Because of some mentions on nice prominent websites,
Dumb: The Game has really taken off all of a sudden! I'm actually learning a lot about internet hype. There was, by whatever chance, a mention on one site earlier in the month, which drove in a bunch of new visitors - a big crowd of them, actually. Then from that, it began to get mentions on a lot of sites. It's very much an exponential thing - if only ten people know about your site, what are the odds that one of those ten is going to have the ear of a major "opinion-maker"? But you get that one lucky break, that blossoms into a few thousand visitors, and out of those few thousand, definitely there are some who combine the traits of really-like-it, like-to-share, and are-widely-listened-to (or they have the attention of someone who is!). I think Dumb has gone mildly viral!
It's really great, exceeding my modest expectations, though not nearly reaching my immodest hopes. Now the question is whether the big hit will settle into a nice solid high traffic level, or if it will peter out and return to where it was. It's weird when you think about those simple traffic statistics actually representing the actions of millions of people and how they interact. It's sort of like seeing the numbers floating in front of The Matrix. Oooh. I already have ideas for my next mildly viral site. Actually, one of the ideas I had long before Dumb, but I haven't yet figured out how to make it work. It'd be a really original and unique web game.
Another website idea I had was a site where people trade items. I'd explain the details, but yesterday I discovered that my idea has been implemented almost to the letter at
Title Trader (and also SwitchDiscs, Peerflix, and GatorSomethingOrOther, but to lesser degrees and with fees involved). So I guess that's done! Does seem like a cool site, though, so I was smart to come up with it. I'm not actually endorsing it though, I haven't tried it. But I really like the idea a lot.
What I really need is just a page of dancing chihuahuas and polka music that flashes seizuriffically. That'd be all over the web in minutes. Or is the era of that stuff over? I guess nowadays it's all embarrassing videos of kids acting stupid. If only I owned a lightsaber! And a video camera. Uninteresting trivia: in Tony Hawk's Underground 2, there's a semi-hidden parody of the lightsaber kid. Now that's hitting the big time!
Yes, I'm still working on Loonyland 2... but this weekend is the Guild Wars: Factions free preview event! So I'm busy for the moment. I did copy the water effects from Kid Mystic into it though. Much nicer looking than what I had previously. I've been doing a lot of work making background tiles for it, which I just hate doing. Ugh.
