 |
| Interesting fact about me: My favorite Pokémon is Moltres |
Hi everyone and happy new year!
I know it isn't a new year everywhere yet. However, it's midnight in Finland so it's time to look at what new things The Deck Out will offer you in this new year of 2012!
- The Deck Out is finally ready to go global
I'm still waiting for a few people to send in their answers about their countries but I have most of them so I can start writing things and I can hopefully be able to start The Deck Out goes global - series in late January/ early February.
- Interviews of "Power Players" worldwide
I'll try to get interviews from both Yuta Komatsuda and Tsuguyoshi Yamato. I'll try to get interviews from other top players around the world as well. I'll also try to get interviews from top Judges / TOs of Pokémon Organized Play. I really think they are the people that deserve as much appreciation as the top players. I'm glad to say that one of the top Organizers in the game ever- BigDaddySnorlax - already agreed to an interview!
I know it isn't a new year everywhere yet. However, it's midnight in Finland so it's time to look at what new things The Deck Out will offer you in this new year of 2012!
- The Deck Out is finally ready to go global
I'm still waiting for a few people to send in their answers about their countries but I have most of them so I can start writing things and I can hopefully be able to start The Deck Out goes global - series in late January/ early February.
- Interviews of "Power Players" worldwide
I'll try to get interviews from both Yuta Komatsuda and Tsuguyoshi Yamato. I'll try to get interviews from other top players around the world as well. I'll also try to get interviews from top Judges / TOs of Pokémon Organized Play. I really think they are the people that deserve as much appreciation as the top players. I'm glad to say that one of the top Organizers in the game ever- BigDaddySnorlax - already agreed to an interview!
- I'll write to 6P UG now and then
Adam offered me a spot and I had no reason to decline because that way I was able to take off the donate button from my blog. The Deck Out will be my top priority when it comes to writing and writing to 6P UG will not affect my blog's content in any way. It'll be only 1-2 articles more per month so I think I can manage. It's a huge challenge and honor for me since English isn't my native language and I was almost an unknown player worldwide 5 months ago before I started my blog. I hope I can get some more publicity and credibility for my blog through UG as well.
- More rogue ideas
I love rogues. But for some reason, I didn't have time to write articles about all the rogue decks I have had in my mind. I'll try to increase the amount of rogue articles in my blog this upcoming year.
- Featured writer(s)
Yeah, I really am trying to get a decent featured writers to my site to get some change now and then. I'll also ask from my Japanese friend if he is willing to write an article for my blog. I'll choose every featured writer carefully and I hope you enjoy their writings as much as you like mine.
- Strategy videos
I know this is a lot to promise but I'll try to make it happen. It will take a lot of time and thought but I hope to expand my blog even further to videos in the future. It might not happen in the near future but I'll try to get them up and going this year. My English is pretty horrible but thankfully Julia has agreed to help me as the voice for the videos. I hope I can provide something unique thanks to those videos to you as well. I already have some very cool ideas, which I could realize with videos.
- Articles on other sites
I want everyone in the Pokémon TCG community to get to know to The Deck Out so I can share all the info I have with more and more people. In order to achieve the goal to make my blog more known around the internet, I have to write articles to other sites as well. You'll probably be seeing my writings on the Beach and in the Gym in the upcoming year because I think they've the most visitors. If you have any other ideas to how to make the blog more known around the internet or if you're willing to help me with that, please let me know!
- Moving to WordPress
If I have time, I will surely do this. I've heard that my blog runs slow on some browsers and I hope I can fix this. WordPress helps me to add more uniqueness to my blog and hopefully I can make it a better experience for you guys as well. In fact, I recently heard that people haven't even noticed "The Decklist Out" or the "About me(us)" because of the unclear layout of the site. I usually have problems with writing on the Blogspot as well and sometimes I get very annoyed at it. If you have any negative experiences with my blog, let me know.
- Q&A Entries
The amount of e-mails I receive daily has grown to the point where I might not be able to answer to all of them. Many of you ask similar things so I may start soon "Ask Esa" or "Q&A" - series where I ask for things which trouble you in the game and try to answer them the best I can. I hope this can help everyone equally and that I don't have to answer +10 e-mails a day. Since all the questions and answers will be public, it's a win-win situation for both me and you!
- The amount of updates
I have so much planned for the future (as you can see) that I might be forced to update 3 times a week. That is by no means a bad thing since I know most of you would like to read more from me than I can provide at the moment. However, I must remember that I'm a human and I have other things to do as well. I'll apply for University this spring so reading for exams will surely take a lot of my time. I hope that it won't affect my writing too much but it may affect it a bit.
That's a lot more new things than I first thought. Let me know what you think about these things or if you've any requests according to my blog in any way! I'm always ready to try and do new things that I haven't thought of yet. Any other comments are welcome as well!
Happy new year and I hope the year 2012 will be as great as the year 2011!
I'm glad you are keep everything updated so well Esa! As a new player to TCG, I have learned so much from your past blogs and other helpful websites (mainly sixprizes). Hope to see more of your great works in 2012!
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year! Well, you sure have a lot of plans. Hope you can manage, since getting University takes a lot of time. But I'm really looking forward to seeing more articles. Thank you for your patience and great work!
ReplyDeleteNO! Dont go Underground! I dont want to have to pay 15 bucks a month just to read your articles! D:
ReplyDeleteThe Hell no! part:
ReplyDeleteVideos: Too much time consuming. First, recording multiple times: you can't correct one second unless you record all the part again, after recording you feel like you could have done it better so you record again. Secondly, reading/writing over listening/speaking: the first is done muck quickly, loading a text is like few kB while loading a video is like few MB which make it worse for those that already find your blog is slow. Finally, something almost nobody think about : English accents are hard to understand for non-native English speakers (and sometimes for native speakers also), I never saw any subtitles on Pokémon TCG videos, and oral English is harder than written English because you can't Google translate it.
Oh, and I hate the openings of the current TCG video series. Too long.
TheTopCut videos are fine : video is the best form for sharing a game. I don't see any advantages for video articles over written articles but : people are lazy to read and prefer hearing (true… but those lazy to improve themselves shouldn't cost you time), and you can put ads to earn Youtube Money! :D (Contrary to classical ads, you can almost never block Youtube ads.)
The amount of update : keep having a life outside the Web ! I don't think that anyone wants you to fail your studies for the purpose of sharing your knowledge and thoughts about the game. :p
The I don't know part :
moar rogue : well it's your blog, you do whatever you want to. Propokemon is mostly axed around rogue decks right now (excluding costing articles) and I don't feel like people are interested by that, while at first it had a lot of articles about metagame. People are more interested about metagame at first (your Chandelure article was almost the first to speak about matchups since NV was released). Looking at original points of view is interesting but as you saw on previous articles metagame decks aren't 100% known by your readers.
RDL article was interesting, and Donphan+Max Potion finished 2nd at a City (HGSS-EP, Switzerland forbids non-European sets), however I'm afraid of what would happen if you do too many rogue articles.
Wordpress : Yeah. The blog is ugly for IE6 readers. You know the worst web nightmare is IE compatibility don't you ? :p
You could put the "The decklist out" and "About me (us)" links on the right, somewhere near "About me". By the way, I think it is irrelevant to have two different things called "About me".
This costs you less times than switching to another blog structure, so you can focus more on articles or on your studies.
The Fuck yeah part :
Going global
Interviews
Q&A
Your blog
Happy new year !
something that you could do is make a post asking people to send in their sites for the league that they attend. there you can get an account and spread publicity.
ReplyDeletei also think that the 6p ug idea could do 1 of 2 things. it could screw you over, or help you. i (along with other seniors, juniors, and some masters) do not want to pay money for articles that aren't extremely different from other articles. however, i do see where you are coming from on the whole "i won't need the donation button anymore!", and i applaud you on that. you deserve to write on the ug.
Woah, I like how you posted it at exactly 12 o clock! Was that planned? I think it's pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteYour blog is great and informative. I really appreciate your writing and I know my league players do as well.
ReplyDeleteIf you start giving exclusive content away for pay on UG, I guess I am hoping that your own web blog does not become irrelevant.
Who owns what you write for UG? Adam? If so, and there are ideas and decklist, you will not be able to share those with your blog, unless it is stated in your contract...
Anyways, I love your stuff and recommend it to all my league players, so...keep up the good work.
man this blog is awesome.
ReplyDeleteThat's all, I always read without commenting, I even used your decklists more than once, so in this eve I felt I had to say something.
keep it rolling.
ESA, ihmiset, kuten sinä innostaa minua pitää pelaa. jokainen joka tuntee minut, tietää, että en pelaa hyvin. on ollut useita kertoja kun olen ajatellut quiting, mutta artikkeleita kaltaisia kuin kirjoitat vetää minut läpi. pitää kirjoittamisesta.
ReplyDeleteDShuntblaster: I'm very glad to hear that. Hopefully I can provide more great info also this year!
ReplyDeleteMatheus: Great to hear that! I also hope that University doesn't slow me down.
Anonymous: Haha, don't worry about UG, it's only once a month and won't affect my writing in any way. I won't keep anything from you.
Zarmakuizz: Thanks a lot for your VERY in-depth answer and thoughts. I very much agree with you in many points and will think thouroughly your opinions.
When it comes to videos, thankfully I don't have the problem with the accent. Julia who agreed to do the voice for the videos has no foreign accent. I think she has more like an British accent to the English thanks to her school. I would like to add videos because they could bring a bit of variety to only text blog like mine. Thanks again for your great answer, I wish every comment were that long, lol :D
Anonymous: Great idea, I'll think about that more! When it comes to UG, I hope it mostly just makes me a more credible author. I won't keep anything from my blgo writings and since the UG article is only once a month, I'll cover there different kind of things like in my blog. It'll be interesting to see how things work out. I'm only taking my first steps in the Pokémon TCG community as a writer so I like to try new things and develop along the process. Thanks for your thoughts very much!
pokemonjoe: Yeah, this was a scheduled update. Don't worry, I wasn't at the computer at the time this came out :D
Anonymous2: I know UG may rise concerns when it comes to my blog and I talked with Adam about my UG articles. I can't release the decklists in this blog, which I share in the UG articles (unless I've already introduced them in my blog) but as I stated earlier, it won't affect the quality of the decklists in this blog. I'll share different thigns in the UG and in my blog but I'll keep the quality of my blog and decklists as high as before (maybe even higher). I have so much info to share with everyone that UG is just one more way to share all the information I have. I have almost 8 years of competitive playing surpressed in my head so I have lots to write about. Not to mention that I love writing so much. However, thanks for your opinion and concern!
Anonymous3: Thanks for commenting!
Anonymous4: That's great to hear! Keep on playing and you'll develop as a player all the time.
Thanks for comments everyone and happy new year! I hope for even more comments and opinions so don't hesitate to write yours! Tomorrow, I'll get back to schedule and I'll release a waited Japanese deck article.
I was... I have no life :P Eh, I'm only 13, so it's not like I can really go to any parties or anything. Anyway, keep up the good work! All of your articles are really informative and interesting! On a side note, I would love for you to do UG because I have it. :P
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year Esa, great to hear the blog is moving in the right direction for the new year. All the best, and as always keep up the good work. :)
ReplyDeletepokemonjoe: Thanks a lot, great to hear that you are looking forward to my articles in UG as well.
ReplyDeleteAaron: Thank you!
I just want to say I love your blog, check it every day. Thanks for all you do, and I look forward to the content you'll bring us this coming year. Keep up the great work!
ReplyDeleteQuarter-Turn: That's awesome to hear! I'll try to keep on pushing myself more all the time.
ReplyDeleteHey Esa, just wanna say that I really enjoy reading your blog and really appreciate all the effort you pour into it. Especially with you taking the extra mile to provide the western world with coverage on Japan's metagame. Thank you very much for contributing so much juicy info to the community at large! Also, it's amazing how you're able to write such high-quality articles in your second language! Maybe you should do shows like how J-Wittz does. :D
ReplyDeleteReader: I'm very happy to hear that! Videos are in my planning but I guess video show will never be a possibility because my pronouncing of English isn't that good. Thanks for the encouragement and I'll try to keep up with the good work.
ReplyDelete