Happy New Year, everyone!  With 2017 upon us, I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on an amazing year with Video Game Music Academy.  It can be tough feeling successful in the shadow of your big, lofty goals so I think it’s important to spend a little bit of time every now and then recognizing the progress that’s being made (even if you can’t feel it at the time).  Below are some of the milestones that VGMA and its community have enjoyed this past year!

7-Day Mini-Habit Challenge (aka #vgma7days)

Last February, we undertook a challenge based on the power of mini-habits – small, bite-sized-anti-overwhelm habits meant to train you to do one thing: put the work in every day.  Over the course of 7 days, composers took to Twitter with #vgma7days and our private Facebook group to share their work – and it blew me away.  Part of the challenge was to earn bonus points by sharing a selfie with your completed #vgma7days worksheet.  Here are just a few of the composers who shared the love:

Here’s what I did in 45 min. this morning! #vgma7days @VGMAcademy pic.twitter.com/0NKSC6GOSY

— Joshua Taipale (@JoshuaTaipale) February 10, 2016

Day 2! (couldn’t manage to post day 1 though… ¬¬’) #VGMA7days #composing challenge by @VGMAcademy pic.twitter.com/byeuZSdbRZ

— Rodrigo Faleiros (@rodfaleiros) February 12, 2016

At least two bars a day? @VGMAcademy We got this. #vgma7days pic.twitter.com/LVLua21VWx

— Hassan @MAGFest (@MrHassanSan) February 10, 2016

Day 7 🙂 I’ll record it tomorrow. #vgma7days @VGMAcademy pic.twitter.com/3n134nMj3F

— Olivier Rifa (@RifaOlivier) February 17, 2016

Including a rather unconventional/hilarious approach to completing the challenge…

@VGMAcademy Well… I’m finished! #vgma7days pic.twitter.com/tKDeqAh2MX

— Joe Cruickshank (@JoeCruickshank) February 17, 2016

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I can’t wait to launch another one again soon (stay tuned to the VGMA newsletter and social channels for more on that soon).

First IRL VGM Academy Meet-Up @ PAX East 2016!

I have a very small, very adorable toddler that I can’t seem to peel myself away from very often.  As such, I don’t make it to too many live events outside of my direct vicinity right now.  Luckily, PAX East happens right in Boston where I currently reside.  This past PAX East, I threw out the idea that some of us should try to meet up at a local restaurant/bar to get to know each other IRL.  If memory serves, about 12 people RSVP’d – which is what I told the restaurant to expect.  To my surprise and delight, and the horror of the restaurant manager, about 25 people showed up.  Other than the manager-playing-hostess who got totally bent out of shape and was surprisingly rude to me about bringing in extra business and being totally cool waiting at the bar until tables were available.  So sorry, Barlow’s Restaurant of Boston – we’ll try to avoid making that same mistake twice!  #customerservicefail

It was an absolute blast.  This community of ours is clearly made of some of the most awesome, friendly people around.  A huge thanks to everyone for being there, and I can’t wait for Round 2 this year!!!

The Video Game Music Academy Facebook Group

In March, I also launched a private Facebook group for the VGM Academy community.  This gave us a place to get together, ask questions, get answers, and share resources without the link-dumping self promotion that happens in most online audio communities.  It’s been a real highlight of the year for me to get to know so many of you better through your engagement in this group, and at the beginning of December we hit a milestone
500 members in less than a year!  Woohoo!

 

And, at the time of writing this part of this post (January 5th), we’re already at 572.  Crazy growth!  Can’t wait to see how the members of our community continue to grow and engage with one another in 2017.  Which brings me to my next point…

Weekly Quests in the FB Group

This year I released Composition Quest Log Levels 2 and 3, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have many composers share their creations with me as they tackle these writing prompts.  From composing a piece that somehow incorporates a friend to writing a piece of music that only uses 3 unique pitches in the melody, these fun and uncomfortable challenges have been helping game composers push their boundaries, step outside of their comfort zones, and stir up a little creativity.

Every week, composers share their compositions for the weekly quest and I select a winner.  All winners will have their work and links to their portfolio/websites showcased for about 20-30 weeks on VGMAcademy.com on a hall-of-fame style page called the Hall of Champions.  You can’t win two consecutive weeks in a row, but you CAN win multiple times.  New Weekly Quests are posted and previous week’s winner is selected every Monday, so come on in and join us!

So Much Final Fantasy

I got to meet two of the greats in Japanese game music: Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy XII) & Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts series, Final Fantasy XV).  So epic.

 

In April, I was invited to hang out in the recording booth for a secret recording project and was surprised to find myself sitting across from none other than Hitoshi Sakimoto.  After a long day of recording, he was extremely gracious with his time and agreed to an impromptu interview without the aide of a translator.  It was a great conversation and I’m just glad that the iPhone voice memos app

exists.

 

Over the summer, I was invited to sing on the soundtrack for Final Fantasy XV and was again delightfully surprised when Yoko Shimomura came waltzing out of the recording booth to greet us and thank us for our hard work.  While the language barrier was too much to overcome, I was able to snag a photo and hear some of the Final Fantasy XV soundtrack music before it had been completed.

 

All in all, it was a good year for my inner child.

VGM Academy Growth

Aside from the tremendous growth of the new Facebook group, the site itself has seen some pretty solid growth over the past 12 months!  I usually don’t share this kind of information, but I’ve come to realize that many composers are also trying to use websites/blogs to establish themselves as knowledgeable experts in the field.  This, coupled with the fact that I’m just excited/proud of the growth VGMA has seen this year, has inspired me to share some of the behind-the-scenes insights about how the site is doing.

Since this is a new thing I’m doing, I’m totally open to questions – fire away in the comments or shoot me an email and I’m happy to answer.

Website Visits

This area saw huge growth: 134% on the year!  Woohoo!  I’ve really been focused on promoting content as well as upping the number of posts this year, and it’s paid off.  Another great contributing factor have been guest posts, which brought in 13,719 site visits this year.  This means that VGM Academy readers love content written by guest contributors!  As a result, I’ll be sure to try and bring more high-quality guest content to the Academy this year.

In addition, the number of subscribers to the VGM Academy newsletter has almost doubled!  Thanks, 2016!  You weren’t completely terrible after all!

In Conclusion

It was an amazing year, and I can’t thank you enough for being such an amazing community.  As always, I will continue to build Video Game Music Academy into a knowledge powerhouse to help you in your game audio careers.  Until then – keep composing!