Good Morning Friends! This is potentially going to be the last reliable blog post from me for a bit. Next week I am going to be dealing with the in-person training that I talked about in a post the other day. As such I expect to not be able to blog in the morning, and when I come home I fully expect to crash very fast and very hard. Last night was a bit of evidence of that happening already. I had a fairly stressful day of work and by the time I wrapped up around 6 pm, I was just dead to the world. I left off in Guild Wars 2 sitting outside the Tomb of Primeval Kings having only made it part of the way through that quest sequence before crashing the other night. While the will was there, I was struggling to stay asleep so I really made no forward momentum yesterday. I’m thankful I at least hit a checkpoint in the quest that I was on so that I can continue at a relatively straightforward place.
I’m exceptionally happy that I managed to get everything ready to go for Blaugust this week instead of having to deal with it in the evenings next week. While the sign-ups have only been open for a few days at the time of writing we have 25 bloggers, four of which are brand new this year. There has also been a significant bump in activity in the Discord which has been cool to watch. There was a bit of a screw-up on Wednesday when I announced everything… somewhere buried within the wall of nonsense was apparently a link to the old sign-up form. Thankfully I could tell by date range who had signed up and copied them over to the participant list that I maintain. I use this list to drive my blogroll which I keep updated as often as I can. I’ve been keeping everything updated on the Media Kit page as it serves as the true permanent resting place of all information assorted with Blaugust in general.
I’ve come to the realization that I think this is the 10th Blaugust. I probably should have made a much bigger deal about that when it came to the design.
What always throws me off is 2017… the year that I didn’t do a Blaugust event. I had allowed the naysayers to convince me that I was doing more harm than good with this event. That entire year was a rough one for me, but by the time 2018 rolled around… I had so many people come out of the woodwork to tell me how much they missed Blaugust and hoped that I would be running one that year. It was really that moment that lit a fire in me to keep me moving forward in spite of how exhausted I might be. So while we missed a year… there was also 2020 when we technically had two Blaugust events… one of which we called Blapril and the other gave us the prompt list.
Every year I seem to try something slightly different, while also keeping all of the things that worked well in the past. Whatever year we added Discord was probably the single best change for the longevity of the event. The first Blaugust was run more or less through the ill-fated Anook platform, and they even went so far as to sponsor an award in 2015 the second year. I still think that platform idea was really cool and is sort of what we are trying to do with Gamepad now… carving out a community. The “new thing” this year is that I set up a Blaugust account on Mastodon, and the idea is that I will use it to boost all of the posts that come across with the #Blaugust2023 hashtag. I tried to do this, but I always sort of hated spamming everyone that had no clue what the fuck Blaugust was from my personal account. This also gives folks an option to follow Blaugust without following me… given that I can sometimes be an acquired taste and I know of at least a handful of people who occasionally participate in the event that have zero love for me personally.
Not directly related to Blaugust, but it has been cool to watch Gamepad grow over the last half a year. I think we went live in November of last year, and during that time we’ve picked up a little over 120 accounts, and currently, at the time of writing this, 106 of them are active…. which is a pretty dang good retention rate. Mastodon and the larger Fediverse are really the social media of choice for me. Sure I am putting my thumb on the scale by choosing to run this out of Gamepad, but ultimately it is my event… so I am going to do the thing that I find most comfortable. A lot of bloggers had already moved to the platform so it doesn’t really seem too far-fetched to make it a home base for the event going forward. I’ve posted about the event on Twitter, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram… but none of those really feel comfortable to me. I am not sure how many folks we will get from those anyways.
I think my hope in running it out of Mastodon, is that it will introduce us to an entirely new community of folks. We already have several sign-ups from folks who had no connection to our core group before we started talking about it on the fediverse. That is EXTREMELY exciting for me. My hope has always been for this thing to spread to different communities and spider out so that we have LOTS of blogs active and happily posting away throughout the year. In this year of internet bonfires… and the if not death of Twitter… the mutation of it into something I no longer want to be associated with… having a place to call your own is way more important than it ever was before. I had the realization that because of my blog… I am exceptionally easy to find. If I lost touch with someone along the way, they can always find me here. For most folks… the tapestry of connections that we have woven between each other is relatively tenuous. If you put your faith in corporate social media as your digital sense of place… then when you lose one of them you also lose your foundation. While self-hosted bloggers have gone out of fashion… we represent a sense of permanency and stability that is hard to remove.
Anyways… did not mean to ramble off in the direction of techno-religiosity… but there you have it. I feel like we need to take back control of more of our internet presence. Gamepad for example is run by folks that I trust and I believe in… and if something needs to happen to it, the portability of Mastodon allows me to migrate elsewhere. Worse comes to worse I can fire up my own private instance just for me, and continue to truck along with the same social connections. My blog is my digital front step, and anyone can find me here along with any of the other connections that I might be active on. That is a weird peace of mind in this time of digital uncertainty.
Good Morning Friends! I have been looking forward to the start of Blaugust for most of this year. This is your yearly reminder that it is almost time for the yearly festival of blogging and other serialized content that I host. I think the most interesting thing about this year is going to be the fact that I am no longer really on Twitter. For a good number of bloggers, Twitter was a staple of our community, and many of us have migrated to Mastodon or other platforms over the last year. This means we have also met a whole slew of new folks during this process and hopefully can widen the reach of this whole event to a group of folks who have either never heard of it or have never participated in it. I am extremely excited to see how all of this shakes out.
What is Blaugust?
Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place in August each year that focused on blogging and other serialized content. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. For years blogging has been dwindling, and in part, Blaugust was my attempt and reversing that course by compiling a bunch of veteran bloggers in one place and making it super easy to ask questions and get answers. The idea is that this festival of blogging can help reignite dwindling fires for the next year and give folks a sense of kinship as a result. Each year has taken slightly different forms and shifted to include more than just blogs, but the core mission is always the same. In this year of corporate internet staples seeming a little less sturdy, it is all the more important that each of us carve our own homes that we can call our own… that gives us a sense of permanence. No matter what happens on whatever platforms I am on… my blog remains.
Why Blaugust?
In April 2013, I made a decision that would ultimately dominate the fate of this blog for the last decade. I decided that I would force myself to write something and post it every single day. It wasn’t necessarily an easy challenge but for roughly three years I posted something every single day without pause. This forced me to get over some of the self-doubt that had kept me mired for years. I started this blog in 2009, but would often go upwards of six months without a single post. Each time I would lapse… it felt like I had to do something really special when I started blogging again or at least apologize for my absence as though there was some imaginary person out there disappointed in me. Forcing myself to “just hit publish” got me past a lot of those hangups and now I can bang out a post in my sleep… and often do consider I write around 6 am each morning. Blaugust came about originally because I wanted to share this revelation with other bloggers, that forcing yourself to write something every day can be liberating.
So I hatched the idea that if I challenged folks to make 31 posts during the month of August, and called it Blaugust… it might help others get over their own fear by immersing them in a pseudo-competition. The thing is… I learned that this maybe wasn’t the brightest idea in the world. For some folks writing 31 posts is a rather daunting feat and failing to accomplish it was just one more setback in a line of setbacks that were keeping them from blogging. So nowadays the original concept is still there, but mostly I just want folks participating to focus on “blogging more” not necessarily conforming to some mad schedule I devised. After three years of daily blogging… I needed a break and eventually landed on the schedule that I have now of trying to knock out a post every single weekday. Even then there will be times when I give myself a pass because I am just not feeling it… but the key is to get back on the schedule as soon as you can.
The Original Challenge
Blaugust at its heart has always been about celebrating the creation of content on a regular schedule. The original challenge was to post 31 times during the month of August which is 31 days long. This can be posting every day or doubling up on some days to make the schedule a bit easier. However, we also want to award anyone who starts down this path, because deciding to blog in the first place is a victory in itself. As such we give out awards based on the number of posts that you manage to knock out during the month of August. Again the idea is to spark creativity and get folks to create more content, not necessarily grinding them to dust on the millstone of some lofty goal. Here are the guidelines for each of the awards that we give out as part of this original challenge:
Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You joined Blaugust for the very first time and we are extremely happy to welcome you into this raucous community. As a result, we are going to recognize your efforts just for signing up.
Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2023.
Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the month of August 2023.
Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the month of August 2023.
Rainbow Diamond Award – You beat the original challenge and posted 31 times or more during the month of August 2023.
The Expansion Packs
Last year we introduced something that I call “Blaugchievements”. This essentially encapsulates all of the half-baked ideas I had over the years into a single series of game-like achievements that you can earn. These should all be considered entirely optional and will be considered on the “honor system”. There is no realistic way that I can track these without killing myself during the month of August, so if you tell me you earned one of these… it is good enough for me. Over the years I have introduced themed weeks, prompt lists, and all manner of nonsense, and Blaugchievements are a great way of sort of neatly tying those all together.
Originally I was going for a whole “Xbox Live” achievement toast thing and made them somewhat generic so I never had to redo them again. Then unfortunately this year I got on this whole visual theme kick and decided to redo all of them… which means going forward this is probably going to be another thing that changes each year along with the logo and assorted branding. You can view the full list of this year’s Blaugchievements here, but below is a quick rundown of the short version.
Reading the Manual – Read the introductory blog post with the rules of the event.
Welcome Wagon – Write a blog post based on the first week’s theme of Welcoming Folks to Blaugust.
Introduce Yourself – Write a blog post based on the second week’s theme of Introducing Yourself.
Creative Appreciation – Write a blog post based on the third week’s theme Appreciating the works of some Creative or Company.
Staying Motivated – Write a blog post based on the fourth week’s theme of how you have managed to Stay Motivated.
Lessons Learned – Write a blog post based on the fifth week’s theme explaining some of the Lessons you have Learned through Blaugust.
Going Platinum – Complete All of the Blaugchievements for Blaugust 2023.
The Event Calendar
One of the things we have had during several of the Blaugust events is a calendar of themed weeks. This should be considered completely optional but is there only to serve as a loose scaffolding for anyone struggling to find something to write about. August usually has Five Weeks and as a result, we have five different themes. Again no one should feel under any obligation if they do choose to write about the themes, to actually make an entire week’s worth of posts. Here is this year’s event calendar:
Here is a quick rundown of the idea behind each of the themed weeks:
Welcome to Blaugust Week (August 1st – August 5th) – The idea behind this week is to give a specific time to be actively talking about Blaugust and welcoming new members to the fold. This could also count as promoting Blaugust for the “Spreading the Madness” achievement. The hope is that drumming up some heavy activity of talking about the event might allow us to pick up a few more stragglers.
Introduce Yourself Week (August 6th – August 12th) – The idea behind this week is to have some structured time around getting to know the other bloggers. I realize that those of us who are veteran bloggers might have already written half a dozen introduction posts by now, but it is a great time to share anything interesting you might have in your arsenal.
Creator Appreciation Week (August 13th – August 19th) – Developer Appreciation Week or the D.A.W. was an event that took place in the blogging community independent from Blaugust but eventually died out. The more modern idea is to show appreciation for the things and creators that we love. This could be authors, musicians, developers, artists, or even other bloggers, with the focus being on sharing something that we love so that maybe others might appreciate it as well.
Staying Motivated Week (August 20th – August 26th) – As we get towards the end of the event, the activity can often trail off a bit. The goal of this week is to share some of your own tips surrounding how you keep motivated and stay focused on creating content. If you are new to the event, you might share some of the things that have helped you stay engaged during Blaugust.
Lessons Learned Week (August 27th – August 31st) – This week is a reminder that the goal of Blaugust is to refresh the content creators out there for the coming year, and not to burn them out in the process. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant and others will want to process their thoughts about the proceedings. This space is reserved as a bit of a cooldown lap so that you can share your own experiences.
The Prompt List
In 2020 we tried something a little different. Due to folks needing something to focus on other than the constant frustration and stress of lockdown… we ran our normal Blaugust event in April of that year… and called it Blapril. By the time August rolled around, none of us were really ready to do a fully Blaugust event… but I had enough of a request from the community to do something. As a result, I tried this ill-fated idea of a blog posting webring of a sort called “Promptapalooza”. It failed miserably, largely because the concept was not super easy to grasp and my explanation of it… was lacking. What it did give us however is a really nice list of writing prompts. So as a result there is no reason not to keep using these. Again this is considered part of the optional content but serves as a well of ideas for when your creativity might be running low.
That my friend is Blaugust and in a few weeks we will be starting the whole proceedings. I thought maybe I was a little late in getting the information out there, but it seems like last year I made this post on the 15th so I’m potentially a bit early. As is my tradition, I am closing the post with a bit of a “too long didn’t read” recap that hopefully serves as a “call to action”.
The Sign-Up Form for Blaugust 2023 can be found here. Since logging in with a Google account has been a source of consternation for some, I have removed that functionality. If you still cannot for whatever reason sign-up but want to participate please let me know. Only those that I am tracking will be assigned awards.
The invite link to the Blaugust Discord can be found here. Participation in Discord is entirely optional but also a great way to bounce ideas off the existing community.
If you feel inclined to do so please use the hashtag #Blaugust2023 for tracking purposes and to make your content easier to find for those watching the proceedings.
We also highly suggest that you utilize the Share Your Content” channel in the official Discord.
This year we have an official Blaugust social media account over on Gamepad.Club a Fediverse/Mastodon server that I help admin. During the event, I will be watching the above hashtag and boosting all of the posts.
Mingle with the participants of Blaugust 2023. Get out and see the blogs, read the posts, and comment frequently! These folks represent a social structure that you can lean on for advice in the coming years. I deeply value the ties I have made with other bloggers and started this process as an attempt to cement those and build new ones.
If you are so inclined there is a “Gaming Together” channel on Discord for those impromptu grouping activities. I believe there was even some discussion of doing a one-shot D&D adventure this year.
If you find yourself getting stuck at any point feel free to rely on the weekly schedule or the prompt list for inspiration or you can hop on Discord and talk through your issues.
You can also check out the new Blaugchievements list for anything that might spark your creativity and check one of those off.
Welcome to Blaugust 2023. As always if you have any questions please feel free to ask. My door is always open but I might be slow to respond because I have a bad habit of idling on pretty much all the social platforms at once.
If you want an archive of all of the various logos and such from this year or past years of Blaugust, please check out the Blaugust Media Kit page.
Final Thoughts
Without you, Blaugust would just be a dumb word that Bel bashed together one year in his head. I feel like I also need to state that ALL of this is optional. You can sign up for Blaugust just because you want to feel like you are part of a community of bloggers, even if you don’t write a single post next month. The challenge exists in its original and expansion forms to add a bit of fun to the mix, but the real Blaugust is the friends we met along the way. As always if you have any questions about any of this… my comms are always open. Thanks for helping to make this nonsense memorable each and every year. Much love, and please… spread the reach of this event, because I love seeing new faces showing up each year.
This is potentially going to be one of the stranger morning blog posts I have made in awhile. Yesterday during the midst of another conversation entirely I planted a seed, and got a significantly more favorable response than I had expected. Essentially I have thought for awhile how awesome it would be to have some event that let all of the great people I know through gaming or blogging to meet up, hang out, and cause mischief. This year it was my hope to be able to make Pax Prime since there are a significant number of people in the Seatle area now. The problem being by the time I even knew the tickets had gone on sale, they were already completely sold out. Our backup plan was to try and get AggroChat qualified for press passes, but we were summarily rejected without much notice as to why. Every major convention has this same issue, with having way more demand than there are tickets available for folks to attend. So this sent me down an alternate line of thinking… maybe we just need to create our own convention. I know that sounds crazy at first glance but bear with me for awhile.
My wife is heavily involved in the twitter math community, and five years ago they were lamenting how every single professional development workshop they have been to was essentially a waste of time. One discussion lead to another, and the idea was mentioned that what they really needed was a way to get together so that they could share ideas. From there they organized the very first Twitter Math Camp in St Louis, and it was a huge success. That first year only around fifty teachers attended, but each additional year it has grown to this year in Los Angeles there were over 200 teachers. So seeing this go from someones vague idea to fruition maybe gives me a different perspective than the average person when it comes to the thought of forming our own convention. I mean ultimately that is how most gathering start, with a basic idea and then just branching out from there.
Our Own Convention
I loved Pax South, but not really because the convention itself was this magical place. The floor was busy, and there were so many people wandering around that it became hell to find a quiet spot to yourself to think. What made the convention awesome was getting to hang out with people that I had only ever talked to online. When I realized this… I realized that I didn’t actually need a convention to have fun, but in truth could potentially have more fun if I just somehow managed to gather up a bunch of people in one place and time. Even if we quite literally did nothing but hang out and play board games and talk about life, it would still end up being an amazing experience. That said I do think we could convince enough people to show up to make it an interesting experience for all of us. Think about the sort of things we go through with the Newbie Blogger Initiative each year, and ultimately how much we learn from one another. It would be easy enough to throw together a series of panels discussing the finer points of various blogging skills that we have. I mean it would be pretty awesome to record an impromptu live Podcast for example, or a technical discussion in how to get the most out of WordPress. There are real things we could talk about, and with that many game bloggers in one spot we might even be able to talk some game companies into showing up as well. Maybe I am brutally naive… but I think it is a thing that might be doable.
I literally have thought about this for awhile now, and those thought processes were just made more concrete after returning from Pax. I’ve long thought that the best place for a meetup would be in a central state. Conventions have this problem of being super convenient for people living on one particular coast, but damned near impossible for anyone else to attend. So after a lot of thinking basically I came up with two potential locations.
St Louis, Missouri
Chicago, Illinois
Both locations have strengths and weaknesses, but both are also fairly centrally located making it not too horrible from pretty much anywhere in the United States, and potentially even doable for Canadians. St Louis is significantly easier for me personally… because I know the town decently well and have several friends in the area that I could potentially recruit to help. Chicago on the other hand… other than flying through O’Hare I know nothing about it, and I really have zero support structure to help out with the planning and the details. Its biggest strength however is O’Hare airport, because essentially it is a straight flight from any major airport cutting down the overall travel costs. That said St Louis hotels, venue rentals, and pretty much everything else would be significantly cheaper which might offset the travel costs. All of this said… they both have strengths and weaknesses, but as I said my personal leanings are towards St Louis simply for the familiarity point.
I guess the ultimate question is… would some sort of convention/meetup be something that our community would even be interested in? We would have to set a date well into the future and begin planning now to make it work, but before any of that… I need to know if people would actually come. I think it could be a really awesome experience, and if nothing else let a whole bunch of people that have only ever communicated online hang out and get to know each other. I also think there is a lot of cool stuff we could learn from each other, so I feel like it could be more than just a “gathering”. Over the last several years we have gone from being a vague connection of island states, to being a serious and formidable community constantly welcoming new people. Blaugust while stressful, is an amazing event and just one in a long line of events that we do each year. While I jokingly referred to this as BlaugustCon… it is more than just that. I think we could build something amazing in the real world in addition to all of what we are doing in the virtual world. Like I said.. the real question is do people even want this? I don’t often ask for feedback, but in this situation I absolutely need it. Leave me a line and let me know your thoughts.
A few years ago I started down this path of madness that I have referred to as my Grand Experiment, where I started blogging every single day. It has been a grueling experience at times, but also something I would not trade for the world. I learned a lot of things about myself because when you are writing that many posts… something interesting happens. At some point in the process you break down the walls you are holding up between you and your readers and start being completely and often brutally honest with them. I sit down at the keyboard each morning and share a chunk of myself, and this bond I have developed with my readers is something pretty special. Last year I wanted to channel just a little bit of this with the rest of the blogosphere and started the Blaugust challenge. The idea is simple… during the month of August blog something every single day. If you succeed in thirty one days of posts… you are a Blaugust winner.
I had this idea that the only folks that would participate were seasoned bloggers. You know folks like me with years of blogging under their belts. The reality however is that a lot of new bloggers took up this banner as their own and produced some amazing stuff as a part of it. As such Blaugust has become this strange event that allows a lot of folks to essentially rededicate themselves to the craft of writing. After last year I was uncertain if I would be doing another one of these, but I was not so subtly urged by my readers that they were expecting it to happen once more. Last year we had 28 Challenge Winners that managed to make it through the month without missing a post, and another 21 Challenge Survivors that participated in the contest. I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of participation… but in the tradition of all internet things… lets make this year even bigger.
The Topic
First off let me get this out of the way. This contest is all about longevity and frequency and not necessarily about what you are writing. The idea is to get folks in the habit of regular posting, so that after a month of posting every single day… they can settle into a more reasonable schedule after August and do regular posts a few times a week. So as far as your blog goes… you can tell us whatever you feel like. These can be game posts, post about some other hobby you are really interested in, or just posts about your life. Somewhere along my path to madness I reached a point where I am essentially immune to writers block when it comes to Tales of the Aggronaut. I can sit down at the keyboard and start writing without any preparation and within a paragraph a theme starts to form and I am up and running with a new blog post. Inspiration is a fickle thing, and essentially I brute forced my way around it. The plan is to make you realize that you don’t need some magical muse to crank out interesting posts. Everything you say is already interesting so long as it is genuine and comes from your personality, and the rest is just simply taking notes.
The Guidelines
Last year… the month of August was a blur for me, and it was honestly hell for me to go through. When you had as many people blogging as we did, a good chunk of my morning was spent tabulating who blogged and who didn’t. Then when you factor in the international nature of this competition it was extremely hard to actually determine what day a given post was supposed to represent. As such this year I am going to be quite a bit more strict on the guidelines, because I would really like to exit the month of August with at least some bit of my sanity intact. I love you guys dearly… but I really need your help on this.
Write a new blog post of no less than ten sentences in length. This is essentially two large paragraphs and is a good solid minimum size. If you are doing a screenshot/photo blog just make sure your description explaining what the image is all about fits this constraint.
Include a link back to the 2015 Blaugust Initiative Page. My hope is that this will allow other people to join in the challenge and play catch up.
Advertise the post on the Blaugust Nook. When you join the nook I will be elevating everyone to “Blogger” access to do this. This is extremely key this year, because this is going to be how I log all posts, and if you do not do thisyou are not going to get proper credit.
Either in the title of your post or the first heading inside of your actual post.. please denote which day this post is for. Something like “Blaugust Day 21” just to make sure that I am giving everyone credit for the correct day, and this should help to stop the oddities of folks in vastly different time zones getting dumped into the wrong slot.
If you advertise the post on social media, please include the #Blaugust hashtag. Again we are trying to help spread the word and get folks to join in process… and at very least get folks reading the posts.
Over the course of the month, write 31 posts.
????
Profit!
The Vlogger Clause
Since this contest is far more about longevity and doing things on a schedule… I thought I would open it up to a slightly different audience this year. Blogging is awesome, and I love it dearly… but Vlogging is also awesome. Being willing to put yourself out there, and on camera… on a regular basis is quite the daunting task. As such I wanted to open this up to folks who are vlogging, and essentially allow them to count a daily vlog as a valid post for the month. As such I am going to throw some loose requirements around it.
Vlog must be at least five minutes in length.
Include a link back to the 2015 Blaugust Initiative Page in your videos “dooblidoo” and mention the Blaugust initiative at least once during the video.
Advertise the vlog post on the Blaugust Nook. When you join the nook I will be elevating everyone to “Blogger” access to do this. This is extremely key this year, because this is going to be how I log all posts, and if you do not do thisyou are not going to get proper credit.
Inside the “dooblidoo” mention what day you are posting for. Something like “Blaugust Day 21” just to make sure that I am giving everyone credit for the correct day, and this should help to stop the oddities of folks in vastly different time zones getting dumped into the wrong slot.
If you advertise the post on social media, please include the #Blaugust hashtag. Again we are trying to help spread the word and get folks to join in process… and at very least get folks reading the posts.
Over the course of the month, write 31 posts.
????
Profit!
Some Revisions
Last year I did some madness that I won’t be doing this year. Essentially the deck was stacked against anyone who was not ready to go on day one. Inevitably there were folks that started one or two days late, that got knocked out of the running for the big prize for not being there from day one. I didn’t really feel like this was fair, because ultimately they put the same amount of effort in during the course of the event, it was just that they had to play catch up a bit. As such I basically have three categories that I am going to be dividing people up into.
Challenge Winners – Anyone who makes thirty one blog posts during the month of August. I will be tallying the Results on September 2nd as to allow for all possible time zone strangeness.
Challenge Survivors – Anyone who makes at least fifteen blog posts during the month of August is going to be considered a “survivor”.
Challenge Participant – Anyone who did not quite make it to fifteen is still awesome in my book and deserves some recognition for showing up and joining in the fun.
The Rewards
As with last year I will be keeping track of these things in my big spreadsheet of blaugust, and at the end of the month on September 2nd I will be tabulating the results. From the contest winners I will be doing a drawing for several prize packages. I hope you enjoy games, and want to acquire more of them… because that is what we are going to do. Last year someone summed up the contest as “write awesome stuff and get games!”. Over the course of the years I have acquired a bunch of spare game download keys, so I will be dipping into this grab bag of awesome to get some prizes for folks. I will be using a secure dice roller to determine one Grand Prize winner and three additional prize winners from the pool of Contest winners.
Grand Prize!
I hope you follow me on Steam, because I will be picking a game off of your Steam Wishlist and purchasing it for you. Nice and simple. If there is something you have been craving like a special store mount or something of the sort from your favorite MMO, we can probably work that in instead.
Three Also-Awesomes
Additionally to a grand prize winner I will be picking three other individuals to get to choose something from the grab bag of awesome. May the odds ever be in your favor… because once again I will be relying on the dice roller to determine who gets first picking order from the grab bag.
All Participants
All participants are going to get sidebar badges to denote that they participated in Blaugust 2015 with special versions for the Survivors and Winners.
If there are any companies that would like to sweeten this pot, contact me because I would most certainly love to give everyone who participates in this contest something for doing this challenge.
The Sign-Up
In order to participate you need a few things. Firstly you need go over to the forums on the Blaugust nook and post your intention to participate in this handy forum thread I have created. This is going to help me prepare to start reading your posts during the month (if you are not already in my blog reader). Then as the month goes on post your new entries to the Blaugust Nook so that you get proper credit for them. The nook also serves as a jumping off place for the Blaugust community that builds up around this event. Share your struggles and your victories, and lean on each other for ideas. We are all in this together, and the hope is that at the end of the month each of us is stronger for the participation. As always if you have any questions feel free to pop me a line on any of the many avenues that I leave available for folks to contact me. Lets have an awesome August and a truly phenomenal Blaugust!
