Issue #2 - a roaring success;

Well, I apologize up front for bringing the site down today :-)  Ok, Im not sorry about it because the exposure was great, but it sucks not being able to browse the forums.

Issue #2 hit DIGG.COM at spot #1 for about an hour, slowly going to #2, #3, and down.  Here are some wild statistics (that are higher in reality then my stats):

Todays issue #2 downloads (so far)              2,632  IN ONE DAY
This months issue #1 downloads (so far)    1,361
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Grand Total:                                                          3,993

Side Note: The folks that hit issue #2 liked it so much that they also went off to issue #1.  We had over 350 new downloads of issue #1 today.

Thats impressive for a small time group like us.  What it means to me, is that were gaining exposure and that means more exclusives for the magazine and the site :-)  Ive already been contacted by some other sites and Im working some relationships to try to make us even better.

Now, just because we hit digg.com and we got double our downloads does not mean weve got double as big of a reader base.  Much of that flash crowd was just the excitement of users clicking "download" from the digg.com site redirection.  However, if even 2% of those guys come back for more then weve done our job well.  Be that one person or two people, or twenty gamers.  No matter, it was worth it.  Currently we have 406 diggs, and the news article about the magazine has been read 4,503 times.

Now, saying thanks...

Editors: Thank you for putting up with me filling your inbox with file attachments.  Then reviewing up to an eight page word document and sending me back the changes.  This went on for a good three weeks fairly non-stop (and weekends as well).

Illustrators: We had some nice art that we can call our own.  BATMANKM was still coloring them into the morning hours last night (finished around 5:30).  I am not paying them, they did it for the love of the game (and cuz they commited to it :) ).  Thanks to batman and darth for the work.

Layout & Design: They rushed to get this done early.  I blame only myself for this, because I told all the writers they had till April 30th to send in their submissions.  Had this been three our four submissions it would have gone ok because that would have given us eight days to get them into our layout.  Then I cut it by three days to get it out this Friday because doodi was going to be gone to E3 and E3 news was going to be crazy.  So they really had five days to layout, not three our four submissions, but 57 pages of articles and gather all the images.  I didnt mention proofing each section and sending back corrections :-)  So when you see that layout just remember it was cranked out in a few days (although the side-bar art was done ahead of time for each section).  Lunatizx and BrokenDesign kicked some ass.

Writers: All articles arrived on time, luckily many were a week early which meant I was able to get them to the editors for a few days of review.  So most were proofed and ready to be given to the designers right on the 30th.  The amount of submissions was huge, and Ive got many to put into issue #3 including submissions from twistedcaboose, buffy, brokendesign,lunatikzx, liger117, n3rf, codemonkey(me), fetal, angelito, dsmooth, tank, and more that people have signed up for (the ones Ive listed are already in and ready to be sent into the layout).  I have two or three more that are still in my mailbox that Ive not even been able to handle yet (now I have some time).

That should cover just about everyone.  Now Im looking forward to a better schedule (due date is May 25th this month), and a more fluid design (section layout is already proven to work and ready to go).  As it stands now, the next issue will be "History of Gaming", with a chance for an E3 "special addtion" magazine to cover anything we get in the press about E3.  Ill wait until after E3 to figure out how well handle that mess :-)

For now, I believe the designers and editors are going to take some time to....play games.  Magazine issue #2 is done, we can rest easy for a bit.  No more late nights for a week or two. :-)

Thanks for all those that took the time to download it, and give feedback.  Next issue will be kick ass ;-)

CodeMonkey