Gleemax Sponsors the IGF

By: Derek Yu

On: February 11th, 2008

Gleemax is a new online gaming community started by Wizards of the Coast (you know, the Magic: The Gathering guys?). It’s essentially a social networking/news site focused around tabletop strategy and RPG games. It’s also, apparently, going to be an indie video game portal.

Gamasutra reports:

IGF Platinum Sponsor and Magic: The Gathering developer Wizards of the Coast have announced their own “Gleemie Award,” giving IGF entrants and finalists a secondary cash and a chance for a distribution agreement, in conjunction with its recently launched community site Gleemax.

The top three winners will receive $2000, $3000, and $5000 cash prizes, respectively, along with the chance for distribution on Gleemax. The seven contestants are World of Goo, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Skyrates, Depths of Peril, Quadradius, Desktop Tower Defense, and Polarity.

This sounds very similar to Gametap’s unsuccessful involvement in last year’s IGF, although the big difference is that WotC is offering cash prizes and not advances (on 5 or 10-year distribution deals).

(Thanks, Alec!)

Posted in Business, Community, IGF / GDC | Tags: 2DBoy, PetriPurho

Al King

‘Unsuccessful’ involvement? You referring to Jon Mak taking up with Sony, or is there something I missed?
Derek

By “unsuccessful” I mean that 1. I don’t think any of the winners ended up accepting the deal (or the advance) and 2. they’re not sponsoring the IGF again this year.

It was a pretty flawed idea to begin with, imo…
Al King

Hah, I didn’t realise *none* of them took up the offer :D It did seem to be more of a boon to GameTap than the winners, though, so it’s fair enough.
Alec

Blast Miner is on GameTap, so I assume Edmund accepted the deal.

Its also currently a “freebie”.
simonc

Blast Miner did accept, yes. I think it could have worked fine, if firm arrangements were in place for each game and those involved were OK with the terms.

But unfortunately there were only verbal commitments and thus a couple of the winners dropped out.