GameTable Online is a service launching this winter which lets you play strategy board, card and dice games against other people across the Internet. They have lined up exclusive licenses to award winning games plus fantastic small press games overlooked by the wider gaming market. GameTable Online's team is working hard to make the online games look and play exactly like the originals, just using the Internet as the medium.

The company has lined up over twenty games from more than a dozen different publishers, including the hall of fame masterpiece Nuclear War from Flying Buffalo. They have also licensed the cult classic Cosmic Wimpout, four Cheapass Games including Kill Dr. Lucky, plus Tom Jolly's Drakon by Fantasy Flight Games. Check out their website for a current list, which also includes games featuring Dork Tower characters, German games such as Ursuppe and Igel Ärgern and small press award-winners like Who Stole Ed's Pants? New games are being lined up all the time.

When the site opens for business, there will be four games ready to play. The subscription fee is only $10 a month for unlimited play of every game on the site. They'll continue to add game after game after game, and not change the price! One quick look at other websites offering professional-quality online games quickly shows that this is indeed a bargain. GameTable Online is the brainchild of Joe Minton, who serves as President of the company. Minton believes that online gaming will exist alongside face-to-face gaming, not replace it. “We are allowing you to play that games that you love when you can't get a group together, when you want to play against distant friends, when you want to try out new games before buying them, and when you want to meet new people who love the same hobby that you do. Think of how much fun it will be to play a quick game of Lord of the Fries before hitting the sack. GameTable Online lets you enjoy much more often the hobby that you already love.”

Minton is also President of Cyberlore Studios, a video game company that has created such hit games as MechWarrior4 Mercenaries, Majesty and WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal. “My roots are based in traditional strategy games like Starship Troopers and Magic Realm,” explains Minton. “My goal in devising GameTable Online is to use the medium that I've become very familiar with to help grow the gaming hobby that I love. While there are not many publishers in the Adventure Gaming industry large enough to launch their own online gaming services, there is certainly room for one company to play this role for everyone.”

GameTable Online is also creating a free Gaming Resource Center to serve the strategy gaming market. They already have a content manager on staff whose sole job is to create useful resources that are kept up to date (unlike the majority of the locations on the web). One of the important resources they are already hosting is the online site for the Strategy Gaming Society! In addition, they host an exclusive Dork Tower comic strip every week.

They plan to have a convention calendar that alerts you via email if a convention is coming to your area. A store directory is also in the works with a distance finder which lets you locate gaming stores within range of a city or zip code. Other facets of the resource center include an exhaustive set of industry links, a news center, a publisher listing complete with contact information, a game database, and a directory of gaming clubs. Anyone can take advantage of these services by clicking on the Gaming Resources link on the home page.

GameTable Online bears all the costs of creating the online versions of the games - a tag which runs over $50,000 per game and up to $100,000 for some of the more complex ones. In addition, the company covers the costs of hosting the games, running tournaments, adding new variations to the games, and customer support. The original publishers all receive royalties from GameTable Online. “For a nominal cost, players receive a high quality gaming service they can use as often as they like and publishers get free marketing plus cash royalties on games they have already created - everyone wins,” exclaims Minton.

With so many publishers having licensed games to the company before it has even launched, it is clear that the service is filling a gap in the strategy gaming hobby. One look at the business plan, the quality of games that Minton has worked on in the past, and the fact that twelve highly skilled professionals are working solely for future compensation to build the company, and it is clear that GameTable Online is the real deal. Many companies have promised one aspect or another of what GameTable Online is building, but never before in the industry has there been such a show of support by the publishers and the fans alike for an online gaming service.

Thousands of gamers have registered for the site already to be kept abreast of GameTable Online's progress towards launch and for a chance to take part in their upcoming Beta test period. “It is wonderful to see so much traffic on the site. People are using our free gaming resources, keeping abreast of industry news and letting us know what games they'd like to see us host,” says Robert Eng, GameTable Online's Customer Service Manager. “The great interest being shown by gamers certainly helps to keep us going during all the late hours spent building the service.”

When the games launch, here's how it will work: First, you log in to the site using your username and password. The site's Play Games page lists every game on the site and the number of folks currently playing each one. Clicking on the name of the game that you want to play brings you to a full screen lobby. From here you can host a new game table to play on, join a game that needs players, or chat with other folks in the lobby. If you want to play only with your friends, you can create a private table. The host of the game sets the game parameters. For example, whether or not the turn timer is being used, the maximum number of players allowed, and game-specific options like whether to use the hero abilities in

Drakon. When enough people have joined the table to play, the host launches the game.

You only need to download the art for a game once. This might take 3-4 minutes on a 28.8 modem, and only a fraction of that on broadband. You can download the art before starting to play to keep everyone from waiting for you. Once you have downloaded it one time, the art is stored on your computer so you won't have to do it again. At this point, everyone plays with excellent speed, no matter how or from where they are connected to the Internet.

The game takes over the full screen so you don't see any browser bars. The game components are shown sitting on a table, just as if you were looking at a real game. Each player's cards or pieces are stacked where they are 'sitting'. In addition to playing, you can communicate with each other using a simple chat system. The online games are designed to have the same feel as the physical games: from using the original game art to the anticipation of dice bouncing around the table.

When you finish a game, everyone's statistics are updated. In addition to tracking wins and loses, GameTable Online also tracks fun stats like the highest roll you've ever had in Cosmic Wimpout. The players are then brought to their own game table where they can launch another game together if they'd like, or rejoin the main lobby.

GameTable Online already has a prize system in place. They award GTO Points as tournament prizes, for buying games from their store, for taking an active role in the community, as well as simply for being a member. Anyone can earn the points, and members can turn them in for free games from the GTO Treasure Chest. Simply choose what you'd like and the company ships it right to you.

As for the future, this is what Minton reports, “We're working hard to line up additional games - in particular we'd like to have a wider selection of German strategy games. We are also in the midst of exciting discussions with dignitaries as well as other organizations in the industry who are interested in partnering with us in a variety of ways. Our core goal is to provide a strategy gaming community center, and there are many ways that this will take shape. We look forward to doing what we can to make this a stronger industry.”

You can find the site at www.gametableonline.com. Register for a free username and mention that you heard about them from the Strategy Gaming Society and you'll get fifty GTO Points for free. GameTable Online has a strict privacy policy and does not share your information with anyone. This looks to be one of the most exciting online initiatives that the strategy gaming hobby has ever seen. We'll see you online!

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