Planbeast: a free tool for planning online XBL games.

[jmac]

Howdy y'all,

I run a website called Planbeast (www.planbeast.com). It is a free service that helps you coordinate plans for online XBL games, find games others are planning, and find other fans of games you like. It's meant to be especially useful for games without enough critical player-mass for random online play, but works great for more popular games as well.

Planbeast is quite new, and needs testers. (Honestly, what it needs is users, but at this early stage all users would be testers.) I would be most grateful if any Geezers felt like checking it out, playing with it, and giving me honest feedback about how well it works, what features it needs, and that sort of thing. And I would be overjoyed if any Geezers like it enough to start using it regularly!



A bit of background:

I'm the president of a games startup called Volity Games, comprising the efforts of myself and a couple of friends to research and develop new ways to improve the space of online gameplay. Planbeast is our most recent project. I started working on it in late 2008, not long after my own introduction to Xbox Live.

After a short time spent exploring XBL, I observed that only a handful of games - the shooters du jour, and a few oddballs like Uno - seem to make up the vast majority of all online play. Planbeast was my attempt to give fans of "the long tail" of older, less popular - but still quite fun - games a change to find other fan and get some good online play in. I also see it as helping players of more popular games coordinate with friends, making it a useful complement to the forum-based game-time planning one finds on forums like this.

If the model works and catches on, I'd love to expand it to embrace other game networks that could also use a service like this. But, starting out with a tight focus on Xbox Live seems like a fine start. (Especially since I personally own a 360, but not a decent gaming PC or a PS3…)

As for what I get out of it: primarily, I want to build an awesome service that will make more people play games together, and have more fun while doing it. The service will always remain free for players' use. There's ads on it now, the result of our vague attempt at exploring ways to (cough) monetize the idea last year, but I think we're gonna end up moving away from that and more towards partnerships with game developers - if the whole idea for this project seems worthwhile, and cool and useful for gamers. And that isn't for me to say, at least not all by myself!

If you do get a chance to explore it, let me know what you think, here or there or via email. And, y'know - feel free to look at my own profile there and drag me into games I claim to like!

( P.S.: the thingy in my signature below is a "Planbeast card", an experimental feature that lets you paste around a clickable graphic advertising your upcoming gaming activity. )

_________________
Jason McIntosh • jmac.org • The Gameshelf

[(XBL: jmac dot org)]

Howdy y'all,

I run a website called Planbeast (www.planbeast.com). It is a free service that helps you coordinate plans for online XBL games, find games others are planning, and find other fans of games you like. It's meant to be especially useful for games without enough critical player-mass for random online play, but works great for more popular games as well.

Planbeast is quite new, and needs testers. (Honestly, what it needs is users, but at this early stage all users would be testers.) I would be most grateful if any Geezers felt like checking it out, playing with it, and giving me honest feedback about how well it works, what features it needs, and that sort of thing. And I would be overjoyed if any Geezers like it enough to start using it regularly!



A bit of background:

I'm the president of a games startup called Volity Games, comprising the efforts of myself and a couple of friends to research and develop new ways to improve the space of online gameplay. Planbeast is our most recent project. I started working on it in late 2008, not long after my own introduction to Xbox Live.

After a short time spent exploring XBL, I observed that only a handful of games - the shooters du jour, and a few oddballs like Uno - seem to make up the vast majority of all online play. Planbeast was my attempt to give fans of "the long tail" of older, less popular - but still quite fun - games a change to find other fan and get some good online play in. I also see it as helping players of more popular games coordinate with friends, making it a useful complement to the forum-based game-time planning one finds on forums like this.

If the model works and catches on, I'd love to expand it to embrace other game networks that could also use a service like this. But, starting out with a tight focus on Xbox Live seems like a fine start. (Especially since I personally own a 360, but not a decent gaming PC or a PS3…)

As for what I get out of it: primarily, I want to build an awesome service that will make more people play games together, and have more fun while doing it. The service will always remain free for players' use. There's ads on it now, the result of our vague attempt at exploring ways to (cough) monetize the idea last year, but I think we're gonna end up moving away from that and more towards partnerships with game developers - if the whole idea for this project seems worthwhile, and cool and useful for gamers. And that isn't for me to say, at least not all by myself!

If you do get a chance to explore it, let me know what you think, here or there or via email. And, y'know - feel free to look at my own profile there and drag me into games I claim to like!

( P.S.: the thingy in my signature below is a "Planbeast card", an experimental feature that lets you paste around a clickable graphic advertising your upcoming gaming activity. )

_________________
Jason McIntosh • jmac.org • The Gameshelf

[Dai]

Hey jmac, China called...

Looks like a great idea - I've signed up.

_________________
Geezer #141

[(XBL: FragBucket)]

Hey jmac, China called...

Looks like a great idea - I've signed up.

_________________
Geezer #141

[Oinkaphone]

Yep - great idea. On my way to sign up now.
And, see you for some TF2 on Sunday!

_________________

[(XBL: Oinkaphone)]

Yep - great idea. On my way to sign up now.
And, see you for some TF2 on Sunday!

_________________

[jmac]

[(XBL: jmac dot org)]

[Dai]

[(XBL: FragBucket)]

[CyberKnight]

What a cool idea.

Signed up.

_________________

[(XBL: CyberKnight)]

What a cool idea.

Signed up.

_________________

[cmdrmarkus74]

Heck yeah I'm in. I can probably get a bunch of boosters from across the pond to help out too. The nice thing about this will be having the ability to plan without having to take time zones into consideration

_________________

[(XBL: cmdrmarkus74)]

Heck yeah I'm in. I can probably get a bunch of boosters from across the pond to help out too. The nice thing about this will be having the ability to plan without having to take time zones into consideration

_________________

[BigAppleBag]

Hey jmac, I tried to register but kept getting an error message:

[(XBL: BIG APPLE BAG)]

Hey jmac, I tried to register but kept getting an error message:

[jmac]

[(XBL: jmac dot org)]

[MidnightGhostGF]

Apple, I was just able to sign up with no issues..... Must be a PEBCAK error....

_________________

Idiocy: Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

[(XBL: MidnightGhostGF / SASxGhost)]

Apple, I was just able to sign up with no issues..... Must be a PEBCAK error....

_________________

Idiocy: Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

[cmdrmarkus74]

.... Canadians. What can you do about em?

_________________

[(XBL: cmdrmarkus74)]

.... Canadians. What can you do about em?

_________________

[jmac]

Bugs / oversights that Geezers have called out so far include our somehow not having MW2 in the database(!), and the registration system's apparent antipathy towards Canada (and, it turns out, any email address whose top-level domain has two or fewer letters).

Easily corrected the first problem, and I believe the second's fixed as well. This is super-awesome. Keep em coming.

_________________
Jason McIntosh • jmac.org • The Gameshelf

[(XBL: jmac dot org)]

Bugs / oversights that Geezers have called out so far include our somehow not having MW2 in the database(!), and the registration system's apparent antipathy towards Canada (and, it turns out, any email address whose top-level domain has two or fewer letters).

Easily corrected the first problem, and I believe the second's fixed as well. This is super-awesome. Keep em coming.

_________________
Jason McIntosh • jmac.org • The Gameshelf

[Flu]

[(XBL: flu13)]

[jmac]

[(XBL: jmac dot org)]

[CyberKnight]

I posted in the "Unofficial Egregious Feature Request Thread" in the forums.

_________________

[(XBL: CyberKnight)]

I posted in the "Unofficial Egregious Feature Request Thread" in the forums.

_________________