Re: Removing personality from Diplomacy?

From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)

Date: Sat, 19 Feb 1994 04:47:00 +0000

In article <2k2ihcINN3e8@hoss.summit.novell.com>,
Rich Skrenta <skrenta@summit.novell.com> wrote:

>Forgive my ignorance, but I just don't see the appeal of anonymous PBM.

Ignoring for a moment the popularity of gunboat email diplomacy, then
the quite successful anonymous PBM game I was in was appealing because
it was a game among a group of players that was holding a lot of
grudges, and the anonymous nature of the game meant that everyone
didn't gang up on me. I thought it was a great success... I won :-)

>I thought the whole point was being in a game with lots of interesting
>people, working out cool negotiations with them, roleplaying your
>characters, etc.

It can be even more interesting when you have to concentrate on what
they're saying instead of some notion of who you think they are. They
may play completely differently in an anonymous game. After all, if I
run into Scott Turner in any PBM game in the future, I'm going to make
a lot of assumptions about how he's playing. They may not be true.

>Could the failure of anonymous commercial games mean that they're
>just not as fun or interesting?

Or is it just because communication is slow and expensive? Gunboat
diplomacy is not a failure.

References

Re: Removing personality from Diplomacy?
keith@cco.caltech.edu (Keith Schneider)
Fri, 18 Feb 1994 05:48:29 +0000
Re: Removing personality from Diplomacy?
skrenta@summit.novell.com (Rich Skrenta)
Fri, 18 Feb 1994 14:15:08 +0000