This blog is not about breaking news, others are better suited to do it.
Regardless, I got an email a few minutes ago by a fellow reader (confirmed by Propoagandroid) that informed me that Gleemax, Wizards of the Coast’s Social Gamer network, will close down for good in September.
While Propagandroid makes a good case about the human impact this will have (People possibly losing jobs), I can’t help but see that Wizards is moving toward fixing what I complained about in my Open Letter.
As Randy Buehler, a person I have great respect for, puts it:
Anyway, all of that is what led me to be such a passionate evangelist, pushing to move Wizards in a more digital direction. It remains clear that gamers are moving online and if we’re going to preserve everything that is special about Wizards of the Coast—and the hobby gamer culture in general—then we have to move online too.
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.
The correct strategy at this point is clear: we need to focus. We’re not going to abandon the vision, but we are going to put large chunks of it on the backburner until we prove that we can succeed at the most important pieces. Those pieces are Magic Online and D&D Insider.
I’m not going to say “I told you so”, my letter underlined something that was obvious from a customer’s perspective and I’m overjoyed to see Wizard’s stepping up to the plate, admit that mistakes were made and proposing an alternative plan to make their vision come true.
Magic Online “V3” is up and running, but it took us a long time to get here and it’s by no means perfect. We have a lot of ideas about what we can do now to make the game better and we’ll be devoting significant resources in future months and years to doing precisely that.
They are aware of the problems and will address it. That’s promising.
D&D Insider functionality has started to roll out, but we’re still behind where we wanted to be.
That is an understatement, but I’m willing to extend extra goodwill for the admission.
Dragon and Dungeon magazines are promising. As for the Rules Compendium, what I really want to see is a monster Stats generator that will allow to cut and paste formatted monster stat cards in my adventure notes.
Until I see the results, I will move in the cautiously optimistic, somewhat skeptic crowd.
Gleemax’s problems were three-fold, to my mind…
First, it was simply too weird. From the weird squishy stress-ball brains that were the first thing to promote it, to the lauch of the website in Alpha testing, they made no explanation as too what it was. Brain in a jar? Green liquid? Purple lighting? WTF?
Second, the thing never worked. Ever. Did it even get out of Alpha?
Third, although I avodi them myself, there is no shortage of social network options already out there. Were gamers unable to use Freindster, MySpace, or FaceBook? Somehow, I doubt it… Gamers are all pretty big users of email, and somehow we manage to use it without WotC offering a webmail service.
I’ll say it for you:
I.
TOLD.
YOU.
SO.
I still don’t think I understand what made Gleemax distinct from the forums wizards offered before, but I never made much effort to look into it.
–Nick
Nicks last blog post..Quick Fix: Adding Aspects to D&D
Interesting news. Unexpected, and pretty welcome too. It’s good to see Wizards concentrating on what they should be doing rather than pretending to be something they’re not. Less good news if you worked on Gleemax, but I reckon this will be a “door closing, door opening” opportunity for many.
I wonder what other news is coming. These things tend to come in threes……….
What made it distinct was the navigation was tenfold worse than regular forum software. The smoked a nice pipe of crack and told their authors to post game related stuff in “blogs” which were not blogs, but forum threads, that you could not find without a crap ton of effort.
As to feeling bad for the people who may be impacted..
How long has Gleemax been out there?
How long have they had to fix it?
How much has it changed since the “beta” (read as early alpha) went live?
Not a lot of sympathy here.
Buzzregogs last blog post..Gith and visitors.
I don’t buy it.
“The mistake that I made, however, was in trying to push us too far too fast.”
I call BS. Going back to the start of 3.0, Wizards has never had any success in the online market. The character generator came in the back of the PHB and worked well, if not simplistically. We were promised something and what actually did come out was a convoluted piece of shit that no one wanted to use and you actually had to pay for the updates for newer books, even if you had already purchased the books.
It’s not that they got in over their heads and are now trying to backpedal; it’s that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. I’m not holding my breath that DDI will be available in any usable way, shape, or form anytime soon.
Wow that’s a lot of anger and mistrust…
I guess that Wizards is reaping what it sowed.
I said my piece a few weeks ago, I willing to give them a running chance…
That being said, I did stop buying virtual magic cards and I don’t plan to register to D&Di, unless it’s a low monthly cost (10$) that includes Dragon and Dungeon.
@Chatty –
The subscription to DDI is, in fact, $10/month and includes both magazines.
So, y’know, there’s that.
Ok, that’s two bits of news – Novels are refocusing too.
What’s number three going to be?
D&D to be renamed Eldarin & Elephants? Or Dragonborn & Donuts? Only time will tell.
greywulfs last blog post..TheWhereWolf: When hunting werewolves, it helps to be looking in the right direction.
How I hate corporate Spin Doctoring of bad news.
Could it be that Wizards is getting hit harder by the American recession than expected?
Hi ChattyDM!
It’s my first comment, so I’ll briefly introduce myself: I’m a cinema graduate from Barcelona (Spain) and I’m the usual DM of my gaming group -sorry, D&D player friends group. My english is quite basic, but since I like to read non-translated books, D&D helps a little bit with the language-learning issue 😉
I’ve been reading your blog for the last couple of months -thanks, man. I even visited your sponsor!- but Gleemax’s made me comment, because WotC’s marketing policies are slightly pissing me off for the lasts months…
First thought when I’ve read it at EnWorld? “Has it been working until now? Really?” That’s because when Gleemax started and I tried it, I thought it was one of the most awful social networks I’ve ever found.
I know that it sounds horrible, but today’s announcement is the right thing to do. They should know their limits, and they haven’t until now.
Firstly, they need to prove that they are capable of improving their website so I can be aware of any D&D news without going to third-party websites. Secondly, they should create a community with a so-basic tool like message boards.
Yeah, I know that’s what they already have, but they’re slow, compatibility-unfriendly and surfing-unfriendly.
From my POV, that’s AFTER creating a great messageboard -or whatever you have as central social tool- that you can expand the community tools, with the gamer connection features, wiki features, etc.
Look at Enworld! EW has been running SUCCESSFULLY for years before they introduced the wiki project!
Or look at Paizo! They have a GREAT MB, and they introducing their gamer connection features from now on.
At Spain, what WotC has been doing with their online ventures’ called “Chapuza”, including their website.
Greetings!
-Aritz
And, have to say it, $10 for a Chapuza that can’t run on non-Windows environments, even with the Euro’s high value, it’s too expensive.
Greetings, again!
-Aritz
Holà Artiz, Como Esta?
And that’s about as far as I’ll go with my neophyte Spanish. 🙂
Welcome to the blog!
I learned a lot of my English with D&D books 25 years ago!
I agree with your point of view. Wizards has been trying to hit too many targets at the same time when they had a less than stellar track record to get one online project we can rally behind.
Actually, Magic the Gathering’s Website has always been decent and fun to navigate… maybe they should have started there.
Can you please provide a link to Chapuza, I’m curious.
ChattyDM said
“Could it be that Wizards is getting hit harder by the American recession than expected?”
My answer to recession is: 1) know your limits so you don’t spend more than you have (done), 2) do a even better job in order to keep your customer base, so when customers recover their budget, they still want to spend it in your games.
I think that they are working quite good in their printed products, but not so good in their online products and IP policies (GSL, etc).
Greetings!
-Aritz
I think “Chapuza” is spanish for botch job… I would guess Aritz meant that they nicknamed the WotC site “Chapuza”. 😉
Is it? Oh I really need to learn Spanish!
Hi again!
It should be my last comment today, ‘cos my sleeping times are reaching minimums!
Nice spanish, thanks!
Chapuza
Short: Opposite to masterwork. Yes, Botch Job is a great synonym! Thanks! Now I’ve learned something, I can go to bed! 😉
Long: In the official Spanish dictionary (yes, we have an Official dictionary) it’s defined as a piece of work made without any care or competence, usually masonry or tasks around house-building or casual home-reparations. ^_^
Mexicans use it to refer to confidence tricks, but I was referring to the first definition.
And we use the same expression when we talk in catalan. You’ll find this useful if you come to Barcelona 😉
Magic: The Website
While it’s considerably better than the D&D one, I don’t like it either. I would have permitted it years ago, but now we all have seen that they are capable of clear and spectacular designs (4e I’m looking at you!) I want a quality-equivalent website.
That’s all folks! (for today) Keep writing ChattyDM, you are bardingly-in-a-not-so-4e-way inspiring! 😉
-Aritz
I’ll be very happy if you’re right and they’re devoting more resources to cool online features for games and brands that people actually care about. I’ll be unsurprised if this is all just a means of covering up a massive layoff and several failed enterprises.
Propagandroids last blog post..Gleemax is dead
I can’t say that I’m very surprised. I continue to grow more and more pessimistic about Wizards’ online ventures (although I will say that Dragon/Dungeon have been Plenty Awesome).
I’d really like to see them have stuff that I’ll actually use–tips about adventure hooks, writing a good adventure, medieval demographics, computer tools, character portraits (this last one especially–for once I’d like to have a big page of, say, Eberron halflings that I can go to, rather than hoping to get lucky on a Google image search or the WotC art-chives).
Unfortunately, it seems like they keep getting beat out in terms of quality by the “private sector”. I think they really need to rip that ancient website of theirs down entirely, and start from scratch.
Very glad now that they didn’t hire me after my (admittedly disastrous on my part) interview for a position at gleemax. It was the right idea for the time, creating a “facebook for gamers” but WotC seems to be too much of a book publisher, and not unified enough internally to support that.
Maybe some independents can succeed where they failed?
@Aritz: Wait, D&DI doesn’t run on non-Winblows environments? Well, good for me then that I never tried it out. I’m not into subscriptions, really.
@Mike Danger: Absolutely. I’ve been avoiding the old parts of the site, because I regularily get lost there, but I just had a look at Gleemax again, and I still can’t find the community.
Actually, I can’t find anything, really. There’s a lot of stuff there, but never where you expect it. From a web designer’s perspective, it’s a usability nightmare. I was actually happy to eventually find Gleemax itself. /Rant
Sorry. Can’t help it. Stuff like that makes me go ballistic.
@Captain Cursor: I’m pretty sure there are folks out there capable of creating such a thing, but that won’t help if they release it again while it’s still in alpha. Let’s hope WotC learns from past mistakes.
Okay, I already shut up. 😉
I think that to create a thriving geek-fueled RPG fan social network you need to build a community first and then provide it with progressively more elaborate social tools.
The RPGsite seems to have a successful formula that’s going in that direction… Pity I’m not comfortable with the level of conflicts and Brutal “honesty” this community seems to thrive on.
Just wanted to comment on a couple of things… with a preface that really I never got around doing much with Gleemax but not because of it, but cause I just didn’t have an interest…
“It’s weird”
Well… I found it odd they based it on a Magic card (from some sort of non-standard deck too, I think… I don’t really follow MtG), but otherwise… *shrug* every site needs a theme. And I like my squishy brain stress toy…
“There are other, better social networking sites”
Yes, probably. In fact I’m sure of it. However, personally, I’d much rather have a place to go that was focused on gaming, where I know that is what people are there for, as opposed to trying to navigate a social networking site looking for gamers. I just recently went looking for a new game group in my area, and was throughly disappointed that I had to go to some other random social site that someone had linked to… it’s not that it scared me for life, but it makes me think it’ a good idea for /someone/ to make a site like that.
Their online magazines are good content wise but once again their awful site come barging in. With the few content we have released yet it isn’t that bad but let’s say in a year, how will you find the content you want in the hundreds of pdfs released to that point. There should be tons of cross referencing and html links to their rules compendium. Overall WOTC’s online ventures seems like they are made like books and not software.
They build it and then add things to the side then go on to build another new complete thing. What they would need would be a more iterative process where they are constantly building on what they did previously. The content is hard to access, buried behind useless animations and things like that.
They could always go the other way around and buy the competition to build upon it (meaning Fantasy Grounds 2 or the other VTT softwares).
I can’t fail to notice how absolutely no one outside of Gleemax is stepping up and saying that it’s a bad thing to close it.
I realize that readers of RPG blogs have (at least) partly left the fold of corporate websites and might not want anything to do about this venture.
Well as they say, the customer is always right.
I also agree that this thing never left the Beta stage. It always looked to me to be nothing more than a weirdly themed, iffy message board…
..and to think I once seriously thought I should move the blog over there… or open a mirror blog there.
I’m glad I didn’t.
I gave Gleemax a try. One of my blog posts even won the weekly Gleemax Favorite contest (so is the gleemax hat I won going to be a collectors item?).
But I have to say, it is probably a good thing gleemax is being shut down. It really was launched way before its time. Too much was missing or didn’t work. I just hope the renewed focus on their other digital initiatives pays off. If not, it is time to focus on print and pdf products.
Hindsight being 20/20, they should have started with a small blogging platform open to the WotC staff. This would have controlled user frustrations and allowed the to focus on refining important features. It would also have brought in readership. Step two would be to launch a public beta where the public could blog. Then start building in social networking features. Finally launch the full on product.
Well, I can’t see that Gleemax shutting down is going to have any impact on me, except possibly to speed up implementation of DDI, which is what I’m really interested in.
Seriously folks, if you didn’t like it, and didn’t use it, then who cares if it’s gone?
I’m with Chatty on this one. I’m willing to give WotC the benefit of the doubt on Insider, and as long as they let me try it for a bit before I have to buy, I’ll seriously consider it. Right now the subscription to DDI is free, and they’ve posted up a fair bit of interesting stuff. I’ve enjoyed perusing it, and it’s made my intro to 4e a bit easier.
That being said, it’s not worth $10 a month at this point. But *IF* the DDI tools are implemented and actually work as planned, $10 a month for that plus the current content I’m seeing, heck yeah that’ll be worth it. For me, at least. Hell, I’ll pay $120 a year not to have to cart around game boards and miniatures.
So Gleemax is gone. I didn’t use it, so I don’t care. I’m giving them time on DDI – we just started 4e, and as someone in the software biz, I know all about unexpected software delays. And bugs. Dear god the bugs.
My experience with it was kind of odd. I just got pointed at it and told the forums were decent. That’s pretty much all I ever did with it, browse the forums. And even then I had to go back to the person who pointed me at the site and ask which forum he was talking about since the layout there just got me lost. I wasn’t quite interested enough to go hunting around there on my own after that.
I never heard of Gleemax until now… says how much I pay attention to WotC’s online presence. The most I ever did was try MtG online, and hated the fact that I had to buy digital cards – I’d rather buy them and play in person (as long as they’re not the damned “new” cards… I’m somewhat of an oldschooler). From what I have seen though, as I did some research after reading this, it is a good thing that they are shutting it down.
This is definitively still open as a market… one just needs to grab the opportunity…
@Lex –
A couple of the applications for D&DI are DirectX-based. They had an in-house DirectX 3D engine already.
But since it is possible to run DirectX under WINE, apparently, linux and mac users may still be able to use these applications.
Besides these, most (all?) of D&DI will be web-based, and therefore platform-independent. (The 3D apps aren’t released yet anyways.)
I have to admit, I like the Gleemax concept, and for what it’s worth, if I had bothered to find out what exactly Gleemax was, I’d probably be a little sad. Still, the concept DOES have merit. I think it would work better outside of WOTC’s grasp however. World of Darkness players, Paranoia players, and pretty much every game imaginable could have their say in a gleemax-like social networking site.
If only I had the expertise and capital to pull it off 😉
Tomcat1066s last blog post..I Got Skillz
@Tomcat –
Crazily, that was the ultimate goal of Gleemax. A system- and publisher-neutral social network. White Wolf could have a home there, as could Settlers of Catan, as could any other publisher.
But just try convincing anyone outside of WotC that that is the case.
It was interesting to see WotC staffers discuss their favorite non-Wizards games in such nonchalant manner in the early days of Gleemax.
Piyu…
Graham,
I’ll have to take your word for that. Like I said, I never really paid any attention to Gleemax. However, with WOTC spearheading it, I wouldn’t believe they wanted it to be platform neutral if I were a competitor.
Hopefully, some third party can create it and geeks will come. Of course, for the time being, we’ve got enough blogs, forums, and chat rooms that we can make all the social contacts we want 😉
Tomcat1066s last blog post..I Got Skillz
My memory may be hazy, but there was an episode of Gordon Ramsey’s Nightmare Kitchens (the british version most likely) where he was helping out this italian restaurant. He decided to check out the competition. There was something like 4 other italian restarants in the area. But no steakhouse at all. So he encouraged the owner to take his restaurant in a new direction and make it a steakhouse.
Gleemax offered nothing that wasn’t offered elsewhere (and offered elsewhere better). Forums, reviews, networking, blogging, and even gaming all could be found on other sites. Tying it all in one place was a neat idea, but way ambitious. And getting the folks who already use those existing sites to switch to Gleemax was a difficult proposition at best. They have history and stability at those sites, why switch? What can you offer?
It started off on a very bad foot (remember the whole “we own your content” fiasco?) Not to mention the buggyness. People saw it was still worse than useless and kept on doing their own thing on their own sites. Even if they got gleemax up to speed, it would have had an uphill battle losing the stigma and convincing folks to shift to it.
They would have had better luck holding off revealing it until they had more to show. But i think they were encouraged to get it out there as part of the DDI/4E initiative. Now Gleemax is a dirty word.
Not really related to the Gleemax shutdown, but WoTC is also canceling all the non DnD and Magic Novel lines. Maybe Paizo will pick up a few of them.
Also of note, the number of staffers posting to forums seems to have dropped off drastically as well on Enworld and other sites. (This via Critical Hits)
Here’s an idea. Why don’t they just make the DDI applications Facebook applications and piggyback on an already existing, established and working social network? Now that Hasbro has finally discovered Kompooters (and despite their own Scrabble version for facebook being gawd awful), this is one social networking gaming solution that might actually work.
So, of course, it’ll never happen! 🙂
Greywulf- Oddly, and possibly another sign of not knowing what to do with the Internet, WotC created an “Adamantine Dragon” account on Facebook and encouraged people to friend it on Dragon Day (or whatever that fake holiday was.) So even while they were developing their own, they were making small steps in that direction anyway, which then also petered out.
Dave T. Games last blog post..Vote Today or Face a Red Dragon
@Graham: Ah, I see… Well, since I just started using Linux, I’d have been totally lost trying to use WINE.
@shadow145: Sad but true.
@Greywulf: Yeah, I think some outsourcing would be good for them.