Planbeast is live (again)

[prog]

Planbeast, the free scheduling service for Xbox Live games, is now online at its new server. I finished the move this morning, and am very pleased with how well it's performing, compared to its previous location. (Scorecard: Hurrah for linode.com, boo for tektonic.net.) As you can see, I'm now confident enough in its quality to make a public LJ post, and let it start to soak in that magic Google juice.

In a nutshell, Planbeast lets you use the web to schedule times that you'd like to play your favorite Xbox 360 games online. You can use RSS or iCal to know when other fans of these same games set up matches of their own, which you can then join as a guest. When the time comes to play a scheduled game, everyone who has opted-in for notification receives an email or an IM telling them who's playing, and how to get started.

Xbox Live is a very clever and robust online game network, but - like all the major such networks - its "matchmaking" functionality is rather wanting. Depending on the game, trying to play online with strangers usually means either finding nobody at all online, or finding yourself playing with unsavory sorts. Planbeast aims to help this by connecting fans of games with one another, and letting a game's online players know who and what to expect from the other folks at the table.

We think it's really cool, and if it proves popular enough, we'll consider expanding it to cover other online game networks as well.

I've been working on this project with my Volity Games colleagues daerr and radiotelescope in what time I could scrounge over the last six months. There's lots of work to do still (holy cow is there), but the site does everything it says it will in its present state. It's going to be in public beta for a while, so I would be thrilled if you visited and let us know what you think.

Have fun!

Comments

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

Shall I commence with the plugging on my blog?

[prog.livejournal.com]

Feel free! Please do make it clear that when we say "beta", we mean beta. The site's still very brand-new, and we have a regular churn of usability issues, both technical and stylistic. We are daily fixing the ones we know about, and are depending on our initial users to have the next batch waiting for us when we're done.

We welcome more people who are willing to approach the system as both gamers and feedback-happy testers!

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

http://tinysubversions.blogspot.com/2009/02/planbeast-is-live.html

My blog has about 400 RSS subscribers, so for what that's worth, there you go.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Thanks! (I chuckle at the "Of course, I hate multiplayer games" dismount, but surely that just makes your recommendation that much more objective...)

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

Also, I know guys at Xbox Live... I can let them know about it too if you want. I'm sure they'd like it.

[prog.livejournal.com]

BTW, in case you didn't infer it from my previous response: feel free.