Happy birthday to us! VGB celebrates its one-year anniversary today

21 November 2006

5 Comments

Posted by:Ferry

Update November 22 at 8AM: As mentioned in our birthday update below, we’re moving to a new server today. Our host tells us any work we do until that is done will not be saved, so we have to postpone updates for a few hours for the transfer to finish. There won’t be any downtime, but if our updates will go lost, some of your recent comments might also be gone later today. Thanks for your patience and we’ll be back updating again later today!

Time sure flies when you’re having fun, one year passed by in a flash! Strange how the more the game industry changes, compared to a year ago, the more everything stays the same.

When VGB was first planned, I told my friend Astro that the goal was to keep this video games blog online for at least three years. After hearing my writing and audience goals for the first year, I’m pretty sure Astro thought I was either way ambitious or plain crazy. I’m here to tell you now that on day one we started with just two visitors, us two. Today, a full year later I’m arranging VGB to be moved to a new server for the second time in the past month…

20,000 visitors every single day (and growing) eat up a lot of bandwidth, you see. We owe it all to you, thank you for visiting! You should know that what fuels us to keep these daily updates of the latest gaming news going are your comments and emails with appreciation. Because believe it or not, it IS hard work to find the news, edit it, write original articles, do research, link to resources that supply you with more info, as well as adding pictures and videos that can entertain both you and us. Hey! We need our daily dose of laughs too!

Because of all this work I’ve gained a lot of respect for the work game journalists, bloggers, and fans put in their medium. There is no way I can thank everyone who send in tips or linked to us, but know it is always appreciated. I do want to take a moment to give a special thanks to our staff: Astro you’re an awesome co-author and pal, the same goes for Alan and Chaz who did a ton of legwork for the Tetsuya Mizuguchi interview. The PR folks at Disney’s Buena Vista Games have been great too and I’m actually going to review Lumines II soon thanks to them.

Before blogging myself I visited a ton of game websites, so this past year has been great to give news tips back to them, and seeing them and many other sites take a liking to our news is great fun. A big thanks to the folks at Slashdot, Kotaku, Digg, Joystiq, Fark, 1UP, Engadget, 4 Color Rebellion, N-Europe, News4gamers, Gonintendo, G4TV, FHM, and hundreds of others. Highlights for me were being quoted by CNN Money in 2005 and being asked for quotes by the Associated Press in 2006, and more recently having my favorite webcomic, Penny-Arcade, even visit and point to us! It’s really been a rollercoaster ride so far!

Again, thank you for visiting and keep in mind, a simple correction, tip, email or “thank you” in the comments is what keeps us going here, because the pay is lousy, but that’s ok as we’re enjoying ourselves. And with that I’m giving the mike to Astro…

Astrotriforce signs off on VGBs 1-year anniversary

Hello guys and gals! Wow, I can’t believe the day has finally come! VGB is now exactly one-year old! Happy 1st year anniversary to us!

As frequent visitors should know, I’m Astrotriforce and my main area of expertise is in writing reviews (though I also write news and post videos) and it’s been wonderful to see how many I actually have posted in a years time. It’s a nice little collection IMO and I will write many more and continue to improve them with new ideas. The site itself has even had several improvements and sections added since it’s inception, probably the most notable being the addition of streaming videos from sites like youtube. Which changed everything. Being able to see my finished reviews look so colorful was great, they really came to life after that. And new categories like the Review Links and Game Openings also added some flair to the site IMO (Game Openings was my idea).

The site has grown so much beyond what I could ever have imagined though, seriously. From our exclusive interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi to our growing fanbase of dedicated visitors (and commenters who have practically turned some of our posts into mini-message boards!) to the very fact that some of the biggest sites in the business have used our links, ranging from CNNmoney.com to 1up.com to G4 . . . it amazes me how much the site has accomplished in such a short time. And of course we have all of our readers to thank as well as the wonderful fellow bloggers at sites like Kotaku who have done so much to give us a lot of exposure. We can never thank all of our readers enough!

Personally for me, it’s been a mind opening experience even though I haven’t been able to update as much as I would like due to work. But it’s amazing to think that two guys can just sit down and start a web-site/blog, and that it can grow in cred at such a rapid pace enough to be used by big sites like 1up.com. Sites that I read myself! Ones that I never in a million years would’ve thought would use something I wrote . . . it’s just so insanely hard to comprehend. I mean if I can do it, anyone can do it!

I remember when the idea for VGB was just a glimmer in Supa’s eyes, and to be honest I never thought it’d actually materialize, much less reach the point it has reached now! So cheers to VGB and here’s to many more years!