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- updated and expanded interview with the two gents behind Cluster Wars
- gamelogs starting for tribenet and galac-tac
- fun limited-scope space trading game for forum posters
- my column in S&D
- a mini-zine companion/insert to complement S&D, scoping out to more "slow gaming" concepts...
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"Slow gaming"? I don't think that's a winning slogan.
Episodic Gaming. That's it. Bob McClain could tell you.
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I was thinking of using a tagline like "gaming at the speed of thought". I agree that the term "slow gaming" is problematic. Episodic gaming doesn't entirely cover it either, though, because I'm trying to extend the scope to certain other high-involvement game experiences. Maybe "high-intensity gaming"? "power-gaming"? "deliberate gaming"? "progressive gaming" or "prog gaming"?
This last would be inspired by "prog rock" -- that difficult listening music that blossomed in the 70s and then seemingly died off. Except it didn't. There is an active prog scene that produces new albums every year and that ensures live shows of old stalwart prog-rockers like Kansas are sold out every time. (Even though they're of retirement age, they keep on touring and have a new album coming out I saw them 2x in the past 2 years...)
Proactive-Reflective Organized Gameplay. P.R.O.G. I might have to use this...
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The term "episodic gaming" sucks. And who's this Bob Mc"C"lain?
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Hey...
I just went to episodicstrategygames.com, and it took me to Rick Skrenta's old PBM site.
What are you trying to pull, McCDowell?
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Slow Motion Games. I haven't thought about them in a long time.
Sometime in the 1990s, Adventures by Mail sold the U.S. rights for Beyond the Stellar Empire (BSE) to former Schubel & Son gamemasters Pete Dorman and Russ Norris of Rolling Thunder Games, and then in 2000 Rolling Thunder sold the rights to Slow Motion Games, run at the time by Neil Bradley, who as I recall was a BSE (and probably a Schubel & Son) player in the 1980s. I think he was in the navy then, stationed somewhere or other.
I don't believe Neil ever got BSE operational - or if he did, it was on a minimal scale - and I haven't heard anything from him since 2002.
Another fascinating jaunt through time and space for all you old-timers out there...
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Ixnay,
I was teasing Bob a bit about Episodic Gaming. We had a group, a forum if you will, back ten years or so ago trying to update the moniker of "play by mail" for those of us progressives that were not providing turns by mail. Bob was fervently opposed to the idea. Just myself and the head of a company doing a state-of-the-art space game (I forget the name, but complete GUI and stunning graphics: I think they ran out of money) were in favor, and we never came anywhere near a consensus. The group fell apart. I've sort of given up on the idea as so many players are so sentimentally attached to "PBM", its not worth the effort. One of those "choose your battles" kind of thing.
I would guess 90% of our players are old PBM'ers, but we do have some bright college age kids that are rabid for Alamaze - playing 10 or more games at a time. I'm sure they have no idea why the genre is called play by mail.
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I remember! That guy doing the space game was Larry Dunlap, I think. Or maybe not. Don't take my word for it. I didn't even remember the forum.
I've now come around to the belief that "play-by-mail" sucks as much as "episodic gaming". I do have sentimental ties to "play-by-mail", and they got in the way of the harsh reality that it's a piss-poor way to describe games to people in this digital age.
College kids are playing 10 or more games of Alamaze at once? I'd hate to see their grades...
