Happy Birthday, Bethblog

A year ago, we started the Bethesda Blog, the official blog of Bethesda Softworks. I noticed that when I posted about work on this blog, my traffic tended to go up. Even now, I get lots of traffic from google searches, hitting past entries like the unofficial credits lists or the various troubleshooting posts -- which are basically reprints of the great stickied threads on our official forums (that is, hidden away on our forums so they wouldn't come up on keyword searches, at least, not easily). Since so much of the web is now dependent on google searches and keyword tags, I hoped that creating a blog with useful information would make it easier for people to find out more about our games.

Also, it gives us a central depository of information about our games and company -- the intended audience is not only our fans, but also the team itself. I love being able to go to the bethblog and see links to articles and press about our stuff.

Finally, the blog is a great public way of celebrating ourselves as a team and as a company. The Q&A's are a great way to get to know the developers here as people, and I love the posts about extra-curricular activities like the TF2 challenges. As much as our focus is about the games we make, ultimately, what makes Bethesda a great place is the people working here.