Making it as an MMO Blogger Part 2

Part 2 of Massively’s article on how to be an MMO Blogger is now out! As we mentioned yesterday, Runic Games’ very own Wonder Russell (The “Minister of Culture”) was included in the interview questions. Here s an interesting question with a nice story quoted from Wonder’s part:

From your professional standpoint, what are some of the key differences between bloggers and major MMO news sites?

Wonder Russell: I can only give my personal experience, and that is coming from a tiny company where most of the news contacts I have now had a “Who?!” reaction, or totally blew us off. Having that background, I really like maintaining good relationships with bloggers who, like us, believe in what they do and want to do it well. It’s kind of like the indie outlet for the indie company.

Right before launch, I took an early chance on Stephen Bray, a Scottish youtube blogger. Here is the email he sent me:

Hello friends,

I am an amateur computer game reviewer presently creating video reviews posted to YouTube. A friend and I are looking at setting up a real site some time next year, but that’s just something in the pipeline right now.

I would like to ask if you would be interested in providing me with a copy of your upcoming game Torchlight for review.

I appreciate that I am just some random guy and that video reviews on YouTube aren’t as prestigious as something like IGN or GameSpot, but I have close to a thousand subscribers and almost all of my reviews have many thousands of views (my World of Goo review has had over fifty thousand views), so I am quite capable of reaching a broad audience.

I appreciate that this may be an irregular request, but consider that the way people consume content is changing. I find a lot of people prefer to put their stock in the word of the independent man on the street, when the alternative is the corporate-owned profit-centric website.

Should you be interested in perusing my library of reviews, you can find them all here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/antisocialfatman

Thanks for taking the time to consider my request,

Stephen

That review has over 80,000 views on youtube (you can see it here) and it turned out to be one of the most detailed and interesting reviews we had.

On top of that, here is an excerpt of a note I got back from Stephen, that made a few of us a wee bit emotional:

“I’d like to thank you sincerely for sending me a press copy of Torchlight. I’ve asked a number of developers (most small/indie companies) for review copies of games, and not only are you the first to acquiesce, you’re the first to even respond. I really appreciate it.”

I’m so glad we sent him a copy. It was a risk (especially because we had the game on an FTP site!) but turned into an awesome opportunity.