#xplayn

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[xplayn]

More than 100,000 days was spent browsing Xplayn.com, literally 100s of years wasted on dinmor*

I’ve just re-acquired the Xplayn.com domain (13 years after selling out, I now have the same email again!). As I was updating domain/Gsuite settings, I discovered something I’ve never seen before: 

Xplayn.com data from Google Analytics

It’s a bit of a mindfuck for me to find access to historical performance metrics for Xplayn. It’s been 19 years since v1.0 launched, I never had any kind of numerical value to help me define Xplayn’s success. Websites in 2001 cared a lot less about KPIs than today, my only Northstar was really the number of users online in the evenings. Because <community>.

Audience:

Above: visitors from 2006 and onwards (2001-2006 lost in time)

Such clear visualization of how Counter-Strike 1.6 slowly bled out. Hats off for how resilient the Danish community was, even during the time of darkness, with no game updates and tournaments dropping support of the game.

Remarkably consistent traffic, considering how social media took off in 2008. 

Stats:

In aggregate the Danish community has spent more than 115,000+ days online on Xplayn. That’s 2,7 million hours. 317 years. No idea what similar sites would clock in at, but I find those numbers humbling and inspiring. 

Factoring in traffic from the early years of [x] a a steady ramp from 0 to baseline traffic (2001 to 2006), Xplayn served an estimated 160 million pages to the community.

Not bad for a website that was hosted on my old Pentium 4 gaming pc, cost efficiently distributed to the world from a shared 2mbit office line. True Story.

When I retired from [x] in 2005 I found the best scene contributors in Denmark to further serve the community. Seeing these consistent traffic numbers, I really want to praise the outstanding job they did. 

For years they kept showing up to deliver for the community, the daily grind really doesn’t get any easier year 3 or 4.

Most people have no idea how relentless it is to run a community site: you are never off. Never done. There’s always a story you can post, there’s always a thing you could write, something to fix, to do. Always. Or at least for 10-12 hours a day (personally I can’t wait to feel that way about work again).

Social Justice Warriors, it’s party time;

This really surprised me: 45.85% women

I am guessing more women started visiting the website in later years, as the blogs and forums kept attracting mainstream tweens. It for sure wasn’t 45% in the first few years of Counter-Strike. :) I conclude that even more people got laid by using Xplayn, again I feel humbled and a little proud.

Age:

The first generation of Counter-Strike players, the core visitors on Xplayn.com. They grow up so fast.


As I’ve been telling people that I am working on Xplayn again, I've been contacted by quite a few old users offer to help out. X-teens who now 10-15 years older, with careers, work experience and skills. It’s been one of the most awesome things about the project so far. 

Interests;

Second highest ranked interest (after “esports” as a category), the tools of the trade. 

We all need a mouse to click ass. And we all need a keyboard... to be Qwer? That’s why gear is a native part of the next Xplayn experience, #brainWASD will make a lot more sense when our closed beta begins later this quarter. 

My career had unexpected mid-game quests yielding far-better-than-expected experience points. I’ve done nimble start-ups and I’ve served as VP for Fortune 500. I’ve cleaned up vomit during night shifts at gaming cafes, I’ve built brands with awesome people, I’ve sponsored the best teams in esports with millions of Dollars. 

After 20 years in esports doing all sorts of things, serving the Xplayn community as Chief Janitor, still stands as the least profitable and personally most fulfilling work I’ve done. When I got it wrong, feedback was instant and brutally honest. When I got it right, it was magical.

May the meta be with you, always.

Kim Rom [x] Founder. Again.

* 2,45 million minutes

[kimrom]

The Fraggers Creed 2020

My mouse is my best friend. 

It is my life.

I must master it as I must master my life.

Without me, my mouse is useless. 

Without my mouse, I am useless. 

This is probably where most people would start to feel worried. 

[xplayn]

It’s happening. It’s actually really happening.

Ladies and gentlemen, esports fans and you random dude who don't know why you've clicked to this page: We've secured funding for Xplayn! 🖱️⌨️ 🎧◾

Xplayn is an English speaking internatonal community site, brought to you by the same old farts that once brought you JGCS, Xplayn.com, GotFrag.com, SteelSeries.com, MajorLeagueGaming.com and other ancient relics.

We're now in the process of incorporating, on-boarding our full team and we'll begin posting regular updates here. 

Thank you for following us and we're super f00king pumped to show you what we're working on.

[xplayn]

Something new.

Welcome to [xplayn]. I first published those words in 2001, in my welcome post on XplayN.com. We wanted to serve the Counter-Strike community with a professional community site, written and run in a tone that was fitting for that environment (so, lots of “your mom” jokes). 

It was just me and one guy I had been in Counter-Strike Clan with. The other guy was an awesome programmer, thought very logical about everything and to this day I never understood why he signed up for all that work as a volunteer: I don’t think he really liked me very much. As clan mates we would usually get into stupid arguments about stupid little things, as people we clearly didn’t work together.

But, somehow, we created great work together. We somehow made each other do better work and Xplayn.com more or less became the Counter-Strike community in Denmark. Not really a website for the community, but the community website. I hope that makes sense. While we in periods of time had some competitors here and there, I would say that Counter-Strike in Denmark was Xplayn.

It’s hard to describe what an early esports community felt like back then, because the world was so different. There was no social media: that was xplayn. There was no reddit: that was xplayn. If you wanted to be a part of the CS community in Denmark, you had to go to xplayn. We organized a Danish ladder, got the big teams to actually play each other in public (trust me, if was very different back then), organized every qualifier for international tournaments that took, started an Internet.cafe, ran the Danish national team, started ESL Denmark, I could go on and on. 90% of all esports activities in Denmark was probably done by us.

If I am honest with myself, I don’t think I have ever worked as hard or as dedicated on anything in my life. Of all the things I have done, Xplayn was the one that somehow triggered the most passion. I worked day and night, doing alternating day and night shifts at a gaming cafe, working on my website whenever I possibly could.

In 2005 my last competitor closed down. I had won. After 4 years of basically not sleeping, being really hungry for food most of the time and not once making a rent payment on time, it was over. I had an office, I had employees, I had learned to sell and find sponsors. Xplayn literally ran every aspect of esports in Denmark that I wanted to touch, and I came to this terrifying conclusion: I had nothing left to win.

I sold Xplayn a few weeks later. In hindsight I wish I hadn’t done that, but I really needed a change in my life.

So now, 16 years later, I am working on the next version of Xplayn. The world is a very different place today, esports is basically unrecognizable compared to where we started. That’s amazing. Everything is amazing. I hope the next Xplayn will be amazing as well, time will tell. I think it’s fair to say that Xplayn will be a new kind of esports site, sometimes you just don’t know if something is a great idea, before you actually build it. This is one of those times.

I have no idea when we will be ready to launch, but I wanted to get started, I wanted to start finding that passion that once consumed most of my day, 7 days a week. That’s probably unrealistic at the age of 42, but the thing about passion is that it can sometimes transform unrealistic to real.

So, welcome to Xplayn. I have no idea what comes next.

Kim Rom Chief Xplayner

[xplayn]

One of the most awesome things about working with really talented people, is that you get to experience those moments where they present work they have put their heart and soul into, work they are genuinely proud of. Especially when their work is so good that you no longer can imagine your whatever-it-is-project without it. The new Xplayn logo is like that. 

The logo probably be further from what I had originally envisioned, but now I simply can’t imagine the new Xplayn being anything else.

[xplayn]

Budbrain. 

[kimrom]

Blog post: https://www.xplayn.com/blog/logitech-gaming-gear

[kimrom]

I made a movie about Counter-Strike and the evolution of pro gaming/esports.

Runtime hits 66 mins, which is insanity in 2020, so here’s a link to individual chapters. My personal favorite is (Bomb)Scene.

[kimrom]

I looked at old numbers, then wrote some words about mostly that.

[kimrom]

Monday hack: Filur.

[xplayn]

Top: xplayn in 2001.

Below: xplayn 2018. 

[xplayn]

SCx.

[xplayn]

Ode to Gremlin, the most rainbow of all publishers.  

[xplayn]

This was my esports website in 2001. That’s not a bad looking web design for 2001 btw, it looks better in pixels than it did in my memory.

[xplayn]

X. xxx. So much sexy, much xplayn. A pre-trailer to the trailer for the announcement trailer of the hypetrailer for intro.