[split] Splitting Galac-Tac discussion into new thread

[Davin]

Even when Jon Capps ran the game, back in the early 1980s, it never really clicked with the crowd (back then, of course, there *was* a crowd), and I'm curious why you've resurrected this game, along with such other not-so-well-known properties as Wasteland and Jim Graham's old Manifest Destiny (few turns of which ever ran, unless I misremember)? Do you think there's a market for these games today?

I'm certainly pleased that there are some of you still around that remember these games from the old days!

Back in the 80's Galac-Tac had enough players and games to keep us fairly busy, but you're right - it certainly wasn't a flood.  I like to think that some of the interest back in the earliest days was due to the color-printed turns and color-plotted hex maps every turn, which were almost unheard of that far back.  But the high mailing costs of large empires tended to keep the turn costs relatively high for those days so it was one of the more expensive games to play.  And if your empire gets hurt too badly to be likely to win, that can certainly make high costs less rewarding.  I think that expense accounted for much of the lower-than-expected interest.  But by putting it on the web I can take the postage and per-turn costs out of the equation and let everyone play the same old game for a trivial monetary investment.  I'm hoping that in itself can help renew interest.

Actually, our friends kept playing Galac-Tac with one another over the years because it was so much fun.  It really only disappeared from public view for lack of a PBM market when all the new console and computer games came out.  Now I'm hoping that many players, new and old alike, will find it fun once again when they go looking for PBM-style entertainment.  It wasn't too difficult to bring over to the web so it wasn't much of an investment to get it going again.

As for the other old games, I don't know whether those will end up being usable or not.  They may require some substantial reworking to make more sense today, but I'm keeping my options open there.  At the moment we're putting what development time we have into bringing Midgard back to life, but it takes a ton of work and we don't get as much time to spend on it as we'd like.  But there are still a number of old Midgard players out there, anxious to see a revival.  After Midgard, I'd really like to tackle Gateway - an original design that Jon and I put together back in the late 80's or thereabouts.  I think that game still has promise for today's PBM-style market.