In a short press release issued Tuesday, Wizards of the Coast (publishers of Magic: the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and dozens of other games your mom told you were Satanic when you were a kid) announced that they are planning to shut down their fledgling “social networking for gamers” side-project Gleemax.

For those that don’t know, Gleemax was created by WotC, and designed to be a Facebookesque site designed for traditional gamers. Our own Jon Zungre first got to see the site in action back at GDC 08.

Why the powers-that-be at Wizards thought that regular Facebook was insufficient for the task, the world may never know. But as of July, nearly a year after the site’s alpha release in October of 2007, all it had to offer loyal gamers was a buggy blogging system, simple user profile pages, and generally unstable forum hosting – nothing particularly groundbreaking in the gamer world or otherwise.

Still, there was definitely a spark of inspiration to be found in Gleemax, one that gamers will now miss out on. Why did Wizards – going strong after the release of Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, a new version of Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures, and more Magic cards than all but the most obsessive can collect – decide to pull the plug?

Here’s what Randy Buehler, VP of the Digital Games division, had to say on the matter:

“We have the two best games in the world [in Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons], we need to take care of them before expanding into new digital arenas.”

Some hefty claims to make, Randy, especially when you’re dealing with a crowd as fickle as roleplayers. Still, it’s easy to understand what they’re focusing on, with the digital Dungeons and Dragon’s side-product D&D Insider still unreleased months after the 4th Edition and the horrible mess they made with Magic Online III.

Let’s just hope that these two products DO get the attention they deserve, instead of getting pushed by the wayside like so much else in the Wizards product sphere.

Source: wizards.com

Tags: gaming culture, gleemax, gleemax.com, social network, Wizards of the Coast

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2 Comments » Dan on August 3, 2008 6:08 am No one has commented yet :( Congrats on your first article! Jonathan Zungre on August 4, 2008 8:17 am how sad. I like to see planeswalkers thriving both on the internet and off. RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.