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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."
Wow, that site sounded like it'd be a lot of fun.
Trolling is a art,
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.
He mentioned "thinking gamers", this would clearly exclude WoWers (I kid, I kid)
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.
Trying to establish a name as a place where idiots can blather mindlessly about irrelevant(though perhaps entertaining) subjects on the Internet?
That's not a crowded marketplace at all.
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
An online hub for gamers to meet already exists. It's called "World of Warcraft."
If you are playing WoW and think you are a gamer with other gamers, by all means, PLEASE just keep on doing what you are doing. You are where you belong.
I quite like the fact that WoW acts like a honey pot, keeping you entertained, and away from the rest of us. Ooops... was that out loud? ;)
They had well entrenched websites already that did a lot of what they initially offered.
www.enworld.org though simple, has a plethora of reviews, forums, news, chat
www.paizo.com was able to get interest because they carried more than just wizards of the coasts products.
It's a tough market I would think. People that want to socialize in an alternate setting probably use something like second life. People that want to mindlessly kill stuff and gather equipment and power game probably play warcraft.
Drop the snobbery. All that does is make you look bitter.
Do you really think your D&D character who you've been playing off and on for 30 years since BECMI is so much more legitimate than someone's Tier 6-geared character with thousands of hours of play time? Hint: it's not.
Disclaimer: I play WoW. I have 2 70s, neither of which are geared for raiding (yet...). I also run a weekly D&D game and I started a board game club at my college. So if you want to try and argue I'm not a gamer... Well, go right ahead. I don't need your validation.
Oh, and my penis is HUGE (in Japan).
Boy oh boy, I saw this coming. I would like to point my fellow slashdot users to my old old comment here first, about how WotC and I had a contract to offer exclusive advertising, then a few months later, they took my idea, all my private proprietary concepts and already made features, then pulled their exclusive advertising deal, and called me up and told me how lucky I was that they didn't sue me a few weeks later after that comment in Slashdot.
All of this is no joke, I swear it. You can call me bitter, you can call me a poor sport, but in the end, I got the last laugh when Gleemax decided to shut down. They were never going to make it featuring their own material, and everyone knew this.
Peter Adkison met with me in private at Origins Gaming Convention back when Gleemax was about to go live at Gen Con, and told me that he would focus everything around Geekalize at Gen Con if I could focus a little more funds around it, to provide fun stuff and prizes and such, but at that time, Origins was our last ditch effort to drum up sponsors, and the like. We went bankrupt in November or so of that year, after being up for one year, spending over 20,000 dollars in advertising, watching Wizards pull an over 20,000 dollar advertising deal from under me so they can steal my ideas, and watched as they took and took and took from anyone they could to try to put together SOMETHING to resemble a social networking site.
So I announce this... if Geekalize could get funding again, and not get ripped off like it did with Dead Mages on the Shores, I would bring it back, and make the social networking site for geeks purely open source, with API's, project management, and among other things, a chance for the community to seriously focus upon the site as a whole, and contribute features, abilities, etc, and all of the coding would be via a GNU license. I want to do this right this time, and I want to see a community for geeks and gamers succeed this time. All who would be interested in bringing forth a community for ALL THE Right reasons and ALL THE RIGHT measures to maintain it and contribute to it, feel free to message me, or visit Geekalize.com and click on the blog link that's on the filler page. I have also provided a link to the web archive on Geekalize to show we were in fact in existence.
Just me