A few days ago, Mozilla released it's final version of Firefox 2.0. With that, Dawdle will no longer be officially supporting Firefox 2.0 for use on our site (as you should be using Firefox 3 anyway). Old video games and video game systems are cool. Old browsers? Not so much.
December 19, 2008
December 15, 2008
Chicago for Child's Play Post-Mortem Post
This is what the Chicago gaming community looks like:
One thousand dollars raised in one night by one community.
How we got there:
- We sold $900 worth of pre-sale tickets. Of that $900, $315 went to open bar payments to Plan B and $93.59 went to Eventbrite/PayPal/Google Checkout fees, leaving $491.41 for Child's Play. Not bad.
- We raised $455 of cash money. That $455 came from walk in donations, tournament rebuys, and auction proceeds.
- We sold re-buys into our MK vs. DC tournament as follows: $10 for the first round, $20 for the second round, and $40 for the third round. The PSP donated by WeSeed was a big help in our raising the additional money.
- Midway donated lots of PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and PlayStation 2 games for us to auction off. So many, many thanks go out to Midway for their generosity.
- That left us at $946.41 raised for Child's Play, which is soclose to four figures. So we at Dawdle.com decided to chip in the additional $63.59 to get us to a cool thousand dollars.
- Because of our lesson with fees, we'll probably sell the tickets on Dawdle.com next year and we're overnighting the check to Child's Play at Dawdle's expense so that more of the money raised goes to the kids.
Things we learned:
- Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is one hell of a party game. No one really knew any of the moves, but there was a ton of "ooohs" and "aaaahs". There was one match that had FIVE Freefall Kombats as the opponents kept reversing each other on the way down. (I think they were both ket bashing the circle button during the Freefall Kombat.) I really wish Ed Boon was there to see a lot of people enjoy his game. If you haven't played it, you should. If you haven't bought it, you should.
- Chicago gamers can drink. We had a $1,000 drink minimum and apparently blew way past that.
So, we were able to raise a thousand dollars without the platform of Kotaku or Offworld like those kids at Funde Razor had (but again, thanks for the inspiration, guys). I'm pretty impressed with us. Next year, we're going to be bigger, better, and we're going to raise more money than any of the Funde Razors! You're on notice, Brian, Joel, and all you other kids. We're gunning for you.
Here's a collection of pictures taken at the event:
December 03, 2008
Join Dawdle and Midway at our Chicago for Child's Play fundraiser on Tuesday!
Dawdle.com and Midway Games are sponsoring the first-ever Child's Play fundraiser in Chicago! Child's Play provides video games and gear to sick kids in children's hospitals all across the country. Join us for gaming, booze, and raffle prizes! The event starts at 7pm and goes until 10pm, or whenever Plan B kicks us out.
You can get in for $10 or get our special open bar ticket for $50. Each admission also gets you one entry into our raffle and you can buy additional raffle tickets at the event for $10 each. We'll be raffling off games from Midway, free accounts on Dawdle.com, and gift certificates to SwagDog.com, among other great prizes.
We'll also have a MK vs. DC contest for those that want to get into the competitive fighting spirit.
To learn more, please go to http://www.dawdle.com/childsplay . To purchase your ticket, please visit to http://childsplay.eventbrite.com/ .
December 01, 2008
We Kick Ass!
We're very excited to be chosen to be in the Gaming "rack" of Alltop. Alltop is probably best known for being one of Guy Kawasaki's startups (in addition to Truemors.) Alltop is an online magazine rack for all sorts of topics - you can discover great blogs that you're not reading in the topics that you're interested in. We're right at the very bottom (for now), but we'll probably end up getting lost in the middle as they add more gaming blogs.
On a personal note, I gave their team (Neenz, in particular) a lot of feedback on the Alltop Chicago page. Neenz originally had beer and baseball as other suggested topics. That's great, but in the offseason, probably not so useful. So they changed it to architecture and economics for the winter.
November 10, 2008
What's New Monday, November 10
The Dawdle team has decided that we're going to post site changes onto the blog as a way to keep our faithful followers informed of what's new. Though some changes happen in the background that a typical user would not notice, some updates do deal with what a "Dawdler" would see on the site.
Here are some of the changes from today:
- Printing something you sold used to look kind of weird because it carried a page default header and footer. That's been removed so when you "Print Shipping Info" it should look clean and smooth.
- Who knew the original "Xbox" was still so popular? "Xbox" games have been selling like hotcakes recently, so it's earned a spot in the top platform bar near the top of every page on Dawdle.
- Here at Dawdle, we strive to reach the ideal that if it doesn't make the experience better, we shouldn't have it. The "auto complete" function in the search bar has been a topic of much debate among the members of the Dawdle team. It just didn't seem to work well enough, so we've pulled it... for now. The Development Team will work on making it work more effectively, and hopefully we'll have it back and better than ever in the near future.
- SERP's and SEO! We already know you know about Dawdle and what you can find here, but we want EVERYONE to know about Dawdle. One of the ways we do that (other than word of mouth, so we hope you tell ALL of your friends about us) is to make our Product Pages and Search Engine Result Pages more friendly to outside Search Engines. Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, and <h1> text have all been updated on Product Pages and SERP's in the hopes that more people will discover just how awesome Dawdle is. We've also modified the SERP to provide you with more useful information so you'll know more about the lowest priced listing without having to click on it. If you've got any ideas on how we can make it even better, we're all ears!
- It was kind of annoying to start filling out your registration to Dawdle only to find that clicking on "Terms and Conditions" navigated you away from the page you were working so hard to complete. Now clicking the link (So you know what you're getting into. You all read those, right?) will open the "Terms and Conditions" in another window or tab.
Well, that's it for now. Remember, if there's anything you'd like to see on Dawdle to make your experience here better, just drop us a line at team@dawdle.com or visit us at Uservoice.
October 18, 2008
Tweet! Tweet! (And other sites too)
We're happy to announce our second Twitter feed - @dawdlelinks! @dawdlelinks will link to interesting gaming stories and blog posts from around the (English-speaking) web. We'll have a bias towards long-form journalism and thought-provoking opinion over breaking news. Expect this to be a bit more The Brainy Gamer and a little less IGN (as an example; we'll link to their kickass longer stuff too).
October 08, 2008
Welcome New Galaxy!
Welcome to the new site for Dawdle.com! We are very proud of all the growth we've seen since we launched in beta last November and are thrilled to already be the largest gaming marketplace out there. We want to change the way that people buy and sell their games and gear - it makes absolutely no sense for people to go to GameStop to trade in their stuff for pennies on the dollar. GameStop just slaps on a yellow sticker and triples the price to sell it to someone else. We can all do better than that.
September 30, 2008
Hands on with Flower and The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom at WIRED NextFest
I met with Kellee Santiago of thatgamecompany and Paul Bellezza of the P.B. Winterbottom team at WIRED Magazine's NextFest here in Chicago on Friday. Both Kellee and Paul come out of the USC's Interactive Media graduate program where they designed and made games.
Kellee, along with Jenova Chen, made a critical darling, flow, that was released on the PlayStation Network earlier this year. She was showing off a demo level of Flower, that game's follow up, which will also be released on PSN early next year. Paul was showing off The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, which may be released on a next generation platform in the future.
Read on for some thoughts on both titles. I'll save my thoughts on downloadable games for consoles in a future post.
September 15, 2008
September 14, 2008
Dawdle at Midway: Watching Motion Capture for MK vs. DC and Hands-On Impressions of a Post-Leipzig Build of the Game
Dawdle's President and CEO, Sachin Agarwal, was invited to Midway on Friday, September 12, to watch the final motion capture session of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and get some hands-on time with the latest build of the game. In fact, the build was so recent that they compiled it when he walked into the room. Read on for a full rundown. And here's the Flickr set with notes.
