[GeoSTL] Wife of www.geogamer.com founder speaks out
- From: Paul Konopacki <konopapw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 02:45:41 -0500
This is an email from the Groundspeak newsgroup
thread regarding www.geogamer.com:
Just another way to play.
Fellow Cachers,
Let me introduce myself. I am a mother of 3 and a grandmother of 4. I
enjoy the new sport of GeoCaching the same as you do, but I don?t get
much time to participate. I recently started my own business with a
company called Prepaid Legal Services, Inc.. In addition to that, I am a
member and director of a Business Leads Group, and am responsible for
the office duties of my husband?s (NetMan), networking company. When I
can find time, I enjoy spending it with my grandchildren, scuba diving,
dancing, traveling and of course hunting for caches.
I just finished reading the forum comments on this site. I have to say,
it really breaks my heart on how some of the avid Geocachers like
yourselves totally misunderstood the intent of GeoGamer. We weren't
trying to replace Geocaching.com, but merely offering ANOTHER way to
play. I can assure you, in no way were we trying to be deceitful in the
postings found at the launching of the site (i.e. the Kim story).
Furthermore, no one from GeoGamer made any of the phone calls mentioned
in one of the earlier comments. GeoGamer does not and never did intend
to change the way the game is currently being played. We do believe if
something isn?t broken, don?t fix it, and as far as we can tell,
Geocaching doesn?t seem to be broken. Out of respect for Jeremy?s site,
I will not go into detail here about GeoGamer, but I will say that our
intention was to reward everyone who wanted to play, so everyone can be
a winner.
It was a comment of mine that started it all a few months back when I
said, "I wish there was a way my dive club could sponsor an underwater
cache dive as a fundraiser.? From there, Ben and Stan came up with the
concept of how it could be done and CacheCoins were born. We wanted to
take this idea to the clubs, churchs, etc., (like the Revlon walk for
cancer I participated in). It was fun, AND its purpose was to raise
funds for a good cause. We first had to introduce to the public to see
how it worked before we could take it any further.
GeoGamer allows players to do exactly what they are doing now, for FREE.
But for those interested, it also offers a way to track points from a
competitive stance and a way to earn merchandise for those efforts.
Later it will give organizations a way to sponsor events and raise
money. The mailing in of the coins was for the players benefit, not
ours. We plan on holding drawings which would give the winners
additional points and/or merchandise depending on revenue. We are not
benefiting at all in the mailing of the coins. Obviously, the more
people that play with CacheCoins, the more revenue generated to buy and
give away better merchandise. We must have done a poor job explaining
our concept since few of you seem to understand it and only think that
GeoGamer is a scam run by a bunch of crooks. I can?t say enough how
disappointed I am with the venimous welcome we?ve received from most of
you. We had good intent and spent a lot of time and effort on this site,
and we are not what you have judged us to be.
I am sure all of you are intelligent enough that if you knew the entire
business concept, you would agree our planned contributions to this
sport is a good thing and not a scam. Nor is it a MLM like Amway (as one
of you so cleverly categorized). We so hoped that the people already
playing the game would embrace it and inspire others to do the same. It
is truly our fault that you don?t completely understand it very well. I
am truly sorry for that and we are working on correcting it.
I am registered in the Yahoo GeoCaching group under associate2forppl if
any of you have further questions or wish to engage in further
discussion.
Other related posts:
- » [GeoSTL] Wife of www.geogamer.com founder speaks out
