Will Google Wave Play a Part in Your Game?

[Asmor]

" Google today said it would drop Google Wave. The over year-old service had "not seen the user adoption [Google] would have liked" and won't be a developed further. "

more at: Official Google Blog: Update on Google Wave

And nothing of value was lost...

ignore

How insightful! Thank you for sharing that profound wisdom!

I started off cynical, had a great first impression when I finally got in, but cooled off very quickly. It was just too... "choppy." Your writing would be interrupted all too frequently and it was a chore to maintain good formatting, never mind pruning things in long-lived threads.

All that said, I think the idea had potential... In particular, I wish they'd gotten it to the point where you could have basically used it to create a cross-domain "message board" or something along those lines.

 

[Beginning of the End]

The two primary sins of Wave:

(1) Poor navigation (notably the scrollbar, but there were lots of other problems, too)
(2) Interrupted or uber-slow typing
(3) Inability to give a wave a subject or title

These pretty much disrupted its usefulness as a dynamic communication tool.

Other major problems included:

(1) Inability to specify passive viewers (who could see but not edit a wave)
(2) Inability to remove people from a wave

If they could have figured out a way to cross-pollinate the content with regular e-mail that would have also been helpful.

I feel that the designers wanted to force people to use wave in the most revolutionary way possible. They would have been better off creating a platform where I could have checked my e-mail, connected through regular chat, and ALSO created waves.

So much potential. So completely wasted.

 

[Asmor]

The two primary sins of Wave:

(1) Poor navigation (notably the scrollbar, but there were lots of other problems, too)
(2) Interrupted or uber-slow typing
(3) Inability to give a wave a subject or title

 

[Umbran]

Invite only sounds like a cool way to start off a product, but in reality it is another hurdle for consumers to jump, and can turn off a lot of people.

Invite-only was a proven winner for Google with mail, and some other applications, if I recall correctly. They had evidence that it worked well. It is a good way to let people in, but give them the impression of scarcity, and put some small control on the speed people pounce on the thing.

I think the features were the problem - when they first opened, it was a glorified, and *slow*, text chat. Who needed that?

 

[renau1g]

How insightful! Thank you for sharing that profound wisdom!

No problem. Glad to see you chose to reply to it....apparently it was too difficult for you to read/understand

 

[TylerDurden]

Google Failed and Wave Died

No surprise here, but this sucks for anyone that worked hard to make Wave work for their Game Table.

 

[IronWolf]

Invite-only was a proven winner for Google with mail, and some other applications, if I recall correctly. They had evidence that it worked well. It is a good way to let people in, but give them the impression of scarcity, and put some small control on the speed people pounce on the thing.

I think the issue with invite only (coupled with if you sent an invite to someone it could be a week before they could start using it) with Google Wave was that you could only use Google Wave if you had an account.

Whereas when they did Gmail by invites you could still interact with others even if they did not have Gmail yet. It wasn't critical that the person you were emailing had email as Gmail tapped into a publicly available system.

 

[Verdande]

Is it still invite only? I have an account, and haven't been invited to anything, but it seems like all you need is a basic google account to make it work.

If this thing has wiki-like capabilities, then it'd be an awesome way to manage a campaign, online or no. I tried using a wiki once for that sort of thing, but none of the players were interested in looking online for campaign info except for one. With this, though, it might be a little easier. "No, you don't have to sign up for anything, you already have a gmail account, right?"

 

[IronWolf]

Is it still invite only? I have an account, and haven't been invited to anything, but it seems like all you need is a basic google account to make it work.

I seem to recall they dropped the invite thing not too long ago and made it open, not 100% certain though. In either case, in my opinion, they needed to dole out the invites faster during its initial testing to get to the point of critical mass. Even with that though, I am not sure it was really a better way of doing things.

If this thing has wiki-like capabilities, then it'd be an awesome way to manage a campaign, online or no. I tried using a wiki once for that sort of thing, but none of the players were interested in looking online for campaign info except for one. With this, though, it might be a little easier. "No, you don't have to sign up for anything, you already have a gmail account, right?"

I would lean towards a Wiki than a Wave to store campaign info even when Google Wave was popular. A place like Obsidian Portal is a way to manage your campaign online and allows you to sign in with a Google Account, Facebook account, etc. That might lower the bar for your players as well. And I think they only need an account if they plan on editing wiki content, not to view it.

 

[renau1g]

I'd second Obsidian Portal's recommendation. Good stuff there. you can make it as detailed or minimal as you like.