Syp of Bio Break linked over to an article Massively posted up today (Link). So Massively asked some pretty prominent dudes in the MMO blogsphere some interesting questions about MMO blogging. The questions look into just where bloggers fit into the bigger picture of the MMO culture.
The questions that Massively asked were not the kind of fair I expected to see. None of the typical blogger questions were present. The stuff I expected to see like “how do you find stuff to write about” or “how do you deal with obnoxious comments”, were not present. Instead the questions seemed to hint at a bigger role that MMO bloggers have when it comes to their readers and the MMO’s they write about.
Here’s the questions found in the article (Link):
- A common myth about gaming bloggers is that they all want to eventually become game designers one day. Do you feel this is either true for you, or MMO bloggers in general?
- Do you feel that your role as a blogger doubles as an “unofficial” community manager?
- What methods have been most effective for you in reaching out to game developers?
- What do you feel are the key differences between bloggers and major MMO news sites?
- A game developer invites you to take an all-expense-paid trip to visit their studio and review their upcoming MMO. They promise a free copy of the game and lifetime account, as well. Would you do the review? Explain why or why not.
From these questions one can almost paint us bloggers as MMO vigilanties. We don’t have editors, we don’t have deadlines and we don’t have the pressure of maintaining hits for advertisers (for the most part).
As solo or even small team bloggers we have flexibiltiy that bigger game sites just don’t have. We can choose to participate in the latest game or avoid it. We can choose to write reviews or we can leave them to the bigger sites. We ‘can’ even go off topic once in a while though granted that never helps us much.
Ok, wall of text aside, let’s get to the heart of the matter, so just what does ‘Making It’ as an MMO blogger really entail? Do you know you’ve made it when you are contacted by or when you are in touch with the folks that work on your game of choice? Have you hit the top when you’ve got a small army of readers behind you?
Perhaps ‘Making It’ as a blogger just means that the opinions you write are shared by those who leave comments on your posts. That would pretty much mean that ‘Making It’ as a blogger has a lot to do with how much influence you, your blog, and that blog’s community, have and how that influence can impact the MMO’s that community participates in.
Perhapse making it as an MMO blogger is actually more about making it as an MMO blog. In that sense, the community that follows a blog is just as important if not even more important than the person posting the wall of text.
Sure it would be neat to be ‘net famous’ as Scary always likes to say. Though I’ve got to say that if even one or two of the things I’ve posted here, or some of the other good ideas or reccomendations I’ve seen on other blogs are actually implimented in game, then you know, to me that would definitely outweigh some of the personal glory.
For those of you that visit MMO blogs and those that have your own MMO blogs, what’s your take on it? What do you think ‘Making It’ means for an MMO blog and or an MMO blogger?

My ex actually linked this over to me when I stopped playing for a bit. Heh, way to convince me to stop gaming right?