New troll on board

[Rick McDowell]

Now maybe I am just really asking to be convinced... or to be introduced to these free/cheap games I did not notice but are as good as the others!

Looking forward, I find it hard to believe that in this day and age, even for such a niche hobby, someone did not think about another way of generating revenue. There is so much creativity in all these free games found in Facebook or mobile platforms, or even these large scale free MMOs. I mean, if Flappy Bird could generate $50000 in ad revenue per day, why couldn't we imagine a sufficiently well designed PBM able to generate even a very small fraction of that (but for a longer time)?

Just my 2 cents.

Of course, PBEM is not competing with Angry Birds, or even WoW for that matter. Those games are for the massive instant gratification crowd that want to jump in and start clicking stuff immediately and see the pixels move.

I'd say players of Sid Meier's Civilization, other PC turn based strategy or the old board games a bit more complicated than Risk (maybe Axis & Allies, Shogun, Diplomacy, Avalon Hill games) are probably the mentalities better suited to PBEM.

Thanks for the kudos on Alamaze, and pricing is now much more affordable. We offer a monthly subscription for $19.95 that provides for six or seven turns a month (depending on the calendar). Players may spend about 3 hours a turn actually committing to their orders on a given turn and possibly conducting diplomacy, and more than double that considering all the possibilities for the current situation and planning ahead. So in that case, a player might be spending about $0.50 an hour to enjoy a deep, rewarding strategy game with 14 other intelligent adults.

Service is at the highest level, we believe, for this kind of game that does involve professional moderation. For example, turns are due at noon Eastern US, and players can expect to have them back in their hands by about 2pm Eastern the same day.

We invite you to visit the Alamaze forum where you'll find about 10,000 posts made in the last several months, and our website where you can find the map, rules, sample turns, and of course, can sign up.

Visit www.Alamaze.co (not .com) to see for yourself.