[quote='GrimFinger' pid='244' dateline='1300383250']
Sorry to hear about Thad's passing. Maybe your mentioning of him will stir some memories of other PBM players, at various points in the future, assuming that this site survives for a bit.
I tried Phoenix a while back, but just never got into the game. I noticed a couple of days ago that Bob Bost (a name that will likely ring a bell with you, Terry) had recently resigned from his faction in Phoenix (which is run by KJC Games). I wrote him, and asked if he would submit to an e-mail interview, and he agreed to do so. I will try to come up with a list of questions for him, before the weekend is over.
You said that you programmed Victory! Did you program it solo, by yourself? How long did it take you, from start to completion?
From your perspective, who were Rolling Thunder Games' biggest competitors, back then? Any thoughts on what some of your thoughts are on some of the best or worst PBM games, that you encountered? Also, any recollections on new PBM companies that entered the arena, after you became involved, and what kind of a splash that they each respectively made, and how they were perceived by the PBM player community at large??
[/quote]
I remember Bost. He was a big money player. Man, so many people I haven't thought of in so long.
I programmed Victory completely by myself. I can't really think how long it took from start to completion since it always had something that had to be done. To get it off the ground probably took 7-8 months of coding after a few months of designing and then we announced the release for financial reasons. During the coding process we always had back and forths about design issues as well so the coding would briefly stop while those topics were hammered out.
I still hadn't written the combat routines when we announced the release, but the rest of the game was finished. Since players could not attack anyone for the first two turns (to prevent attacks before players had gotten alliances formed, setups returned, defenses built, etc) that gained me four weeks to finish up the ground and air attack routines. Plus, the time after the announcement to the first game filling (forty players per game) was a couple weeks.
I think ship combat (by FAR the most complicated routines) got finished two weeks after that (in a miracle no enemy ships spotted each other for that one turn even if they could have been at war -- :) ). After that time was spent making player entry programs, GM moderation utilities (being able to inspect or change the database), printing to text files rather than dot matrix printouts, etc. Plus, by then I was back to daily work stuff as part of my day to keep the company running and never really got full days to code again until early work on SuperNova Rise of The Empire started up again in 1996 or so.
I think Rolling Thunder's biggest competitors back then are difficult to tell. Midnight Games had the same type of client base as we did, but we were friendly with them and even played in their games at the time. Other companies were large (GSI, ABM, RSI, FBI, etc) but they didn't fight for the same type of customers we did. A game like It's a Crime or Duelmasters attracts a different person than SuperNova does for the most part.
I think Russ was more interested in the competitors aspect of the business than I was. He and Pete had more experience in the industry and I was still under the impression that the problem was more growing the industry than fighting to keep a customer away from a competitor. I'm still not sure which is right, but at the time I was under the impression that exposure was the most important thing and the quality of our games would retain customers.
It is also difficult to tell the best/worst games. The worst are easy I guess -- there were always companies that started up with the best of intentions and folded up shop when things got difficult and kept their customer's money. Those things just hurt the niche and turned away so many potential lifetime players in one single bad first time experience. Any company that stayed around for a while or refunded their accounts can't be said to have had a bad game IMHO, even if I didn't particularly like playing their product.
The best games are tough. It just really depends on what you are looking for in a game. I liked playing the grand epic games so I leaned towards Legends, StarMaster, etc that had hundreds of players in any given region. Some games are run like clockwork though and ones like StarWeb have a lot going for it in this area -- very professional and balanced. Others broke barriers in the industry -- GSI getting LOTR license in a niche industry and doing massive advertising in mainstream publications like Dragon magazine, games like The Next Empire and Monster Island bringing in laser printed turn results rather than dot matrix, Legends getting a relatively full featured player turn editor program, etc. I remember when RTG set up our bulletin board system and upgraded our modem from 300 baud to 1200 baud and players flocked to it with long distance phone calls to download/pickup their turns rather than using the postal service.
Many of the best games IMHO also just couldn't scale well. The ones that were a labor of love had a great intensity for a time, but eventually that GM would burn out/financial difficulties or something and be unable to continue. In hindsight it seems inevitable that hand moderated games were fated to only be a hobby that burned brightly but then would fade.
Some companies in the industry that popped up are still around. I'm not sure when Madhouse started, but it is great to see they are still moving along. I wasn't that familiar with overseas companies outside of the ones I had to deal with for licensing issues. At the time playing overseas was just too restrictive in time and postage costs.
I had to write some software that kept track of how many turns were processed by our licensees since there was always a bad apple who didn't want to pay the correct fee or in some cases said they already had the software and wouldn't be paying. Luckily we had put in some checks into the main program so that it shut down and that usually got us the correct royalty checks on time in the future.