What's wrong with current BBGs?

[Cortrah]

If PBM want to convert successfully to the on-line media I think it can do far worse than look to games like Farmville or Mafia Wars. Yes we all agree they are repetitive, shallow and maybe even boring however they have got right far more than any PBM todate regarding success online. What is so wrong with getting a simple basic PBM game working online successfully and using it's model and platform as a base to increase depth and complexity?

First this is an excellent conversation and I'd like to thank you all for it.

While I agree with what Gads is saying here in principle, I wonder if the solution is really to go another route.

I am basing my response on a specific experience playing "Lords of Ultima" a friend showed me this game a while back and during a lull I tried it out. It had a lot going for it, nice graphics, a nice little soundtack in the background, some strategic complexity. It was definitely sticky. It's definitely successful. But as a player I felt like a patch of mold growing.

I think this particular game suffered from some common problems, that though a good formula for success, made it no fun.

A) the whole "grow your virtual tamagachi" thing got old after a while because the design was so focused on keeping you constantly engaged for short term gains. The effort, while easy, was continual. My time is worth more than that.

B) I played for a week or two but never even managed to get into a real fight because the design really didn't give you much incentive for fighting with others ? It was much more rewarding to raid a dungeon rather than another player. This probably helps the success of the game, but kept it from being fun in my mind. I want to play with human allies against human opponents who are trying to win.

C) Because it was free it meant that there were a ton of folk out there that really weren't even interested in playing the game. They were playing "Web Forum" it was like gathering all the folk who don't consider their time to be worth anything together to talk about whatever. While your patch of mold grows in the background.

D) Finally the kicker, if you ever got into a fight, the arms war mechanic from "Magic the Gathering" was there to pit your wallet against your opponent's. So the idea is clearly to get everyone to be precious with their free game and then get them to pay a bunch for it at the end. Really the worst case scenario.

It reminded me of public free concerts. Sure they can be free, but they can also be so mobbed and standing room only with folk that are really there for the beer and fried food that if you really want to see the band you'd do better to buy a ticket and get a seat in a nice theater with good sound.

This game was like enduring the atmosphere of a free public concert but if the band were to every starts playing you would have to pay a lot of money to hear then anyway.

I think the key strengths of the PBM style is that it's turn based so that you can play when you have time, that it's players against players - not killing 100 giant frogs to get to the next level - and that the game moves at a pace that allows the players who are interested to write up stories.

Whether it's browser based or not, good UI or not, difficult to learn or not. Those are the aspects that call out to me. I'd rather pay money and have my time respected, than play MMO's like WOW or Lords of Ultima.

I think Ilkor sounds pretty exciting, but what I think will really make it fun is if it attracts a lot of folk who do blogs on their character's adventures like the space faring stories you guys were putting up.

The more you can even require roleplaying the better, though I don't have any ideas offhand on how you could do so.