GGTV Blog

I went to the local NYC anime meetup last night. It was really fun. I made a new friend that has very similar sensibilities as I do (Evangelion aside). We seem to be on the same page in regards to mecha story arcs and “seinen” anime. Of course, there were a lot of other very nice people there as well. Overall, very cool. I just wish it wasn’t on 9th Ave. That was a really long and cold train ride back to Astoria.

This X-mas is hopefully going to be really relaxing. I’m stressed, the wife is stressed, we’re all a bit under the gun. There are a lot of moving parts and things hanging in the balance so it’s been a bit tense lately. We’re staying put this winter and hopefully that means we’ll have a chance to relax. Hopefully…

Wow, time is passing way too quickly. It’s a wonderful thing that we’re approaching the cheeriest time of year. But it’s also depressing that there’s seemingly so much left on the table and not enough time to do it all.

One of the problems we’ve run into recently has been our branding. From “goodgameTV” to “GoodGameTV,” our site has undergone one minor re-branding effort but two massive business model overhauls. Each iteration of the previous model has leaped us epically further from the previous, resulting in a disproportionately large chasm between relating the name to the business.

Our first version was an ad-based distribution model where the staff loads the content provided by web-based content producers. We nixed this citing unprofitability even with scale to size referencing Hulu, Youtube, etc. as comparables. At this point, all of our content was to be themed around the gamer demographic. “goodgameTV” made a lot of sense here.

Our second iteration was a subscription-based model where we limited the amount of content producers and promised original programming “worth paying for.” We decided to change plans due to lack of quality, marketable programming themed to our content focus that would attract user dollars and the funding to create our own. We realized that this type of premium content would force us into production of our own content, which was not our forte and would schizophrenically split our resources between content incubation, production, logistics, distribution, financing, and everything else in between. This was simply too ambitious for us to take on. At this point, our content was still focused on the “inspired by gamers” theme.  “goodgameTV” still makes sense although we opened the tagline to “inspired by gamers.”

Now, our third and final model is based on VoD distribution, thereby removing all elements of content production from our table. We happily concede creating our own content but in doing so have opened up our content strategy due to the lack of quality “video game focused” content. Now, we aim at the E3, Comic Con, and Anime Fest demographics, which is much more diverse than simply the “video gamer” audience. It certainly will give us more widespread range, which is the absolute positive. There really isn’t too much of a downside other than that we go in whatever direction our content licensors take us. That being said, our content is now more reliant on our site partners and licensors than us, meaning that “GoodGameTV” is seemingly no longer appropriate. Oliver has suggested we evolve into our own interpretation of a more generic brand, such as “Yahoo” or “Google.”

We’ll continue to revisit this obstacle as we go.

This post is a week late, but that’s really how long it took to recover from the romp that is Comic Con. Our staff busted their butts off to make sure we had a successful launch and we did. So much gratitude and appreciation is given to them for their mammoth effort.

Comic Con was both fun and tiring. It was fun to see all the people, the cosplay, the fervor and zeal of the attendees, and the commitment by the companies to try and put on a show. It was completely exhausting to the vendors who tried to maintain their pep and zip throughout. We woke up at 6AM everyday and got home at 10PM and sat for probably less than 30 minutes throughout the entire weekend while we were there. Our feet were swollen and aching every night and waking up to do it again and again just seemed like a living nightmare.

Regardless, the payoff was excellent. It was about as successful as a launch as we could have imagined. Now that that’s over, we’re onto more important things, such as site traffic generation and content uploading. Back to the grind.

These past weeks have been raging with activity. Preparing the site for launch and our booth at Comic Con has made things rather strenuous. We’re very lucky to have amazing help to allow us to get through these times relatively intact.

Between logo redesign, t-shirts, business cards, stickers, booth banners, booth equipment, props, content uploads, content prep, graphics work, marketing push, staffing, transportation, costumes, logistics, etc. it really feels like the wheels have been burning at 100mph. And even if the wheels had fallen off, the spokes keep spinning at max speed. At times it’s been a little testy, especially with some minor, occasional setbacks. There’s simply so much to do.

Just the other day, I pulled a 16 hour work day and went to bed exhausted. I dreamed I was falling behind, so low and behold I barely sleep and start working during the twilight hours. That was the second night in a row that had happened. Looking back, I was being a little overly paranoid, but it’s that feeling of falling behind that’s gotten me so worried focused. At the end of the day, you can only try your best.

Our booth is almost ready to go and I’m psyched. We’re corner booth #1669 located next to Sega, IGN, Fox, Animal Planet, and Nintendo. Wow! What a location! I’ve thanked the Reed Expo guy many times about the placement, he’s always pulled through for me thus far. I’m really excited to see my content partners there and my potential partners as well. It’ll be the first time some of us are meeting.

We seem to be pretty well prepared though. Not too many things are unaccounted for at this point. I’m even flying in ultra-reliable staffing help from back home just so things go extra smooth. All in all, as nervous and excited as I am, I have a feeling that things are going to go relatively well. Maybe it’s just fortuitous premonition…

These last two weeks have been an epic bonanza of video conversion. Other than that, there’s not too much to report on from the content front. We’ve processed quite a few discs and have started creating a slew of files. It’s been uphill, but it’s been worth it.

Comic Con is coming up and we’re certainly getting antzy. We’re formulating our launch strategy and things are falling into place. Tons of people have been inputting advice based on their trade show experiences. Though we’ve been to Comic Con before, it’s always been as a visitor rather than a vendor. I hear things are VERY different on the other side of the table. That’s what we’ve been preparing for.

One quick thing we’ve learned is that trade shows and conventions are a money suck. Literally, everything is designed to cost you an arm and a leg. Want electricity? That’s a grand. Want internet? That’s a grand. Want lights? That’s another grand. Here and there the bills add up and before you know it, you’re broke because you wanted to demo your product or service. Ouch.

The flip side is that you cut all of that stuff out and go super bare bones. The danger is that you’ll be just like all the other Con noobs with a sad little table and a poster or two. 80,000+ people in attendance and only 200 end up visiting your booth because it looks sad and depressing. To put a spin on a song I really like: “There’s a fine fine line between smart….and a waste of time.”

So that’s why we’re trying to find that balance. Keep a close eye on the budget and expenses, but make sure that what you end up splurging on actually makes some kind of impact. That showstopper piece or two is the clincher that will drive droves of foot traffic into an inkling of curiosity enough to at least enter the booth. Where the heck is that line?! Good question.

To be continued…

Shipments of our content have arrived and we’ve begun the laborious regimen of mass encoding. There are tons of discs to go through. It’s both exciting and extremely daunting.

When boxes first arrive you think to yourself This is so awesome! We have so much stuff! I wonder which one these is ______…or Where’s the title I’ve been waiting for?! Disc after disc, box after box, plastic wrap upon plastic wrap, it then dawns on you: Oh crap, we have to convert all this stuff.  It’s kind of like getting a wholesale shipment of all your Christmas presents that you’ve been dying to get your hands on all at once only to later realize that none of it is fun because it’s all time-intensive and really boring work. It’s great that there’s so much. It sucks that it means long long days encoding, re-encoding, checking for errors, going through file by file.

Initial waves of encoding have begun. We have a target in mind for launch and it looks like we should be able to hit it (hope I didn’t jinx us). I’m definitely worried and a little bit overwhelmed, but if we can pull it off I’m sure it’ll be worth it. If we can’t, then we’re just going to have to roll with the punches.

On another note, last week I had some productive talks with more content licensors. It could lead to some very interesting agreements — agreements big enough that people will start doing a double-take. My goal is for people to start whispering amongst each other Whoa, where did those goodgameTV guys come out of? Again, hope I didn’t jinx us for a second time.

I’ll refrain from making any more prognostications just in case third time is the charm that actually does jinx us.

In other news, marketing has come to the forefront for us, an important priority. A couple of noteworthy items: 1) we are throwing around a new tagline/slogan for our site that has gone over quite well with many and will perhaps be implemented within the coming weeks, and 2) we’ve hired a marketing expert to help us vitalize our social marketing campaigns. We hope that this social marketer, in conjunction with our Comic Con launch, will help us build site and content awareness to our future audience. Only time will tell…

It’s getting very very hectic on all fronts. Hope to have more updates soon.

As I’m scrolling through my Netflix account and Hulu, I realize that there’s a lot of crossover in terms of content. It seems that all of us, to some degree, are fighting for similar genres. Obviously Hulu and Netflix are much more general and offer something to everyone and we’re more specialized (or we hope to be at least). To that end, my goal is to find more content that makes us head and shoulders above unique. A lot of my focus is now on differentiating ourselves not only by platform but also by the type of shows and movies we carry. This is where we start getting fun and creative…

It looks like indeed we’ll have a decent selection of content at launch if we can get it all up on the site in time. I’m very proud of this. Of course it can always be better and we will continually work hard at bringing in more, better titles. But this is a decent start. Let’s face it, it could be a lot worse, that’s for sure. I’m very excited to be working with our content partners. It’s going to make for an interesting and hopefully lucrative, long ride.

It’s important to state that I’m having a lot of fun starting up this business. Sometimes it’s easy to get overwhelmed and start panicking, but those are actually the best times when you realize that there’s so much more to be done. I hate the feeling of relaxing and thinking there’s not much to do right now, because that’s just not the truth. The fear of failure and resting on one’s laurels is my true motivation and inspiration. It keeps my clock ticking and my mind (over)actively working.

We just closed a couple of content deals and are in the midst of working on some more. The goal is to have a decent amount of content to offer this October when we launch at Comic Con. The last thing we want to be is a garbage pile for bad content, so we’re certainly being somewhat picky in terms of what titles we end up putting up on our site. We’ve already turned down a couple of distributors whose titles don’t quite meet our standards.

I’m really antsy about October because of the amount of work we have ahead of us. In fact, I’m a little bit intimidated. Hopefully we have a great plan so that we can actually accomplish what we set out to do. More importantly, I’d really prefer that we not be embarrassed when we release.

I ended up email bombing a bunch of people (almost everyone in my inbox, which is a LOT of people) when I tested out a feature in Mozilla Thunderbird, my email program. I simply tried to set an auto-reply function up by following the instructions online. WARNING: DO NOT FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS. Pretty much everyone who’s on my email contacts list and on my phone ended up calling me complaining that I had just nuked them with spam. Wow, I feel REALLY REALLY bad.

Lastly, I am going on vacation for a week, super excited. I think it’s a pretty well earned break. I have been stressing myself out lately with a couple of things on my table, but a good number of them are actually baring fruit, so I feel relieved. I’ve hit a lot of my recent goals, so at least I feel better about everything.

The past couple of weeks have been hectic as heck. I’m working on getting titles on the site and it’s progressing very well. For the past three weeks I think I’ve been averaging 12 hour work days. Sometimes it’s gotten pretty stressful.  BUT I know the payoff is going to be huge and well worth it.

The site has undergone construction from the back end to accommodate some very important operational stuff, so there have been very few front end changes. But trust me, we’re hard at work on the site, so it’s definitely not just sitting there.

I expect to have some major news announcements within the next week or two. We’re definitely moving in the right direction to doing something really big, so stay tuned…

PS I haven’t played any games lately, been so bogged down with work that I’m actually not getting enough sleep.  Alas…

Thanks to Oliver, we’ve had a successful relaunch of our site. There’re obviously lots of functions that need to be added, but I think it’s safe to say that everyone now gets the idea when they visit our site. He’s put in a lot of work into this baby, so we’re all very grateful for his efforts burning the midnight oil.

There were some obvious setbacks with Carl’s passing. We’ve managed to move past them and are now refocused on our efforts and direction. I’ve been in constant contact with his wife and we were able to donate a substantial gift to his fund, mostly to help her out in the wake of his departure.

Our next steps involve adding the many planned features onto this site to really help our site shine head and shoulders above the other guys. It’s these features that will give us our edge. In the meantime, we’re planning on acquiring and loading up some content for all our prospective users. This will be the single most important step in our development process. If we get this part right, we’ll be a force. I’m not even going to consider the alternative scenario…

Summer time is when things slow down, much to my dismay. This is when we’re just rearing to go, but a lot of people are on vacation. We’ll try our best to persevere. I hope to have lots of tangible results to show for the fruits of our labor