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.

Comments

The slogan:

[Rob T Firefly]

Gleemax makes you feel like it's 72 degrees in your head... all the time!

Re:The slogan:

[Praedon]

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.

Re:The slogan:

[MaWeiTao]

This whole Gleemax thing is a blatant rip-off of Geekalize.com

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.

Redundant?

[shoptroll]

But http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ already exists!

Re:Redundant?

[H3lldr0p]

No redundant, just not under their control.

They killed Dragon and Dungeon for THIS?!

[ajs]

I never thought Wizards of the Coast would fall this far, but they actually killed the two most widely read and respected D&D publications for... THIS? Ugh.

Re:They killed Dragon and Dungeon for THIS?!

[Reason58]

MMO killed the PnP star.
MMO killed the PnP star.

In my mind and in my parent's basement,
We can't hit res we've gone too far.
Net tubes came and broke your heart,
So put all the blame on Al Goooooore.

Re:OK

[cavtroop]

Amen to this. For a while, our group let us use pretty much any splatbook you wanted. Now, we restrict mostly to the core books, and one or two chosen splatbooks.

Most of the splatbooks are poorly written, unbalanced pieces of drivel. If you allow them in your game, the new rules/feats/etc. in the books are either way better, or way worse, than that in the core books, and you can get some seriously unbalanced characters.

Our group is going to end its current campaign sometime over the next year, after which we'll reset and start another one. We're already talking about limiting the source material and splatbooks allowed. That way, you don't carry a library around with you, the ruleset is simpler and easier, and we believe it will lead to more fun.

Remember, PnP is what you make of it - that is what makes it so great. Unlike an MMORPG, where you are completely restrained by rules and mechanics - in a PnP game, if you don't like something, or if some mechanic is not fun, then simply change it! *That's* the true allure of tabletop PnP, along with the actual social interaction.

Re:OK

[Aladrin]

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-

Strange?

[DragonWriter]

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.

Why is it a "strange development" that a manufacturer of various entertainment products would open up a portal devoted to that type of products, and particularly its own products (Avalon Hill is a division of Wizards)?

Re:OK

[Rob T Firefly]

That reminds me of the time in 1983 that someone told me pen-and-paper was dead while playing a D&D cartridge on a Mattel Aquarius. Or the late 1980s when MUDs and BBS games got popular. Or that time in 1993 when a bunch of us were playing Ultima 7 for DOS with the speech pack, and someone said it beat pen-and-paper. Or five years later when Ultima went online for the first time, ready to kill off tabletop gaming forever. Or that time in 1998 when Baldur's Gate came out and people declared it the death of tabletop. Or 2001 with the surge of interest in LARP signaled the death of tabletop. Or 2004 with the advent of WoW and how it was poised to kill off tabletop. Etc..

There are alternatives to D&D out there.

[Valdrax]

Not having to own, carry or read 75 Wizard's books alone makes up for what I lose in the roleplaying aspect.

I would like to point out that there is a vast variety of perfectly fun games out there that have only one book or at the very least aren't part of a supplement factory product line like those that come out of WotC and White Wolf.

I recommend checking out indie-rpgs.com for good discussion on what makes gaming fun. The forums there are heavily biased towards the semi-academic theory of how to design games, but the articles section there will make you think about what games are.

Start with System Does Matter in which Ron Edwards muses a bit over the three major different play goals of gamers and some very broad differences between systems. If some of this makes sense, move on to the much larger and more academic GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory.

A brief excerpt from the second:

My straightforward observation of the activity of role-playing is that many participants do not enjoy it very much. Most role-players I encounter are tired, bitter, and frustrated. My goal in this writing is to provide vocabulary and perspective that enable people to articulate what they want and like out of the activity, and to understand what to look for both in other people and in game design to achieve their goals. The person who is entirely satisfied with his or her role-playing experiences is not my target audience.

If this sounds like you, then maybe the problem isn't that you're tired of gaming and that gaming sucks -- it's that you're not playing kind of games that reward what you want out of gaming. It sounds to me like you're getting burned out because you're not getting what you want out of a game, and you're just still doing it to hang out with friends who might not have much to talk about otherwise. I've been there. Read these essays, think about what it is that you like, and then poke around the Forge for info on good games that fit your style of play. You'll probably be surprised by the sheer variety that's out there beyond the stuff churned out by WotC. Far too many people check-out of gaming because they aren't aware that there's other stuff out there or because they're unwilling to try it.

Try some new games. Maybe your friends will enjoy a one-shot or two as variety.

Worst case scenario, find a new play group. Gaming is a lot like a relationship in that many people will claim that it's better to have bad gaming than none at all, but that's not true in the slightest. Like any social activity, if you're not getting what you really want out of it, it becomes an energy-draining obligation. Even so, there's no reason to give up on it entirely if better gaming is out there. Plus, just because you aren't spending every weekend with your friends doesn't mean that you won't see them ever again.

Re:OK

[east coast]

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.