Warhorn acquired by Zeitgest Games
For some months now I've been alluding to possible structural changes in the Warhorn "organization". Today i can finally talk about those changes.
I am extremely excited to announce that Warhorn has been acquired by Zeitgeist Games. You may know these folks as the producers and publishers of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor roleplaying products. As RPG'ers, they used Warhorn at various conventions. Eventually Dustin Clingman contacted me to see if ZG's developers could help to get some of the most frequently requested features added to the site, and things snowballed from there.
ZG will be taking over the physical administration of the site and mailing list. The transition will likely happen piecemeal over the next few months. At some point we'll begin to create new sites over there, and those which are in use now or in the past will either be migrated or archived. As we come up with a more solid transition plan we'll fill you in on the details.
Once the transition has begun, you will start to see new features in Warhorn. Things like being able to establish a single Warhorn user account from which you register for any event on the site. Personalization features, the ability to search for events based on criteria like location, games offered, and so on. There's a huge list of requested features, and ZG will be able to dedicate full-time development resources to them.
They also plan to really engage the community who use Warhorn, and especially all of you who organize events with it, in a way that I never really got around to. I'm not the best customer service guy. I'm more of a stereotypical Mr. Crankypants software guy. But these folks are professionals as well as gamers at heart, and I think you're going to see a lot more focus on community.
What does this mean for me personally? Well, as part of the deal I become a partner in Zeitgeist Games. I will continue to be involved with Warhorn, helping with the transition, creating a roadmap for its future development, writing code, and participating in the community. I won't be stepping away from Warhorn, but my role will definitely diminish as others who can focus more fully on it step in to shoulder much of the responsibility.
This is a huge day for Warhorn, and I hope you are all as excited as I am for what will happen in the next several months. Let me know in the comments what you think about all this.