Are you on GamerDNA?  Make sure you sign up today, it’s super easy!

The process of plugging in your gaming accounts to GamerDNA is quite simple and can be done with just a handful of clicks of the mouse.  Here’s the walkthrough:

1. Head on over to Manage your GamerDNA

In the top navigation for GamerDNA we have some quick profile options in the far right hand side.  There you will see your Home, Profile, and Manage icons.  If you mouse-over the Manage icon you get a variety of quick options, or you can just click on the Manage icon to go to your GamerDNA management page.

2. Add your AKA’s!

The GamerDNA Management page is basically the hub of your gamerDNA…this is the place that you can go to edit everything about your GamerDNA profile and experience.  Every setting that you would need to change or addition that you would want to make to your profile, can all be made from this page.

At GamerDNA we call the names that you have on your gaming networks your "AKAs", or your Also Known As names.  To add them to your profile, scroll down to the middle of the page and click on the "Manage AKAs" button.

Now all you have to do is add your gaming names from the different networks that you game on.  GamerDNA currently integrates automatically with Xbox Live, Steam and Xfire - so once you add those names, we can automatically update your profile and let all your friends know what you’re playing.

You can add other network names to your profile so that other gamers can see them, and we even have privacy settings so that you can make sure you’re comfortable with who does or doesn’t see your gamer names.

After you’ve added your Xbox Live, Steam, and/or Xfire names - Give GamerDNA a day or two to start picking up all your information and run it through our system.  After that 24-48 hours setup time, we start pulling your gaming information every day and update your profile. This means you can let all your friends know what games you’re playing, what achievements you got, and what days you played - without even updating your profile!

When you’re all setup, make sure you head on over and Edit your Broadcast Settings so that all your friends can see what games you are playing these days.  GamerDNA is the best way to automatically update Facebook and Twitter with all your latest Xbox Live, Steam, and Xfire gaming!

If you have any questions on how anything works, please let us know on our Get Satisfaction page.  We’re here to help!

Have fun!

Sam Houston

GamerDNA Community Manager

It’s been a busy month here at GamerDNA, with lots of work going on behind the scenes…and as a result, we now have plenty of stuff to talk about!

Last week was E3, the annual Video Game Industry trade show for all the game publishers/developers to show off their cool stuff to the press and retailers (like Best Buy and Wal-Mart).  The show has become a huge press spectacle over the years, and this year was no exception.  Exclusive game announcements and trailers, even The Beatles made an appearance at this year’s E3.

The "Harmonix House Band", featuring Harmonix’s CEO Alex Rigopulos on drums, playing The Beatles: Rock Band

This newsletter is jam packed with details on the latest GamerDNA updates, the latest GamerDNA News, and much more.  We hope you enjoy it!

Quick Newsletter Navigation:

TweetMyGaming Launches

GamerDNA Feature Spotlight

Member Spotlight

GamerDNA News

Contests in May/June

Top Conversations on GamerDNA

Wrap Up

TweetMyGaming Launches!

Last week we announced the launch of TweetMyGaming, a site that tracks all of the gaming conversations on Twitter in real-time, and surfaces the most popular games that are being talked about right now.

On the website you can watch all the game related tweets from Twitter stream in to the site in real-time, see what the top games are on Twitter, or take a look at a particular game’s page on TweetMyGaming and see what people are saying about that game.

Last week I had the pleasure of doing interviews with MTV Multiplayer and Current TV throughout the week about TweetMyGaming, as the site is a great way to see how people are reacting to game announcements and press, in real-time.  You can check out my segments with MTV Multiplayer below: 

MTV Multiplayer - TweetMyGaming Day 1 Wrap-Up

MTV Multiplayer - TweetMyGaming Day 2 Wrap-Up

MTV Multiplayer - TweetMyGaming Day 3 Wrap-Up

We created the site as a mash-up between the Twitter API, and the newly launched GamerDNA API, called Helix.  The GamerDNA Helix API is in beta right now, and we’ll be adding more and more to it as time goes by.  Right now, even in it’s beta state, it is quite powerful and gives you access to a large amount of data and features from GamerDNA. To find out more information about the Helix API, please check out our documentation here.

GamerDNA Feature Spotlight

GamerDNA NOW Page

This past month we introduced the NOW page, a real-time feed of all of the activity on GamerDNA.  You can use this page to see what is happening on the site, find new stuff and other gamers to check out, or even see what games are getting all of the attention within the community.

Facebook Connect

We’ve now added Facebook support, alongside our Twitter, FriendFeed, and Tumblr integration!  Check out this How-To guide on how to hook up your accounts to GamerDNA!

Players Widget:

This tracking widget allows you to pick up to 20 friends and get updates about what they are playing right now, or have played recently. It gives you a quick one-shot look at what everyone has done recently, right from an easy to find spot on your Member Homepage.

Check out more details on our release notes for this update, which includes details on the GamerDNA Helix API!

Other Updates:

New Member Search, Account Settings section, and G4TV videos on GamerDNA - Release Notes here

Member Spotlight

This newsletter’s Member Spotlight has become a fantastic member of the community, and as such it is time to put Mykalgaidin in the spotlight!

-Where in the real world do you live?
Louisville, CO, USA

-How long have you been gaming?
Since I was three and my father brought home an Atari 2600. 28 years later I’m still going strong. I’d appreciate it if that number wasn’t spread around…

-What got you into gaming and what sort of games do you like the most?
My dad got me into gaming. I’ll play dang near anything. I do have a soft spot for JRPGs, Legend of Zelda, Metroid. Basically anything with a decent story. A good narrative can turn a mediocre game into a playable game.

-What brought you to gamerDNA and what do you think is the best feature of the site?
I first read about gamerDNA on Kotaku, I believe. I tried it out, and found a great community that was filled with people passionate about the same thing I was. Currently the feature I use the most is the NOW page. It makes it very easy to find new and interesting conversations, and it has exposed me to a greater cross-section of the gDNA membership.

-Who from the gamerDNA community would you like to meet in person?
It’s quite a list, but here goes: Mishy, QforQ, colliny2K, arislyn, Svoboda, Retodon8, Dvader83, Shiiro. I’d say Jezmyn as well, but I see her every night.

-What is your favorite game?
Kind of a loaded question. There are so many fantastic games I’ve played over the years, and it’s hard to narrow it down to just one. I guess I could say Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I dig that out at least once a year and replay the entire thing.

-What gaming systems do you own and which is your favorite?
PS2, PS3, N64, DS, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii, Gamecube, GBA, iPhone, PSone, OSX, SNES. Again, it’s hard to pick a favorite, but I definitely play my DS and my 360 the more than the others.

-The E3 Expo was just the other week, what games are you most excited about that were announced/shown off? What are you excited about for 2009 in gaming?
Another long list, I’m afraid. Final Fantasy XIII, Kingdom Hearts (DS), Metroid: Other M, Uncharted 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Mass Effect 2, God of War 3, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Shadow Complex.

I look forward to the expansion of digital distribution, more independent games and the expansion of current franchises. I’m not that impressed yet with the likes of Project: Natal and Sony’s Eye Toy retread.

Thanks Mykalgaidin!

If you’re interested in being in the next Member Spotlight, all you have to do is become a member of the GamerDNA community and get involved by posting comments, game posts, and generally being a good member with a positive attitude.  You will be rewarded!

GamerDNA News

Kotaku TweetMyGaming Article - Kotaku posted a nice write up about TweetMyGaming

Joystiq TweetMyGaming Article - Joystiq also gave us a nice write up on TweetMyGaming

Joystiq Left 4 Dead Player Engagement Graph - Last month we created a graph of Left 4 Dead game play, comparing PC gamers against Xbox 360 gamers, and Joystiq wrote a piece about it.
 

Contests in May/June:

Last month we ran two separate contests around our NOW page and our Facebook/Twitter integration.  Congrats to ForteV4 and Celestian for winning the $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Last week we asked everyone to join us in our chat room for the E3 Keynotes , because we would give out GamerDNA T-Shirts to random participants.  Congrats to the following on winning a shirt!

• YannieBoy
• Wink
• Crystalia
• WayneMSmith
• Retodon8
• brianchilders
• MrVista360
• andyg8180
• bob101910

Top Conversations on GamerDNA:

TandyQ gets excited about Shadow Complex

QforQ asks "What games are you most excited about from E3?"

Wingman709 shares his experience with the new Xbox Live beta of 1 vs 100

Retodon8 weighs in with his opinion on the Nintendo E3 Press Conference

That wraps it up for this Community Newsletter! Make sure you follow us on Twitter or become a fan of our Facebook Page, they’re both great ways to keep up with what we’re doing in the gamerDNA offices! 

If you have any ideas/suggestions, feedback or would like to discuss this Newsletter - Please let us know on the forums!

Thanks a lot, see you next time!

Sam "QforQ" Houston
gamerDNA Community Manager

To start off, you will have to be a member of GamerDNA, so if you haven’t done that already, head on over and register right now! 

After you’ve registered and setup your GamerDNA account, make sure you head on over and add all your network ID’s to your gamerDNA. GamerDNA can automatically broadcast your Xbox Live, Steam and Xfire gaming, so all you have to do is add your username on those networks to your GamerDNA.  For the platforms that we don’t tie in to, like Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii, you can manually add activities to your GamerDNA and have those broadcast as well.

To setup your Facebook and Twitter account (or other networks), head on over to your Broadcast Settings in your Manage your GamerDNA section of GamerDNA.  Here you can configure all your settings so that you can broadcast your gaming activity to your friends.

Facebook:

Setting up Facebook is quick and easy, since GamerDNA has implemented Facebook Connect to quickly connect GamerDNA to Facebook.  After a few clicks and a couple settings toggled, you should be good to go!

Here is an example of what your Facebook updates will look like:

Twitter:

Setting up Twitter is also quick and easy.  With GamerDNA you can automatically Tweet your Gaming!

Here is what a GamerDNA Tweet will look like:

If you’re a user of Tumblr and FriendFeed, we work with those networks as well.  Head on over to your Broadcast Settings section and you’ll be all set! 

That’s about it!  If you have any questions on how to setup your Social Network accounts with GamerDNA, please let us know by contacting support.

Have fun!

Sam "QforQ‘ Houston

GamerDNA Community Manager

The game is similar to many other tower defense games, in that you have to defend your base against the onslaught of enemies…except in this game you have to defend yourself from a barrage of deadly balloons, using Monkeys that have been trained to throw darts at fast speeds.  As you build up more cash, you can hold off the onslaught of balloons by creating Missile Launchers, Saw Blade Shooters, Catapults, and a Super Monkey which can throw darts at insane speeds.

Bloons Tower Defense 3 starts out by giving you 75 lives, which you need to hold out with at least one life left for all 50 rounds to beat each track.  The game has a variety of different tracks, with different strategies that can be used on each one.  After you beat each track you can receive a medal, which is saved to your account and shows up when you view the track listing.

The game is one of our favorite Kongregate games on GamerDNA, and we encourage everyone to check it out!  All you have to do is go to the Bloons Tower Defense 3 game page on GamerDNA, the press the Play Now button!

Have fun!

The show officially kicked off with the Microsoft Press Conference, which featured over 10 games (which most were exclusive), and some huge celebrities like Paul and Ringo Starr from The Beatles, as well as Steven Spielberg.  As a huge music fan, it was pretty awesome to see the first world reveal of The Beatles: Rock Band…as well as see the two remaining members of The Beatles.  My favorite part of the conference was actually the opening of the show, which featured Harmonix’s amazing opening cinematic for The Beatles: Rock Band.

The "Harmonix House Band", featuring Harmonix’s CEO Alex Rigopulos on drums, playing The Beatles: Rock Band

Some of the other highlights from the conference were the game play footage shown from Alan Wake, Splinter Cell Conviction, Halo: ODST, and Modern Warfare 2.

The next day, Tuesday, both Sony and Nintendo had their conferences.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make these…but I’ve got to say I’m pretty excited about Uncharted 2 and God of War III.  Judging from the lines to play God of War III, I think most everyone is excited about it as well.  The game looks beautiful on the PS3, with tons of gore and a lot of action.  Spring of 2010 can’t come fast enough.

There were a lot of games to check out at E3, and we’d like to hear what you are most excited about.  Let us know, "What game are you most excited about from E3 2009?" by posting a comment to QforQ’s game post!

Besides all the excitement of E3 around the game announcements and getting a chance to play the games, GamerDNA was at the trade show to make an announcement of our own.  Last week we announced the launch of TweetMyGaming, a site that tracks all of the gaming conversations on Twitter in real-time, and surfaces the most popular games that are being talked about right now.

On the website you can watch all the game related tweets from Twitter stream in to the site in real-time, see what the top games are on Twitter, or take a look at a particular game’s page on TweetMyGaming and see what people are saying about that game.

Last week I had the pleasure of doing interviews with MTV Multiplayer and Current TV throughout the week about TweetMyGaming, as the site is a great way to see how people are reacting to game announcements and press, in real-time.  You can check out my segments with MTV Multiplayer below:

MTV Multiplayer - TweetMyGaming Day 1 Wrap-Up

MTV Multiplayer - TweetMyGaming Day 2 Wrap-Up

MTV Multiplayer - TweetMyGaming Day 3 Wrap-Up

We created the site as a mash-up between the Twitter API, and the newly launched GamerDNA API, called Helix.  The GamerDNA Helix API is in beta right now, and we’ll be adding more and more to it as time goes by.  Right now, even in it’s beta state, it is quite powerful and gives you access to a large amount of data and features from GamerDNA. To find out more information about the Helix API, please check out our documentation here.

Well that’s a wrap for this year’s E3 for GamerDNA.  We’re very excited about TweetMyGaming.com, if you guys have any feedback on it please let us know by posting a comment below!

Thanks!

Sam "QforQ" Houston

GamerDNA Community Manager

We are hard at work on a major (and somewhat total) site revamp right now that will be landing in a few months… but we did want to squeak out a small update with some bug fixes and a new tracking gadget on your member home page.

Your gamerDNA Track List

This tracking widget allows you to pick up to 20 friends and get updates about what they are playing right now, or have played recently. It gives you a quick one-shot look at what everyone has done recently.

By clicking the "edit" link next to the track list, you can select which friends you want to actively track. Their status and game play history will then update on this gadget every 5 minutes.

You can also click "View All Friends" and get status updates for everyone on the widget (20 per page) if you are curious what your extended network is doing.

This is a small first step towards a completely revamped member homepage that not only delivers real-time content about the games you like, but also updates around the your friends and people that you might find interesting.

GamerDNA Helix

We continue to move forward with great progress on our API called gamerDNA Helix. If you are a developer, skilled in the ways of XML APIs… check out our beta documentation. We are interestedin any feedback that you have to offer about how our API evolves. We have some pretty cool things in store that will empower you to create a variety of deeply integrated applications.

View the beta documentation here:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcrj8bnk_25chkxgwhp

Please note, that this documentation is subject to change. Any API discussion/questions can be submitted in the API Forum.

The full list of updates in this release after the jump!

Profile Changes/Updates

• Implemented the presence gadget on member home. It shows presence of two sets of people. 1) your tracked friends and 2) all friends. You can also configure which of your friends are tracked by clicking on the edit button within the component.
• Built the systems for requesting presence from Xfire and Xbox. Steam coming this week.
• Created a notice for users that do not have any users set to track that gives instructions one why/how to get started.
• Removed challenge progress and company blog widgets from member home to make space for presence. Challenges will be coming back bigger and better than ever as a new badge system.

API Changes/Updates

• Extended the Attention HELIX call to contain more data to prevent numerous calls against our database.
• Completed all test cases for HELIX for the new methods.
• Fixed an issue where a test case was reporting as successful even when it was not.
• AlsoPlaying enhancements complete for HELIX.
• Created member game activity method
• Created member game post.
• Created member reviews method
• Added method to request user presence.
• Repaired a cache call that was causing the games:attention helix call to report a 500 error on every second request.

General Site Changes/Updates

• Put in a two tier caching system to prevent pileups on the homepage when the stat cache expires.
• Added new caching to header (has to intelligently break out certain pieces and expire caches manually when you view a game or member), footer, game page: top players widget
• Tracked down some "Operation Aborted" errors that were appearing in Ie7 due to some javascript behavior.
• Due to changes to realm war, we had to make some changes to handle the new data.
• Fixed an issue with the profanity filter that was causing it to crash when checking strings.
• Fixed a bug where the game type ahead wasn’t functioning properly in IE7.
• Cleaned up some style issues that were appearing on the Now page in certain situations.
• Corrected an issue with the Shaiya guild theme not showing buttons correctly.

Hey guys!

It’s that time of the year again…where every game company in the world and 50,000 fans and business folk swarm Los Angeles for 2009’s E3 EXPO!  This year is shaping up to be pretty exciting, with rumored huge announcements from several companies, including the big three: Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

The place and the time that a lot of those announcements happen is the Keynotes, which each of the big three hold next week.  We’d like you to join the GamerDNA development team in our Chat Room, to watch those keynotes live and share your instant reactions to what is being announced and shown off!

If you join us, you could win GamerDNA T-Shirts, we will be giving out several during each keynote!

You can join the GamerDNA Chat Room by clicking here, or by clicking on the Chat link at the bottom of every GamerDNA page.

Here are the Keynote times:

Monday June 1st:  Microsoft  -  1:30pm EDT (10:30am PDT)

Tuesday June 2nd:  Nintendo - 12pm EDT  (9am PDT)

Tuesday June 2nd:  Sony - 2pm EDT  (11am PDT)

To watch the live video streams, you can watch it live on TV on G4TV.  You can also watch live streams on G4TV.com (which will have TONS of live video all week), or you can watch it live on GameTrailers.com.

 In the mean time, let us know what your E3 Predictions are and what you’re most excited about, by leaving a comment on QforQ’s Game Post!

Update June 3 2009 10:00pm ET

Hey everyone! ChangeAgent here… Thanks for participating in the chats. It was alot of fun watching all of the keynote presentations. We did a few T-shirt drawings for everyone that was there. The winners were:

• YannieBoy
• Wink
• Crystalia
• WayneMSmith
• Retodon8
• brianchilders
• MrVista360
• andyg8180
• bob101910

If you were a T-shirt winner, QforQ will contact you next week for size and mailing information (when he is back from E3)

The two winners of a $20 Amazon Gift Card are…. ForteV4 and Celestian!

We’ll be doing more contests and announcements over the coming weeks, so I encourage everyone to stay tuned to our blog to keep up with what is going on at GamerDNA.  In the mean while, make sure you check out the GamerDNA NOW page and our new Facebook integration!

ForteV4 won our GamerDNA NOW contest, congrats ForteV4!

And that leaves us with Celestian, who won our Broadcast contest!

Congrats to the both of you!

Sorry for the late patch notes this week, things have been pretty busy on our end as we’re working very hard on some of the next additions to GamerDNA.  I’ll also be filling in for Trapper this week and I’m excited to get in on the Release Notes action this time around!

The update that we gave GamerDNA this week was pretty light, with most of the work going on behind the scenes in preperation for larger updates that will come out in the coming weeks.  This week we added in a couple community features that have been requested, as well as a change to how we can take in feedback from our community and give you guys the best support possible.

Account Settings page - Helping you change your password and email settings!

This week we took some time to clean up our Account Settings page.  Before the process of changing your email and password wasn’t that easy and our community let us know that, so this week we made it much easier to change those settings.  You can get access to this page by clicking on the "Manage" button up in the top right corner of your screen, when browsing the site.

Member Search - Now supports User-name and AKA search

In the past few weeks we received a lot of feedback from our community about our Member Search, especially about having the ability to search by a person’s AKA.  As of this week, you are now able to search by GamerDNA user-name, or by searching by a Public AKA that they have put in their profile.  This means that you can search by their AKA’s on sites like Twitter, or by their names on places like Xbox Live and Steam!

 G4TV Videos - GamerDNA now brings in videos from G4TV!

GamerDNA has added G4TV as one of our latest Video Partners, which means we are now automatically bringing in fresh videos from G4TV.com and from your favorite shows like X-Play.  These videos are added to a game’s Game Page, and can be shared with your friends or commented on.  For example, you can check out the new F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin Armored Front DLC Trailer on GamerDNA right now!

 Lastly, we launched our new Feedback and Support website at Get Satisfaction!

Now if you click on our Feedback or our Support links at the bottom of the page at GamerDNA, you will be taken to a page with widgets that will help you find an answer to your question, report a problem, or give us feedback and praise!

This new site makes it a lot easier for us to support our community and easily see what our community wants to have added to GamerDNA.  We use and monitor this site every day, and we encourage everyone to get involved and share your feedback with us!  Please check out our GamerDNA Get Satisfaction page today!

And that about wraps it up for us this week.  Please stay tuned to GamerDNA over the coming weeks, we’ve got some exciting things in store for the coming month(s) and we can’t wait to show you and get your feedback!

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Sam "QforQ" Houston

GamerDNA Community Manager

Starting today and through to this Friday, you can be entered to win one of two $20 Amazon Gift Certificates, and all you have to do is use GamerDNA!

To enter, all you have to do is create a Game Post, a Game Activity, or upload an Image to your GamerDNA between today and 12:00am EDT Saturday May 23rd.  As a secondary requirement, you also need to comment another community member’s content that they’ve put up on GamerDNA.  What’s the best way to find all this interesting stuff to comment on at gamerDNA?  The GamerDNA NOW page ofcourse!  The GamerDNA NOW page is a live stream of activity on GamerDNA, showing all game posts, manually entered activities, images that are uploaded, and comments made.  You can even comment on cool stuff that you find, right from the NOW page!

You can also enter to win by adding your Facebook and/or Twitter account to your GamerDNA and have at least one update sent out to those sites, between today and 12:00am EDT Saturday May 23rd.  You can connect your Facebook and Twitter account to your gamerDNA on this page here.  All community members that have added their Facebook/Twitter account prior to this contest are automatically entered, as long as they have at least one GamerDNA Twitter/Facebook update sent between Monday-Friday this week!

A winner will be chosen for each contest, so you have two chances to win!

RULES:

NOW Page contest:

-Post a comment on a Game Post, Activity, or Image  (Best way to do this is through the NOW page!)
-Create a Game post, or upload an image, or Manually update/create a Game Activity with what you did when you played the game
-You must complete these requirements between 12:00am EST May 18th and 12:00am EST May 23rd.
-Anyone found spamming will be immediately disqualified
-Winner will be chosen at random and announced on May 25th on the GamerDNA Blog
-Must be at least 18+ to be eligible
-Each Community Member that meets these requirements receives one entry in the contest

GamerDNA Broadcast Contest:

-Must have a Twitter account or a Facebook account setup for Broadcast on gamerDNA
-At least one Facebook or Twitter update must be sent from GamerDNA
-All members who previously completed this requirement before the contest are eligible
-You must complete these requirements between 12:00am EST May 18th and 12:00am EST May 23rd.
-Must be at least 18+ to be eligible
-Each Community Member that meets these requirements receives one entry in the contest
 

And that’s it!  We wish everyone luck and we’re looking forward to seeing all the community activity this week!