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.
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.