#i never played on that server for context. but i watched plenty of videos from their channel

[skeletalheartattack]

@ those tf2 server related tags: the lazypurple silly servers still exist. and if you want a silly-adjacent server that still has killing/pvp enabled then they also have a "TDM" server where objectives are disabled so you really just get to dick around

i figured his servers would still be around, although i don't think i ever had personally played on his servers before. i think i've seen some videos of them in the past though.

the two servers i use to hang around in through 2012-2016 were mostly just... hang-out servers? the term i refer to them as is "hub servers", similar to like... hub levels in platformers. one was a big city server where i met a good ammount of my friends on, the other was a server with maps the server owner created, which is also the server that hosted one of my maps. they had some sourcemods in common like the jetpack plugin.

im not sure if i could personally experience the vibes of those servers in the same way these days. granted anytime i play tf2 these days, it's usually to play casual, haven't touched any community servers in a long time.

[empires-recap]

Shubble Episode 17 Recap

Link: Empires SMP #17 | XORNOTH SHOWED ME THE FUTURE OF EMPIRES | Shubble

Runtime: 23:19 (2319! We’ve got a 2319! Sorry I’m a nerd I’ll leave)

Date of Release: September 14th, 2021

Other Players Featured: Xornoth (No captions in video, translation provided), fWhip

Note: The way Shubble does Empires is her videos are typically stream highlights. As someone who actively watches Shubble’s streams, some extra context may be provided in italics. Chat will be referred to as such. Cross outs will be my personal commentary.

Intro and Revenge Arc: Shubble opens the video by talking about how she want’s to get revenge on Joey and Sausage. Joey is obvious since he killed her because of Xornoth. She also blames the Creeper death of her original parrot to Joey. She does later show the replacement parrot later. She wants revenge on Sausage because of his instrumental role in killing the dragon and freeing Xornoth. She wears the angry wolf head as a disguise/mask so as not to be recognized. She doesn’t want to do anything drastic this time, just a warning. She believes all people are beyond saving, except maybe Joey. After arriving at Joey’s base with the dark oak signs she made, she realizes they’re too dark and heads off to find some glow squid ink sacs to make it more readable. At Joey’s she also sees hers and fWhip’s head on the wall.

Xornoth Logs on - After getting the sacs she heads to her skeleton spawner to repair her elytra so she can fly to Joey and Sausage’s (girl please put Unbreaking III on it it would help SO much.). As she gets out of the minecart she see the chat message that Xornoth has logged on just as it begins to fade. She become even more scared when she realizes it is only her and Xornoth online.

<Xornoth> >:)

<ShubbleYT> go away

As she leaves the mine, she finds the path up blocked by stone. Xornoth’s head pops out as she breaks ground. He also puts lava down at the entrance which she blocks with cobble. She digs a side path that links to a nearby pond and Xornoth looks at her as she swims up. There is some eye contact before he disappears. She gets defensive as a tentacle wraps around her castle. The ground then begins to die, more tentacles sprout up in front of her, and the sky grows dark with a storm. She heads down to the fairy circle, Lord of Mars and Lord of Saturn in tow. Shubble is blinded and she and Xornoth exchange words (his responses below). She wonders what else he wants now that the dragon is destroyed. He wants destruction and, besides what she has seen, there is plenty more to come. She replies that they are going to defeat him, if they can get all the kingdoms together against him. Gem helpfully /s replies in chat “no we’re deffo gonna sit back and take it” She blames him for Joey and partly sausage, who Xornoth says was already corrupted before he arrived. She says they found a way to cure it, but Xornoth reminds her that that was when he wasn’t at full power. He then calls her out for not protecting her kindom, attacking her golems and poisoning Lord of Saturn. She mounts the Mother Wolf, Lady Sun, and warns Xornoth to not come closer. He says she can’t do anything, none of them can do anything, and kills Lord of Mars (o7). She vows that Xornoth that he will pay, calling herself the angriest wolf spirit of them all.

The Temptations: The grass is restored, but Shubble thinks it was only a glimpse of what he can do. Xornoth then appears in front of her, but quickly disappears before he can do anything. She says that she was going to get revenge, but she knows now that’s only going to fuel him more. He appears by the Mother Wolf and Shubble rushes to protect her. She stakes claim to the land while riding her, calling it her forest. He then appears on her castle, which makes Shubble call him a horrible leader whose only friends he bullied. He denies it, saying they simply chose the side that will win. She counters saying that they were corrupted and that they wouldn’t choose him if they had free will. Xornoth tries tests that theory, temporarily gifting her with regeneration, strength, and resistance. He shows her the power she could wield by allowing her to one-shot a zombie (it was originally a villager who spawned, but Shubble refused since he was an innocent man), and playing into her need to protect her people and kingdom. She seems a little swayed, but stands firm. She says that a leader earns the respect of their people and she won’t loose sight of it because of the power he gifted her. She then calls him out for what he is: a sad, sad spirit that lost who keeps being reborn angrier and angrier because no one really loves you so you make them fear you. He then says wonders why he needs love when he can do this.

<ShubbleYT> fell out of the world

The Warnings: Shubble finally gets the time to dig a grave for Lord of Mars, who valiantly fought by her side. But she admits that Xornoth was right and that Joey and Sausage are running rampant and need to be reminded that there will be consequences of their own actions. She leaves a message in front of Joey’s Fire Temple and Sausage’s Dark Tower: You have angered the forest dwelling spirits. Repent or you’ll face the consequences - Wolf Spirit. She then lights both up with glow ink sacs and red dye. She also thinks of an idea of her becoming the wolf spirit, combining her spirit with Lord of the Moon’s to become a hybrid to be better fit to lead her people and her wolves. The next day, she logs on and finds these crystal or portal things floating above her base.

Mushroom House Build and Ending: She spends most of the rest of the video building a mushroom house for her people, using the same base design from her coven house from X Life SMP by Dad’s Guide on YouTube. She builds it accidentally right next to one of the tentacles, picking away at it as needed with her hands before it disappears entirely about halfway through. Any corruption went into the corruption box at her base. There is a point where she died from landing too hard with her elytra, which lands her at spawn since the loft bed at her base is considered obstructed. She tries to run back but takes enough damage especially with the lack of food not regenerating her health that she dies again by falling on a stalagmite. fWhip, who was lurking in stream quickly logs on to help get her stuff back since he thinks she died at his base. He was taking the bins out irl and missed the first death. She then finishes the build’s exterior and ends the video by saying how much she loves this server and this village and her builds and that she never wants to loose it.

Xornoth Translation (? = unsure) (Any break ups of dialogue are done because someone talked between speech, does not include video cuts)

“Hiya”

“Hi” (x2)

“I want destruction”

“You’ll see there’s plenty”

“[laughter] I’d like to see you try.”

“Well that involves you all working together, which you CANT.”

“That man [Sausage] was already corrupted before I showed up.”

“It’s cute you think that will work. You cured it [the corruption] before I was at full power.”

“There’s not much brain between you all.”

“Look at you, cowering in a circle in a hole. Hastier? to defend your own empire. Just like you wouldn’t defend you’re own people.” (The amount of times I listened to this line and only heard Tastier is more than I’d like to admit.)

“You sure?”

“Your Empire’s citizens have some hearts too”

“Your wolves’ hearts will crush easily in my fist enough.”

“That poor? little puppy can’t do anything to me now. You can’t come together to defend your own empires, let alone each other’s.”

“And [Lord of] Mars will pay for it.”

“Mars is dead.”

“I’m sure you don’t say.”

~~~

“They joined the side that will win.”

“The side that gives them POWER.”

“You sure you don’t want the power?”

“You could be unstoppable. Never lose your home again.”

“Why would I take your home if you’re working with me?”

“I can give you something to punch.”

“No, but you can punch this.”

“Fine. Look, 1 hit. You can crush your enemies in your fist. Never be bullied again. No one would ever make fun of your height.”

“People would fear you, people would BOW DOWN to you. Isn’t that what you want … as a ruler?”

“Fear, love. All the same. Gets the job done.”

“Who needs love when I can do this?”

[jackdawyt]

I want to wish you all a Happy Dragon Age Day! What an exciting day to be a Dragon Age fan, and just talk about how much love this franchise! To celebrate this day, I’m sharing what Dragon Age means to me specifically.

As you can tell, there are many things these games mean to me, I’ve been a BioWare content creator for about 3 years now and I’ve been playing Mass Effect and Dragon Age since I was 10 – which is half my life, so I have many stories and experiences with how this franchise has changed my life.

I could tell you about when I was 15 and I really didn’t have many friends, but I filled that void while waiting for Dragon Age: Inquisition, I started to oil paint Leliana and Josephine, while binge-watching content creators like GamerMD83, Ability Drain and Lady Insanity. Their content inspired me to create and only helped me fall even more in love with this franchise.

Or I could tell you about how when Dragon Age: Inquisition launched, it changed my life during a period of loneliness and rejection in 2014. The amazing cast of characters brought the best out of me, allowing me to move on with that lull in my life. And in that following year, I met Gareth David Lloyd, the voice actor of Solas just before Trespasser released. 

And of course, I’d be incredible remiss to not share how Dragon Age, through my YouTube channel & content has cultivated long-lasting friendships with amazing content creators and fans, how the community has supported me and, overall, how I’ve been able to have genuine interactions with so many people who just feel the same way I do about Dragon Age, it’s been beautiful. But… for people who generally know me, or have been an avid viewer, there’s one story that truly defines what Dragon Age means to me. And that is how my love for Dragon Age spurred an actual relationship, that has redefined my entire life.

In February 2018, I met Saria through our shared interest of Dragon Age, she had joined my newly announced Discord server at the time, having watched plenty of my videos. I started to talk with her just casually about our love for Dragon Age, which then developed further.  

Skip ahead the countless texting throughout the days and nights, and then texts that soon turned into voice calls, yadda, yadda, yadda. I started to like this Saria character a lot more than I anticipated.

For context, I live in Britain, and at the time she was in Colorado, which was about a 7-hour time zone difference, for me to stay until 7 AM orally speaking to a female who loves Dragon Age was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. I was 19, and I never dated before, never mind a long-distance relationship, the idea of dating as a whole was something that I really just hadn’t considered for my age. I always just had a crush on singer/songwriter Birdy, and used to say that I’d somehow marry her, and that’s where all my feelings would go.

But there was something different with Saria, she was funny, beautiful, quirky, relatable, and someone who I could talk to about anything for hours. So, we gave long distance a shot, she’d never dated before, I never dated before. Some people say that maybe a recipe for disaster, but for me, it was an experience we could both take at our own pace and build a relationship based on what we want, not what others govern as a relationship.

Anyhow, I met her physically for the first time in July 2018, and it was the best day of my life seeing her and spending time with her in Colorado. We decided to keep the long-distance going until I finish University in the UK.

Saria came to stay with me for 6 months in the UK that following October and it was so amazing staying with her.

And, honestly, seeing The Dread Wolf Rises Teaser with Saria physically with me was one of the Dragon Age experiences I’ve had, and I know it sounds cheesy, but from a long-distance relationship point of view, to be able to be together while watching the trailer for our favourite game franchise meant so much to us.

And in February 2019, on the 13th, the same day the year before we decided to be in a long-distance relationship, I asked Saria’s hand in marriage, and she said yes.

Dragon Age has not only been my encouragement through hard times in life, but it’s also given me a future. I have met my soon to be wife all because of the experiences Dragon Age has opened up to me.

When I tell most people that I met Saria through Dragon Age or YouTube videos, I often get the odd look or the silly “boomer” remark. But through it all, no matter what anyone thinks I’ve found the one for me. And Dragon Age is the reason for that. It’s how we both original met, and it’s how we’ll continue to thrive in this community because we both love and appreciate what Dragon Age means to us both.

And that is why Dragon Age so significant to me, as I said at the start, it’s given me amazing friends that I’ve yet to meet in real life, an engaging and fun community, and of course the partner of dreams to tackle the real world with. And for that, I’m grateful to not only the developers but to you guys for watching my videos and giving me a shot in this huge fan-base. If it wasn’t for you, I may never have met Saria.

Let me know what Dragon Age means to you down below. It is DA4 Day, and the official group are raising money for the charity AbleGamers – who are devoted to changing the lives of gamers with disabilities, so check the page out if you’d like to donate:

https://tiltify.com/+dragon-age-day-2019/2019-dragon-age-day/rewards

[thedizeezd]

A Full, Extensive, Thorough Guide to Streaming Video Games for Beginners

There's no secret. Streaming video games has caught on with many gamers like wildfire. The technology has finally adapted so that anyone, young or old, can start a streaming career even with basic equipment. Some streamers have seen success even with a one-monitor setup, while others who have gone all out on purchasing loads of equipment haven't seen much success at all. It proves that equipment—green screens, high-end sound equipment, multiple monitors—isn't the key to success.

So, then what? How does one get from point A, just beginning a stream, to point Z, developing an audience that actually pays you money for entertainment? It's honestly never an exact science to tell you the truth. A lot of it has to do with personality, who you network with, who you support, and what to expect from all of that. But I would argue the most important thing of all is never get discouraged with streaming video games. Millions of aspiring content creators all have the same idea—you want to create content that nobody has seen before. You've got great ideas! You want to plan out everything and start growing your community, and you know you can do it well.

I don't mean to discourage you. The road ahead is long and tiring. But you can traverse it if you put your mind to it and don't let up.

Thus begins the guide you need to start streaming video games. I can give you the keys, show you the door, and maybe even open it a crack for you. But you have to pull that door open the rest of the way, and nobody will do it for you.

Where to Start? Get Your Equipment

The good news is that some of you may already have enough equipment to start streaming video games and you don't even realize it. The PS4 and XBox One have built-in streaming capability along with camera support (if you have them) so you don't really need to concern yourself with bitrate, resolution, keyframe settings, or anything else that might be too confusing. I remember when I first started streaming and I was overwhelmed at all the settings—I started off with the wrong resolutions and didn't realize how shit my streaming setup looked until I actually got the brains to bring up a stream feedback.

Regardless, streaming via console isn't a bad idea to start because it can get you some kind of exposure. You don't even need a separate monitor or TV, although I do recommend you get a headset so you can hear the game audio without it repeating through an external microphone. I can't tell you how many streams I've heard where there's a very obvious echo from an external speaker and microphone that isn't on a headset. It's low quality and people will be turned off from it.

If it's your desire to start investing in some equipment, welcome to intermediate streaming. I would definitely recommend getting a second monitor, one to view your game on and a second to watch chat, have a stream feedback up, audio controls, and of course your streaming program. It all depends on what you want to monitor though—I run three monitors and a television which honestly is overkill for me. I try to fill up screen real estate only to recognize I don't even need the windows I have up.

Generally, you only need to be concerned about one of two programs. Those would be OBS and XSplit, the latter of the two I prefer. OBS is free, XSplit is paid. I just prefer XSplit over OBS because the UI is a little cleaner and the function terminology makes more sense to me. Most people I know use OBS, but I'd recommend trying out both to see what you think about either of them. I won't go into detail on how to set these up because that could take a lot more blogging. Instead, I've written a guide on how to stream using XSplit. It's a little outdated because of hardware upgrades, Amazon servers (I'm on Mixer now), and other factors, but should still hold true for anyone wanting to stream on either program.

A capture card is next. The two most selected brands for capture cards in the streaming universe are Avermedia and Elgato. Elgato is known to have fantastic customer service, Avermedia is known to have better hardware. I own both and I can attest to that. Pick one, I don't think you can go wrong. Some people go with higher-end capture cards because generally "gamer-related" products aren't worth the actual money, a lot more of the money pumped into them is just spent on marketing to gamers (coughrazer). But for these specific capture cards, I think they're actually worth it.

If you get an external card, be aware there will be wires. Many of them. Especially if you have multiple consoles, which brings me to switches.

Switches are nice pieces of equipment for video game streaming. I know plenty of streamers that have multiple consoles attached to one switch, and some of them detect their power so they automatically "switch" (ha) to the powered console and so there's no fumbling with buttons or trying to remember which console is on which output. It's just a matter of convenience so you're not fumbling with unplugging wires. Keep in mind that if you're using a switch to manage video output to your capture card, you will have a LOT of wires. I hold all my consoles in one ventilated hutch to keep clutter down. Clutter will happen if you decide to go this route.

Streaming started getting more popular around the time Intel Sandy Bridge processors released, so the technology has definitely developed so a lot of modern machines have the capability to handle on-the-fly video decoding to send to your stream servers. With that being said, you don't want to get anything meant specifically just for email and word processing. Generally, anything for streaming video games will take an i7 processor, especially if you use the x264 codec for streaming video games—that forces your processor to do the video encoding. Or, you can use NVENC if you have an NVIDIA card for your encoding, which is all in your streaming software settings. NVENC is a heavy drain on video cards, so if you're using a 1-PC setup running Call of Duty: Black Ops IV I would highly recommend an extremely beefy-ass PC, possibly with multiple video cards.

Going the 2-PC route is ideal, however. That's my current setup. I have two keyboards and mice and swap between the two when I need to control one or the other. Think of a 2-PC setup just as if you had a console plugged into your switch, only you control it through a keyboard and mouse setup instead of a controller. This is when your wires can get particularly nuts, especially if you run a KVM switch. I do not recommend a KVM switch, because it is cumbersome to have to switch between control sets just to change things on your streaming PC. Try and get two sets of a keyboard and mouse. I promise you it will work better.

A few last things on equipment: some people prefer using the Elgato Stream Deck which I think is a fantastic piece of hardware, but you can similarly just get a 10-key pad and map scene transitions to it. Do your research on decent lighting. And if you want to invest in really damn good sound, I'd recommend reading TransientGamers' extensive audio hardware guide. He recently hit partnership with Twitch, and he also does sound design for (I think) motion picture. Take a look.

I Can Stream...Now What?

Congrats on moving on with equipment! There's plenty of things you need to keep in mind when you start streaming and while you're streaming. I'll probably start with one of the most important things I've learned in the time that I've streamed.

Always be aware of what you say and do in the eye of the public. I've had numerous incidents where I've let something horrid slip, or I showed something I didn't want to show to an audience of people. What people tend to forget is that everything you say and do can be taken out of context, so even if you say or do things that are intended to be harmless, they can be used against you for harm. There was one time I let something slip on accident and around the same time a very prominent YouTube celebrity was under the scrutiny of the media for saying something similar to what I said. Thankfully, my current audience understood my intents and they laughed at my blunder. But remember, you are being recorded and anyone can copy what you've said to use it against you while you're streaming video games.

Second. Try to think of your stream as a television show. It might be hard to think of it as such a thing, but I've seen far too many people with dead air or constant chair stream where there's really no entertainment value. Remember, one of the biggest aspects to viewer retainment is to be entertaining. Otherwise, why would anyone bother with watching your stream? Television shows hide the politics and focus on the "relaxed fun" atmosphere.

Third. When you start off streaming video games, it's good to have a few scenes already set. Your first scene should be some kind of "Stream Starting" deal with something moving. You never want an entirely static stream. Ever play a video game that just says "Loading..." and doesn't show any indication of movement? Maybe it's the case that the game froze, or the computer locked up? You won't know unless you have something moving. A timer works great for this too, although I wouldn't recommend it right off the bat—if you set it for 5 minutes and don't have enough time for a full setup before the stream begins, either you'll start unprepared or you'll piss off people that come into your stream. Have something moving.

Another good scene to have is a motion-based "BRB" screen. There are plenty of small video clips and animations online you can purchase for cheap and just put a text source in it to notify others you're human and you need to pee sometimes. I've seen some people literally put up a BRB screen and go eat dinner for 30 minutes—it works. Others I've watched literally stop the stream. No. Don't.

Of course, there's the main stream scene. This should include your game. If you haven't thought of that part already, then maybe streaming isn't for you. Typically they include the webcam, sometimes a few stream stats, and other widgets to show on screen. Here's what my main

screen looks like, although I've just recently moved to Mixer as I outlined in the previous blog post. Some people prefer the pure, simple webcam/green screen/game look, others might prefer a ton of different flashy things on their streams. It's up to you and what kind of audience you might want to attract.

The Not-So-Fun Part

So now we consider what you want to do with your stream. If you want to turn it into a business, you're going to have to network. A lot. One of the things I say constantly is if you want a partnership, or perhaps some kind of viable money, it's important that you are known. If nobody knows who you are, you don't get support. It's pretty simple. There are some methods of getting "ahead" that are very legitimate, such as signing up to do charity streams. Althouigh the intended result with charity streams is to raise money for good causes, a welcome side-effect is that you get publicity. Pursuing charity streams for the intent of making a business out of streaming video games is...well, fuck you if you do so.

Keep in mind that with this day and age of broadcasting platforms, people tend to question the legitimacy of stream viewer counts. If there's 500 people in your channel, the channel lists only 30, and barely anyone is talking, this should raise a red flag for many, many viewers.

In other words, don't viewbot or try to get ahead by using some external hosting service. You will lose support. Partnership isn't everything, and neither is money. Pardon my french, but fuck you if you viewbot. You deserve no support.

But, as before, network. Stop by streams similar to yours. Say hello to people, even if you don't know them. You need to service people before they service you, and sometimes you get serviced, so return the service. You'll eventually find someone you click well with, and use each other to network.

If you use people to get ahead...well, you get the idea.

Attend cons if you can, find local groups, reach out to people on social media, and stop by their channels. Sometimes even boring content creators turn into your viewers, so don't be afraid to stick around someone's channel for the sole purpose of gaining a viewer. Visit channels on Discord, check out new channels from time to time, but I would advise not to automate any kind of social media. I used to put up auto-DMs in my Twitter and I would drop a link for people to check out. That never worked.

What did work is when I would engage in conversation with them. I'd stop by their channel, host them a few times, and maybe even donate and sub. Eventually, a broadcaster can turn into a viewer if you play your cards right. And if they don't, stop supporting them. That's it.

Also, do not go into another person's channel and announce "Yo streamer, I'm going to be streaming X game today!" That's a blatant advertisement of your own stream, and you're likely to get kicked or even banned if you pull that. Always be cognizant of the rules of anyone else's stream, and read them thoroughly before you even say anything. I've learned the hard way with that.

As before, network. Find the legitimate people you enjoy. Figure out who you can network with, and establish relationships with them. Eventually, you'll build something where some of your users are shared and some of their users are shared, since your audiences tend to like the same kind of humor, and birds of a feather flock together.

Lastly on this topic, although you may have made friends in some sense, recognize these are working relationships. However you treat whatever platform you broadcast on, recognize that some people will be trying to take advantage of you. Be amicable with people, but remember some people are out solely just to make a career playing video games and don't care who you are. I'm not much of a "magnetic" person, unfortunately, and I've been in the seat before where suddenly many, many people I didn't know had a strong interest in me. It's a weird feeling, and there were times I let it get to my head.

Don't. Having a large ego in this business will only cause you to lose support. I would know.

But, with all that said, I would caution you, reader, that at the first sign of someone doing unethical, shady things, do not pursue the relationship further. I wouldn't say burn the bridge, but keep your guard up with the particular person. Being used is never a fun thing.

A Business? Or a Hobby? Or Both?

This is always a hard question to answer because it feels like both often times. There are some ethical issues I've always had with it, so I try not to pursue too much with it. However, if you're able to distinguish between a business and a hobby, I have some tips for you with the former selection.

I started a spreadsheet (or many) that tracks the following: Profit and Loss, Preshow, Postshow, and Weekly Checklists, "extra" benefit recipients (for Patreon, Gamewisp, others), User Acquisition (how people came to your site and how you get them to stick), content timelines (internal and for your viewers), SEO, and whatever might come to your mind if you are really serious about streaming video games. I would definitely try to put effort into marketing your own self constantly. Truth be told, there are some aspects to content creation that are not fun. When you're not streaming, and for many that's about 6-8 hours a day, you have to dominate social media channels.

What exactly do I mean? I mean spread your name as far as the eye can see. Share your channel and its content as much as you can. Make sure your YouTube channel is up-to-date on clips. Make sure you use tumblr. Get those social signals and hit them hard. I've heard of pretty rough stories of 16 hour days of streaming, social media, content creation, blogging, networking, and pretty much doing whatever else is necessary to spread your brand for streaming video games. Generate your Discord and be sure to plug it regularly so you can build your community. But remember to take time off, too—never let this difficult career path affect your health. It's not worth it.

Also, if you decide you want to stream for the money, you are doing it for the wrong reasons. Streaming video games for a living takes more work than you think. It's a fun job, but expect your time to be limited and your significant others to dislike you. Or maybe even leave you.

En Conclusion

That's what I have to say for now, for part one. I've been streaming video games for 5 years, but there's plenty I don't know. As before, I can show you the door and open it a little, but you have to walk through. It's your channel, your business, and you need to take the lead. There will be a part 2 soon, discussing sponsorships, free games (and how to handle those), and other matters of streaming video games.

Thanks, and see you online soon.

[aurimeanswind]

Your Greatest Gaming Binges & ExtraLife 2017—Sunday Chats (11-5-17)

There is a lot going on. And I mean a lot. Behind the scenes. In front of the scenes. All in preparation for this coming weekend, where we and my team of internet friends from all over the Continental United States will be participating in ExtraLife 2017, an event I have participated in for seven years, and this will be my eighth. 

First, some context.

I tell this story every year, so I apologize if its trite to you, but its the truth. In 2009 I was diagnosed with a more ethereal-type disease called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It plagued my life for about seven months, causing me to be homeschooled during my Junior Year of High School, drop all of my Advanced Placement classes, and stop seeing my friends for weeks on end. It through off my college plan. It ruined my life. It made me miserable and unhappy. And I lost hope until I started seeing a specialist, Dr. Rowe, at John Hopkin’s Medical Center in Baltimore Maryland. With physical therapy, medication, and exercise, I was able to finish my Junior year of High School, and live a normal life until I relapsed in my Senior Year of High School, and had to retread old ground again, more frustrated, and more determined this time.

In 2012 i fell into a deep depression. Scared, alone, and as I slowly coiled up into my room and stopped seeing my friends, going to school, going to work, or doing anything, I had no one to turn to. Until I reached out to Dr. Rowe. He was a Chronic Fatigue specialist, but I remembered part of CFS is depression, something that I didn’t have to experience at the time. He gave me the depression test that I had passed with flying colors every other time I had seen him, and, stunned at the change, helped me start a path on a better and less mental-illness-plagued life without depression.

Every year, my team donates to John Hopkin’s Medical Center. It’s a place that irrevocably changed my life. It gave me hope when I had none, and set me on a better, healthier path. This is my way to give back.

So join us, this coming Saturday starting at 12pm Eastern Standard Time, at http://twitch.tv/IrrationalPassions, and donate to a cause that has helped me and countless others. All the details of who is coming, what we’re doing, and what you can do to help are or will be live soon at http://IrrationalPassions.com/ExtraLife.

Thank you, for all your support, and I hope to see you there helping us stay up and keeping us jolly.

It’s also with massive pride that I can fully announce that Greg Miller, Gen Miller, and Joey Takagami will be joining us from San Francisco California, and Greg is bringing Portillo too! Check out this video Roger Pokorny and I made to convince him to come:

I’m excited to see you all there, in spirit, for our wacky shenanigans!

Now... I onto the entrée.

Your Greatest Gaming Binges

Today, as is now customary for the first Sunday of each month, I asked YOU ALL a question, and it was about the most intense gaming marathons you all have gone on. Specifically single-session, and specifically why.

Now, I’ll say, full disclosure, you should always remember to consume the average amount of calories, vitamins, and minerals in your diet everyday, and take care of yourself: sleep when you need to, drink plenty of water, and listen to the recommendations of the FDA and USDA (here in the states) to better understand what your body needs, to live a better, and more fulfilling life. But I aside from the self-destructive aspects of binging gaming sessions, I love a game that gets its hooks in you so hard that you just can’t. Stop. Playing.

I have had countless 12-hour+ gaming sessions that have left me bleary-eyed, but still bushy tailed from the amazing stories that have come from them, and with a year like this year, I think there are many out there from this year alone. I wanted to hear your stories!

First, one of mine.

Danganronpa 1. Boy oh boy. I think I’ve infamously talked about it at this point. But when that came out I was so incredibly obsessed with it. It was all I played for days, and I’d roll out of bed, grab my Vita, and keep playing, until I rolled into bed, played until I felt asleep, rinse and repeat. It was an incredible few days of gaming, and it was what got me back into visual novels.

Now, to the audience!

See, I love the classic gaming sessions. I think that was a totally different era of playing games too. Hearing times of people playing Street Fighter 2 and just going were the best. And shoutout to Super Techmo Bowl, because that game is fucking rad.

I can’t get into Minecraft, but I like the multiplayer love. Scott, Evan and Tony, my cohosts on IP, helped run a big Minecraft Server for over a year. The stories to come out of those play sessions are magnificent, and I was into the jolly cooperation.

MGS4 is fucking crazy. Luckily there is plenty of movie time to go get snacks in that game. I think I beat that game in three or so sessions, so I get it.

BUT HELL YEAH JAK 3 AND SLY COOPER. Those games are so rad. Well deserving of massive play sessions. I remember going out and buying Red/Blue 3D glasses because I rented Sly 3 from GameFly and didn’t get them. I ended up steeling them out of a display box in a Blockbuster (DON’T TELL ANYONE) so i could have the cool Sly Cooper branded ones.

But boy. Jak 3 in one day. That’s a tall ask.

See, I wish I played MGS at all in the era of when you only played one game because it’s all you had. I only ever really experimented with multiple play throughs when it came to MGS4, and that was still a ton of fun, but I wish I could have done it with something like MGS2 or 3.

The different styles of play are what make those games so hard to put down too, even though I just played the same way the whole time. Like a loser.

Get a better game Plankfan, because I can’t do this Garden Warfare bullshit.

Kidding, but yeah I think of the multiplayer bingers, Overwatch has taken the cake, and that’s the most class-based of all, considering each character is their own cup of tea.

Very much so! Game rhythm is super important to how hard you can binge it. Especially with single player stuff. Like, Rocket League has tons of ups and downs and variety therein, so the rhythm is changing all the time. Single player games need a good loop, and facing off against the next villain really pulls you through Akrham Asylum. Especially with the Metroidvania-esque format.

I’m curious to what you thought of it, ultimately, because I like that game a great deal, but nothing in Deus Ex really blew me away. I think it was just a very good “one of those” with no unique hooks really. I know a lot of people have different feelings about that, but any immersive sim really makes me never want to put it down, so I get it.

You should do the same with Dishonored 2, because it’s v good.

FUCK YEAH.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of those games I spent 14 hours straight playing during ExtraLife 2010 and never looked back on. I love it. I could play that game all day.

Oh my god yes. Just like the Minecraft love I love this too. And the loop of that is great.

I have never really had a LAN party for anything, but ExtraLife is the closest I’ve come to that. I really like the loop of all that too. I played Halo 2 with my brother and his friends when I was younger and it was a blast. Boy... This sounds like it’d still be rad today.

Another Arkham game. I really jive with this one too, but City has just enough Open World in it to keep me fully immersed. I started playing that game after a midnight launch and just didn’t stop. It’s the same idea of wanting to see the next villain, especially after Freeze shows up. Whoooooo boy.

Oh boy. My recent trip back to Skyrim has brought me back here, because good lord do I just want to grab everything everywhere forever. And my inventory limit simply does not agree with my life choices on that front.

I think Skyrim was the game that got me to break away from my completionist tendencies too, because It’s just a game that I don’t think would be fun to fully complete after a while. It’d just burn thin too soon.

Hell yeah! That’s a game I played a ton of when I first started it. I think my second session with that game was somewhere around eight hours, but then Zelda came out and I just stopped. I want to finish that game before the end of the year, if anything to see the story through, but those open world games just bring the most out of all of us.

BRING IT BACK.

BRING IT BACK.

BRING IT BACK.

Bloodborne is just so incredible. I love just letting myself go in that world too, because that truly is a game I could sit down with for an entire ExtraLife. I know it wasn’t your cup of tea, but I love it. The same has been true of all my other Souls experiences, because those are games that get their hooks in and just don’t let go. I think those are the games best suited to playing across multiple sessions too, since some time away is usually what you need to get past a boss you’re stuck on.

The ultimate binge game: The Witcher 3. That’s a game that I couldn't really podcast with either, because every snippet of every conversation was just so compelling for me. But of course, the monster dens and boss fights were where the podcasts came in anyway. Boy. What a fucking game.

Thank you all for writing in your answers! I hope folks still like this format, and I’m excited to do more of these. Been thinking of ways to spice up Sunday Chats going forward, and while I have some soft ideas in the pipeline, we’ll see what I ultimately end up on.

As I said last week, I currently have no intention of doing a Sunday Chats next week as it’ll be as we wrap on ExtraLife 2017, and I’ll preferably be dead. But we’ll see! Just don’t expect one, and certainly won’t be taking questions.

Regardless, I’d love it if you tuned in next week, Saturday, starting at Noon Eastern Time, to watch us play games and do dumb stuff!

http://twitch.tv/irrationalpassions

Be there

And keep it real.

[royal-red-asks]

7 Videos About SEO You Should Watch

Whenever I mention SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, people always ask, what will be SEO? These three make certain that the content that we all put out is high-quality, superior, and SEO-friendly. Pro tips: From MyTasker, we have seasoned content material writers and SEO experts that can assist you to upgrade your old blog posts structured on the trend. DA is SEO organization Moz's rank showing how respected a website is, based upon its link profile and various other factors (i. e. the amount of backlinks pointing to several site from another site). Leveraging voice search is definitely another among the top SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends that will be impacting search engine optimization in 2018. You should outline your NAP data for your business at the start of your Local SEO campaign and keep it consistent. Right now plenty of SEO experts have observed that only building a huge number of links will never assist in ranking a website within the long terms. SEO will gain importance over all else as it assists you drive quality traffic, obtain visibility, boost your brand plus lend your business the trustworthiness it requires to succeed. So, I might declare 2018 is a problem for Google, just as very much as it might be regarding SEOs. We have several good rankings, but we are usually always trying to improve and discover what the future holds intended for SEO. In 2018, the user experience is the particular center of development as nicely as the key point intended for the SEO strategies. SEO continues to be king of the Internet, plus businesses will continue to require valuable, and unique content that will will meet the need associated with their company in the many years ahead. Backlinks are one of the most significant SEO factors. In order to give you a head begin, here are the SEO tendencies and techniques we expect in order to dominate in 2018. Debbie A. Everson is the particular CEO of, experienced SEO Specialists and Search Engine Optimization Company to 2, 000 small companies. Off-Page SEO refers in order to all the things that may be done directly OFF your own website to help you much better search engine positions, such because social networking, article submission, discussion board & blog marketing, etc. SEO (or Search Engine Optimization ) is probably the most significant competitive digital marketing advantage that you could have over your competition. For internet marketers who were brought up inside the ‘traditional SEO market, ' 2018 is a time in order to adapt or die. Today, I'll discuss the on-page SEO techniques which will assist you to increase your position searching results in 2018. Long descriptions are usually great for Youtube video SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and give you a location to add timestamps, useful hyperlinks, and an overall summary. SEO could be the process associated with maximizing a site's search motors visibility to connect with the potential users and customers throughout their search journey. 2 tools to help with nearby SEO are BrightLocal (for rankings) and MozLocal (for local research optimization). SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION professionals have highlighted the chance that Google will get a lot more specific in analyzing relevant articles. CRAWL it, such as Google does, with (for example) Screaming Frog SEO spider, and repair malformed links or things that will result in server errors (500), broken hyperlinks (400+) and unnecessary redirects (300+). SEO is mainly about keywords. See how I naturally included multiple variations of the keywords (called LSI keywords) that I am looking to target how to do seo”, seo tips and techniques”, search engine optimization wordpress”, and so forth Whether the marketer or a business proprietor, and even an agency for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, it's always good for analysis and learning new SEO strategies. With that will in mind, here are several key tips for enhancing your own Google rankings, based partially within the latest SEMrush SEO study, plus partly on our own evaluation of marketing trends. Within SEO terms of speech, that will means much more long-tail key phrases included in the list. Taking the effort to understand even the basics of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION can help your site get higher click-through rates, engagement, plus of course, rankings. This particular will lead to an even more individualized experience, while the rise associated with voice search and digital co-workers can offer the ideal terrain to develop artificial intelligence plus reward successful SEO strategies that will keep up with the developments. Whilst this does mean that many local SEO-rich sites can very large (and therefore, potentially expensive), it remains one of the particular most effective methods to get your own website on the first web page or two of Google's SERP. In purchase to analyze your SERP functions, you'll need a powerful device like SEO Powersuite's Rank System, which lets you track fifteen Google SERP features, along along with your keywords and organic outcomes. And many SEO suggestions and tricks increase your cyberspace user experience quality while concurrently improving your ranking in research engine algorithms. You possess to know many vital marketing and advertising SEO tools and associated along with order to create good SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION for the online business. It optimizes technical SEO and can help you with keyword optimization of your content. In the event that you build quality backlinks with regard to your blog post, you'll furthermore rank higher for the aggressive terms like SEO Tips” effortlessly. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is even more required compared to before, because everything that reduces UX will fck up your own rankings (even in the personalized search). Subscribe in order to the Single Grain blog today for the latest content upon SEO, PPC, paid social, plus the future of internet marketing and advertising. Traditional SEO techniques are usually still effective, but taking straight into account these trends could considerably increase your relevance on the particular search landscape. As digital assistants exceed smart phone devices, there is a excellent opportunity both for SEO plus content, taking advantage of the growing market that connects the particular brand with a user within a unique but still relevant plus useful way. SEO plus SEM both heavily rely upon keywords to push traffic to company websites and webpages. The first issue raised is that, when people expect SEO to become a magic potion for immediate on line success and profit, ” they have a tendency to be sorely disappointed and frustrated. ” Other issues discussed are the time it takes to focus on SEO, the technical aspects that can seem intimidating, the possibility of receiving a penalty for doing something inappropriate and more. Right here is the trick, attach the link within your content of your own target website, helping your focus on audience in reaching your web site, increasing traffic and impacting SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. SEO optimized posts are likely to rank high in research results in comparison those unoptimized articles. The point about YouTube Google rankings considering that April 2014 Google had the major update, many vseo possess been crying however the remedy is pretty simple. If a person have just started your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION campaign for the brand-new website, after that you should focus on long-tail keywords. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, alone, is not enough in order to guarantee success and content advertising, alone, is not enough in order to guarantee success. We believe by now, most associated with the principles of SEO are usually more or less well recognized by people that have carried out their amount of time within the trenches since 1999, even though new platforms and data forms arrive all the time maintaining the need for ongoing exercise or testing even more essential than in the past. That's why a good consumer experience from an SEO viewpoint is more than your website's speed. For instance, several businesses miss the mark along with SEO and images, and nevertheless rank well. If you want increased rankings, you need to examine his stuff - he's the particular Unicorn among a sea associated with donkey SEOs. Consumer Experience as such has a good enormous influence on SEO. Off-page SEO very efficiently within promoting your company where interpersonal media, bookmarking sites, forums, weblog directory, Q&A, articles, videos, picture and infographic sharing, and record sharing play well. So just how do the SEO masters cope-up with the ever-changing context through the search engines? For instance, parenthetically we want to create a blog post about SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION because we are trying in order to build a inbound link in order to an SEO website. That will number will probably tick upward as SEOs become more advanced in their strategies and Search engines is constantly on the location so much emphasis on hyperlinks.

In today's rapidly moving world, SEO techniques can modify on the dime—and the most severe part is that you just might not even know this. Hacks which could have gained you a front-page result simply because recently as 2016 are outdated now, but they may actually hurt your website's rankings. It's a really great and knowledgeable blog to enhance your SEO ranking. Take some time plus find out about your Meta titles, description, URL readability plus how to earn featured thoughts and site links SEO's close to the globe are taking click through rate seriously claiming it in order to be one of the best ranking signals. Bing has confirmed that will they track unlinked brand plugs and use them as the ranking signal — and the patent by Google (along along with observations from many SEO experts) indicates that Google may end up being doing this as well. I've seen success with producing videos lately and am searching forward to utilizing your SEO suggestions to help my videos position on page 1. Plus SEO professionals are absolutely thrilled about this new opportunity due to the fact featured snippets provide a possibility for low-ranking pages to reach the particular top of search results along with almost zero effort. Along with an increasingly crowded online area, staying on top of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends and adapting to all of them can help you beat out there the competition. Here are usually the most important SEO adjustments you need to integrate directly into your 2018 content strategy. Just remember in order to pay attention to solid articles creation and copywriting fundamentals, participate your viewers deeply, and remain abreast of technical trends such as backlinks, SEO health, site rate, and schema. Lookup Engine Optimization (SEO) is the particular scientific art of optimizing your own website around specific keywords within order to rank higher looking results, such as Google. Gianluca is usually a Moz Associate, blogger, creator of the Web Marketing meeting The Inbounder and an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and Digital Strategist independent specialist together with his company, 1 of the Agencies recommended simply by MozYou can find Gianluca upon Twitter sharing the best regarding web marketing and blabbing furthermore about space, politics and football. SEO or search engine optimisation is a complex science amongst all other dominant Google algorithm's 200 or more factors. Nevertheless, the bottom series is that SEO is accountable for bringing you on best of the search engine ratings as well as the increased you rank, the more guests and customers you end upward with. If I say voice research optimization will be among the particular top five SEO trends within 2018, I wouldn't be exaggerating the fact. With regard to example: I used to make use of a web dev company, plus one in our clients suddenly tanked on Google search listings, on further investigation an unscrupulous SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION company had purposely been via directory listings and purposely transformed the name of the company and the address, and furthermore went through creating a number of unrelated duplicate listings upon those sites. Sometimes, this can be hard to figure out which updates will actually impact our SEO efforts and straight impact rankings. Despite several concerns AMP is generating among some bigs news sites, internet owners, and SEOs, it won't seem that Google will decrease pressure for a large quantity of websites to adopt this. Regardless of the fact that SEO offers the highest ROI of any kind of ecommerce marketing campaign, most on-line shops are put together along with little to no consideration associated with search engines like google. Consider these points while developing SEO strategy to get higher ranking in search results. The particular term SEO in relation in order to seo is also used with times to make reference in order to search engine optimizers, who are usually consultants that mange and assist in the development and completion associated with search engine optimization projects for clients. The faster you realize why Google is usually sending you less traffic compared to it did last year, the particular sooner you can clean upward and focus on proactive SEO that will begins to impact your search positions in a positive way. Obviously, keyword search positions is another very important metric to track if you are usually analyzing your SEO efforts. Tone of voice search is one of the particular latest SEO trends in 2018.

With most that said…SEO is still regarding content and links. Use long-tail key phrases, full sentences and questions -- although your present keywords are usually still important and play the big part in SEO, even more people are choosing to research in full questions now, mainly because they're speaking, instead of within short term. This is the component of an SEO strategy that will focuses on building quality exterior referral links that trust the given site as an expert or source in the focused categories. Eliminated are the days where very much of what one did with regard to SEO was purely for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (link building, highly optimized articles, content only for the major search engines, etc). Well, backlinks are the particular evergreen ranking factor of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, there's no doubt about this. But times are changing plus so does the things. I've been ranking video clips last few weeks for key word like SEO Outsourcing” and Wp training London” and some SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION agency terms here. So, to make it easier to suit your needs, we compiled a list of the 25 best SEOย tools you need to know and grouped them into five neat categories: keyword research tools, technical SEO, backlink analysis, link building and rank tracking. We looked at hundreds associated with SEO companies to decide which usually ones would make our ranks list. Thus, really time for mobile optimization intended for better SEO result. SEO means helping businesses perform everything they can to create more money from those who else are visiting their website through organic search. Google provides been actively encouraging businesses in order to convert their websites to HTTPS, and those websites are getting rewarded with a minor SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION boost. Now please bear in mind almost all of this is my viewpoint on SEO but remember that will is from someone who will be getting results with search motor optimization and to prove this particular you can run a couple of Google searches to see that will yes Infobunny gets results towards some very, very strong respected competition.

All of these types of strategies wrapped up are recognized as SEO, or seo. At the most basic degree, SEOs need to think regarding the fact Google can much closely imitate what a human being user can do. Search engine optimization has in order to evolve with the times, yet not in the way nearly all people describe it. Every period I see someone write SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION has changed a lot within 20 years” I laugh out there loud. Keyword research is one associated with the most important aspects associated with SEO. It's that will period of year again, whenever we see an influx associated with SEO articles forecasting trends in order to look for in the fresh year. I move into much more detail within SEO Page Titles: 15-Point Directory for B2B and B2C Brand names, which explains the best methods to work in relevant key phrases that accurately reflect the web page content. The main thing, however, will be that Local SEO is almost always cheaper and more efficient than traditional marketing. Lookup Engine Optimization; short for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, is a process coping along with the optimization of websites within a way that they can get high ranking within the particular search engines. SEOs will start to optimise content for incredibly defined user locations, like close to certainly one of their shops or within a cafe district, to assure they capture every potential certified lead. But along with the newest changes in the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION industry, getting this coveted #1 spot may not be more than enough to get you all the particular traffic that you require for your company. While it's impossible in order to keep pace with every revise in your efforts to boost your own page ranking, there are several key SEO trends and strategies to follow in 2018. SEOs conveniently call this effect ‘domain authority' plus it seemed to end up being related to ‘PageRank' - the device Google started to rank the particular web within 1998. Ranking for seo” is hard. An accessible URL is usually an important SEO ranking element. Key phrase research is an important section of SEO. Google's CEO Sundar Pichai announced that will voice searches make up in order to 20% of mobile queries, which usually puts new challenges in front side of SEO experts. SEO stands for lookup engine optimization. ” It is definitely the procedure for getting visitors from the free, ” natural, ” editorial” or natural” lookup engine results on search motors. This typically involves using advanced SEO tags (e. g., tags) that search motors like google reference when the more visual search engine outcomes page is displayed. Focal points for SEO in 2018 functions suggestions on what to prioritise in 2018, including on-site lookup, topical, local and mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and where SEO capabilities need to sit within organisations. We might construct a blog post that will has the SEO related key phrases in it and we would certainly put the link of the particular website that people are trying in order to build the back link in order to within text of that blog site post. My SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION guide will break search motor optimization down for you. Meta description is not a immediate SEO ranking factor but this helps in ranking indirectly. Once such an interview gets published, it nearly always gets a lot of backlinks and SEO value.

In 2018, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategies will be more focused towards visualizing the information since it will provide an online method of users. With the particular explosion of mobile search, most of us continue to see SEOs appear narrower than regions, counties or even even suburbs. According to the particular survey, 77% of our clients voted for user experience because the main SEO trend regarding 2018. Google has introduced (at least) a ‘percieved' risk to submitting plenty of lower-quality pages upon your site to in a good effort to curb production associated with old-style SEO friendly content dependent on manipulating early search motor algorithms. Since a person working on the particular fringes of SEO, not the daily focus, it's great in order to have this broad overview intended for getting at least the essentials right on my websites. With voice research becoming as popular as this is, featured snippets are having a huge part within the particular SEO game. We understand a lot about our customers but just a small amount associated with that information usually switches straight into an SEO strategy. To become competitive in SEO in 2018, it is very important to understand how Rankbrain is assessing user experience upon your site. With visual content getting emphasized as an important section of SEO strategy, we will shortly see an improvement in the particular search results too, which is usually further in line with the particular user's queries. You can furthermore use Google Analytics to discover SEO keywords for content search engine optimization. And am do see that blogs are pushing incorrect advice both to new organization owners and to people that SEO 2019 PDF have run their own companies with regard to years but are extremely fresh to SEO. Research engine optimization (SEO) could be the procedure by which webmasters or web business owners utilize strategic duplicate to reinforce their website's position. Good SEO books explain in more detail how best to use key phrases and the way to structure your entire web site to attract the attention associated with search engine spiders along along with human visitors, and an content like this cannot do the particular topic justice.

[king-shrug]

7 Videos About SEO You Should Watch

Whenever I mention SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, people always ask, what is usually SEO? These three make certain that the content that we all put out is high-quality, superior, and SEO-friendly. Pro tips: In MyTasker, we have seasoned content material writers and SEO experts who else can assist you to up-date your old blog posts structured on the trend. DA is SEO firm Moz's rank showing how respected a website is, based upon its link profile and additional factors (i. e. the quantity of backlinks pointing to several site from another site). Leveraging voice search is definitely another among the top SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends that will be influencing search engine optimization in 2018. You should outline your NAP data for your business at the start of your Local SEO campaign and keep it consistent. Chances are plenty of SEO experts have observed that only building a big number of links will never assist in ranking a website within the long terms. SEO will gain importance over all else as it assists you drive quality traffic, obtain visibility, boost your brand plus lend your business the trustworthiness it requires to succeed. Without a doubt, one particular of the biggest trends that will has already begun to consider place and will continue properly into 2018 is the loan consolidation of niche MarTech players simply by larger content cloud vendors, along with the role and importance associated with SEO increasing significantly throughout this particular transformation. The essential to successful SEO is focusing on long-tail keywords you need to be along with these search results because even in case you have thousands even thousands of social media following, this still won't be as eective as ranking high on the particular SERPs for your target key phrases. While obtaining as many pages indexed on the internet was historically a priority intended for an SEO, Google is right now rating the quality of web pages on your site and the particular type of pages it is definitely indexing. As mentioned earlier around 95% of general population can not move beyond the initial page SEO search results, therefore as a business you require an in-depth knowledge of the particular latest SEO techniques and begin incorporating them in your company today. SEO (or Search Engine Optimization ) is probably the most significant competitive digital marketing advantage that you could have over your competition. For internet marketers who were brought up inside the ‘traditional SEO market, ' 2018 is a time in order to adapt or die. Today, I'll discuss the on-page SEO techniques which will assist you to increase your position searching results in 2018. Long descriptions are usually great for Youtube video SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and give you a location to add timestamps, useful hyperlinks, and an overall summary. SEO will be the process associated with maximizing a site's search motors visibility to connect with the potential users and customers throughout their search journey. 2 tools to help with nearby SEO are BrightLocal (for rankings) and MozLocal (for local research optimization). SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION professionals have highlighted the likelihood that Google will get a lot more specific in analyzing relevant content material. CRAWL it, such as Google does, with (for example) Screaming Frog SEO spider, and repair malformed links or things that will result in server errors (500), broken hyperlinks (400+) and unnecessary redirects (300+). SEO is mainly about keywords. See how I naturally included multiple variations of the keywords (called LSI keywords) that I am looking to target how to do seo”, seo tips and techniques”, search engine optimization wordpress”, and so forth Whether the marketer or a business proprietor, or maybe an agency for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, it's always good for analysis and learning new SEO methods. With that will in mind, here are several key tips for enhancing your own Google rankings, based partially for the latest SEMrush SEO study, plus partly on our own evaluation of marketing trends. Within SEO terms of speech, that will means much more long-tail key phrases included in the list. Taking the effort to understand even the basics of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION can help your site get higher click-through rates, engagement, plus of course, rankings. This particular will lead to a far more individualized experience, while the rise associated with voice search and digital co-workers can offer the ideal floor to develop artificial intelligence plus reward successful SEO strategies that will keep up with the tendencies. This new paradigm associated with users relying on voice research for many of their research needs will be a video game changer for SEO. The internet users are almost all excited to know how brand-new SEO trends could affect their particular business this year. It's our own job to stay ahead associated with digital marketing trends so check out out these 9 SEO forecasts. The process associated with manipulating your content so Search engines and other search engines normally return your page near the particular top of the organic lookup is what SEO is just about all about. As Rand Fishkin pointed out in a Whiteboard Friday, content that is enhanced for keywords still holds beneficial SEO power. 9 forecasted SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends that will shape your own digital marketing strategies. Some SEO professionals and bloggers say that brief URLs ranks better in Search engines. Amazing article i don't know regarding youtube SEO but after reading through this article i fully realize how to rank video on the web and google also. The particular rise of featured snippets, PAY PER CLICK, voice search and local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION can often yield better results compared to an organic ranking. SEO in 2018 is also expected to include some wonderful features with new technology and the trends are currently favoring the popular expectations. Content that will is clearly designed for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION purposes is something that Search engines is already reducing - annihilation is the only way this can go. Dropping obvious key phrases into a piece of articles as many times as you possibly can, whilst not focusing on the high quality and relevance of the articles will get a site no place (apart from down! ). So, rather than packing plus cracking a keyword into your own content as much as a person can, white hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION will help you with the particular usage in such a method the content makes sense plus engages visitors well. I can clearly state that In 2018, Smart SEOs and even data-driven company can focus more on Searcher objective and less on keyword quantity, difficulty and links metrics. During this phase we furthermore perform tasks like keyword analysis (for existing pages), on page” SEO corrections, schema markups plus more. As far since I know, this only functions for HTML or CSS webpages - I don't go significantly for Flash websites, and was am not sure how that will pans out with respect in order to search engines and SEO. SEO is usually targeted on organic search outcomes — progressing to the top associated with the list when a consumer searches for keywords related in order to your business. With no Local SEO program in place your company can not be able to consider advantage of the local on the internet demand for your products or even services. If a person want higher rankings, you require to read his stuff : he's the Unicorn among the sea of donkey SEOs. Every business is limited in order to its own budget for customizing organic marketing results and the particular SEO professionals' aim is in order to make the most of elaborate allotted. Consequently, Link Building is one particular the most important in the particular list of ‘SEO trends 2018'. That's why a good consumer experience from an SEO viewpoint is more than your website's speed. For instance, several businesses miss the mark along with SEO and images, and nevertheless rank well. If you want increased rankings, you need to go through his stuff - he's the particular Unicorn among a sea associated with donkey SEOs. Consumer Experience as such has a good enormous influence on SEO. Off-page SEO very efficiently within promoting your company where interpersonal media, bookmarking sites, forums, weblog directory, Q&A, articles, videos, picture and infographic sharing, and record sharing play well. So exactly how do the SEO masters cope-up with the ever-changing context through the search engines? For instance, let's imagine we want to create a blog post about SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION because we are trying in order to build a inbound link in order to an SEO website. That will number will probably tick upward as SEOs become more advanced in their strategies and Search engines is constantly on the location so much emphasis on hyperlinks. 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[zephystechblog-blog]

A brief experiment with online game networking.

***DISCLAIMER: ALL PACKET CAPTURES WERE CONDUCTED ON MY HOME NETWORK, AND NO CONFIDENTIAL OR PRIVATE DATA WAS CAPTURED NOR EXPOSED. ALL INFORMATION SHOWN IN THIS POST WAS OBTAINED BY LEGAL MEANS USING PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY WHOIS***

I recently put an old Cisco Catalyst 2960 into production on my home network. It’s not doing anything really special, it mainly just functions as a standard switch. But, I started to wonder, is it a waste of a powerful enterprise-grade switch to just do nothing? Then I got an idea to leverage one of the features in IOS to conduct an experiment.

So I set up port mirroring on my switch to copy traffic coming in to or leaving from port 23, and copy that to port 1. So what’s on port 23?

My Nintendo Switch! (Yay, this won’t get confusing, a Switch plugged into a switch...)

I took my Kali Linux laptop and plugged it into port 1 on the Cisco switch, fired up Wireshark, set the capture to promiscuous, and then played a single round of my favorite online game.

Splatoon 2! It may be a kid’s game primarily, but I like it plenty.

I ran the Wireshark capture from the moment I launched Splatoon, until the conclusion of a single 3-minute match.

https://imgur.com/j2grkO7 - larger version

At first glance, it does appear to be about what you’d expect. Some DNS queries for Nintendo servers (A DNS query is when a device needs to know what the IP address of a server is), TCP connections to said servers, and... wait, what?

https://imgur.com/QqdAF2c - larger version

TLS? I have to be honest, I wasn’t expecting to see encryption for online gaming communications.TLS stands for “Transport Layer Security”, an encryption protocol usually used for secure websites, aka, HTTPS. Perhaps I’m being naive, but as far as I know, there’s no sensitive data being transmitted. By all means correct me if I’m wrong, this was just a big experiment for me, I’m not educated in how online gaming networking functions.

Now onto what I found when curiosity struck me, which was immediately with the first few packets.

So this was the first server that the Switch (console) contacted upon launching Splatoon 2. At first I didn’t think there would be much to learn from here, but I did learn one interesting thing.

I suppose I should not be surprised, but for some reason I still find it interesting to see that Nintendo apparently uses Amazon AWS Virtual Machines for their servers. Working in a datacenter myself, I know that virtualization is the future. Hell, it’s the present. Still, I found this little tidbit kinda cool to know.

Now I won’t show screenshots for every server the Switch connected to, because there were a hell of a lot and there wasn’t any new information gleaned from any of it.

So onto the interesting part, the traffic captured from actual game play!

From the moment I chose to join an online Turf War lobby, I saw pages and pages of UDP traffic scrolling by (I was watching the live capture as the game progressed). This I was fully expecting; UDP is the transport protocol of choice for real-time applications due to its low overhead, and the lack of a necessity for re-transmission of dropped packets due to the nature of real-time applications.

The reason for this is due to how UDP functions. UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol, and is usually know as a “best effort” protocol. That means that the device will send the data without caring about whether it successfully reaches its destination. This makes it ideal for real-time applications like skype calls, video conferences, and gaming.

On the flip side, the other protocol we can see here, TCP, is a connection-oriented protocol. Known as ��Transmission Control Protocol”, TCP will first establish a connection with the server, and then send over the data, with each side confirming receipt of the data, and re-transmitting any lost packets. This doesn’t work well with real-time applications due to increased processing overhead (and in turn, latency/lag), as well as the fact that re-transmitting lost packets is pointless for real-time applications.

What I didn’t expect though, is the number of varying IP addresses that my machine was communicating with. Using NSLOOKUP from my cmd prompt, I started to notice that these IP addresses belonged to various ISPs; Comcast, Verizon, a few I’ve never heard of before. NSLOOKUP is a utility built into various operating systems that lets you look up domain names or IP addresses to see what they match up to. So this got me wondering: What exactly is happening here?

In networking, the two biggest types of networks are Client-Server networking, wherein clients (In this case, Nintendo Switch consoles), connect to a single server, and the server orchestrates everything. The other type is peer-to-peer, letting consoles talk directly to each other.

Now, peer-to-peer doesn’t seem ideal. Sync’ing up many clients with peer-to-peer can be tricky, even if Splatoon matches are no more than 8 players; 4vs4 matches. But, seeing all this UDP traffic destined for a range of seemingly random IP addresses, all belonging to ISPs, seems to indicate that is what’s happening.

In gaming, the client-server model would use a single server that would be the “authority” on the state of the world as it exists, the coordinates of all players, objects, projectiles and such. This much I understand from playing Minecraft on personal servers. Everyone logs into a server, not each other (Even though in this context, you CAN have a peer-to-peer game of online Minecraft, where one player’s game doubles as a server, but the same idea still applies really).

This means, to me, that client-server is the best way to go, because the server can control everything that’s happening. Everyone’s consoles sends data to the server to indicate player position, projectile position, etc, and the server processes this and sends it out to the other players.

I do see some TCP packets mixed in here, sending “Application data” and responding to the server with ACKs. Could this be the main game server passing on other player’s data? Then what of the stream of UDP traffic? Why does the UDP traffic halt immediately after I leave the online lobby?

https://imgur.com/zKi0ug7 - larger version

As you can see here, as soon as I left the lobby, the UDP traffic stopped, never to resume again, leaving me with just some TCP traffic that stopped after 4-5 seconds, also never to resume again.

So what did I learn from this, aside from Nintendo using Amazon VMs for their servers? ...........not much. If anything, I feel more confused than ever. I can’t tell for sure if Splatoon is using the client-server model, or peer-to-peer model for online game play. The only other factor that points to the client-server model, is the obvious fact that during Splatfest, a highly popular event that attracts very large numbers of players, the lag is much more noticable, and time-outs and dropped connections are rampant, indicating that a loss of synchronization can cause someone to be dropped from a match.

If anyone has more experience or expertise with this, let me know what you think of this experiment, and shed some light on a confusing subject.