Nerd Bacon News: September 2015 (1)

I know I said that we'd get back on a more regular schedule with Greased and I still fully intend to; my apologies for my intermittment involvement with The Bacon these past few weeks. I guess we all end up dealing with the transition from summer to fall. September has been a relatively benign month overall (though we're pleased to see steady production from many of you) but we've got a lot of fun things in store as the calendar year winds down and as the holiday gaming season gears up!

E3 is the year's biggest event when it comes to gaming and it's also when we endeavor to push many of you out of your comfort zones temporarily to help us keep up with the coverage, but don't forget about the holidays! E3 is wonderful from the industry's perspective, but it's the Christmas season that holds major significance to us on a consumer level. Reviews of the latest games are a good start, as well as other sorts of opinion and analytical articles. Keep reading to find out how to make Holiday 2015 and New Year 2016 Nerd Bacon's most successful yet!

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Waiting for Me to Respond?

Hey guys and gals. I know that 3 or 4 of you have sent me (The Cubist) emails that you're waiting on responses to and I sincerely apologize for taking so long to get back to you. Between some familial issues and a desire to get some writing of my own done lately I just haven't had the attention I need to write back properly. Most of you already know that I'd prefer to make you wait a few extra days and get a detailed, proper response from me rather than a timely reply that may be brief, unclear, or inconclusive. So while I do apologize for making some of you wait, hopefully you'll at least appreciate my desire to wait until I know that I can give you my best before attending to your matter. Finishing up this issue of Greased (which I've been working at for the better part of a couple of weeks) will really free up some time for me to get back to you with the proper answers.

On a related note, I also want to assure the 3 or 4 of you who filled out the "about me" questionaire recently that I will have your information typed up on the "Meet the Team" page shortly. Again, my time and energy just hasn't conincided enough for me to get it done but I do want you to know that your efforts have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. I'm pretty sure that I've awarded all of you who filled it out the appropriate badge (the Golden Mushroom) despite my tardiness, but if I haven't, please let me know. Keep an eye out and I promise to have write ups for you guys and gals up on the site very soon!

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Coming Up in October...

A couple of years ago I read that as the Gen X'ers and Millennials began thoroughly edging out past generations, Halloween decorations were finally starting to overtake Christmas decorations in terms of money spent. Many of us nerds have often been fascinated by a darker, more sinister side of things but it finally seems like the rest of the world is getting in touch with their alter-egos and our culture is at long last embracing both the shlock and macabre of the Halloween season!

Well, we here at Nerd Bacon are no different! We want to use the entire month of October to celebrate the morbid, the spooky, the gruesome, and the gory...in video games, that is! We will continue to accept any and all game reviews as usual, but we do hope that most if not all of you will participate in this yearly event. Our goal is to collectively review as many horror-themed games as possible. Anything alluding to the supernatural will be sufficient, but the more explicitly occult or horror-themed in nature, the better. Obvious choices include games from the Resident Evil, Castlevania, Alone in the Dark, Silent Hill, and Ghosts 'N' Goblins series, but any games with zombies or vampires or ghosts or demons etc. will do nicely!

October isn't that far away, and we've found that a little preparation for these themed months can help go a long way. To help us hit the ground running, you can go ahead and start reviewing Halloween-ish games right now! Just be sure to add a note in the title such as "For OCTOBER" in the title bar before you submit the article for approval. That way our editors can go ahead and look through the article and have it ready to drop on October 1st instead of wasting a week or two waiting for everyone to actually play and review games conducive to our theme.

Many of you have already been with us through at least one October, and if you participated, you were retroactively rewarded with a badge. For those of you new to the site or for those who haven't yet churned out a spooky October review, you'll be awarded a nice new shiny Pumpkin Badge (or is it a gourd?) straight from Super Mario Bros. 2! This badge will be available each and every October, but don't wait until another whole year has passed to get yours! Snatch it up now!

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A Case of the Twos
by Nerdberry

Our 2 year birthday was a big success for us as a team. I'm not sure on the numbers just yet (The Cubist should have those stats here), but from my perspective, we all busted our asses and got in the spirit! The Watchman and Jarrad (aka InfiniteKnife) streamed great sequels all month long, and not to mention we put out over 30 original sequel reviews! That's pretty impressive. But we didn't publish JUST 30 articles, we published over 62 total articles in the month of August! That's almost double the output of July, which is a testament to how damn hard Doc Croc worked editing. Everyone stepped up big and helped us put out some awesome material. Thanks for an awesome birthday, folks.

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The Holidays Are Closing In!

The holidays, and by extension the new year, aren't that far away! Much like E3, we're asking those of you who are able to step out of your comfort zones and give us novel material to mark the occasion.

What do we mean by this? Well, there are a lot of options depending on what you're interested in. First of all, we have lots of high profile releases for 8th generation systems getting ready to drop. Are you one of the ones out there with a PlayStation 4 or Wii U or Xbox One? If so, let us (and the world) know what we should be looking forward to in the coming months. This can be as simple as a news piece with information about upcoming games or it can have more of a personal flavor with predictions and your own opinions (based on your expertise). Don't be afraid to tell us what you think: which games are going to make a major splash? Which games will fall short? What is sure to get everyone's heads turning by year's end?

Once November or December rolls around, you may also wish to focus on sales figures and statistics. Give us a "year in review" - what worked? What didn't? Who dropped the ball, and who stepped up their game? Here's a perfect opportunity for you to cut loose with your own opinions while reporting on hard facts. For an example of this type of analysis, take a look at an article I wrote last year: The Console Race: At Year's End (2014).

If all this seems a little challenging (of course that's the point though, right!?) you can always do us a great service by snatching up those new releases as quickly as possible and pumping out a review as quickly as possible as well. Having reviews for these big-time games up on the site as quickly as possible will be a real boost to our search engine hits.

We're also open to other ideas as well, so bring us any and all ideas you may have. This is a great chance to be opinionated as long as you can back it up with some sort of hard (sourced) information. Don't be afraid to jump in, even if you've never tried! Well-done analytical pieces and sharp, well-founded predictions will be popular pieces on the social network circuit. It'll also be a great springboard for another article after the new year rolls around. Did your predictions hold? Why or why not? What changed? What didn't? What shocked you? There's a ton of room for freedom and creativity here, and the next few months will offer countless opportunities for you to express your larger opinions on gaming and the industry in general.

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Review Spotlight

• Top 10 Ways to Waste Time in GTA Online - Rhutsczar
• by NerdBerry
  This article is absolutely hilarious and downright brilliant. It goes to show that your Top 10 articles can be fun and entertaining without having to be extremely serious and perfect. I'm certain this took some time, planning, and coordination. In no way does this top 10 look easy to write, but it also doesn't look painstakingly hard either. Why? Because Rhutsczar had fun here. He took a simple concept and lived and breathed it for a short while. It was a fun read and the positive energy around it is exciting to see on the Nerd Bacon pages!

• Ittle Dew - Avara
• by NerdBerry
  What a weird little game this is! Or at least, it certainly looks that way. Avara blasted onto the scene with some instant fan favorites, one of which was Ittle Dew. While the game itself may have only received an average Nerd Rating of 5 out of 10, the article was a fun and easy read. Good flow and nice attention to detail. Avara might be new, but she writes like a seasoned veteran. And her enthusiasm is ever-present in her many articles! Fine work!

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A Challenge Approaches!

As Nerdberry already pointed out, our "sequel challenge" in honor of our 2nd Anniversary was a resounding success! Productivity went up and it even brought a few of you out of hiding to write for us! In an effort to replicate this success, keep your eyes and ears open near the end of October for the announcement of a brand new challenge, which will also be rewarded with a very special, limited edition badge! Like our 2-Year celebration, this challenge will require a certain number of reviews of a certain theme within a fixed time frame. We're not quite ready to unveil the details just yet - got to stay focused on October! - but get ready as we reveal all of the details within the last week or so of October.

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Get Greasy!

Help us fill Greased with the things that you want to know about the site! What do you want us to talk about regularly? What kind of updates are you hoping for? What sort of information would inspire you to be even more productive? Let us know how we can make Greased yours and we will do our best. Don't hesitate to share any tips or tricks you may wish to share as well. We'd love to have more of you guys' and girls' input. We'd also love to field any questions that you guys and girls may have: questions about grammar, spelling, or punctuation? Maybe an ambiguous piece of policy you want clarification on? Or maybe there's a technical aspect that you've seen in another article or on another site that you're interested in using? Chances are that if you have a question so does someone else, so please, speak up and ask us! If you submit something that we use in a future issue of Greased, you'll earn yourself a Lightning Bolt Badge!

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Show Off Your Cool Stuff!

We've tried very hard to put ourselves out there on several social networks, mostly to drive traffic to the site. However, there's one in particular that has functioned more as play rather than work: Flickr! When Nerdberry and I got The Bacon off the ground, it was largely due to a need for an outlet for our combined gaming knowledge. Most of you probably know by now that we have some pretty awesome collections at our disposal, and several of our members have also shared this sentiment. Well, what better way to show off these pictures than on Flickr?

Do you have great pics of your collection(s) that you want to share with the world under the banner of Nerd Bacon? If so, send them directly to me (TheCubist@NerdBacon.com) and I'll make sure they make it up on our Flickr page! Send me enough pictures, and I'll give you your very own album! These pictures don't necessarily have to be extradorinary, but if you're going to take a picture of something as common as, say, your Super Nintendo, why not gather up all of your SNES-related equipment (accessories, games, etc.) and take a picture of all of it together? That lends more credence to our aim of displaying each member's collections. Conversely, if you have the capacity to take professional-grade, high quality photos of common systems/games/whatever, they would be welcomed as well.

Ultimately there's not much that we'll actually turn down, we just want to give users a reason to check out our presence on Flickr. If you haven't yet stopped by our Flickr page, you should! We have over 200 photos so far, including my personal collection of Amiibo, several of Doc Croc's super-old stash, rarities from Nerdberry and myself, and some great flea market/garage sale finds from ZB. Contributing photos to Flickr earns you a badge as well: Kuribo's Shoe from Super Mario Bros. 3! Earns yours today!

By the way, if you want to make my life just a little easier, read through our instructions on how to watermark your original images (including images for Flickr) and go ahead and watermark them before sending them to me. If you choose not to that's ok - I'll watermark them anyway - it may just take me a little longer to get them posted.

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We Still Need an Extra Reporter (Or 2!)

With the upcoming holiday season, lots of big games are getting ready to drop. The industry will be full of announcements, delays, cancellations, praise, criticism, scarcity, exclusives, and more! We really need one or two of you Baconeers to step up to the plate and become a full-fledged reporter for us. Although we would prefer those with the "Author" rank or above, we will make the position available to anyone with at least 10 posts under their belt.

What does being a reporter mean? Well, besides getting your very own nifty Feather Badge, you'll be one of The Bacon's primary sources of new information. That means bringing us at least 2 news articles per week instead of the typical member quota of one review per 30 days. Two per week may seem like a lot, but remember, news pieces don't have to be long, they just need to be correct and informative. In fact, the more succinct and to-the-point, the better. We want to cover this upcoming holiday season as thoroughly as possible, so if you think you can give us 2 news pieces per week, let us know! For an example of what most news pieces should look like, just take a look at The Watchman's archive of posts.

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Site Developments

There isn't much going on with the site on a technical level, but you can expect a few "fun" changes for the month of October. Many of you have already witnessed these modifications, but for those who haven't, I'll keep it a surprise, albeit a small one!

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Site Stats

It feels like I've done nothing but slave away on this issue of Greased for the past...forever...and in the interest of getting this information out in a timely manner, I'm going to wrap things up and save the site statistics for another time. I know it's been a couple of months since I've updated you all on the site's traffic and for that I owe you another apology. At any rate, I expect to put together a small email within the next couple of days detailing the site's traffic patterns for the month of August at the very least. You can hopefully expect a rundown of September's numbers during an October edition of Greased.

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Until Next Time...

September has been a fairly quiet month by all accounts, but we really appreciate the steady flow of articles coming from all you Baconeers. It can't be fireworks and parades every single month, and September is just one of those "down" months. However, I like to look at it as the calm before the storm. Tradtionally October has been a very active month with our "horror" theme, and then there's all sorts of hyped up games popping up every week for the last couple months of the year. Even with Thanksgiving and Christmas causing waves in the norm, November and December have in the past been some of our most productive months. Make us proud and keep up the good work everyone!

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