Quote from: ElectroKittyThere are dozens of "gamer-portals" out there. If it's just another one, meh. If it has uber-cool tools and wizbangs, maybe.

Well it does have the money of Wizards behind it so they may be able to create something that the other ones (created by normal gamers using the software available to them) cannot.

Quote from: walkerpWho is Randy Buehler?

Randy Buehler is, I believe, the head of Magic: the Gathering R&D, though he may play musical chairs in the boardroom there, I dunno.

For a long time, he was a top-ranking tournament player who actually played professionally; he and his team ranked consistantly high enough to take money away from many events yearly. As a respected player and theorist, he was invited to work for the company. This is not something new; Wizards frequently tap people who have a clear and powerful grasp of the rules and game in order to head up development of future expansions and test for issues of balance.

Does that help?

I think it was ill advised to roll out the site and that half-assed press release when so much is still unknown about the D&D Digital Initiative.  I can't be the only person who immediately mistook the whole thing for the DI project.

Quote from: Blue DevilI would think that if WOTC is doing it that they would only care about the D20 fans since the are the ones making them money

I think it would be the opposite to some degree.  The typical gamer started with D&D and has sampled other things after a while.  There isn't much to be gained from those who are already all D&D all the time, except to maintain their loyalty.  If they could get non-D&D people to hang out there (and it's a huge IF), then some they will hear about all the new WOTC products and may be enticed back.

Plus, if it's where most gamers hang out (another huge IF), then it will be THE place for other companies to place ads.  I'm sure ad revenue played big in their minds when they were creating it.

Whatever. I can't see the attraction, but I'm freaking old.

Meh.

-clash

Gleemax sounds like a fictional drug from the show Joe Somebody, or from the Kid's in the Hall Movie. (Brain Candy)


That's just WRONG, on so many levels.


*Side effects include blurred vision, slurred speech, anal leakage, and possibly even death.

Gleemax, IIRC, is an inside joke at WotC.  Apparently there was a comment about who was running the show, and somebody or other said it was a big brain in a jar controlling the company.  Someone name it Gleemax, and it stuck. I think.

There are RPGA/Living Greyhawk players who got little brains in the mail from WotC with the website name on them but in som sort of code (it might have been lame enough to just be written backwards or something).

And Black Flag - narcissism is popular with kids these days? I think that's been universal since about 1958 or so, particulalry in the US.

Could this be the response to all of these forums and live journals and so forth? Could WotC be putting up it's own resources to grow the hobby overall? Could someone at Hasbro have said "Great, but you've worn out the 3.5 market, and they are not going to go for 4.0 yet - you need to get more people playing!"

That's my conjecture.

I'm curious to see if they'll go beyond MySpace to other social networking sites - Facebook, Livejournal, Xanga, Orkut, Friendster, etc.

Hah. Well, I'm very excited about Gleemax, and I've been on it since it opened to the public. I did the brain and the quiz.

Here's the attraction, for all you old people.

Your'e a gamer, you have a personal website. Ok. That seems simple. It could have some personal graphics or little bits and bobs, but it isn't that extensive. It could have a blog, but you don't usually go there to blog.

You link to other gamers, who have websites in the same fabric (this is kinda like Livejournal or Xanga or Myspace). Usually these other people are people you know, like your friends or whatever.

Ok. You aren't impressed yet.

You can also link to other gamers you don't know, discovering them via connections and proximity. Like in my game group, one player is in another gaming group that meets on Friday, with 4 other dudes. And another player has two housemates who are gamers. And there's a guy I met at an LG Gameday last year that I gave a ride to GenCon, and he has his own gaming group. Well, I've eventually managed to meet all of those guys. We even had a barbecue once. I call them my "Sister Campaigns", and I've even guest appeared in a couple of them.

The way I used to manage all these connections was with a rolodex type deal on my computer. But I had to work really hard to build a lot of these connections. I have an email listing on my computer called "Recruit_all", that I send out when I am casting around for new players for a campaign. It's just full of email addresses for people I know locally that I have gamed with in the past. And I sometimes meet friends of friends that way as well.

This eliminates most of that.

Outside of my realm (apparently I'm a social butterfly), I realize that gamers have a very fearful, paranoid culture in a lot of ways. They don't want to end up inviting the crazy guy or the obnoxious guy or whatever. The people that are most concerned about this? Often, they are the craziest and most obnoxious. And they don't host games, and they don't get invited very often, because they are terrified.

But online, you can kind of get to know people. To a degree, anyhow. Yes, This Is A Hook Up Site. Think of this site we have here. Is there anyone you would invite to your game just based on hearing them post? Of course there is.  

This is a way to discover and meet people, to coordinate games, and to organize gaming. Like I would make my page, and I would link to Settembrini, Jrients, Seanchai, and James Skach in a second. Maybe we aren't colocated enough to matter for local gaming, but maybe the network grows just a little, and maybe I move one day.  I also have been running stuff on FantasyGrounds lately (I've hosted players as far away as the UK).

Also, the power of hyperlinked tags on a single userbase is kinda impressive. On Livejournal I have an interest list, right? One of my interests is the MC-303 synthesizer. Does that seem kinda odd? Right, well, I can click on that tag and pull up like 9 other users who are also interested in MC-303 Grooveboxes, and vsit their journals. I also found an LJ-community that lists that tag as an interest, and I've been a member there for years. Not everyone knows what an MC-303 is, and out of those people, only a few people really *love* that little box. But I do, and I've met people in Japan and Sweden who feel the same way I do. Thats very cool!

Ok, now imagine a userbase with a few thousand gamers.
...and Imagine your favorite game which nobody wants to play as a hyperlinked tag. Would you click the tag...?

Finally- the advantage of a Myspace type enviro: It's not especially verbal, it's visual. The usual forum-blather, swine flim-flammery and theory-squawk aren't going to fly. I suspect that is part of what is what is behind the photographic scavenger hunt going on right now- it's a community that emphasizes real people. By contrast, forums (even our own, which I love so much) are just fiefdoms.

Quote from: jrientsI think it was ill advised to roll out the site and that half-assed press release when so much is still unknown about the D&D Digital Initiative.  I can't be the only person who immediately mistook the whole thing for the DI project.

Huh?

So this isn't the same thing as the D&D DI?

I'm completely confused at this point.

Quote from: Abyssal MawThis is a way to discover and meet people, to coordinate games, and to organize gaming. Like I would make my page, and I would link to Settembrini, Jrients, Seanchai, and James Skach in a second.

First - I'm honored.
Second - I'd love to hear about your Fantasy Grounds shit, someday.
Third - I'm trying to figure out how a game with all of those people would go; that would be interesting. What would we play? Who would GM? Most importantly, who would bring the beer?

(If its a beer-type game, I always bring one sixer of the most obscure beer I can find in bottles.  Long-standing policy. )

But to GoOrange.:I think this is the digital initiative. When it's up I think it's supposed to look like a gamer version of MySpace, somehow tied in with one of their web-games (the goblin game). D&D incidentally, is already on the real Myspace. I have it on my personal MySpace page.  The Buehler guy is a program manager of some kind, listen to the podcast (which is messed up and starts repeating itself at the end). It seemed clear to me last night.

I listened to it last night. The user-accounts for the forums are actually just tied into the regular Wizards/Magic/RPGA forums right now, but I think that might change.

Quotewho would bring the beer?

I´d do that.

Abyssal, thanks for your explanation.
I´d also be honoured to roll some dice with you.

Maybe we should all meet up for a Good Gaming Congress in Montevideo.

Settembrini:

Yes, MySpace is full of shit. So tacky, to five years ago. Gleemax: teehee. However.

There may be a potential here, once you hook up a gaming board like rpg.net with a much better designed social network like facebook, on which yours truly does have a page (and a fanclub, I should add*).

To quote the wisdom from my rpg.net post on the subject:

Quotea bundle of the two, which according to Shannon does already exist as a vBulletin plug-in--and which I guess means having a personal page instead of your typical message board profile--could be really effective.

I agree MySpace is horrible--super-clunky because of all those video and music add-ons. But facebook was (still) clean and fast last time I looked, and a facebook-ish page for every rpg.net member would be a major thing... you're looking for GURPS gamers in their 20s in North Carolina--do a search, drop them a line, join/form a group.

That said, there may be a tension here between the desire for relative anonymity on a message board and the desire for identifiability on a social network.

On reflection, the last sentence does give me pause. I like the idea, though, I really do.

*OK, so it only has 2 members.

Quote from: Abyssal MawThis is a way to discover and meet people, to coordinate games, and to organize gaming. Like I would make my page, and I would link to Settembrini, Jrients, Seanchai, and James Skach in a second. Maybe we aren't colocated enough to matter for local gaming, but maybe the network grows just a little, and maybe I move one day.  I also have been running stuff on FantasyGrounds lately (I've hosted players as far away as the UK).

Y'mean like NearbyGamers?

-clash