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Gaming Portal Announced By Wizards of the Coast
1up has coverage of a strange development: a gaming portal focused on tabletop and strategy games. The site is slated to be a editorial/community site focusing on Avalon Hill and Wizards products, as well as potentially offering a venue for independent PC games. "Wizards of the Coast is eager to stress that Gleemax is not about pimping their own products, so much as it is about strengthening the overall culture of gaming as a whole. It's a husbandry approach; by creating a fertile ground where the various tribes of gaming can meet and greet, they hope to build interest (and presumably sales) through the basic principle of cultivating a strong player community." The whole thing is something of an odd move for the company, and for some insight into the launch Greg Kostikiyan at the Games*Design*Art*Culture blog clarifies the reality of Gleemax as an indie game publisher. You'd think he would look at the site as competition for his own Manifesto Games, but he seems fairly philosophical about it.
This true about a lot of things, and not just Pen & Paper RPGs. Consoles and PC Games have provided another avenue to get certain entertainment needs rather than the 'real thing'. RPGs, Wii Bowling, Strategy Games (replacing board games), the plethora of 'puzzle' games on Reflexive and Gamehouse... People used to have to go through a lot more hassle to sooth those urges.
Now they can have a quick game with only a few minutes setup, instead of having to get people together and agree on a game, etc, etc.
It's just progress. People used to have to listen to the radio for news and entertainment, but then TV came along. And now video games. Something will likely replace them as well, in the future. I personally suspect it'll be a movement towards VR and integrating reality with the VR. A pair of sunglasses that let me play video games with my hand motions would be awesome, and incorporating real-world stuff into it also would be awesome.
What about SecondLife-in-real-life, where you could build a 3d sculpture in the subway, and others that are hooked in could see it as well. Or design your plain red t-shirt to have an animated design.
I'd pay good money for that, and that kind of tech is -not- that far off.
Even more on-topic... With those glasses, your Pen & Paper RP sessions would take on new life as Eric really did look like 'Eldarar the hedgewizard' and Susie really -is- a troll, and casting a spell at her looked a bit dangerous. You keep all your rules and acting, and the details and special effects could be handled by the system.
I better stop. I want that really bad now, and it'll be years before we see it. -sigh-
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
This whole Gleemax thing is a blatant rip-off of Geekalize.com. I am the president of Geekalize, and had a contract with them to advertise Regionals of Magic the Gathering. When they continued to press this whole Gleemax thing, they canceled the advertising contract, and made the announcement. When I had conference calls with them, I was sharing ideas of what I wanted to do with Geekalize, including the spots on profiles where they can share stories of their gaming experience and such. Obviously I won't go into detail, but rest assured this is going to make quite a stir from them violating confidential comments that I had shared with them to get them to advertise with Geekalize in the first place.
I assume this will be marked as trolling or flaming but wait till I document everything that had happened between Geekalize and Wizards of the Coast, and I will challenge them to review all of it and try to prove they did not spy and steal my future plans for Geekalize. That is the problem, you can't trust anyone in the industry if you are the underdog. Lesson learned.
Just me
Two different beasts. If you can substitute EQ2 for a PnP game and not miss the latter, then you weren't doing it right.
Oh, you mean I wasn't doing it your way? Not to get on you or anything but I always thought that there was more than one way to enjoy D&D. If I'm wrong just tell me.
the face-to-face socializing and wide-open gameplay of a good D&D game kick the snot out of killing the same mob for the 1000th time hoping for a good drop, or sitting around for 45 minutes waiting for the other 30 people in the raid to get their shit together.
And the "load and go" gameplay of MMO games kicks the snot out of trying to work around everyones private life in the hopes that an entire group can show up, especially at my age where many of my peers have new wives/husbands and young children to consider in the mix. Grinding can be a bore, no doubt, but how much different is it on the excitement scale then making 12 phone calls 3 days before a session, getting everyone together just to realize that you only got nearly everyone together. So you call up the absent player(s) again only to find out that work or family has thrown up a last minute obligation and they'll either be late or not showing at all. All of this leaves not only a timegap that you need to fill with random garbage (not much different than getting a raid together, eh?) but also the problems it causes for the GM. Maybe your group is more stable but in my group we have a lot going on in our private lives and it's not as easy as saying "everyone be here at 7pm ready to play."
Worst case scenario with EQ2 (or whatever MMO): I log on, no one else is around, I have no solo material to work on (yeah, right). So I log off and play CounterStrike instead. Maybe that's part of it too, I feel that playing is becoming tiresome because I'm seeing it more and more as an obligation to not let others down because I have to show up or it's going to cause the party problems. I simply don't want to make those kinds of commitments to D&D anymore when I have, what I feel is, a substitute. I probably wouldn't feel the same if I didn't have EQ2.
The thing that will probably make you cringe over all of this is that if I had to choose I would drop P&P RPGs in a second.
And you can play a perfectly fun game of D&D without buying any books at all. If you think you need every splatbook WotC publishes, you're a sucker.
I actually don't buy these books but all it takes is a lukewarm GM and a player who wants to use The Complete Potato Farmer v. 3.5.1223.2a to start to throw a group for a tailspin. I'm not the GM here. If the GM allows whatever book to be used it makes it all the harder for those of us without. I actually haven't upgraded since I got PHG, DMG and MM for 3.0 and I feel somewhat isolated by how the balance of the game is thrown off by the supplemental materials that WotC is selling for 20+ USD a pop. I see my kick ass spells as a 3.0 cleric being turned trivial in the face of prestige classes who have better spells four levels earlier than myself.
Somewhere else in this thread I adress this in a roundabout manner by saying that WotC is treating D&D like a "cheap whore ala Magic". It's somewhat amusing for me to look back and remember how I felt about Magic after hearing about players pouring money into their decks only to have some cards be made invalid for play in certain situations and among certain other players who wanted to stick with the official edicts of Wizards.
Unfortunately part of what amused me at the time has turned into my own little problem when Wizards took over TSR. Not that TSR wasn't heading down that road themselves.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Your claim is entirely possible. However, having browsed through Geekalize.com briefly I didn't really see anything I haven't seen on dozens of other sites already. It's entirely possible Wizards of the Coast had already been thinking of such a site; again, these kinds of sites are fairly common. They may have considered promoting themselves via existing sites, like Geekalize.com, perhaps even establishing a partnership. Ultimately, they concluded they'd be better off having their own site where they could exercise complete control over content. From your perspective, unfortunately, it seems like they ripped off your ideas.
Of course, this is why people shouldn't disclose too much and why they should be protected legally. I presume you're discussing the matter with lawyers. Bringing up the matter on sites like Slashdot may not be the best idea.