Hi there! In case you didn't know, I created newgrounds. No, it wasn't made by some giant company - just some dumb kid who now has help. I also co-founded the Behemoth; we made Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. Icon by Pegosho, banner by OmenaKettu.
The public launch will be next Wednesday, August 20th. I'll be making a formal front page post this Wednesday when the pre-release launches! In the meantime, check out the trailer:
We were curious to see just what would happen if we boosted a Facebook post. We decided to boost this Newgrounds game teaser post from Pico Day because it already had over 200 likes and spreads visibility of NG characters. I selected the option to promote this post to our fans and their friends (disclaimer: we never do any weird stuff like buying traffic / Facebook fans, so presumably our existing Facebook fans are legit people). After submitting payment info, it informed me that our post would be promoted to the United States, United Kingdom and the Philippines... The Philippines? According to Google Analytics, the Philippines accounted for just 2% of NG's total traffic this past year, and we suspect many of them are the same people who spam our blogs every night with links to counterfeit goods.
I dug around Facebook analytics and our Facebook fans indeed consist of a surprising number of people from the Philippines.
The Philippines account for 6% of our 185k Facebook fans. I assume a lot of them are made-up people, but in a perfect world only 6% of our ad spend would go their way.
So we started yesterday afternoon with a budget of $200, got approved, and waited as our budget just sat there. It wasn't until the middle of the night that our budget started getting eaten away, ya know, when people from the Philippines are online. Today, our budget has been used up. Guess where almost 90% of it went?
PH - The Philippines! Just like the video warned, we likely gained a bunch of fake fans who will eat into our real fan distribution when we make future posts.
We were featured on almost 400k feeds for $200, that is roughly a $0.50cpm - $0.50 per 1000 views. That's a much higher cpm than a lot of the ads on NG and a considerable % of what NG made in revenue yesterday. Facebook is making a fortune because advertisers go there for "targeted advertising" but as far as I can tell, the target is straight into the toilet!
No disrespect intended to actual human fans in the Philippines, let me know if you're one of them!
Late last year we bought Skylanders Swap Force for the PS3, it was meant to be for Christmas. Then at the last minute in December, I snagged an Xbox One and decided if I was gonna spend hours playing Skylanders, I wanted to play it with the best framerate and graphics possible... So I bought a second copy assuming we would return the PS3 version. Turns out Amazon has a 30 day window to return, and we missed it by two days so we were stuck with it.
Next I tried to Ebay it but it never hit the minimum price after a few attempts... So now it's just been sitting on my desk and it's time to give it away!
If you have a PS3 and would like Skylanders Swap Force, draw a Skylander character sitting in the NG tank, upload it to the Art Portal or Dumping Grounds and post the link in this thread. It doesn't have to be great art, it could just be really funny MSPaint or crayon. I'll pick one winner and send them my PS3 version of Skylanders Swap Force.
Deadline is Monday, March 10th at 12am Monday morning so finish by Sunday.
Saminat was asking me about the time I was in The Toxic Avenger IV and I got curious to dig up some pictures. I found a bunch that I don't think I ever posted in the NG history and the blog editor is a handy way to share them all... This was back in 1999, the original story is here.
Pictures from day of filming at the Playboy Mansion:
I was in San Diego last week to do a bunch of Behemoth stuff but while I was there I also did a one hour stream on Twitch.tv where I played Castle Crashers with fans and told some never-before-heard stories about the development of CC. I probably should have given a heads up about it here on NG but I was self-conscious about how it would turn out. I did tweet about it through so if you follow my on Twitter you have a better chance of not missing stuff. Also follow the Behemoth on Twitter, Youtube and Twitch!
If you want to watch me tell stories about Castle Crashers while getting my ass handed to me and struggling with on-line match-making, watch this video:
If you play WarFrame, Marvel Heroes or D&D: Neverwinter, I have a promo code for $75 In-Game Credit that came with my new video card.
Reply to this blog and let me know which one you play. I'll randomly pick one of you and PM you the redemption info! I'll update this post to let everyone know when it's too late to enter.
Working on an end of year post right now so expect that up on FP today too!
UPDATE: Was tempting to give people more time but decided to just call it. I was feelin' the posts by Cairos and CooliSushi the most, so I flipped a coin between them - heads was CooliSushi and tails was Cairos. It flipped heads, so CooliSushi scored the promo code!
Then I felt bad so I gave Cairos $25 store credit so he can browse NG without ads if he wants to snag a supporter badge. Also sorry to the rest of you who got nothing but thanks for playing!
I'm making this post with our new rich text editor for blogs! You guys don't have access to this YET but should in a few minutes. UPDATE: You can now do this too!
I'll make a fancier post later but for now, here is Jazza's monthly challenge for December:
You can do multiple embeds and multiple images now! I'm really excited to start dev blogging the game I'm working on with JohnnyUtah but we haven't officially announced it yet.