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Wizards of the Coast Declares Gleemax Site a Critical Failure
In a recent blog post, Wizards of the Coast Vice President of Digital Gaming Randy Buehler announced that they were killing their Gleemax social networking site. Originally designed to create a central hub where gamers could meet, discuss, and play games online, it has thus far been unable to deliver on the grandiose promises made at launch. "The mistake that I made, however, was in trying to push us too far too fast. I still think the vision for Gleemax is awesome: creating a place on the web where hobby gamers (or lifestyle gamers or thinking gamers, or whatever you want to call us) can gather to talk about games, play games, and find people to play games with. But I've come to realize that the vision was too ambitious. We've made progress down about ten different paths over the past eighteen months, but we haven't been able to reach the end of any of them yet."
I'm sorry. There's a reason you failed. You called it Gleemax.
Now, the internet is full of stupidly named stuff - a side-effect of trademark law, particularly in the American Corporate Reich, sorry "USA" - but gleemax is really dumb. Like having a disgusting headless dog with a leg bone jammed down its neck as your mascot dumb.
Feminine sanitary towel with gentle vibrating action? Real estate that comes with free MDMA ? Either way, gleemax is a terrible name.
Back then this COULD have taken off. But today, with a billion "social networking" sites (read: you make the content, I make the profit) around, hammering out yet another one is about as sensible as creating the better mousetrap or the better search engine. Yes, you could succeed. But the chances are so slim that you're better off trying something else. Why? Because EVERYONE does it. Everyone is out there creating the next better social networking page. With this bell or that whistle, but basically, in their core, they're just the same that myspace and its copycats have been for years.
How about trying something new instead of trying to recreate something that has been done so many times over that nobody cares anymore?
And no, I don't know what "something new" would be. If I did, I'd probably create it and become rich myself.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They did it backwards. Typically, you are supposed to underpromise and overdeliver.
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They roll out Tiny Adventures for Facebook (which is still having some issues it seems) then drop their social site. I wonder if this is part of a plan to focus on "apps" or ways of connecting to the already established bases of MySpace/Facebook?
1) I'm sure more than a few D&D/P&P RPG fans are on those sites already.
2) More visibility. Running your own site dedicated to just RPGs will only attract a certain crowd.
Regarding #2, I'm slightly above "casual" P&P RPG follower, but I hadn't really even heard of their site until this /. posting.
No sig for you!!
The mistake that I made, however, was in trying to push us too far too fast
More likely the reverse was true. Not enough promotion (to the sort of people who would use it) or that they were turned off by what it offered, or how it was presented.
You can never have too much progress, unless of course you outrun the capabilities of your website providers or programmers.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
After 2 years of being in 'alpha' status with nothing spent on advertising...
hmmm. Imagine that.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Before this, I'd never heard of Gleemax, and apparently, so hasn't Slashdot:
I find it quite weird that there doesn't seem to be a post about Gleemax in Slashdot's history: I wonder how many other sites they missed out on.
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
For those who weren't members of the site, when they started their "Gleemax" project they replaced large numbers of the board staff, whom most members got along with well and respected, with new staff that nobody knew. The moderation process was changed, making it stunningly ineffective, and problems were handled in absurdly poorly-thought-out ways.
Wizards of the Coast seems to be trying to do as much as possible to damage itself online. Magic Online v3 brought a new client that almost everyone hated, has compatibility problems galore and was still delayed for something like two years.
It's pathetic.
Screw Blizzard, and screw 4th edition. :-(
I find it unfortunate that some people are very unhappy with 4E. From my limited D&D experiance, I'm actually finding 4th's combat system to be quite good and far better than anything in 3rd edition (including 3.5). And I've already done fare more creative roleplay things in 4th than I did in 3rd.
Though, on that matter, our 3rd Edition DM had plenty of vile for 4th edition (and 3rd edition for that matter, he was a core AD&D person), but found out that 4th edition was quite fun once he got actually played it and not just heard people saying things like "in 4th edition, hobbits don't have harry toes" kind of thing that just throws some people off the deep end.
It's too the point that I think most 4th edition haters simply haven't played the game for any reasonable amount of time. Surely it's not perfect, but I find the game mechanics to be very good and a great effort at just trying to make an entirely different style of game.
Perhaps it's also because I haven't sunk any money at buying 3rd edition books (and again when 3.5 was released) because I only started casually D&Ding a couple years ago and I've only been borrowing a friends book. Some of the resentment seems to come from people getting sick of spending lots of money on products.
Either way, I'm enjoying 4th edition immensely and would recommend anyone to at least try it out, roll up a character, see what they think. Maybe it's not for you, but don't knock it till you've tried it.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Wizards being owned by HAZBRO has had a more deleterious effect on D&D than WOW.
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