Re: Running a pbm..

From: Geoff Dunbar <gdunbar@prankster.com>

Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 00:00:00 +0000

I'm not sure this is really of interest, but I figure there are
not so many people running pbem games that we are not in danger of
spamming the newsgroup or anything. And besides, people might
be interested in the answers I give.

At Merry Prankster Games, we (me, and my wife for some of the
business details) run Atlantis games; a playtest which I am
still running (but not accepting players) which peaked at 500
players and still has about 200, and Atlantis 3.0, which costs
$1 per week, and has about 180 players.

Halcyon 88 wrote:
>
> Hello!  My teacher is letting me do a school report on this topic.  Can
> anyone answer these questions?
>
> 1) How much do you usually spend on advertising, and where are the best
> places to advertise?

The only advertising we have done is to add our web page to
as many search engines as I could find. I think most of our
players either played the Atlantis 2.0 free playtest, or came
from word of mouth. Free games attract a _lot_ of players,
even some who will pay to play later if the game is any good.

> 2) What is the average amount of turns that a customer plays, i.e., what
> is the turnover rate for players?

Generally pretty low. Once they decide to play, they generally
stick with it. This is not true for free games though; many
people signed up for Atlantis 2.0 and dropped out without
playing a single turn.

> 3) Is there any reference source that you can recommend about starting
> your own pbm?

It is an incredible amount of work; both in creating and
programming your game, and running it. If you are looking
to make money, you are probably better off delivering
newpapers. For me, it is just a hobby that happens to pay
for my computer and my network connection. (Not to imply
that I don't take it seriously; I spend hours each week
running Atlantis games).

If you are just interested in running a game for free,
and not designing or programming it, there are a few games
for which the source code is available; Galaxy seems to be
the most popular, the source for Atlantis 1 is also
available. Both of these are written by Russell Wallace.
Running the game is still a lot of work, and you will have
to have some programming acumen to get them to work and
fix any bugs that come up.

If you have any more questions, feel free to email.

Geoff Dunbar

References

Running a pbm..
halcyon88@aol.com (Halcyon 88)
Wed, 21 Aug 1996 00:00:00 +0000