Barriers and Obstacles: Into the Breach of a New Era in Play-By-Mail Gaming

[GrimFinger]

Ooh! I was wondering when this discussion would come up here on the forums.

Actually, the article that I posted that started this thread was originally posted on this site last year. So, you're a bit behind the times, Ramblurr. Prior to that, back when I had set the Flagship magazine website up with a forum that was working and had finally started gaining some degree of posting activity, this issue was discussed there, we well. That was before that iteration of Flagship's forum imploded.

Examples of failed transitions to the web from the traditional monetization model abound in the entertainment/media industry:

• Music industry - 10 years ago you bought albums, today people buy singles. This required a shift in their model. All songs are no longer equal.

The music industry shot its own self in the foot - time and time and time, again. The whole mass lawsuits episode was a public relations disaster, calamity, and nightmare of the first magnitude. Trying to sue their way out of their own archaic existence, to try and reestablish their discredited model of bringing music to the masses, never had any chance of winning the music war for them.

In the past, people loved the 45s (the record type). They also loved those one song on each side cassette tapes.

For all of the music industry's doom and gloom about pirated music being downloaded and traded for free online, I certainly recall going to local flea markets as a kid, and there were plenty of pirated 8-track tapes for sell, there.

Once they started suing people en masse, I made a point of not buying music - for several years. The music industry had a shitty model that it continually foisted upon the public. The public will buy music. It has always bought music. It will always buy music. Give the public a clumsy, clunky interface to obtain that music, and combine it with an obsolete business model that offers them music packaged, not the way that they want it, but in a way that they don't want it, and you set the stage for mass revolt in the Digital Age. The music industry banked its future on heavy-handed legal tactics, and many would download music for free, just to spite them. Technological advancement brought with it cultural change, and the music industry wanted to preserve its Neanderthal culture. So, it paid the price, it's still paying the price, and both technology and culture will simply create new music industries to replace the dinosaurs that refuse to get their shit together.

Newspapers - Perhaps the most like the old PBM. They made the mistake in the web's infancy of giving news away for free online, and now they realize that was a huge mistake.

For a long while, I used to read the free news offered by The New York Times. Now, I no longer even bother visiting their site. Their new paid model is doomed. They should fire whomever came up with the idea for it.

The New York Times was certainly well-positioned to establish itself as a premier source of news and information to a humongous online audience. Instead of focusing upon making itself increasingly relevant to a changing culture, they opted instead to focus upon preserving the status quo. There is much irony in the fact that The New York Times, an entity which reports on the world, refuses to enter the whole new world that we now live in. The New York Times is doomed to learn the hard way, apparently, that their competitors (both current and future) will ultimately fill the void that The New York Times is carving out for itself to fall through.