GMking.org’s recent merger with Dan Egger’s GMTV proved to be a noisy transition for both GMking.org and GMTV; but we’re happy with the results. The merger also showed us the ignorance of many people who blindly chose to misinterpret GMking.org’s intentions as well as the end result of such merger.

I don’t want to be misunderstood, however; the GMking.org-GMTV merger proved to be very popular and well recieved with most people, but I was still surprised to see some negative comments, so I’ll use this blog post to counter those.

A competitor says:

GMKing consumes yet another external Game Maker service removing user choice. I’m neither surprised nor angry of this. While this move serves to only make GMKing better and make it self bigger I think GMKing goes about their business the wrong way.

First of all, it must be made clear user choice is not being removed in any way!! Before the merger, users already had a single choice when it came to a Game Maker Television service, and that was GMTV. After the merger, surprise surprise: still one choice (so far) for a Game Maker Television service: GMTV. User choice has not been removed, and competitors are still welcome to create rival services, user choice is a good thing, so I wouldn’t mind having more options for a Game Maker Television service really.

The change that we are planning to do at GMTV doesn’t include ‘making GMking.org bigger’ — at all! I’ll talk more about that in details later.

It is then said:

You see… GMKing seamsseems to always try to merge a service into themselves if that other service becomes popular. By doing this it removes competition while bringing yet more people to themselves and making GMKing more popular.

Let us first make it clear the GMking.org never was competing with GMTV to begin with! We never had a rival service, and so there was absolutely no need to supposedly ‘remove competition’.

One of the general ‘negative predictions’ seems that GMTV will be an advertisement service for GMking.org and our projects. This is utterly false! GMTV:

• Will not refer to GMking.org directly in its introduction videos (though there will be a crown floating shortly.. nasty advertising, eh?)
• Will not include any out-of-the-ordinary advertisements for GMking.org or its services. One advertisement will probably be included in the normal format as it has always been (GMTech had advertsiements in GMTV in the past, too.. so MarkUp can rightfully ask for advertising space).
• Will not block any competitor advertisments; to the contrary, our competitors are more than welcome to advertise in GMTV as has always been the case!
• Will not include any biased reference to GMking.org in the script of the show. If GMking.org is ever mentioned, it will be in the same context as GMTech, GMM, Russell’s Quarterly, or even 64digits are mentioned — all from detached, general points of view.

It is then said:

GMTV has now lost their earnt popularity and will now live on the popularity of GMKing.

And I will humbly say: WHAT POPULARITY of GMking?! MarkUp is more popular than GMking! GMpedia is more popular than GMking! And even GMTV is more popular than GMking! Thats right; none of our services use the GMking.org brand. When someone sees “MarkUp” — they never think GMking.org, why will the case be different for GMTV?

GMTV is already more popular than the GMking.org brand, and for one reason: we do not promote the GMking.org Brand to begin with!

The GMking.org network is not intended as ‘a common generic brand and umbrella that contains a killer set of Game Maker services which we fully control and allow noone to compete with’. Hell no! GMking.org is a centralized way for the staff working on different Game Maker related project to meet together, take advantage of their experiences, and work together to create a better service. Thats it!

So, if our objective is not to suck life out of the GMC, and not to remove competition.. then why did we merge?

Well, we believe that GMking.org has the resources to help GMTV become a better service for the community. I’m not trying to sound selfless, but hey — GMking.org is a non profit and open service; there is absolutely nothing for us to gain. If our objective wasn’t to provide good, solid services to the GMC, then we wouldn’t have existed to begin with: its that simple.

So, how can GMking.org make GMTV a better service, you ask? Well:

• First, we’re planning on changing the video encoding to make videos of higher quality yet of lower size, making them faster to load
• Utilize the excellent services already availalbe in the web to provide videos in a much better way
• Utize web technologies such as AJAX and Flash to make videos much more accessible
• Having the MarkUp and GMking.org writers and staff write reviews as well as tutorials to be part of GMTV
• Provide the GMking.org resources (including hosting, etc) rather than depend on third parties
• Take advantage of our own connections and ‘operations’ to help get GMTV content, etc.

That doesn’t sound so bad now does it?