Gleemax is Dead

[Imaro]

What parts of Gleemax were going to be premium/pay as you go?

Here are some relevant sections from the Gleemax fact sheet...you can find it by googling Gleemax announcements. Emphasis below is mine.

Strategy Games: Along with elite WotC titles like Magic: The Gathering®, Dungeons & Dragons® and Uncivilized: The Goblin Game™, Gleemax.com will provide a variety of Indie games, all stamped with the WotC seal of approval for great game-play, giving them a prominent distribution channel to reach strategy game players. Gleemax will also feature on-line versions of popular strategy board games. Players will be treated to various trial and full versions of games free ofcharge, with enhanced and full versions available for a one-time or subscription fee

Editorial Content: Gleemax.com will provide focused content for strategy hobby gamers with unique up-to-date information on popular strategy games, tournaments and category announcements. Along with articles and interviews, the portal will feature custom content from various industry leaders in the form of blogs and message board postings, and tools for user-generated content. Additional premium content will be available to subscribers for a nominal fee

 

[Stoat]

I hadn't seen that before. I had thought that Gleemax was a pretty good idea poorly executed. But if the plan was to use it for direct revenue, it was just a bad idea.

 

[mhensley]

It's not too late, but remember that continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different outcomes is unlikely to meet with success.

Even worse, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

 

[mhensley]

ASP.NET as a platform runs fine and is well supported. So does SQL Server. (SQL Server is loads better than MySQL).

I really doubt ASP.NET is the cause of Gleemax's failures.

It doesn't really speak well for their technology vision though. I've worked at several companies doing ASP. I've also worked doing PHP and JSP. Without a doubt, the PHP and JSP sites running on Apache are far more stable and robust than any site I've run using ASP and IIS. Every company I've worked at using IIS has had to reboot it's webservers on an almost daily basis.

 

[Clefton Twain]

Can't really say I'm surprised or sad to see it go. I never understood its purpose nor did I ever use it (though I tried).

--CT

 

[Greylock]

While i didn´t give a rats ass about Gleemax, the "lolhaha Wizbro" comments in this thread mark an all-time low for the ENworld community, IMHO. "Don´t care about stuff said on the internet" seems to be the best feat choice i made in the last couple of months.
Still, i took it to protect myself when visiting the Wotc boards. I didn´t expect to need it so much on these boards...

Number one, there weren't more than a handful of those type posts out of a 200+ post thread, and number two, I think the folks who made those posts were misinterpreting the news anyways.

~ stop the low level insults. Thanks - PS

 

[rounser]

~ if someone is behaving badly, report it - don't respond. Thanks, PS

I'm far from WOTC's biggest booster at the moment (I'm very frustrated with what they've done), but this thread seemed really harsh and personal to me, too, earlier on. I mean, the guy wears his heart on his sleeve and people are getting stuck into him - it's a bit hard to read, and definitely a bit of a low point for ENWorld karma.

 

[renau1g]

EA has no single "expertise", I think. They have a lot of smaller companies which create vastly differing games, and there should be one among them that could handle something like the DDI. The problem with EA is mostly that they seem to prefer fixed release dates and if a game is not entirely finished by them - so be it. That's what bugfixes are there for... (Heck, it can even damage the story of a game!).

Except Spore , which instead they cut portions of the game out to be released in the inevitable add-on/expansion pack.

But I'd prefer them to at least have some programmers with some expertise, which they seem to be needing.

 

[gargoyle2k7]

Goodbye, Gleemax, and good riddance. It was unimpressive as it was, and once WotC announced that anything posted on Gleemax was thenceforth owned by them, I divorced myself from that fetid morass. I am not against a public forum that is >the< center for all gaming, but not when it is in a non-user friendly site, and anything I write becomes another's property. Gleemax is dead; long live the gamers!

 

[phloog]

Of interest to me (and possibly ONLY me)...

One complaint that is voiced here often is that the 'suits' at Hasbro/WOTC don't love the game, and don't care about RPGs, so they do such-and-such.

This thread and others may have revealed to me a problem with WOTC:

They have TOO MANY gamers involved.

I find myself asking 'Would you rather have a company run by gamers with a great love of D&D, or by a bunch of uber-business people?', and I don't know the answer.

Gleemax feels like a project built by a bunch of people with a love of the game and gaming, but little skill or business acumen.

GSL feels like a project that resulted from a bunch of people with high business skills, but absolutely no concern for gaming, gamers, or 3pps. It was a slick business move.

So which WOTC is in charge of DDI? Will we get a lousy product designed by people with love and the best of intentions? In this case I think we'd rather have cold-hearted programmers who know what they're doing.

To do this right, it seems like you need someone who LOVES D&D, AND is excellent at business/programming/etc. How many of those are out there, and are we therefore doomed?

The other option, and I'm afraid that they are FAR from this, is to reorganize along these lines:

Create teams for the business and application development that need NO knowledge of or love for the underlying games. For each team, appoint one or more Consumer Advocates/Liaisons, who have the ability to provide vision and guidance for the products and decisions made.

The CAs are not allowed to make decisions about coding, platforms, development tools, programming flow, pricing, etc.

The business teams/programmers are not allowed to make decisions about functionality, scope, flavor (color, fonts, etc.).

I'm probably oversimplifying, but I'd rather have someone fixing my car who knows about cars than have someone fixing my car who knows nothing about them, but REALLY loves to drive as much or more than I do.