MEPBM:Bill Field Speaks From: swater@esd.sgi.com (Adam Waters) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 16:59:06 +0000 Hey everyone, I wrote GSI some e-mail yesterday asking them about their plans for the future. Specifically I asked about what they were doing to take advantage of the growth in information technology. I criticized them for not being flexible enough in terms of game variation. The games get stale I said. I also asked why we can't do our own data-entry via telnet yet, and why we can't get digital turnsheets instead of hardcopy always. Bill Field wrote back the very next morning with his response. I was impressed he wrote back so rapidly. His text follows. I encourage anyone to comment on my criticisms(I wish I'd cc'd myself on the letter!) or on Bill's response, or on GSI in general. I'm curious to see how people feel. Thanks! Adam Waters ****************************************************************************** 11/15/94 Dear Adam, Thanks for your questions and concerns regarding the services that GSI offers. We certainly are glad to expound on some of the projects and services that are being planned. One of the concerns of any small business is how much effort to put into "game research" and how much to allocate in the direction of daily operations, business growth, and services expansion. There are only limited resources and too-much emphasis on one or the other direction could lead to profit problems down the road. The other major concern is how to direct your company's efforts toward the growth of the market place. What is GSI doing in these areas? Well, first of all we have added a number of services in the last year to expedite and ease the player's task of getting turnsheet to GSI. Free and more accessible faxing, email turns, additional and cheaper email access are just a few. Additionally, we have now expanded our databases to include near-automatic Zip+4 encoding for all domestic delivery. We will also be launching our new "Postal Bar Coding" in the very near future in another effort to ensure better delivery of our turns. We also plan to release a new email turn/resultsheet delivery system in the first quarter of '95. This will allow GSI to send a digital file (for fax or email delivery) of our resultsheet, text AND graphics, to any one of at least four possible platforms (Macintosh, DOS, Windows, and Unix-based systems). We could offer such services now, but we are limited to just the Macintosh. We have two different systems under development toward this goal. We do not plan on putting "Whispers" on-line because to never intended to reflect the kind of rapid turn-around player interaction (besides, it could never compete with the forums on CIS and AOL that provide this kind of activity). But, we do have plans to develop an on-line data entry system. However, the nature of our data-entry is such that it still requires some human intervention (in the area of 'riddles'), so this is still some time away. Part of the reason for this is that although the PBEM (Play By EMail) market is steadily growing, the market share is still too small (compared to PBM) to warrant a huge investment of time ($$$) in providing such services. However, we do expect this share to increase and thus we are investing some time toward offering better service to those customers. Postal/Fax delivery is still by far the preferred method of handling turns (even amongst our customers that have computers and access to networks) by most of our players. Of course, we have a number of new gaming projects in both the proposal and design phases. We are not at liberty to discuss these plans, but rest assured that new games will be forthcoming - both in the near and far future. Thanks again for your interest. We hope to continue to provide new and interesting games for many years to come, and better services to better satisfy all our customers. Good gaming! Good Gaming, BY William B Feild Jr Game Systems Inc. ****************************************************************************** -- ---------------------------------------- ~ Adam Waters ~ ~ swater@engr.sgi.com ~ ~ ~ ~ "All's fair in love and core." ~ ---------------------------------------- Referenced By Up