Roll20 has released a press release regarding their recent ENnie award for “Best Software” and surpassing 250,000 users! It seems like just yesterday I was posting their announcement of surpassing 100,000 users.

My comments regarding the press release follow the press release posted below.

ROLL20 WINS TABLETOP GAMING INDUSTRY AWARD, SURPASSES 250,000 USERS
Online Application’s Creators Attend Gen Con Indy as the Gaming Hobby Soars

Indianapolis, Indiana (August 25, 2013) The development team of the browser based virtual tabletop Roll20.net was recognized last weekend as creators of the “Best Software” at the Annual Gen Con EN World Roleplaying Game Awards, known as the “ENnies.” The Roll20 program added its 250,000th user over the weekend since launching the popular gaming platform eighteen months ago.

Project lead Riley Dutton said of the ENnies win, “It is exciting and encouraging to be recognized as valuable to the tabletop gaming community. Some of the very best creators in the industry were recognized at the ENnies, and to be listed next to them is a true honor.”

Added co-creator Richard Zayas about the Gen Con weekend, “So much of what we do is online, so the chance to go to Indianapolis and see nearly 50,000 gamers– meet some of our users, play new games we haven’t yet gotten to try, and just enjoy the celebration of these hobbies was fantastic.”

On the subject of Roll20’s quarter million users, program co-creator Nolan T. Jones said, “We created Roll20 as a way for us to personally play games with our friends across the country, and knowing that we’ve been able to help so many others do the same is staggering.”

The Roll20 development team stated at panels over the Gen Con weekend that future updates will revolve around better methods to find gamers in their system, and that they are actively seeking to work with major publishers to bring their content to users in easy-to-use formats.

Roll20 began as an effort to keep developers Dutton, Jones, and Zayas in touch via long distance gaming. Their project became public with an eighteen day Kickstarter campaign in April of 2012. Since then it has attracted over 250,000 users as a free service. The program continues to be funded by subscribers who receive features that assist advanced gameplay.

 

I thought the “Best Software” award was well deserved. While I was torn between wanting Roll20 and Purple Sorcerer’s Crawler’s Companion to win this category with 250,000 users it is little surprise Roll20 ended up with the gold.

If you haven’t checked out Roll20 yet and have any interest in online gaming with a virtual tabletop, you owe it to yourself to take a look. I have been running a DCC RPG campaign over Roll20 for the past year. The software has pretty much just worked. We lose no time sorting out connection difficulties or anything typically associated with a VTT. Though their features have increased over the months, one can still just use it to display a map for a more theater of the mind game keeping complexity to a minimum.

Roll20 has certainly allowed me to get a lot more gaming in over the past year than I would have otherwise.

In regards to surpassing 250,000 users, it was January 21, 2013 when their press release went out announcing surpassing 100,000 users! Here we are in late August with a 150,000 user increase! Very impressive! That is quite the player pool to work with when looking for a new game to play or group to play with.