There was a huge celebration here in the Unigamesity yesterday night because this blog is finally one year old, the little fellow! Yes, on September 1, 2008, we went live and promised to keep delivering great content – and by the numbers of visitors we see coming back, I think we managed to do this. So, if you’re curious and you want to know a bit more about Unigamesity after one year of existence, read on – there should be some fun facts here!
The beginning
Yes, when we first went live on September 1st, 2008, the front page of the Unigamesity looked as you see for yourself in the image to the left and the post pages were even more dull and lacking life! Only after a few months of tweaking and learning, the Unigamesity started to look as good as it does now – and I promise you that I will keep tweaking it and it is just a few days until some cool new items will appear on the front page!
The trip
When Unigamesity was started by myself and my friend George, we had high hopes of becoming one of the best gaming-related websites in the world. We knew nothing about the world of blogging, of online journalism and we soon realized that it is not possible to see our dream come true – at least not yet. Because, yes, the reality is really tough for a two man crew with a budget of zero bucks who want to compete with the grands. And even though eventually George left the Unigamesity for projects that turned in a profit, I still decided to stick with this website which I consider as my child and I am heavily attached to. And I continued the trip on my own…
When this blog was launched, I wanted to cover all the gaming platforms available from the DS to the PS3 (and even the PS2!) but it was, unfortunately, an impossible job for one man. Keeping up to date with all the news on all platforms – and paying top money for the games to test and review – was almost suicidal and I had to stop if I cared about my sanity and health. A few months ago I have kissed goodbye the entire console and handheld part of the Unigamesity and decided to focus on PC gaming, especially on free to play MMOs and flash games and my job became a bit easier and the information started to become more complete and complex. Of course, this meant that the Unigamesity also lost quite a bunch of students and I was really sorry to see them go, but life ain’t always as we want it to be…
Today
However, today I am really happy with how Unigamesity is moving and shaking that stuff and I still believe that if I continue to work hard and deliver top content my dream might still come true and Unigamesity will indeed become one of the best gaming related blogs in the world!
Because today I have you, the readers, the visitors who discover great stuff here and decide to come back, and decide that even us, the small bloggers can deliver great content. Not to mention the fact that it’s much easier to follow, anyway. Today, you can also help out and rest assured: next year, we’ll be celebrating two years of Unigamesity in style and the party will get bigger and bigger in the years to come. Because of YOU, the most important element here in the Unigamesity!
The stats
Celebrations without checking out some stats are like MMOs without a chat system, so let’s see a few random facts about Unigamesity:
– there are 2,315 posts on this website and 867 comments from you, the users. There were also 7,307 spam comments eaten by our defense system, thank God for that!
– we’ve had a record of a bit over 130,000 unique users in the Unigamesity in June this year right before changing lines and going “PC only”. Now about 75,000 PC gamers are visiting the blog and I do hope that thanks to the great content the numbers will increase!
– there is some really popular content here as well: over 100,000 people were helped to fix Fallout 3 lock ups and crashes, while tens of thousands more managed to finish their games thanks to our walkthroughs, especially the most popular, the Sniper Assassin 3 walkthrough and the Escape the Bathroom walkthrough. Add to that tens of great unique articles and lists and you’ll have some reasons to come back again!
– such great content also got noticed by the “big guys”. Unigamesity got featured on top gaming sites, including Slashdot, N4G, Alltop, Ripten or Blue’s News, as well as huge portals like Reddit or Digg (but unfortunately never made it to the first page… yet!) and social networks. Not to mention other great bloggers and forum users that talked about stuff posted here – I thank you all for that!
– there are 75 people already following our updates on Twitter (and you can follow, too) and almost as many subscribed to the RSS feed.
– finally, I drank over 300 cups of coffee while writing, I have upgraded my computer twice to keep it up to date and I have become a bigger game junkie than I ever was before starting this blog. And I love it!
In the end, I want to thank you all for visiting and making this trip so pleasant. Obviously, without the readers, no website would exists. Thank you for being here and Happy Birthday, Unigamesity!
UPDATE & Fun Fact: I have just remembered that about a month ago I started playing with the idea of creating a Unigamesity Store. If you wish to get some really strange underwear (like the “BIG Mana Potion” boxers or the “cLICK me” string bikini) or, even better, if you are brave enough to wear the site’s logo on a T-Shirt, check out the never-launched Unigamesity store. And LOL!
