Tales of the Rampant Coyote
Ye Olde Archives. Visit the new blog at http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/ - and use the following feed: http://rampantgames.com/blog/wp-rss2.php
Ye Olde Archives. Visit the new blog at http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/ - and use the following feed: http://rampantgames.com/blog/wp-rss2.php
Friday, November 24, 2006
The Great Games Experiment
GarageGames recently opened The Great Games Experiment for beta testing. If you have logged into a GarageGames account in the last year, you are automatically signed up. Otherwise, you can either email a request to join the beta, or you can find an existing beta member who hasn't used up his two invitations yet.
What is it? Well, it looks to me to be sort of a MySpace for gamers. The intended purpose seems to be to bring game makers and game players together in a social community. Ideally - if the game PLAYERS can be motivated to join the community - it could be a great opportunity for less-well-known games to be discovered, and for communities of gamers to form around them. And retro-gaming, though there are already some specialized communities out there for those, too. They've not neglected mainstream games, either.
I guess that's going to be the big hinderance to see if www.greatgamesexperiment.com gets off the ground - will gamers be interested in joining a big general gaming community like this when there are already several specialized communities out there? About the only thing somewhat unique that it might offer is (at the moment) an emphasis on indie games... and there has not yet been a community that has really formed around PLAYING indie games (that I know of). Even so, the Great Games Experiment doesn't really enforce an indie slant - though it does seem to encourage it with demo / download / buy now links for every added game that are enabled by default.
I guess we'll see if it really takes off or not.
If you are interested (and have an account), I'm available there as the Rampant Coyote. If you don't have an account and need an invite, let me know. I only have the two, but I may as well use 'em.
Labels: Indie Evangelism
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:07 AM (Permalink)
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I don't think that specialized communities will go away with this, but I can see an advantage to having one place for people who enjoy multiple specializations. Or for people like me who don't go way into any single niche enough to seek out a community but who nevertheless like talking about games with others.
Jeff Tunnell (co-founder of GarageGames, and Dynamix) has answered some questions about this project in this thread at indiegamer:
GarageGames Has Big Plans for GGE
He did ask that we don't blog about it yet, but I'd already made this post. Oh, well. Anyway, a couple of the most interesting comments he makes:
"The bottom line is that if we don't do it, then MTV or NewsCorp or some other huge corporation will do it and own the space."
And even more interestingly:
"I can tell you that we eventually see GGE as a frictionless publishing platform where anybody can sign up to sell their game with no gatekeepers other than the users..."
This is something some folks in the indie game developer community have been asking for for a long time. And it's been attempted before, to be sure. But maybe GGE will have what it takes to go the distance.
We shall see.
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GarageGames Has Big Plans for GGE
He did ask that we don't blog about it yet, but I'd already made this post. Oh, well. Anyway, a couple of the most interesting comments he makes:
"The bottom line is that if we don't do it, then MTV or NewsCorp or some other huge corporation will do it and own the space."
And even more interestingly:
"I can tell you that we eventually see GGE as a frictionless publishing platform where anybody can sign up to sell their game with no gatekeepers other than the users..."
This is something some folks in the indie game developer community have been asking for for a long time. And it's been attempted before, to be sure. But maybe GGE will have what it takes to go the distance.
We shall see.
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