Computer Moderation: The Bane of the Play By Mail Industry

[GrimFinger]

SuperNova had a lot of StarMaster in it. It was a computer assisted game rather than computer moderated. We still had lots of sheets of paper describing what the player was up to in their special actions, etc. The problem just became getting (and paying) good GMs and keeping the continuity from turn to turn since a different person might deal with each turn that got sent in from a position. Once hundreds (or maybe a thousand?) of people were in the games it was impossible to keep the true flavor of 'special' actions going and thus Victory was destined to be a computer moderated game since we had seen the writing on the wall for scaling games for larger amounts of customers.

Terry - Former programmer of Play By Mail games

Computer moderation was great for reducing errors, or so it has been said. But, in the bid to enhance efficiency, by removing the human element in moderating play by mail games, the Sword of Damocles fell - piercing through the heart of the PBM industry, and dealing a mortal blow that postal gaming has been wounded by, ever since.

Abandoning the warmth of human imagination for the cold efficiency of machine programming, commercial PBM companies led the way into the future - a bleak, desolate, and famine-stricken PBM landscape. Welcome to PBM Hell!

Paying homage to the gods of profit, efficiency was the key in this pilgrimage to the Mecca of the Future. Except, somewhere along the way, play by mail bore the brunt of efficiency's gore. Efficiency slew the beast of the PBM Hydra. As it turned out, the heads of that Hydra belonged to the many thousands of PBM die-hard players. Efficiency prevailed across the industry, and play by mail gaming was never quite the same, again.

PBM had been terminated! As it turns out, it was an inside job.

It's a shame that PBM games couldn't have remained hand-moderated, with the customer service end of things becoming as efficient as the code. But, such is life in the PBM lane.

Automating things via the code had such obvious advantages for play by mail games, for sure - though in hindsight, the question might be asked, advantages for whom?

And what of this "true flavor" of special actions? Maybe that's where the problem with the PBM industry lies. Maybe it just ran out of flavor. Do you like to eat meals that have less flavor or more flavor? I know, I know, it's rocket science, apparently, but you can probably figure out what I'm getting at.

And if you can't, well let me lay it bare for you. Full automation achieved at the cost of reduced flavor has not been such a good deal for the PBM industry, after all. For short term game, the Old Guard killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. Oh, they automated the goose, all right, but the goose was never asked what it thought about what they had in store for it.

And now you know the story of play by mail's El Dorado. It was deep fried in the vat of automation. PBM's goose was cooked!

Play by mail hasn't tasted the same, since.

[vanollefen]

I couldn't disagree more. Computer moderation made PBM possible. Human moderation was too time consuming to make running a game viable for most people. And as for the "flavor" it added, its oned thing to sit in a room of people playing a human moderated game for free, and another paying for someone to use their imagination to decide your fate. Maybe its the engineer in me, but I never even considered a game that had any degree of human moderation.

Playstation and the internet killed PBM as it was back in the day. Just my opinion

[Victory]

I hear what you are saying and agree with you to an extent, but ....

The hand moderated games burned brightly and were fun, but their drawbacks were legendary as a GM.

A single GM could only handle so much work. If they quit their day job and did it full time then burnout would ensue within a few years (for the most part). Keeping creative for so many players for so long for so many days a week is not an easy task.

If the GM did it part time then inevitably the GM would get a girlfriend, social life, whatever and the game would slowly become secondary and then tertiary and then fade away.

A GM of these intensely hand moderated games just couldn't charge enough to make a living. Imagine your RPG playing group meeting all the time with forty people in it. These forty people have to pay for you to live on -- in this day and age many people won't fork over enough money for you to make a living writing a page or three of text responses back to them.

You have the problem when one of your big players who spends $500 (or more) a month on your games decides he will quit unless you do XXXX or give him YYYY. What do you do? Do you let him walk and hope you pick up 25 players who pay $20 a month (actually probably more due to scale of postage/envelopes/etc) asap? Do you knuckle under and eat your integrity and hope no one finds out and that this player doesn't do this again now that he knows it works? Can you even pay your bills without this big player (or his alliance)?

Assuming all this works out and you haven't burned out after a few years and you realize you can't scale any bigger than you are currently at do you accept your fate to make $30,000 a year? Or do you try to find another GM and skim some money from his turns while you pay them? It has to be someone creative and a gamer. What happens if they leave? How do you find a replacement or how do you absorb their turn load?

It's tough. Much of the spark and fun in PBM was due to the creativity of the GM. Computer moderation takes that away, but hand moderation will inevitably burn out the GM. Mixing the two helps since the GM can get up to a livable wage and still retains some flexibility, but doesn't completely solve the problems of GM favoritism, scaling, etc.

It does no good for the player to have a blast playing only to have the rug pulled out from them in two years when the GM can't do it anymore because he has a family to feed.

It also does no good to have a completely computer moderated game that can't draw in players because the magic is missing. If you are going to go completely computer moderated then why not play World of Warcraft or Eve Online where you get instant feedback with more people and somewhat fancy graphics? You might even get more of a personal touch since the massive resources behind those games can actually introduce more storylines than an overworked PBM moderator.

It's just tough.

---

I'll also add that the vast, vast majority of PBM gaming companies that took player's money and then folded were the hand moderated variety. These were people getting in due to the low barrier of entry and then eventually giving up and absconding with whatever money they had deposited.

I think this cost the PBM industry more players than anything else. At RTG we occasionally would honor money lost at other companies in an attempt to keep some goodwill for the industry.

It is impossible to tell how many people just gave up on PBM after losing $50 to a fly by night company that just took their money and did a couple turns before giving up.

I do agree that filling out a turn for Monster Island (for example) is NOTHING like filling out a turn for a hand moderated game. The efficiency change was IMHO inevitable, but it was also a seismic shift in the way PBM operated and the fun involved for many people.

[Ramblurr]

I can understand the sentiment of Grim's posting, but I agree with Terry: hand moderated games while providing much fodder for the imagination are simply unsustainable.

In someways this article presents a false-dichotomy, because it doesn't consider emergent gameplay. That is, a game where the mechanics are well defined and automated, yet the decision on "how to play" the game is left in the hands of the player. By providing the player with the tools to play the game how they see fit, players can mold the game experience they want. These games are commonly referred to as sandboxes.

True, you don't get the same sort of free-form play you would in a hand moderated game. Players are definitely constrained by what the computer program backing the game is programmed to do, but the trick is not over-complicating the game. In computer science we use the term orthogonality to refer to basic pieces that can be mixed and matched successfully, and that is the idea with these types of games.

Some modern examples of these games are EVE Online or the older Ultima Online, and even the new indie hit Minecraft. Of the PB(e)Ms I am familiar with, Conquest and Destiny and Olympia were games with this sandbox characteristic.

[GrimFinger]

I just got home, a little while ago, and I will respond at length probably tomorrow, sometime, or maybe later tonight, if I don't go to bed before that.

If you go through the various editorials that I have written pertaining to PBM, you will likely find that I point fingers at many different things. Some things that I will likely point a finger at, I haven't even written about, yet.

It was Terry's posting in another thread from earlier, today, that mentioned the "true flavor" of special actions, and that got me to thinking, which in turn led to me writing this article off the cuff.

It doesn't bother me that any or all of you disagree with part or all of what was posted in this editorial. It would be far more bothersome if you disagreed - but then didn't bother to take time and post.

Rich Van Ollefen of Flying Dutchman games fame, the guy who programmed Victory!, and the guy who is trying to brink back Far Horizons are all a part of this discussion about play by mail. Even if this discussion thread were to die tomorrow (and I certainly hope that it doesn't), the combination of you three guys posting on the same topic in the same online discussion thread makes this a discussion of considerable significance. I'm sure that Walter wishes that I would post some more editorials that you guys disagree with enough to post your own views on the subject matter under discussion.

It's not exactly the easiest thing, these days, trying to get people talking, much less talking at length, about gaming of the postal variety kind. Yet, without people posting about PBM, visitors to the site will have nothing to read when they finally do happen across the site - assuming that they do manage to find it.

Look back at Terry's quote, above. If you've got a commercial PBM game with hundreds - or even a thousand - paying customers playing it, then what is the cut-off point to generate a profit, as far as how many paying customers does it take before the cost of additional GMs could be hired?

And for all of the good things that automation in programming brings with it, there is still the flavor issue. A human being in the role of moderator can certainly bring a great deal of imagination value to a game. How does one quantify the value of that, compared to automation?

Automation can reduce human errors. It can improve speed and efficiency in processing turn orders and turn results. It can make a game expandable to virtually an infinite number of players. But, automation also comes at a price. Automation is not an all-positive approach to running PBM games.

For those who think that play by mail is dead, yet who wonder why, shouldn't we explore all kinds of possibilities that may have contributed to the PBM industry's current state?

[Ramblurr]

But, automation also comes at a price. Automation is not an all-positive approach to running PBM games.

Just gonna single out that quote before heading to bed. I don't think anyone would disagree with that assessment, however, as we have seen stated, pure hand moderation (the opposite of automation) is not an all-positive approach either when you're running a non-trivially sized game.

I think the main issue comes down to money. Today, people won't pay like they used to. Automation brings efficiency which reduces the GM's time investment, which allows more people to play at the cost of 'the magic'. It is a tradeoff or a spectrum, not a binary choice.

[Victory]

But, automation also comes at a price. Automation is not an all-positive approach to running PBM games.

Just gonna single out that quote before heading to bed. I don't think anyone would disagree with that assessment, however, as we have seen stated, pure hand moderation (the opposite of automation) is not an all-positive approach either when you're running a non-trivially sized game.

I think the main issue comes down to money. Today, people won't pay like they used to. Automation brings efficiency which reduces the GM's time investment, which allows more people to play at the cost of 'the magic'. It is a tradeoff or a spectrum, not a binary choice.

I agree. Even back in the day when SuperNova was cranking out turns (and I was very good at processing turns with some flavor at a good rate per hour) the owners of the company were working 60 hour weeks (ten hour days for six days each week) and we still weren't rolling in money. We couldn't charge more for a turn since we were already one of the pricier games around, but we also couldn't stop spinning the wheels since all our time was spent cranking out turns to pay the rent/computers/paper/postage/taxes/advertising/etc.

You work ten hour days six days a week for years and the creative spark is tough to keep. Keeping track of what hundreds of players did on their last turn gets tougher and tougher.

We turned to a modified system where special actions were no longer hand moderated, but each unique find on a planet had options A, B, C, D to choose from. Those then were recorded and had a tree of options that continued on for the player to explore (I believe that is still the SN:ROTE system).

Going away from the hand moderated special action replies cost us some players, but gained us back enough time to work on another game. Without that change we would never have enough hours in the day to create something new and original and would be stuck just maintaining an old game that didn't ever change much.

Hiring <good> new GMs didn't help since paying them was pretty much a break even proposition and our company just churned more money and our games were larger with more players, but none of the owners were making any more money. Since we couldn't skim enough margin off these additional GMs and still pay them a reasonable salary they could live on the owners were still stuck on the treadmill of spending all our time talking on the phone, picking up and sorting mail, etc since the overhead of those things increased as the player base got higher and higher.

Without automation none of us would get off the hamster wheel of working sixty hours per week to make less money than we could make in a "normal" job doing 40 hours a week. Once one of the owners wanted a family, got married and had a kid his viewpoint changed dramatically which had an equally dramatic impact on the future of the company once his time commitment necessarily had to change.

Hand moderated PBM can only work for small games and probably only for a hobby style GM. And those are dangerous once that hobby becomes slightly less popular than some other hobby that person finds and the game ends with a fizzle.

Automation is about the only way in today's entertainment climate that a company can make a livable wage for someone doing this full time IMHO. It isn't the best option, but it is probably the only option.

[GrimFinger]

Just gonna single out that quote before heading to bed. I don't think anyone would disagree with that assessment, however, as we have seen stated, pure hand moderation (the opposite of automation) is not an all-positive approach either when you're running a non-trivially sized game.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who designed and ran a small scale play by mail game years ago, I can certainly attest to pure hand moderation, and even computer-assisted hand moderation, not being an all-positive approach to running a play by mail game.

The issue of non-trivially sized game raises other issues. If you want quality, at what point does the number of players impact quality negatively? Probably not at the same rate, for all PBM games, but also likely, I think, is that sheer numbers can, and often did, impact large scale, non-trivially sized PBM games, back in the day.

Do you know what discussing this aspect of PBM reminds me of? A lot of complaints that I have read over time in web hosting forums about web hosting companies who try to pack too many web hosting clients onto the same server, and how performance and quality of service are degraded.

I think the main issue comes down to money. Today, people won't pay like they used to. Automation brings efficiency which reduces the GM's time investment, which allows more people to play at the cost of 'the magic'. It is a tradeoff or a spectrum, not a binary choice.

I think that people have more money now, by and large, even with the current economy considered, compared to the heyday of play by mail gaming. I think that people will always spend money on entertainment, if they have money to spend. I don't see a lot of print advertising by PBM companies, these days. I got my start playing Hyborian War, after seeing an ad on the back of a black and white Savage Sword of Conan magazine (or was it Conan Saga).

Postage is the primary drawback, I think, to the postal medium as a medium for gaming. For the end consumer - the player, it boils down, I think, not to a paper entertainment product being incapable of possessing value sufficient to enable them to justify in their mind that it is worth the purchase price, but to whether what is offered is worth what is asked. For many, perhaps most, if they tried play by mail, today, it would be a newfangled product, to them. Technology, itself, is not a barrier to a PBM revival. If anything, technology available now could facilitate such.

[vanollefen]

Money is an interesting thing when it comes to gaming. I spent a fair amount of money on PBM, usually was in 2 or 3 games of Starweb, 1 or 2 Illuminati, and a couple other random games at any time. Throw in long distance charges, and it added up. Flew out to Arizona for Flying Buffalo conventions for several years. PBM was a blast. I got as big a thrill getting that game turn in the mail as i did opening it and finding out my carefully conceived plan worked (mostly).

I spent a lot of time over the last year playing an online "free" game, enjoyed it, tried a couple others, but found out a couple of common problems - people willing to pay for extras dominated, and the amount of time required to be competitive (and I am by nature) was very high.

I can't bring myself to pay for a subscription game like Eve yet - not sure why. Part of the reason, I think, is I think of the owners as businesses rather than gamers. Corporations rather than people.

As a moderator, money was a factor, but more of a justification. Running Flying Dutchman Games let me buy new computers, a laser printer (over $2,000 - times change), go to conventions, and paid for my gaming habit. I think in my best year I made around $10,000. The two years I ran PBMCon, I lost money both years but had so much fun it was easily worth the time and money. I had a guy from England (I think he was part of Madhouse games) show up (in Chicago), and I don't know who was more surprised - me because he came so far, or him because I figured anyone who came that far for PBM should get into the convention and play everything for free.

Enough rambling for now. Have fun everyone

[Victory]

As a moderator, money was a factor, but more of a justification. Running Flying Dutchman Games let me buy new computers, a laser printer (over $2,000 - times change), go to conventions, and paid for my gaming habit. I think in my best year I made around $10,000.

RTG was a full time business for all of us and was our total income. For much of the time I was there we would make that much in a couple weeks, but the catch was expenses were so high that profit was very small (since we had a staff of three owners, two principal employees and 4-5 other GMs).

Our style of games required a critical mass of players. SuperNova regions had a minimum of 150 players (I think) to start a game. Victory had a game setup processed at exactly 40 players, etc. To be an epic space conquest game you needed to have a lot of people to form alliances, bump into each other, etc. If the game was to live for years and years it required a lot of people to start with (since few wanted to join if they are years behind the original players in technology).

Our plan of paying additional GMs and getting a little profit from each additional region just never really paid off. The added equipment, sorting mail, paying GMs, dealing with phone calls, paper costs, etc always ate into the profits enough that we could never stockpile enough money to get off the treadmill. Once we started automating and licensing games we managed to see a little daylight and could begin getting time to develop for the future.

Well, my real job has kicked back in so I will probably drop off on my posts here. It was good to talk with you and I liked the timing of bumping into Rich as well. I think I only saw you once briefly at a convention, but I also remember the ads for Flying Dutchman games. It was a fun time back then.