[00:00:00] Alex Clemesha: There are people who play who are immature, so I also receive messages that are outrageous and childish sometimes. It's
[00:00:07] Nate: funny. Yeah, because some of them are literally 10 years old. We get those all the time.
[00:00:12] Alex Clemesha: I can't believe what they're saying to me. It's so, it's so outrageous.
[00:00:20] Nate: Welcome to the Hey, Good Game podcast where we chat with the creators of your favorite games that you secretly play in the cracks of your day. So we just chatted with Alex Clemesha, The Wiki Game. Aaron, what was your favorite part of that interview?
[00:00:37] Aaron Kardell: You know, I, I think we talked to a lot of different game developers.
[00:00:41] Some, sometimes people have quick hits. I think what's cool about this is, uh, Alex started working on this game, I don't know, 15 or so years ago, and it's just been a slow and steady build over time. There's certainly been some, some spikes in traffic where, uh, in the midst of COVID, maybe traffic spiked a [00:01:00] bit.
[00:01:00] But, uh, you know, just that persistence over time and you can really tell that it's a kind of a passion project and a labor of love. And so that's, that's super cool to see. Yeah.
[00:01:10] Nate: I think for what I took away was, you know, Alex has found growth through just sustained kind of consistency over time. He hasn't, it didn't seem like there were really any.
[00:01:24] Incredible spikes in traffic at any one point. And so part of this, and I think we've seen this with our own games is just the, uh, the time it takes, you know, for it to kind of take off. And he has 60, 000 users a month hitting that site, which is pretty incredible and a very successful game in its own right.
[00:01:43] So, but just his own passion for development, passion for creating and keeping at it. It is something that I, I have a takeaway from. So with that, let's go chat with Alex.
[00:01:59] I'm Nate [00:02:00] Cadillac and I'm here with my cohost, Aaron Cardell. And today we're extremely excited to speak with Alex Clemishaw, the creator of The Wiki Game. Thanks for being here,
[00:02:08] Alex Clemesha: Alex. Uh, thank you for having me.
[00:02:11] Nate: Well, we usually like to kick things off, uh, with just a simple question, but what is your favorite
[00:02:16] Alex Clemesha: game to play?
[00:02:17] Um, I guess I'll just go right into a admission is that I don't play tons of games, but like, I used to be like obsessive with kind of like Nintendo games, like as a kid, and I always liked like little computer games. So I always liked just messing with. kind of technology and just, just kind of like tinkering with simple games.
[00:02:45] Yeah, I never, I never got into like the complex games. It was just, I just, I just, so I was always, I was into like a, a simple game and, and kind of more like, how does it work? So that's kind of how I approached games. And then with a Wiki Game, [00:03:00] I got into writing a game because I just loved Wikipedia. So, so I just wanted to find a way to spend more time on Wikipedia and just go to more articles.
[00:03:12] Like when I first found Wikipedia, I was like, wow, this is an incredible resource. So to gamify exploring Wikipedia was the motivation
[00:03:21] Aaron Kardell: now on, on timing for, so to dive right into The Wiki Game on, on timing. Uh, I I think you started this in, uh, was it around 2020 or was it, was it before that? Uh, The Wiki Game?
[00:03:35] Yeah.
[00:03:35] Alex Clemesha: No, it, it was actually, I mean, the first cut, so to speak. was a long time ago. Probably like 12, 13, 14 years ago. Oh, wow. That's quite a history. Yeah. I've actually, it's actually has a lot of history and Um, it's been quite popular for since 2010, where it did get featured on [00:04:00] certain blogs and Reddit and stuff where even early on, it was a good amount of traffic and it never got giant, but there's been a steady amount of players, like in the tens of thousands per month.
[00:04:13] It's kind of been like that for years. I mean, uh, that's a very rough estimate and it goes up and down based on if it gets linked on social media sites or Reddit or YouTube or stuff like that. But, but yeah, so pre 2010 was when I first started, started on it.
[00:04:30] Aaron Kardell: Right on. Yeah. No, I thought I, somehow I had in my head, maybe it was a, uh, kind of inspired by COVID or COVID obsession kind of thing or did it?
[00:04:40] Take off in a bigger way during COVID or am I just
[00:04:43] Alex Clemesha: making stuff up? No, you aren't making stuff up. And I bet you saw my pinned tweet on, on Twitter or X on X during COVID. Wikigame saw a large spike. I mean, it [00:05:00] was like so undeniable. Like people were just stuck at home and wow, people were playing web games.
[00:05:07] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:09] Aaron Kardell: Suddenly got a little bit of time on their hands. Right. It
[00:05:12] Alex Clemesha: was like, man. I mean, it was like, and I have, so I have a web, I have a web game, but I also have a iOS app. And it was like 5x sales for a couple months. Well, I don't, it doesn't sell that much, but we're talking like, you know, a large increase.
[00:05:29] So, um, yeah, that, that was, that was just a, a large spike. It was probably one of the largest spikes, but there, there has been a few over the years where it's been like a, um, really popular, like subreddits or stuff like that. And,
[00:05:46] Aaron Kardell: uh, so to, to rewind back then, you know, so it's been, been out there for a while.
[00:05:53] I imagine it's been quite the, the journey to just see. Waves of people discovering it and things like [00:06:00] that, but, uh, you know, which, which was first, but it's, I, I've got to imagine the website was before the iOS
[00:06:07] Alex Clemesha: app. Yeah, the website was first and, um, it was motivated actually. Um, and just, just to dive right into technical details, I don't know if that's appropriate or not, but I mean, absolutely.
[00:06:21] One of the motivations was my love of Wikipedia, but the other one was I wanted to make a real time multiplayer web game. That was like, I wanted to just figure out a way to like, learn how to do that. And there was like, around that time, there was technologies kind of pre WebSockets, probably familiar WebSockets, which is kind of the way to do.
[00:06:46] real time web functionality these days, but you know, around 2010 and before that it was less obvious how to do that, but I wanted to make a web game. So that was one of the main motivations [00:07:00] multiplayer
[00:07:00] Aaron Kardell: game. No, I, you know, uh, it's, it's funny you bring that up because, uh, we've been researching a lot of web games out there and it's, it's not that common that there's, you know, kind of true.
[00:07:12] Synchronous multiplayer mode, you know, so many of these are sort of casual games that you play, you know, whenever you've got time and and if there is a multiplayer element, it's asynchronous, but it sure seems like you've got a solid adaptation of that. And, uh, I guess my question on that would be. You know, as, as other game designers are thinking about just sort of that synchronous versus asynchronous approach, do you ever find it's hard for, like, are people playing at all times of the day?
[00:07:45] So therefore there's always sort of like somebody I'm competing against or is there. Is it a challenge to, like, kind of go back to single player mode then, or just tell us what some of your takeaways are from sort of the live, [00:08:00] synchronous play?
[00:08:01] Alex Clemesha: Uh, yeah, totally, I absolutely experience that. Yeah, so for a multiplayer game, if no one's there, then it seems, yeah, quite empty.
[00:08:11] But in terms of like, yes. I guess I'll just bounce around, but like, I mean, one thing that I learned about people and their motivations with games is they like to play relative to other people. They often, I mean, this is a broad statement and you know, every broad statement is false in a lot of ways, but people are very motivated by, you know, playing as others.
[00:08:36] So at least that's, that's what I saw. So it was just. Yeah, I would, I would always, I would get lots of complaints when in the early, early days that it was kind of like a multiplayer game, but there was not enough people there. And, but you know, it was, it would go up and down. It's spiky traffic and you got people coming along and it's such a casual game.
[00:08:58] You don't have long time [00:09:00] playing it really. Do you
[00:09:01] Aaron Kardell: happen to know, like, are there, or do you have any way to track, like, are there What's cool about it is you can just play against anyone and you show up and you're, you're playing against like whoever's in it at the time. But do you have a lot of awareness of people that maybe organize, like we're going to get on and play at the same
[00:09:19] Alex Clemesha: time?
[00:09:20] Yes. So two answers to that. One, let me backtrack two steps. I am currently working on the third version of the game. The 2010 that had true real time multiplayer. The second version actually has kind of like pseudo real time. It actually does a polling effect, but what I did add was in, in these like group rooms, but what I did add was the ability to make private group rooms.
[00:09:51] So you can make a private group where you can choose your own like challenges, choose your own start and end pages, your own Wikipedia articles to [00:10:00] connect. And, in terms of that, like, that motivation was, came about from so many requests, we want to have a private room to choose our own articles to connect, you know, we want to choose the ideas that we're exploring on Wikipedia.
[00:10:22] So, so that's how, that's how the game, which is live right now, version two, there are private rooms. So a lot of people just know the game as going to the public group, which is just like if you just go to the site right now as anonymous user, you can play, um, with anyone else. But there are private groups now where you can choose your own.
[00:10:42] Yeah,
[00:10:42] Nate: I'm, I'm curious. So kind of, I'm generally really curious at the overall picture of The Wiki Game and you know, you wrote up a case study, which was a great case study in terms of like how you built it out. You had mentioned you have about 45, 000 people a month coming to the [00:11:00] game, um, at the time it was written.
[00:11:01] Yeah. What are the things that you do? Do you do any marketing or any talking about the game as a way to draw new people in? Or do you just kind of let it run on its own? What are you doing for, uh, retaining or getting new, new
[00:11:16] Alex Clemesha: users? Yeah. It's like I thought, I have thought a lot about that to get more users, but if I'm being honest, I have done.
[00:11:27] Almost nothing Which I guess is a good thing because it has spread like semi virally, I mean it's not super popular, but it's all organic, it's all, it's all either spread via social media or probably like, from what I can see from analytics, um, reddit. And some popular game blogs and just Google searches.
[00:11:53] I mean, the concept of The Wiki Game is a concept that's kind of like in the culture. And I don't know if you guys didn't, [00:12:00] did you know that or not, but like, there's a lot of other people who have independently invented The Wiki Game and actually have approached me in the past, or there are some other games.
[00:12:12] Kind of very similar to it that have the same concept even a couple that have come and gone over the years So that's another just organic search of people just, you know, wiki, google the phrase Wiki Game. And actually, uh, that's because people just are thinking about Wikipedia and playing game. And, um, yeah, I've been kind of like a top result on Google for many years, which has been helpful.
[00:12:38] Yeah.
[00:12:39] Nate: So have you ever thought about reaching out to Wikipedia? Like, has there ever been any sort of partnership or conversations around partnering in some
[00:12:49] Alex Clemesha: way? Yeah, I have a couple cool stories with that. My coolest story for internet savvy people is that wikimedia themselves [00:13:00] contacted me In around 2009, 10 timeframe, and actually their lawyers did, and their lawyer at that point was Mike Godwin of Godwin's law, which is a famous internet law.
[00:13:14] A lot of people are familiar, it has to do with conversations eventually as they, as they go down and down and more and more people get into more of argumentative. As arguments get worse and worse on the internet, someone inevitably, uh, mentions, like, Hitler or the Nazis. It's ridiculous, but kind of famous internet.
[00:13:35] So anyways, that's Mike Godwin, and he was the lawyer of Wikimedia, and they actually contacted me, um, yeah, years ago, we had a nice talk, and I, at that point, I actually was running off the domain name wikipediagame. com, which breaks their, uh, trademark. On that, so, um, they were nice about it and, but they, they asked, can you move over [00:14:00] to the word wiki?
[00:14:01] Um, but they're like, you know, we, we play this game internally at Wikimedia, which was like so awesome to hear, but just can you like, can you not use the word Wikipedia in your branding?
[00:14:10] Nate: That's, that's pretty amazing. Uh, I, I wasn't sure which direction that was going to go when you get contacted by someone's lawyer first, usually pretty
[00:14:19] Alex Clemesha: soft resolution there.
[00:14:21] It was wonderful. I mean, they were like, yeah, we play it internally. And so that was like, you know, that was like 12, 13 years ago probably. And fast forward many years, I've been contacted with. Some people from Wikimedia it themselves in just about four months ago. I was contacted by one of the head of branding Maybe I'm not exactly sure his role but um, they use The Wiki Game in a wika Wikipedia meetup like as just For hundreds of people and I was just like maybe four months ago.
[00:14:55] It was in August so yeah, and so that kind of stuff is like That's [00:15:00] just gold for, I mean, for a labor of love to have them do that. It's just like, you know, I love that. It's awesome. So, yeah. Have you ever been approached
[00:15:10] Nate: about, you know, acquiring or, yeah, I'm kind of curious like how this plays a role in your life, uh, you know, financially or if, if at all, um, is this something that supports you a little bit
[00:15:21] Alex Clemesha: or, uh, no, it's not at that level.
[00:15:24] I do make money off of it. The app sales and. I have used it as a resume piece over the years, so kind of like, one step removed. You know, I show people like, look at this thing I've made over several years, like I built the iOS app, I built the web app, I've like dealt with all the nuances that come come into play when you're dealing with tens of thousands of your users, you know, all spams and hacks and maintenance.
[00:15:54] And so these are the resume piece, iOS app, I have actually sold [00:16:00] the data a couple times to universities, just for them to use as research. Totally anonymized data for them to do, um, academic research on. There's actually probably at least Six to eight like legitimate academic papers using the wiki, Wiki Games data of exploring like how do users traverse links on, you know, web links essentially.
[00:16:29] That's fascinating. Yeah. So
[00:16:31] Nate: I mean, inherently it's, it's a game like activity, you know, just rabbit hole in your way through the internet, right? Exactly.
[00:16:38] Alex Clemesha: Rabbit hole. That term. Now,
[00:16:42] Aaron Kardell: I have to ask a question that's got to be on somebody else's mind, uh, was this inspired in any way by the six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon or
[00:16:54] Alex Clemesha: yeah, I mean, yeah, that that's one of the ways that this concept is in the [00:17:00] culture, like, like people kind of just get it right away because of six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
[00:17:06] Yeah. I personally really didn't. Probably when I started, I didn't know about that concept. Maybe. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I did. So I, yeah, I personally wasn't. I just love, I just love Wikipedia. I mean, it was just, I mean, a buddy of mine, We're just kind of nerdy and we, we would just actually sit next to each other on our laptops and just click on links.
[00:17:29] And then we started being like, okay, let's, let's like get to a, let's get to a goal article. It's just so geeky, but that's, that's years ago. That's how it started. It's
[00:17:40] Aaron Kardell: awesome. Well, it's, it's fun that a fun off the cuff hobby is, you know, evolved into something much more than that. You mentioned a little bit about the business side.
[00:17:52] You certainly make money on the, uh, the apps, but I noticed from a business perspective, it doesn't appear [00:18:00] that you have ads on, on the web game. And I was wondering if I'm sure that it was an intentional decision, but can you tell us more about your thoughts
[00:18:09] Alex Clemesha: on that? I mean, yeah, I mean, I have pretty strong feelings about, I mean, I just don't like ads.
[00:18:15] And I just feel like, I mean, this game is based around exploring Wikipedia and, you know, even though the content of Wikipedia is owned by everyone, the license is permissive, such that you can do anything you want with it, essentially. I just felt like it was just not right to, to go to a certain level of commercialization.
[00:18:41] You know, obviously kind of hovered around it, like, I mean, you pay for the app. And, and I do have some future plans where I would have some premium features, but just ads, I just could never, and I've been asked that. I mean, I've been contacted by ad agencies, I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens of time because the [00:19:00] traffic, the retention and the traffic and the time on site is, I think, good enough.
[00:19:03] I don't even know that much about it because I would, I just, it's not going to do it. I'll just make money some other way. I don't, and just, yeah. So that's why, extremely intentional to not run ads.
[00:19:17] Nate: Yeah, I think that that's, as we've had these conversations with other creators, some people have been able to turn it into their full time thing because of ads, you know?
[00:19:27] And so there's, but there's always this, should I, shouldn't I, how much am I going to ruin the experience, you know, of the game itself? Um, so it's, it's like, there's never one right answer, right? So
[00:19:39] Alex Clemesha: you have talked to others that have that, have had that tension. Oh, yeah,
[00:19:43] Nate: absolutely. Uh, yeah. Nilanth in Toronto with CineNerdle has, uh, you know, it's kind of a world spinoff in cinema, like has, uh, postponed his, his postdoctorate because he's able to earn enough from the ads on his game.
[00:19:59] And it's like, well, [00:20:00] I'd rather build games for a living. And if I can, Make money doing that. Like that's a pretty, you know, all of our situations are different, you know, and so it's, uh, sometimes comes down to what do you want to spend your time doing? And, uh, yeah, we've, we've heard both sides, you know, Toby 18XX games doesn't run ads.
[00:20:18] Alex Clemesha: So, yeah, I know. I mean, I've, I've heard that I could potentially make decent money and I just, I just feel like it just goes, if it wasn't based around the content of Wikipedia, I would probably be convinced. But it just doesn't seem right. I just can't do it because it's a game based on exploring Wikipedia.
[00:20:39] So that's my personal experience with this exact game. I understand other games, you know, but it's really because the Wikipedia content. Well as,
[00:20:50] Aaron Kardell: uh, maybe I'm a little bit too capitalistic for you, uh, Alex, but, uh, You know, an idea you could consider for the future is if, if you [00:21:00] ever were to flex on that is, uh, you could always give a portion of profits back to the Wikimedia Foundation.
[00:21:07] Um,
[00:21:07] Alex Clemesha: yes, that is something I have considered and I do donate every year, like not a large sum, but definitely non trivial sum. Because I do make, you know, on the order of thousands or low thousands on the iOS app. Um, it goes in spikes, but in general, that's the number. So I give them, I give, donate every year.
[00:21:28] Absolutely. So I kind of use that model a little bit for the iOS app because I've, I just cut loosely take a percentage, but for the web game, yeah, at this point, but I do. So I am working on version three. So this is a. A labor of love that goes on for years and every, you know, I go a couple of years without touching it and now I'm actually back on and I do have some premium features that would be like potentially for larger private groups to pay for, um, [00:22:00] just features to make it more fun to play in large groups and to make it more fun to create challenges or to have pre filled challenges.
[00:22:10] Um, in the site. So I have a lot of, uh, kind of premium features. So it would be a freemium model at that point. So it, it would be no ads and free for the most usages. And then for large groups, it would be the freemium model. So I'm optimistic about that.
[00:22:28] Nate: No, that's, that's great. And thanks for, uh, revealing some of those features here
[00:22:32] Alex Clemesha: first.
[00:22:34] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I've definitely studied other apps and how they do freemium and thought about it quite a bit. So
[00:22:41] Nate: I'm just curious about the timeline. So you, you built the game in 2010 web based game. What, what year did you start coming out with a native apps? How long did it take you to go to that?
[00:22:51] Alex Clemesha: Maybe, maybe like maybe the web game started in its first version around 2008, but it was just like not really, no one used it. It didn't really [00:23:00] work. So it was around 2011 where the iOS app came out. So it was only a couple of years after, and it was really like, it's because at that point the web game didn't have that much traffic, but there was a couple, there was a little bit of people using it.
[00:23:13] I mean, pretty low numbers. But I knew I wanted to get experience building an iOS app. So it was only a couple years later, and it was around the same time frame, like the 2010 frame was when people actually started using the web game. And I built the iOS app, which I worked with a friend of mine and designer.
[00:23:32] So we, it didn't really take that long to build the iOS app because I'd already thought about the concept of the web game and just had to learn like, IOS programming, which took
[00:23:42] Nate: like a year. We do tend to ask some questions you don't have to answer, but, um, you know, in terms of downloads or anything, like have, have you seen, I'm kind of curious, like in terms of downloads, how many downloads do you have of your app?
[00:23:55] Alex Clemesha: IOS app. Yeah. Well, the IOS app is still a paid app, [00:24:00] which if you know anything about IOS apps. People don't pay for apps in general. The freemium model wins. So, my download counts are in the low hundreds per month in general. Unless I see big spikes. So, so, you know, it can be like 300, 200, 400, 500, and sometimes I see a thousand.
[00:24:25] So it's, it's a modest amount, but it's still like, you know, dollar 99. So I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's incredible. Really. I mean, like I haven't actually done much the iOS app in many years, which is like incredible. Like this thing is just. People still keep playing it and it's still, yeah, it's pretty low numbers, but that's just because the model right now, it's, uh, it's paid out.
[00:24:47] I am in the
[00:24:47] Nate: camp just for the record. I would love to see an updated version. Oh yeah. I just know that on my, my screen doesn't fill the entire viewer. And so, uh, I'd love, I'd love to see it, uh, [00:25:00]
[00:25:00] Alex Clemesha: Oh yes, totally. Yes. Thank you. So V3. No, no. Yeah. Oh, it's. That's the thing about like a side project that is a labor of love.
[00:25:08] Like it's like, man, I wish I could do more and it's just like painful. I'm like, I know, I mean, I just like know the list of things that are broken. I'm like, ah, but it's just cause I care about it. But yeah, it's totally, I actually started doing a native app two years ago and I just got pulled away by other work by like my like day job and stuff.
[00:25:31] So I've made attempts. And the current version of the web game is built in a way that there is a generic, uh, JSON API. So it's not, you know, coupled to the web app. So that, so the, it's done intentionally so the iOS version, when I update it, would just be able to use the same backend. I'm making slow progress, but man, it needs some love.
[00:25:58] Well, I'm sure
[00:25:59] Aaron Kardell: we'll have more [00:26:00] questions on the game itself in a minute, but we, we kind of dove pretty quickly into the game and you mentioned that this is a side project for you. Would, would love to hear just more of kind of what you do on a day to day basis, uh, maybe both professionally and personally.
[00:26:15] Alex Clemesha: Yeah, professionally, I just, uh, just web and mobile, uh, development. For a long time now, probably almost 20 years, a lot of like dynamic websites, like, um, like react based, um, uh, Python backends and my expertise these days is actually iOS apps. So I'm currently employed as like a lead. IOS developer as an independent consultant, but yeah, currently doing IOS and in the past, a lot of Python react and I'm,
[00:26:51] Aaron Kardell: I'm curious, maybe just, you mentioned you're an independent contractor, so one, one of the games I wrote.
[00:26:58] Back in [00:27:00] 2008 timeframe, like it would, it would sometimes be a source of leads for other people that maybe wanted something built. Yeah. I'm curious. Do you get a lot of leads from, from people asking for dev help based on their first discovery in The Wiki Game? I
[00:27:17] Alex Clemesha: do get some leads. Yeah. But, but there, I have been quite picky just cause I already have work that I kind of like him.
[00:27:27] You know, I mean, if you've done web, if you've done like development, like working with um, inexperienced people, it can be quite difficult because they don't know the complexity of things. You know, they're so used to these modern apps that are built by teams of dozens or hundreds and they work so well.
[00:27:48] And it's just the disconnect. In my experience, you could maybe get lucky. So, yeah, so I say no a lot, essentially.
[00:27:59] Aaron Kardell: Yeah, totally [00:28:00] get that. So when, when did you start programming in the first
[00:28:03] Alex Clemesha: place? Um, around 2000, so probably about 20 years ago in college, I was actually a physics major, um, computational physics, but I just liked learning stuff.
[00:28:14] I wasn't going to be like a physicist or anything. I just thought, I don't know. I was like learning stuff. I guess this is why I like Wikipedia. It's like learning stuff. So I was a physics major, but I just like, you know, programming was the way to make money. So, um, it was in college. And so I just started dabbling then and uh, it was just, I just, just love the concept of the internet.
[00:28:37] And I mean, it's just, it's just absolutely incredible when you think about it. It's just the power. I mean, it's like, what are we doing right now? Like we met each other, internet, like every, what is Wikipedia? What I, it's just, I don't know. I just love the internet. I mean, even though the internet is a total mess, you know, like compared to like Wikipedia with every other site on planet earth, it's like the [00:29:00] internet is a mess.
[00:29:00] It's also just so fascinating. So I just got, I just get interested in like internet technology and just like that a long time ago.
[00:29:09] Nate: Well, I think you've hooked into one of the bright spots of the internet, which is why I think this makes it so compelling, right? Like you, you're, you're playing on all the positivity of what Wikipedia brings, you know?
[00:29:21] And so that's, that's
[00:29:23] Alex Clemesha: pretty cool in my mind. It's so positive. Wikipedia in general is really positive.
[00:29:27] Nate: Has there been any, you know, we, we've talked with. Other developers who just have had fascinating things happen through them because of building games. You know, like people have met their spouses, uh, you know, through Rubik's cube tournaments and That's awesome.
[00:29:43] I'm, I'm curious, like if anything has been surprising or serendipitous to you while building The Wiki Game?
[00:29:48] Alex Clemesha: I think the best thing about looking at is the constant stream of meeting people like you guys and all the other people who just contact me. And like, and then you just [00:30:00] have like a cool conversation about whether it's the, the researchers that I've talked to many times over the years from Stanford doing research on just internet content.
[00:30:10] To my Godwin, the lawyer, it's just that is just like interacting with people like all over the planet, really. So no one thing is stood out, but it's the constant stream like every month or two, um, it means someone needs it. I mean, I got a lot of messages that are like, I mean, it's a casual game and I feel like some people, you know, there are people who play it who are immature.
[00:30:39] So I also receive messages that are outrageous and childish sometimes.
[00:30:44] Nate: It's funny. Yeah, because some of them are literally 10 years old. We get those
[00:30:48] Alex Clemesha: all the time. And I can't believe what they're saying to me. It's so outrageous. I mean, any game creator probably goes through that maybe, like once it gets popular enough.
[00:30:59] [00:31:00] It's just outrageous the things people say. I mean, it's funny. If you have any sense, you just laugh, but it's, it's just like.
[00:31:08] Aaron Kardell: This, this reminds me a little bit of a conversation I had, uh, with Nate early on as we were getting started. Like, Nate, we can have a feedback form. We are not posting our email like, yeah, just the number of, uh, random amounts of feedback you get is,
[00:31:26] Alex Clemesha: Oh, absolutely.
[00:31:27] Yeah. Being people say outrageous things, but it's, it doesn't, it doesn't affect me one bit. In a way it's like a good sign because I get a positive, I get quite a good amount of positive and get some outrageous negativity. You know, if there's, if there's not, if you're hearing nothing, you probably haven't hit a nerve.
[00:31:44] You haven't made something that's, you know, meaningful at all. Probably. I mean, in general, um, That's kind of a good sign, baby. Worth talking about. But, um, yeah, that's one thing that I think, uh, web or, uh, game creators who put their sites online [00:32:00] will end up learning once they get to the intermediary stage of traffic.
[00:32:06] Is that you start to become, you start to get attacked a bit, you know, so I'm, I'm dealing with cheaters and people who tried to hack the system and everything from outrageous usernames to, you know, the little like script kitty denial of service type activity. Just everything I've experienced at all. So
[00:32:28] Aaron Kardell: I'm curious, Alex, you know, it seems like this has been a little bit of a slow burn just in terms of growth and kind of development over time.
[00:32:38] And I think there's an aspect of that that's just super cool. I'm wondering if you can remember, what did it take to get the first thousand users? And even if that wasn't super intentional, just like, what do you think like, uh, brought that
[00:32:53] Alex Clemesha: about? Yeah, it's a good question. And I think people starting with new games.
[00:32:57] It's a big thing because you, if you can [00:33:00] just get some people to really like your game, it's so motivating. So in the beginning, I actually, I actually did a little bit of effort. Like I would go to, maybe I went to, um, like some meetups, like developer meetups where I would do talks on The Wiki Game, uh, about the technology.
[00:33:20] So that was one way I could just like, you know, just talk to people at the game just to get some people playing it. Because at the beginning, you just need some people to play your game to motivate you. Um, so yeah, meetups are one great way. Like, I mean, you, and you have to ride the line between you, you don't want to be spammy because then you just seem spammy.
[00:33:42] But yeah, you're marketing yourself. In ways that are, um, kind of give back and, and I found my, my way of doing that was to talk about the technology that I was using. So I was using like real time web technology. I was using like the Django web [00:34:00] framework. I was using like a Redis key value store. So talk about it in different ways.
[00:34:05] Like, Oh, I did it this way. I use I use this, um, these patterns to build this feature. Like this is how I, I think actually several years ago I wrote, I did actually write a couple of blog posts about the tech, about the details of how I use certain technologies. So that was one way to just get the game out.
[00:34:27] Was through like developer communities and maybe that's just because I kind of the game is a little geeky here So maybe that worked a little bit. I'm not sure.
[00:34:35] Aaron Kardell: I I think there is a common thread we've heard from other game developers or even just that we see in a lot of the forums where that that is kind of a first place that people reach out to whether it's a developer forums or hacker news or a certain subreddit a lot of times that's sort of You get enough people talking about it and maybe they are for whatever reason a little more geeky in nature [00:35:00] Yeah, I think things like that take
[00:35:01] Alex Clemesha: off exactly subreddits and hacker news where some of my very early Feedback absolutely the subreddits and hacker news or some of the very early kind of little Bumped in traffic and people really like giving me feedback.
[00:35:17] That was legit. Not just like oh fine
[00:35:21] Nate: Alex, you've, you're obviously working on mobile apps, you're an iOS developer, you've built this, this game. Do you think about validating ideas and do you have a process for validating what might work if you were starting something new today?
[00:35:37] Alex Clemesha: The internet is so vast that if you, this is my just personal opinion that I'm just That I'm convinced that all you have to do is just look into the right sub communities to look to like what like You know, what, what are the geeks doing?
[00:35:55] What are the, you know, you know, I mean, don't build another candy crush or, or I [00:36:00] mean, whatever thing that's already been done that that's not, I know like candy crush is an older game, but, but like, just try to look for like just a niche, new idea, um, or just, just sub communities. Yeah. I would say that would be a way to just validate, like, see what people are talking about in general or
[00:36:16] Nate: just.
[00:36:17] Looking, looking back, would you have done anything differently, um, either in the promotion of it or, you know, any, anything along the, along those lines in the
[00:36:28] Alex Clemesha: early stages? I guess I, nothing comes to mind, but, uh, yeah, I, I guess I would have done everything differently. I mean, you can always do more, I guess, and the best, is that regret?
[00:36:40] I don't know. I wish I would have done. There's like more to do. There's like more features. And I'm still working at it after like, you know, 13 years. So like, I mean, I still like success is going from one failure to the next without losing enthusiasm. So I, you know, I've, I've tried a bunch of things that didn't work and um, [00:37:00] yeah, I have some high hopes for the game.
[00:37:02] Yeah. That's nothing I would do differently. It's just like, yeah, it definitely takes a lot of work. Yeah. So just keep motivated. I don't
[00:37:11] Aaron Kardell: think earlier you shared this. So if we did, I apologize, but, uh, Are there any analytics you're able to share in terms of just, uh, usage on the site, a number of visitors per month or daily active users or anything like that?
[00:37:30] Alex Clemesha: Um, yeah, I'm usually pretty open about that. So like, or I, I always am open about that. And when I am open about it, like it maybe just gets stale or not like in that blog post. Uh, that was like that, but that was like probably four or five years ago. It is not that different actually. So those are the general numbers.
[00:37:51] Like in that like little, um, on my, um, Clemisha. org, the kind of like case study. So currently these days, the [00:38:00] web game is seeing around 60 to 80, 000 unique players a month. And the time on site is around, hovers around 10 minutes, which is pretty decent for a casual game. I mean, and, and then one fascinating thing is.
[00:38:20] There's a little bit of a long tail of people who are obsessed with the game who play and you can actually see that on The leaderboards you can see people some of people's names that pop up a lot I mean, I if you go on the game a lot, I see people who would just play a lot But but yeah, those are the general numbers now It's around sixty to eighty thousand you need but it spikes it can it can really spike because it gets posted on subreddits Or, or are popular YouTube channels and then it really spiked.
[00:38:52] And then it just drops off. Or Thanksgiving
[00:38:54] Nate: holiday
[00:38:55] Alex Clemesha: comes up and it's fascinating how
[00:38:58] Nate: I'm sure I'll be playing [00:39:00] it much more in the next
[00:39:02] Alex Clemesha: week. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, it's funny that you said Thanksgiving holiday because actually on weekends and holidays, I see a drop in traffic because I think a lot of people play at schools, colleges and high schools.
[00:39:18] So that's one extremely distinctive signal you see in the, um, analytics is that it just goes down on weekends and then back up. You know, we
[00:39:29] Aaron Kardell: noticed that on some of our sites and as somebody who's, uh, Has employed people from time to time. It makes you wonder what's happening during the work week.
[00:39:40] Alex Clemesha: Yeah.
[00:39:40] Well, they're playing casual games. Yeah.
[00:39:42] Nate: There's something more fun to do than what you're supposed to be doing. Yeah. Well, touching on that subject, I read that you had. Uh, you have a lot of teachers who use your game in classrooms. Yeah. Can you speak to that a little bit and like what's been
[00:39:57] Alex Clemesha: your experience there?
[00:39:58] Yeah. Um, that [00:40:00] was one of the motivations for the second version of a game, which I, which I actually was calling Wiki Game groups. So, it was teachers who wanted to control the start and end pages, the articles that, you know, you connect on the game. And I actually had, like, email dialogues with several teachers who were using it in the classroom, and yeah, it's a casual game, like, so, there's not like a lot of depth to it currently, and that's partially, there's so much I could do that's more, but just as like a fun, like, entertaining, and yet.
[00:40:35] educational kind of play like a couple times a week. There are many teachers in kind of, in probably like high school grades was the most common. Yeah, I thought it was gratifying.
[00:40:48] Aaron Kardell: One of the things we, we often ask towards the end here is Is there anything you would want us to ask you? Um, and, and we can ask you and you can answer it.
[00:40:58] Like when
[00:40:58] Nate: is version 3 coming [00:41:00] out?
[00:41:00] Alex Clemesha: Or Yeah. Yeah, I would like you to, um, pressure me to work harder. Because honestly, like, I, so as a solo developer, Like, I liked when you pointed out that the iOS game had imperfections because I need to hear that. So, yeah. So I'd like you to ask me why isn't this working and why are you fixing it?
[00:41:24] Because it's hard to get motivated when you're just a solo developer. And so you, when you, yeah, so there's a lot to do. Yeah. And so my version three. Is about 70 percent done rough number, but I'm doing both. I'm having a transition, um, that I'm actually, um, transitioning away from the angular web framework to react.
[00:41:45] Which has been great, and I'm also moving, uh, the back end to new servers and upgrading everything. So on the order of many months, hopefully.
[00:41:55] Aaron Kardell: So we, we got your response, Nate. Do you want to ask when is version three coming out? Not [00:42:00] sarcastically.
[00:42:03] Nate: So Alex, when is version three coming
[00:42:06] Alex Clemesha: out? Okay. Um, uh, March 1st. So four months. There it is. Wow.
[00:42:14] Nate: We'll have to get this podcast out there before March 1st.
[00:42:17] Alex Clemesha: Now I'm sweating. Now I'm sweating. But thank you so much. Also I am too.
[00:42:23] Aaron Kardell: This, this. Hey, this solves two things for me. That's right. Alex, uh, we'll put a little pressure on Nate too.
[00:42:30] Yeah.
[00:42:31] Nate: That's awesome. Alex, if there's, uh, you know, if you want people to reach out to you or find you, where should we direct people?
[00:42:37] Alex Clemesha: Um, you can just email me at alex at The Wiki Game. com. If you want to just talk about the game or my last name, uh, on X formerly known as Twitter. Uh, I go on there periodically, but you can just email me.
[00:42:52] And yeah, if you want to, I, I'm, you know, I, I. I oftentimes receive emails from beginner developers who ask [00:43:00] about a feature of the game and how I built it, and I'm happy to tell, like, all the details, like You know, I built it. Everything's built on open source, uh, Wikipedia contents, open source. I'm happy to share exactly how I did everything.
[00:43:15] So it's extremely generous. Yes. It seems like the right thing to do.
[00:43:20] Aaron Kardell: Alex, thanks for joining us today. Uh, really cool. What, what you've developed over sounds like a 15 year plus period of just an, an awesome game. Uh, appreciate what you're contributing to the community and just. Uh, how much of an open book you are on, uh, on your process and your journey?
[00:43:38] Alex Clemesha: Well, yeah. Yeah. Appreciate talking about it. And so, yeah, thanks for contacting me. Let's get talking with you guys for sure.
[00:43:44] Nate: Thanks, Alex.[00:44:00]
