http://i.imgur.com/hDklG.png
1 year ago today I had a party at my house celebrating the launch of a new game site called Cheerful Ghost. The initial concept was born out of a few problems I had with gaming. I had a ton of games but no way to share that list with anyone. I also wanted to talk to awesome people about the games I loved but I couldn't find a place anywhere that made sense to do that. I also realized as I was online and read things about other games no place tied what everyone said about a game together. For instance, if I went to a game site it wasn't easy to view all the posts and information for a single game like Super Mario Brothers or Starcraft. I also didn't like gaming sites I saw as no normal person seemed to matter much. Paid journalists were front and center as the focus of many sites and as such normal people were relegated to the comments section which are often lame areas to talk about games.

So starting with some simple ideas I started out to solve these problems I had. I started with a pen and paper and started drawing the site I wanted to use. I sketched out my ideas over a few weeks and showed it to my friends. After getting a good response to my drawings I spent mostly every second of my spare time over the next 4 months building the initial launch of Cheerful Ghost. I started with a few design goals but one was that the site HAD to work the same on phones, tablets and desktops. I hate using sites that suck on phones and tablets. I opened up the site for 2 week beta period and after that on January 28th I formally launched http://cheerfulghost.com.

Thinking back on what I launched with I am kind of embarrassed as the site you see now is much much better. Some say that if you don't launch a product a bit embarrassed you are launching too late. If you can imagine one thing that sucked at launch was that you couldn't see the current post stream! You had to click around twice to see peoples latest posts. After fixing that mistake I also added some new features like auto-magic adding of PSN & Steam games, a ton more post embeds, post titles, an entire visual site redesign and more.

As I look forward to the next year I have a bunch of stuff I want to do but my ultimate goal is to grow the Cheerful Ghost community. I want to thank everyone for being part of one of the most awesome parts of my life. Deciding to build Cheerful Ghost was a good idea and spending the time to make it what it is now has been totally worth it!

BR   Supporter wrote on 01/29/2013 at 02:41am

WoooHoo! Congratulations Jon, on such a fine site. Just so you know, I have it set as my homepage on my phone :)

jdodson   Admin   Post Author wrote on 01/29/2013 at 02:44am

Thanks @BR I am glad it works out in that way. I also have CG as a little icon on my phone home screen too :D

SignalWarden wrote on 01/29/2013 at 03:02am

You did a good job and I'm glad to be here. If you need any help with it moving forward don't hesitate to ask.

Travis   Admin wrote on 01/29/2013 at 03:32am

Glad to have been a part of it. Thanks for bringing us together.

Timogorgon   Member wrote on 01/29/2013 at 05:08am

I'm really impressed how far the site has come in just one year. It's been a fun year, and it'll only get better!

jdodson   Admin   Post Author wrote on 01/29/2013 at 04:32pm

Thanks guys, it has been fun hanging out with you all.

@SignalWarden, ill email you about it. Love to hear your ideas.

jdodson   Admin   Post Author wrote on 01/30/2013 at 01:35am

As an aside, this trophy is being retired today:

http://cheerfulghost.com/trophies/59/awarded

:D

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