#oneaday Day 522: Addressing the Audience’s Demands

So in an attempt to better understand my audience, such as you are, I’ve been delving once again into the top search terms for my blog. I’m going to take the top ten search terms from the last year and address each and every one of them individually so that hopefully if you’ve been in attendance on this page at some point in the past and found it to be wanting for further information on the topic you searched for, you’ll feel better and more satisfied in your choice of Google links that you clicked on.

Divine Divinity (303 hits)

Divine Divinity is an action-RPG from Larian Studios which bears more than a passing resemblance to Blizzard’s Diablo series. The difference is that the world is not randomly generated and there is a more robust quest and interaction system more akin to something like the Baldur’s Gate series. The entire world is available to explore from the get-go and aside from some appalling voice acting of the very worst kind, it’s a great game. Pity its sequels aren’t up to much. You can grab it from Good Old Games.

I’m Not Doctor Who (81 hits)

That’s the name of this site, because my name is Peter Davison, though I usually go by “Pete” because I prefer it. Peter Davison, as you may know, was the stage name for Peter Moffett, who played the Doctor in Doctor Who between 1982 and 1984. I am not him, therefore I am not Doctor Who.

Offensive GIFs (73 hits)

Here’s one.

Teaching Sucks (65 hits)

Teaching does indeed suck. I’ve worked as a classroom teacher on two separate occasions in my life and on both occasions it nearly killed me. In the first instance, I stuck it out for three years in the secondary school music classroom — my first year in a run-down school half a million quid in the red where I was threatened with being knifed on a regular basis, and my second in an ostensibly “nicer” area but which still reduced me to a literally gibbering wreck by the end of my time there.

The reasons why it sucks? Poor behaviour and teachers’ lack of power to do anything about it. Ridiculous amounts of bureaucracy. The fact that one person is expected to do what, in any other job, a team of at least four or five people would take on between them.

If you can stick it out, fair play to you. It’s not for me.

“Mandatory Sex Party” (35 hits)

This was a term coined by Allie Brosh, who at one point wasn’t sure whether or not it was an actual thing that happened. I’m still not sure, but there’s certainly a lot more than one Google hit for it now.

Persona 4 (35 hits)

Persona 4 is one of my favourite games of all time. Featuring a hugely lengthy quest, genuinely loveable characters, a gripping (if crazy) plot and a love-it-or-hate-it catchy soundtrack, Persona 4 is one of the greatest JRPGs of all time and I will fight you if you disagree.

Fatal Labyrinth (34 hits)

Fatal Labyrinth is a graphical roguelike for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. You can play it as part of the Sega Mega Drive Collection on the Xbox 360 and PS3, but I bet you haven’t.

“Get Rich or Die Gaming” (27 hits)

Get Rich or Die Gaming is an absolutely terrible Xbox Live Indie Game with artwork that looks like it was put together in Microsoft Paint, voice acting that would make a school play’s director blush and designs on being a point-and-click adventure. Fair play to them for actually releasing it, but it really is not very good.

NSFW GIFs (26 hits)

Here’s one.

Memes GIF (25 hits)

(Click to embiggen. Some NSFW. Some NSF anybody. Apparently this character is called “optimized GIF dude” and is something of a meme. I’d never heard of him, actually.)

So there we are. I hope you feel suitably satisfied now. If not, go and have a sandwich and a wank.