PBM as it was, lost its customers because they decided they could get more of what had attracted them to PBM, elsewhere. We can talk about the joy of anticipation, but to me thats making a virtue of a handicap. Back when I was a player, I had carefully arranged my turn submissions so that I received one every day. Usually that meant going home for lunch, filling out the turn sheet and mailing it at the Post Office on the same day so I could get it back 7 days later. (The minute Reagan ended Sunday hours at the Post Office, 7 day turnaround was a dead duck.) Most PBM players I knew ran multiple turns each week either in the same game, or in more than one so they could work around the interminable wait between turn and return.
Muds grew in popularity during the same time that PBMs were fading away, in part because there was no wait and in part because communication between players could happen simultaneously, not after the fact. Social games like Second Life have gone a step further down the road of community, while MMORPGs started out being called "graphical MUDs and were also the logical outgrowth of the text-based games that were first available on GEnie and AOL.
All of these formats took advantage of the internet, which is becoming the preferred method of communication for most English-speaking people with enough disposable income and/or time to spend on gaming. Meanwhile very few PBMs had the resources to rethink their entire delivery medium. (I was seduced away after 9 years because my player base was dwindling and there was a lot more money to be made writing software for businesses, especially as 2K approached.)
To me, Play by Mail wasn't about waiting 7 - 10 days to get a turn back, it wasn't about having gigantic phone-bills talking with my allies, and while it certainly was about cranking out a newsletter for my alliance, most of what was in it was way out of date by the time it reached its readers (all 12 of them.)
It was about role-playing - notice how much role-playing you and Ix are doing with a game that really doesn't offer that much support for it. It was about working out strategies to accomplish goals that either I created for myself and with my friends or that the game created for me or us - i.e. it was about winning.
These days, I pay my bills on line, I buy most non foodstuffs/clothing on-line, I read entire books on line, and watch movies on line. I WM two non-gaming community websites and participate in three or four more regularly. Almost all of my personal communication with family and friends is by email. Hell, I file my taxes on line. I cannot imagine a circumstance whereby I would want to play by mail when I don't even pay by mail anymore.
What PBMs that survived the avalanche of internet gaming did so by, at the least, becoming primarily PBeM, and or becoming PBW like BSE-Phoenix. I don't see that becoming less true as the price of mailing continues to soar, the postal service continues to slow down, and the ubiquity of the internet and internet communication becomes greater. 25 years ago, I suspect that you would have started a magazine like David Webber or Nicky Palmer did. Instead you started a website and are extremely interested in its search engine rankings, because you know that the Internet is the way people communicate these days.
If the concept of PBM is to make a comeback - and I sure hope it does - it will be because new designers utilize today's technology to offer gamers what appealed to gamers about PBM 25 years ago. What those games will look like may be very different. How players interact with the game and the other gamers will be different in method, but similar in content. But the fun and excitement will be pretty much what it used to be. . . I hope.
Muds grew in popularity during the same time that PBMs were fading away, in part because there was no wait and in part because communication between players could happen simultaneously, not after the fact. Social games like Second Life have gone a step further down the road of community, while MMORPGs started out being called "graphical MUDs and were also the logical outgrowth of the text-based games that were first available on GEnie and AOL.
All of these formats took advantage of the internet, which is becoming the preferred method of communication for most English-speaking people with enough disposable income and/or time to spend on gaming. Meanwhile very few PBMs had the resources to rethink their entire delivery medium. (I was seduced away after 9 years because my player base was dwindling and there was a lot more money to be made writing software for businesses, especially as 2K approached.)
To me, Play by Mail wasn't about waiting 7 - 10 days to get a turn back, it wasn't about having gigantic phone-bills talking with my allies, and while it certainly was about cranking out a newsletter for my alliance, most of what was in it was way out of date by the time it reached its readers (all 12 of them.)
It was about role-playing - notice how much role-playing you and Ix are doing with a game that really doesn't offer that much support for it. It was about working out strategies to accomplish goals that either I created for myself and with my friends or that the game created for me or us - i.e. it was about winning.
These days, I pay my bills on line, I buy most non foodstuffs/clothing on-line, I read entire books on line, and watch movies on line. I WM two non-gaming community websites and participate in three or four more regularly. Almost all of my personal communication with family and friends is by email. Hell, I file my taxes on line. I cannot imagine a circumstance whereby I would want to play by mail when I don't even pay by mail anymore.
What PBMs that survived the avalanche of internet gaming did so by, at the least, becoming primarily PBeM, and or becoming PBW like BSE-Phoenix. I don't see that becoming less true as the price of mailing continues to soar, the postal service continues to slow down, and the ubiquity of the internet and internet communication becomes greater. 25 years ago, I suspect that you would have started a magazine like David Webber or Nicky Palmer did. Instead you started a website and are extremely interested in its search engine rankings, because you know that the Internet is the way people communicate these days.
If the concept of PBM is to make a comeback - and I sure hope it does - it will be because new designers utilize today's technology to offer gamers what appealed to gamers about PBM 25 years ago. What those games will look like may be very different. How players interact with the game and the other gamers will be different in method, but similar in content. But the fun and excitement will be pretty much what it used to be. . . I hope.