WotC "Gleemax"

[Catman Jim]

Wizards of the Coast has announced the formation of what is being called the "MySpace for Gamers", Gleemax. I've included the press release & link to the site below, I'm interested in what you all think about the concept and what it might mean for us 'Lofter's specifically.

"Wizards of the Coast Announces Online Home for Hard Core Gamers
Gleemax.com™ Gives Gamers a Voice, a Gaming Arena and a Place to Interact in Today’s Vast Online Universe

June 11, 2007 (Renton, Wash.) – Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (NYSE: HAS), the leader in trading card, tabletop strategy and role-playing games, today revealed plans to launch Gleemax.com™, a first of its kind online destination for hard core strategy and hobby gamers. Building on its heritage in the hobby gaming space with Magic: The Gathering® and Dungeons & Dragons®, coupled with its success with Magic Online® and its understanding of what strategy, hobby and tabletop gamers want, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) will now provide gamers with a centralized destination online to get everything they want or need.

Gleemax™ will be built on three pillars – community, games and editorial content – each representing the essence of what WotC has been providing strategy gamers for more than 15 years. Specific site features will include an online social community, existing and future releases of WotC digital gaming properties as well as independent strategy games, player profiles, interactive analog and digital community activities, editorial content including community message boards, WotC and player blogs, regularly updated industry news, and game rankings and reviews.

“Wizards has long been the champion of great game play and Gleemax furthers our commitment to this ideal,” said Loren Greenwood, President of WotC. “This moment marks an evolution of our company and to this end, we’ve created an entirely new digital division led by a longtime senior member of our research and development team, Randy Buehler.”

There are several “firsts” for WotC with Gleemax, including the site’s social networking community tool functionality. The tools will run the gamut from traditional social networking fare (blogs, friends lists, etc.) to gamer-specific tools (game reviews, game ratings, ways to search for games and gamers) to specialized content that adds to the enjoyment of specific kinds of gamers (ways to build and arrange warbands for various miniatures games, ways to talk about characters in role-playing games, etc.).

“Deep down in the DNA of our company we know that the way to sell hobby games is to invest in the community of hobby gamers,” said Randy Buehler, Vice President of Digital Games for WotC. “We feel that Gleemax will provide a lasting infrastructure that supports not just our own customers, but the entire strategy gaming culture.”

In addition to the social networking capabilities, as part of today’s Gleemax announcement, WotC also announced several game initiatives coupled with the site’s features. The website will include an indie strategy game portal devoted to digital distribution of PC games that the company believes will be attractive to its community and worthy of the WotC Seal of Approval for fun, strategic games.

WotC also announced a hardcore board game portal, which will give players access to its backlist of Avalon Hill® titles such as Axis & Allies® and the award-winning Vegas Showdown™. These two portals supplement a WotC digital game lineup that already includes Magic Online (which celebrates its 5th birthday later this month) and Uncivilized: The Goblin Game™, previously announced and slated to begin external play testing later this year.

Gleemax will also give core hobby retailers a place to advertise upcoming tournaments and events, which will automatically populate the calendars of players in those areas interested in those games. “This community will have one foot in the digital world and one foot in the analog world,” commented Buehler. “Based on our experience with the communities around our various games, we find this makes for a particularly vibrant online experience.”

And as an extension to the already robust Wizards.com editorial content, Gleemax will include blogs from WotC insiders and a discussion of game-play, which is so often neglected or overlooked by mainstream computer gaming publications. “Our gamer has been slipping through the cracks,” said Buehler. “Right now the tabletop and strategy gamers are scattered across many websites and they can have a hard time finding each other or finding information about good games to play. Gleemax fixes this problem.”

To ensure Gleemax provides players with engaging content and vibrant features most commonly requested and wished for in online communities, WotC is enlisting industry thought leaders in all areas dedicated to online social experiences and strategy/hobby games to sit on a Gleemax Advisory Board. WotC will use the board’s input to not only assist during the development stages of the site, but ongoing to ensure Gleemax is providing everything possible for enthusiasts.

In addition to the Advisory Board’s industry thought leaders, to kick off the launch celebration, WotC is making an Open Casting Call to select three players to sit on the Advisory Board, ensuring the hobby and tabletop gamers and fans are represented on the board. The selection process will be a reality TV style contest run through Gleemax.com over the course of the summer. Bringing player members onto the Advisory Board reinforces WotC’s long-standing tradition of engaging with its consumers to ensure their thoughts, opinions and voices are heard.

“We want to build something that the whole industry can embrace,” said Buehler. “The only way to get this right is to build it in collaboration with our community and this Advisory Board will make sure we do exactly that.

Gleemax.com will launch in various phases, each phase providing additional online community tools for today’s players with the first phase previewing at GenCon in August. Phase one will offer gamers online community tools, gamer personal profiles, and editorial content. Then over the back half of the year and into early 2008, new features will be steadily added and new games will start coming online.

For more information on the Gleemax.com launch and phase launch plan, please visit http://www.gleemax.com."

[WolfKook]

WOW! Seems like THEY are making a HUGE move AGAIN!!!

Let's see how it goes... I never really liked the WotC community very much, which all those people ranting endlessly at each other, or going into "I know the rules better than you" arguments... I fear things can go on a similar direction with Gleemax. I feel safe here...

However, it seems very interesting. It even makes me want to apply to the Advisory Board...

[alhoon]

Well it seems a bold move but I don't think they'll make us much profit from it as they think.

I mean, it is very good for us players and happy customers buy more things but I believe they will need too much effort for a slight increase in sellings.

All in all, I'm quite happy about it as long as it keeps going instead of WotC blowing it up after 2-4 years.

[Joël of the FoS]

Cool news, but this launch is uninteresting. Why launch a site with 5% of what it will do? Sorry to say that, but the site isn't exciting now. We'll see later...

Edit: the next rolling out phase in August, an Gen Con? That's a long time for a message board to stand alone by itself.

Joël