Gleemax = Enworld

[Brown Jenkin]

Rather than edit my long post above I will add one more thing here. I am not opposed to the Gleemax game. It is fine as an piece of the site. What should have happened is before the preview was annouced something of the final umbrella concept should have been impossed on the site and the Gleemax game should have been reduced to its proper place as the first piece of the larger picture.

 

[hexgrid]

At the moment. In the press release they labeled it a central "gamer" destination. I believe, like others have said, that it's going to be the umbrella that all of their gamer online content will fall under. Right now it's more Magic-centric, but I think they'll add D&D content as time goes on (probably closer to when Dungeon and Dragon breathe their last articles).

I don't know- it'd be a huge waste of the Dragon and Dungeon brands if they just made them part of Gleemax.

 

[Aeolius]

I find the entire theme of minions of Gleemax to be demeaning and condescending. Also, I don't DM Sci-Fi games. The layout of gleemax.com is obvious meant to appeal to a sci-fi crowd.

I'd like to see WotC set up growf.com, for the D&D crowd.

But then again, that would entail pink message boards, so never mind.

 

[Contrarian]

I imagine Gleemax will be the MySpace to Enworld's LiveJournal.

Clearly, Gleemax got to you. He's using mind control to damn Enworld with faint praise.

But seriously folks: You know what the most significant differences between Gleemax and Enworld are going to be?

1) Gleemax will (probably) be advertised in the D&D rulebooks. D&D newbies will know about Gleemax before they know about Enworld or other boards.

2) Gleemax won't have an annual funding crisis.

The "threat" of Gleemax isn't that it will steal existing users from Enworld or other boards. The threat is that it will grab newbies before they discover other boards. That has the potential to limit the long-term growth of those other boards. Which is doubly-bad when you've got a site that clearly needs more revenue than it's getting.

No predictions of doom here. Just a possibility to consider. The effects, if any, will be subtle (a decrease in new memberships), and they won't be noticeable for a year or two -- long enough for WOTC to market Gleemax to the next wave or two of incoming gamers.

 

[Hussar]

You mean, grab new players the way that the Wizards board already does?

Come on, do you really think EnWorld is the first stop for new gamers?

I can see it now - "Oh wow, Dad, thanks, I really wanted this Players Handbook. Now I can finally check out that ENWorld place I keep hearing about."

 

[carmachu]

Guys -

First of all, it isn't fair to insult Gleemax based on a preview. When it finally debuts maybe it'll be incredibly useful, and maybe not, but consider this - WotC is going to do everything they can to make it as cool and useful as possible. This is high profile and very important -- and they have a lot of talented and ingenious people who love D&D. Frankly, I'm betting it's going to be awfully good, and that's a GOOD thing..

You know what they say about first impressionss, dont you?

They had a small opportunity to wow the community with its preview, especially on the heels of the bad publicity of axing Dungeon and Dragon magazine.....and this is what they gave us.....

Its not looking good at the moment.

 

[GlassJaw]

If you want to grow the hobby, you don't take a 'build it and they will come' attitude. You go to where they are. This may do very well with existing CCG/CMG players, but I don't think it will have any impact on growing the hobby.

Couldn't disagree more.

The successes of the internet are built on the open source community model. That's why Myspace and YouTube become insanely popular. They were places in which the people could build and evolve the community on their own.

They succeeded because a) there was a need for such a space and b) the developers got the interface and usability right.

I think there is a need for such a site for gamers. Now it's up to WotC to provide something people will want to use and contribute to. Honestly, this is the first annoucement in a long while from WotC that has really grabbed me.

 

[Maggan]

Heh.

Gleemax is catching a lot of flack.

But names can grow on you. For example, "Green Ronin", what kind of name is that? A green ronin? Is he painted green? Is he a newbie? Why is he green? Is it an internal thing?

But now, "Green Ronin" is established and people don't think about it. They just think of a great company.

So Gleemax could work in the end. Worse names did.

/M

 

[GlassJaw]

Lots of people have wiki's or other pages for running their games. I'm quite sure that fair numbers of the people reading this have web pages for their games. A central space, myspace style, where you can stick up a page for your game, plus, hopefully, a VTT setup (perhaps cross pollinated with the DI) would be great.

Again, assuming WotC does it right, I would be overjoyed with this news if I was a small publisher. Imagine how many more people you could reach with WotC's audience. Honestly, the percentage of people that even know EN World exists is so miniscule compared to the numer of gamers out there. WotC should embrace the 3rd party publishers and allow them to advertise and discuss their products on Gleemax.

Their press release said they are also looking for members for an Advisory Board to provide insight on what Gleemax should. Again, I'm really hoping WotC reaches out to other publishers and developers (for RPG products and otherwise).

The more open source this project is, the better.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Like others in this thread, I don't believe ENWorld has anything to worry about. It has years of service and thousands of supporters and that isn't something that will likely go away easily. If Gleemax were offering some kind of change in format (similar to the shift between Usenet or mailing lists and Message Boards), then I could see where there might be a massive- if gradual- drift, but not for this Gleemax thing as I understand it.

I'm not quite clear if Gleemax is supposed to replace the Wizards Community as it currently exists or not- if so, then it would certainly become a viable community on its own; if not, Wizards is essentially competing with itself for the online demographic, which seems strange.

Gleemax does sound really stupid- I wonder what was going on in the marketing meeting that made that the most appealing naming option?