“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.” It’s a shame WotC doesn’t have the resources to execute on Gleemax right now, because the vision is pretty good. Someone could possibly beat them to it – maybe the BGG developers if they’re interested in developing for a more general community, but they probably aren’t, and anyway it’s unlikely that many others could get the industry behind one unified effort the way Wizards was trying to. The Gleemax forums, BTW, will be moving back to the Wizards URL they (largely) came from.
So what do y’all think – should I use some of my copious free time to hack up a social network? Or would any of you be interested in seeing some more social-ish features show up here on the Cave?
As I commented on another thread, WotC seemed to have some network issues on Gleemax and DNDInsider for a while. I thought it was just me, but I heard it reported by a number of other people. So, I’m not surprising that between that and the lateness of some of the DNDInsider tools that WotC had to cut something.
Re: your comments on expanding the social aspects of this site, some of the longer comment threads suggest that this site has people occasionally willing to comment on industry issues. A forum may make such conversation easier. The GIN does that for a select audience, but it has a poor front end. Other forums dabble here and there. But there’s not a great public social site for the industry that encourages talk about industry topics on trends, major news items, and developments.
I don’t know that I’m suggesting that you hack together the Cave’s version of Gleemax, but expanding the site tools would be interesting.
BGG developers aren’t interested in creating a more general community because they’re currently working on another segregated one – RPGGeek. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I really liked the promise of Gleemax. I think that it’s something that the gamer community could really sink its teeth into if done right. Of course, I’m a big fan of Facebook.
On reflection, I really wonder if a “cross-training” site for tabletop gamers is really something that people want. I mean, we’ve always been (and will remain) proud cross-trainers here, but I’ve always felt like we’re in the minority amongst those gamers who feel like being Internet-active. That could be a chicken-and-egg problem, of course, and it really only applies to the community aspects of the Gleemax vision.
Lee: we’ve had a couple of ideas on the table for a while along those lines. Probably you’re right, and we don’t need to get all network-y.