The WeGame Blog

Hi WeGamers!

I’m happy to announce that our hardworking client developers, Coedman and CaliberLore, have cranked out a new release of the WeGame client! Here’s a brief summary of the changes:

Bug Fix – 2.3.5′s updater issue: We introduced a problem in the previous version of the client that was preventing it from updating certain files on XP machines. It has been fixed.

Bug Fix - Client failure on slower computers: There was an issue effecting some slower machines that was causing the client to work incorrectly. It has been resolved.

Tweak – Settings interface update: We’ve changed the way the settings page works in order to prevent some common user errors.

Tweak – UI updates: You can now press enter and escape to proceed or cancel through many WeGame dialogs!

Tweak – Uninstaller updates: Fixed some small issues with the uninstaller

New Feature - Automatic creation of new video files: By popular demand, the WeGame client will now automatically start a new video file when it reaches the four GB limit. This means you no longer have to re-start recording in the middle of an intense boss raid in WoW, a long 3v3 in League of Legends, or an extra-challenging game of Solitaire.

That’s it for this release! If you have any issues, please post on the forums or contact us at help@wegame.com. If you have any other feature requests, please also let us know. We strive to be the very best utility for gamers, and we can only do it with your help!

-Jeff  Gorndt, Operations Manager, www.wegame.com

Hi WeGamers!

I’m excited to announce our partnership with Roxio on their recently announced Roxio Game Capture and Roxio PC Game Capture products. These devices, which allow you to capture, edit and share your gameplay from both the computer and console, are powered by the WeGame technology we’ve developed over the past three years.

The Game Capture unit is a small 5″ x 3″ x 1″ device that connects to your PC via USB and your console by component video and stereo audio inputs. Your gameplay is captured as an AVI, WMV, DivX or MP4 file in 480p video, or as a JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF or GIF screenshot while your gameplay remains in HD. Once you capture your footage you can use the Roxio Game Capture’s editing tools to add voice overs, transitions and overlays to your frag videos or machinima movies. You can then share your videos directly to WeGame, Facebook or YouTube through their client.

The PC Game Capture is a software solution that captures your PC gameplay much in the same way that WeGame already does, and offers the same editing suite of the console recorder, allowing you to perfect your videos before sharing them with your friends and clanmates.

The Game Capture unit will be available on March 24th for $99.99, and the PC Game Capture Software will be available in Q2 for $49.99. They both can be purchased at Best Buy, Gamestop and Amazon, as well as the Roxio store.

I’d like to thank our users for helping us to develop such a great product, and Roxio for giving us the opportunity to bring it to a wider audience.

If you’d like to read more about these two great products, check out Kotaku, Joystiq,Gamerbits and Gamerbeat.

-Jeff  Gorndt, Operations Manager, www.wegame.com

Hi WeGamers,

Just wanted to make a quick post to let you know we may experience some site downtime tonight between 9 PM and 12 AM PST while we perform some server maintenance. You may experience unexpected client or website behavior during these three hours. Sorry for any inconvenience, and thank you for your continued support of WeGame!

-Jeff  Gorndt, Operations Manager, www.wegame.com

Hi WeGamers!

Back in December, we announced our games digital distribution platform: Ignition. The launch of our distribution platform took us one step closer to our ultimate goal of making gaming easier and more enjoyable for everyone. We initially launched with a small catalog of games, all of which were free-to-play browser-based and client-based games from our partners like MochiMedia, Bigpoint, Subagames and others. Today, I’m happy to announce another important milestone: the launch of our first AAA game, RIFT from Trion Worlds, on WeGame. RIFT’s amazing success has surprised everyone. It’s among the top-selling titles in the US weeks after its release – a very substantial accomplishment for the first title from Trion, and a sign of even greater things to come.

To celebrate this very important milestone in our history, we’re offering RIFT at an incredible price: $35.95 for the standard edition and $42.95 for the digital collector’s edition – an amazing 28% off of the retail price. This special introductory price is only available until the end of the month, with a limited number of copies available each day, so buy now!

To get RIFT, please download the WeGame client. Then visit the RIFT game page and click the orange buy button. After purchasing RIFT, the client will start to download and install it. You can then find RIFT under your games tab, and launch it from there. After that, jump in game and enjoy! Feel free to look me up – I’m Gorndt on the Tearfall server.

In the coming weeks, expect many more quality games from top-tier publishers and developers who we are proud to call our partners. Is there a game you want to buy through WeGame? Let us know in the comments!

Buy Rift Now!

Please note that in this version the WeGame client will ask for UAC permissions on launch if you have UAC enabled through Windows 7 or Vista. This permission is required to record many modern games, so please click OK when the UAC window appears.

-Jeff  Gorndt, Operations Manager, www.wegame.com

Hi WeGamers!

As gamers, we’ve all been told that we’re wasting our lives when we grind away hours and hours playing videogames. While I’m not sure that it’s a waste, there’s no doubt that we spend a lot of time playing our favorite games. Today I thought we could send out a little salute to the people with the most hours played on WeGame, and let them know how else they could’ve spent their time.

Tr3ndy – #1 in League of Legends with 428 hours. Instead, you could’ve played 214 full games of tennis. That’s a game every work day for a year.

Zombieblood911 – #1 in Team Fortress 2 with 678 hours. Instead, you could’ve cooked 170 sixteen-pound turkeys. I’m not sure how long it’d take to eat them.

eldukedrino – #1 in Counter Strike: Source with 759 hours. Instead, you could’ve made 5,502 dollars, and that’s making minimum wage!

Gr4Ss – #1 in Garry’s Mod with 880 hours. Instead, you could’ve taken 4 road-trips across the United States, taking 9 days a trip!

tobix345 – #1 in Modern Warfare 2 with 902 hours. Instead, you could’ve watched 1804 TV episodes, or all of MASH, Seinfeld and Cheers, and then some.

Infarkt – #1 in World of Warcraft with 1,983 hours. Instead, you could’ve watched 991.5  movies, almost enough to cover the New York Times Top 1000 Movies.

We salute these true fans, who’ve sold out on all other hobbies in favor of their favorite games. Tune in next week for more fascinating facts from the WeGame Logs!

-Jeff  Gorndt, Operations Manager, www.wegame.com

Hi WeGamers!

I thought a fun little feature today would be to examine some of the top games we track here on WeGame and look a little closer at their stats.

One big selling point of games is how many hours they take. While gamers are divided on this issue – Some saying that it doesn’t matter, and a short, cohesive experience is more important than overwhelming length, and others (myself included) want to see their 60 bucks turned into a certain number of hours of entertainment. However, it’s one thing to say that Oblivion is 100 hours of gameplay, and another to actually sit down and play it for 100 hours. I’m going to take the number of players for a game versus the number of hours played, and we’ll get an average how much time people spend on a game. Additionally, I’d like to compare this to the current price of the game, and see what’s the best buy for filling time. So here are the numbers:

Portal – 11,408 hours played by 20,136 players. Cost: $15
0.57 hours per player, 0.04 hours per dollar

Call of Duty: Black Ops – 216,764 hours played by 21,795 players. Cost: $60
9.95 hours per player, 0.17 hours per dollar

Garry’s Mod - 239,324 hours played by 18,857 players. Cost: $10
12.69 hours per player, 1.27 hours per dollar

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – 18,307 hours played by 4,470 players. Cost: $20
4.10 hours per player, 0.20 hours per dollar

Left 4 Dead - 17,520 hours played by 10,727 players. Cost: $20
1.63 hours per player, 0.08 hours per dollar

Left 4 Dead 2 – 86,076 hours played by 15,624 players. Cost: $20
5.51 hours per player, 0.28 hours per dollar

Starcraft 2 - 48,278 hours played by 10,071 players. Cost: $60
4.79 average hours per player, 0.08 hours per dollar

Team Fortress 2 – 156,369 hours played by 25,245 players. Cost: $20
6.19 average hours per player, 0.31 hours per dollar

World of Warcraft – 1,667,692 hours played by 88,116 players. Cost: As much as you want to spend.
18.93 average hours per player. ??? hours per dollar

Of course there’s more to consider here than just the numbers. People are more likely to run the WeGame client in conjunction with Garry’s Mod than they are with Left 4 Dead, but as long as they have the game installed they’re counted as a player. Furthermore, some of these games were hard-to-avoid impulse buys – Portal, for example, was free for a few weeks earlier in the year, which I’m sure resulted in a large number of people getting the game that weren’t necessarily interested in playing it.

Even with that in mind, though, I’m pretty surprised by the results. I’m the type that if I buy a game, I’m gonna play it until I hate it, which usually means at least 2 runs through single player and as much multiplayer as I can bear.  For example, while the average WeGamer has played 6.19 hours of Team Fortress 2, I’m at 153. Even the age of the game and not running the WeGame client doesn’t account for that level of difference. It seems to show that the average player is very casual, and that a very visible minority (Including me!) gives gamers the reputation for being obsessive nerds.

-Jeff  Gorndt, Relationship Manager, www.wegame.com

We are looking for a few good people to join the WeGame team in San Francisco, CA. We have positions open in Engineering, Design and Product Management.

If you have experience in any of the above areas and want to join our family, check out our Jobs page.

Hey WeGamers,

Today we are excited to publicly announce Ignition, our digital distribution platform for games. In conjunction with our launch of Ignition, we are also happy to offer exclusive beta keys to the upcoming and highly anticipated MMO from Trion Worlds: RIFT. Continue reading below for all the details!

What is Ignition?

Ignition is a digital game distribution platform we have built on top of the existing WeGame experience. With Ignition, you can now download or instantly play hundreds of games from our top-tier game partners – for free. Our initial catalog of games includes both downloadable and browser-based games.

The WeGame client automatically manages the download, installation, and launching of our downloadable games for you, so all you need to worry about is playing! You can access our browser-based games from both the WeGame client and the WeGame site. We recommened playing the browser games through the WeGame client so you also get access to the newly added video recording and screenshot support we added for browser games.

Download the WeGame client »

How do I get access to Ignition?

Existing WeGame users will be invited to the Ignition beta in groups. You will receive an e-mail from us informing you that your account has been upgraded. Once upgraded to the beta, all Ignition features will be available to you instantly in the WeGame client and site without any steps required on your end. We hope to roll out Ignition to all WeGame users very soon.

New users joining from sites who have been given WeGame beta invite codes will be able to use the codes to instantly join the WeGame beta. Note: These keys are one-time use only and are limited in quantity.

RIFT Beta Key Program

We are excited to be able to offer exclusive RIFT beta keys to all users who are in our beta for Ignition. Existing WeGame users have been selected to beta test Ignition will be receiving e-mails on how they can claim their beta key. New users joining the WeGame Ignition beta using special invite keys given out to the press will receive their beta key immediately after signing up. The RIFT beta keys will give you access to one of the beta weekends that Trion Worlds will be holding this month. For more details, please visit: http://www.riftgame.com/beta

In addition to the standard RIFT beta keys we are giving out, we have a handful of VIP RIFT beta keys that we will be giving out daily from today to December 18th. Every day, we will be giving out three (3) VIP RIFT beta keys, one to a random user who fits one of the criteria below:

• Existing WeGame beta user
• New WeGame beta user who joined that day
• Randomly selected user on Twitter who tweets the following message: “I want to join the #riftbeta on #wegame! http://bit.ly/wgriftbeta”

Which games can I get on Ignition?

Below is a list of our initial launch partners and the games they are making available to WeGame users. For a complete list, check out our Games page, or download the WeGame client.

What else is new?

• Video recording + screenshot support for browser games
  • We have extended our core video recording + screenshot features to support any browser game that is played in the WeGame client. To try it out, just launch the WeGame client and start playing one of the games offered. You will see a toolbar above the game that will let you control the recording and screenshot functions.
• Brand new Welcome/Signup flow for new users
  • We updated our welcome/signup flow for new users to make it even more user friendly and to allow new users to easily link their WeGame account with their Facebook, Twitter, Xbox Live, PSN, and Wii identities.
• Integration with Xbox LIVE, PSN, Wii (coming soon)
  • As mentioned above, you can now link your WeGame account to various console platforms like Xbox Live, PSN, and Wii. In the near future, WeGame will automatically track and publish your activity, stats, and more from your console.

Parting Words

We hope you enjoy the latest evolution of the WeGame platform. Moving into 2011, expect us to aggressively expand our game catalog to include games of all genres, including AAA core titles you may find on store shelves.

If you have any questions, comments, or technical problems, please chime in on our Forums.

If you are a publisher or game developer interested in getting your game in front of WeGame’s 1.7 million users, please e-mail us: ignition@wegame.com.