TenTonHammer.com - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Let's face it, rewards and voting systems have big problems. As for reviews, no matter how experienced, fair, or skilled at using clever metaphors the reviewer is, it's just one person's opinion of the game. Sites that hand out awards based on how many viewers vote for an MMORPG are vulnerable to organized efforts to "stuff the ballot box" - just look at how often a certain space MMORPG wins a certain other MMORPG network's yearly awards.

What if you were able to vote for your favorite games not by checking a checkbox and hitting a button, but simply by reading the articles, watching the videos, and checking out the news stories you're interested in? What if interest and "hype" could be gauged not by arbitrary scales that only the true lovers and haters of a game would bother to fill out, but that every gamer, casual or hardcore, could influence.

That's the vision behind The Pulse, the first truly passive rating system to hit the games space.

Reading The Pulse

Just like a human heart, the beats per minute (or "BPM") of a game ranges between 0 BPM (flatline) and 200 BPM (pure adrenaline). The faster the Pulse, the more excited our gaming community is for the game. It really _is_ that simple. But, unlike a human heart, the longer a game has a high BPM, the healthier it is. The "beats" (the green, yellow, and red bars on the Pulse "Chart") show how intense the game's traffic was on any given day. Finally, the blue line shows the number of premium members who have chosen the game as a favorite (currently in testing - coming soon!).

How It Works

Moment by moment, The Pulse system counts how many times our viewers access content tagged with the name of an MMORPG. Then, each night, The Pulse system performs a number of calculations on these counts. Without getting too heavy into the math, these daily calculations include:

• Assigning a popularity rank (how popular an MMORPG is out of the 140+ MMORPGs we cover, 1 being most popular / interesting to the community, 140 being least). Popularity rank and other detailed information is availble to premium members who have chosen the game as a favorite (coming soon!) and to developers of that particular game.
• Based on how explosive the game's traffic is that day, compared to its own recent history, assign one to nine "beats" (these are the green, yellow, and red bars on the pulse readout) for that day.
• Assign BPM based on how the game performed that day compared to other games (0-200 BPM, more BPM equals more excitement).

Won't one game (/cough WoW) dominate the numbers?

Not necessarily. Remember, this is a measure of how many viewers are tuning in to see coverage on a specific game. Blizzard isn't the most prolific of developers when it comes to exclusives - interviews, dev diaries, and such - and much of our WoW content (quality though it is) is home-grown - class guides, our quest database, and such. Even though our WoW writers do an excellent job, these types of content do steady, even traffic, which wouldn't register as much as the traffic spike we'd see with, say, an exclusive class interview on a top-tier, in-development game. So even though WoW might have 10 million plus subscribers, it might not have the critical mass of excitement on a given day.

Is it fair to compare totally different MMORPGs to each other?

No, and that's not the aim of The Pulse. If a fantasy MMO, a sci-fi MMO, and a a free-to-play sports MMO all have a banner day, they'll each max out their beats. In other words, this isn't a zero sum calculation where the different MMORPGs are competing with each other over which gets an extra beat.

I'm a game developer / publisher / promoter and want to increase my game's Pulse, how do I do it?

Teaming up with Ten Ton Hammer for exclusives and interviews is a great way to keep our community informed about what makes your game exciting and different, and increase your game's Pulse at the same time. Please contact garrett@tentonhammer.com for information on setting up some content opportunities with Ten Ton Hammer.