for both PC gaming and console gaming. It took me about five minutes to figure out how Jing works and I was on my way!
In my screen capture, I highlight a personal friend, Jason Axelrod’s (also known as Jaxel) website 8wayrun.com. 8wayrun is the community home for the Soul Calibur competitive community and the home page where news is posted is done in a blog format. The site is extremely well designed and very visually appealing. Jaxel manages to have a very well organized website that allows users to integrate social media, as well as interact with each other in house, with a chat room and an extensive forum. 8wayrun is coded from scratch by Jaxel the same code is used for websites for other competitive communities such as testyourmight.com (Mortal Kombat, Injustice, Killer Instinct) freestepdodge.com (Dead or Alive series) and virtuafighter.com.
Audio Recording with Garage Band
Hey! How is everyone doing? I have been a little behind as far as keeping up with my blog but I am back here to share with all of you the audio recorded commercial I made for this blog! In this recording, I use two different songs, “Sister September” by the French symphonic black metal band Anorexia Nervosa and “Dead God In Me” by the Swedish melodic death metal band In Flames. I chose “Sister September” because I love how the intro builds up, starting off with a very nicely orchestrated arrangement of strings and then kicks in with heavy distorted guitar and a heavy drum beat. I spliced the song right before where the first verse comes in and switched it out for the prechorus. I decided to do this because I wanted to have as little vocals as possible because I feel like vocals tend to get in the way when a voice over is applied to music. I chose “Dead God In Me” as the outro simply because it’s one of my favorite songs from my favorite band, and of course, from my favorite album of all time. It’s simply a song I really enjoy and I was excited to feature it.
My experience with Garage Band was very strange. I felt that it would have been very easy for me because I have worked with other programs in the past, such as Reaper and ProTools when I was working with my old band from high school. I have a very fundamental understanding of the ins and outs of audio editing, however, I found myself being a little confused using Garage Band due to its simplistic design. First off, I couldn’t find out how to change the temp of the master track. I wanted to use the metronome in splicing because It would make it easy for me to determine where the measures start and end because they would be visually displayed. Instead, I had to listen to the track several times to make sure I was splicing in the right spots. Also, I had trouble navigating the menus at first. My gut instinct was to go straight to a pull down menu and import the two audio tracks that I used as my background music, however, Garage Band works differently than Reaper and ProTools. I found myself referring to the tutorial videos just to figure out how to import tracks. I also found it strange that there was no option to record enable tacks on the version I was using, and only the tack selected had audio recorded onto. I would question how good of a program garage band is for recording multiple tracks at once. As a drummer, I would normally need at least 6 tracks to record drums, 2 overheads, one snare, 2 on the tom toms and one in the kick drum. I don’t know if I would be able to do such a task on Garage Band with the knowledge I have of the program now. However, I find that Garage Band is a great program to play around with and use for simple audio editing, but it isn’t the best when it comes to doing more demanding tasks, such as multi-tracking.
A link to my commercial audio can be found here!
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