Computer Moderation: The Bane of the Play By Mail Industry

[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.