07-01-2012, 01:45 PM
Some context...
I wrote that article in 1993 for Steve Jackson's brand-new Pyramid magazine. For that issue, Steve had asked "some of the industry's leading players" to forecast the future of their particular gaming niche. For reasons known only to himself, Steve chose me for play-by-mail.
(Interesting aside: one of the other "leading players" was Loyd Blankenship, once a top-tier member of the hacker group "Legion of Doom". Loyd was arrested for his hacking activities - remember, this was back in the 1980s, when many people weren't even aware of personal computer let alone hacking - and Steve decided to help in Loyd's "rehabilitation" by hiring him to write GURPS: Cyberpunk. One smart guy, that Steve Jackson.)
So I wrote the article. Its title gives away my thesis: "Play-by-Mail: The Infancy of Cyberspace".
In 1993, play-by-mail was still a healthy little cottage industry, with many thousands of active players worldwide. Predictions of its demise were common. Way back in 1984, when Steve Jackson was a paid columnist for my old magazine, Gaming Universal, he wrote: ""Play-by-mail is about as big right now as it ever will be; what's more, it will be nearly extinct in five years . . . and none of us will even care." His premise was correct, though his timeline a bit off.
I updated Steve's forecast in my Pyramid article: "If I may make a prediction: play-by-mail, through the U.S. postal service, will be nearly extinct in another five years . . . and, more than likely, none of us will even care - because the people who like PBMs will have something more."
The "something more", of course, is the Internet, and in particular, on-line games. In 1993, on-line gaming was indeed in its "infancy", and relatively few people had access to the web or email (and of those who did, it was typically through an expensive dial-up service like CompuServe or AOL).
I got quite a bit of negative feedback about that article from many of the small to mid-size play-by-mail moderators. They're all out of business now.
I closed with this:
"As a society, we're learning to do without the postal system, either through its real-world circumvention (FedEx, for example) or moving towards a digital medium. As Scientific American said recently, junk mail is the only thing keeping the post office in business. The move towards a paperless world will not happen overnight or completely, but in coming years we will deal with our fellow humans more and more from between computer screens . . . or more accurately, in a small corner of the Net where our lustier, craftier, mightier selves will meet for epic adventures - and no one will ever need to lick a stamp again."
I haven't licked a stamp in... years.
http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=363
I wrote that article in 1993 for Steve Jackson's brand-new Pyramid magazine. For that issue, Steve had asked "some of the industry's leading players" to forecast the future of their particular gaming niche. For reasons known only to himself, Steve chose me for play-by-mail.
(Interesting aside: one of the other "leading players" was Loyd Blankenship, once a top-tier member of the hacker group "Legion of Doom". Loyd was arrested for his hacking activities - remember, this was back in the 1980s, when many people weren't even aware of personal computer let alone hacking - and Steve decided to help in Loyd's "rehabilitation" by hiring him to write GURPS: Cyberpunk. One smart guy, that Steve Jackson.)
So I wrote the article. Its title gives away my thesis: "Play-by-Mail: The Infancy of Cyberspace".
In 1993, play-by-mail was still a healthy little cottage industry, with many thousands of active players worldwide. Predictions of its demise were common. Way back in 1984, when Steve Jackson was a paid columnist for my old magazine, Gaming Universal, he wrote: ""Play-by-mail is about as big right now as it ever will be; what's more, it will be nearly extinct in five years . . . and none of us will even care." His premise was correct, though his timeline a bit off.
I updated Steve's forecast in my Pyramid article: "If I may make a prediction: play-by-mail, through the U.S. postal service, will be nearly extinct in another five years . . . and, more than likely, none of us will even care - because the people who like PBMs will have something more."
The "something more", of course, is the Internet, and in particular, on-line games. In 1993, on-line gaming was indeed in its "infancy", and relatively few people had access to the web or email (and of those who did, it was typically through an expensive dial-up service like CompuServe or AOL).
I got quite a bit of negative feedback about that article from many of the small to mid-size play-by-mail moderators. They're all out of business now.
I closed with this:
"As a society, we're learning to do without the postal system, either through its real-world circumvention (FedEx, for example) or moving towards a digital medium. As Scientific American said recently, junk mail is the only thing keeping the post office in business. The move towards a paperless world will not happen overnight or completely, but in coming years we will deal with our fellow humans more and more from between computer screens . . . or more accurately, in a small corner of the Net where our lustier, craftier, mightier selves will meet for epic adventures - and no one will ever need to lick a stamp again."
I haven't licked a stamp in... years.
http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=363