Re: PBM report

From: madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)

Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000

>>a little like what you did for DungeonWorld. I know
that you've established a strong player base for it, so we may try and
emulate you a little in it.<<

Yes, big playtests are a great way to kick off a game, particularly an
open-ended one.

>> Giving away more or less free positions for the length of the playtest would
allow us to get access to the same kind of
feedback open source software gets without opening up the code as open
source.<<

I never give away free positions in a playtest.  All our players pay to
playtest (at a lower rate).  I would advise you to do the same, although it
might be harder for you to get paying players without the previous games to
offer as recommendations.  The whole 'paying to playtest' thing has been
debated here a million times.  Our policy is to charge for big, exciting
playtests, and we always fill (and overfill) them in very short order, so the
players are obviously more than happy with this too.

>> As much as I love and use open-source software I still perceive a
need for proprietary software, especially in niche markets like PBM where
commercial games take a lot of time and effort to develop and there should
be recompense for it.<<

I certainly agree.  I've never released any pBM code and I never plan to.  Its
not the code thats valuable, so much as some of the ideas inside that code.

>>And I appreciate any suggestions I get from someone who is running a company
that not only spits out new games every time I blink, but manages to have
great player retention, so feel free to "suggest". <<

What I suggest is that next time you are in the UK you pop in to us.  I'll show
you what the system we have *does* and that might help you avoid various
pitfalls that new games run into.

>>IIRC you guys use Macs don't you ? Just wondering if you've looked at OS X
and the new developer tools that are coming out for it ?<<

We use Macs for the most part, but we dont ignore PCs. OS X, yes we've looked,
and it looks exciting.  But as with any new Mac system I'll wait and see.  Macs
are nice machines, but they have a habit of messing up on new systems.

>> Madhouse are pretty
prolific right now, but the tools seem to be something that would allow you
to be even more so, and do some really cool things in the future.<<

We are already moving into new areas for the future.  We have an 'Everquest'
type game at the design stage, with some very new ideas about multiplayer
online games that haven't been tried before.

If anything, we have more experience of how to keep long-term players happy
that the Ultima or Everquest guys do, they just have bigger budgets for
graphics and sound.  (For instance, we dont have a PK problem in DW, and theres
no rules against it... how many of the online games can say *that*.)  Thats
something we are tackling right now.  We also have some other projects that are
boiling under, not to mention 'Destiny' (our space opera) that may, or may not,
be out by the end of the year (depending on how much my brain melts before
then.)

Steve T.

References

Re: PBM report
"MindShift Design" <teammsd@mindshiftdesign.com>
Sat, 14 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Re: PBM report
"MindShift Design" <teammsd@mindshiftdesign.com>
Sat, 14 Oct 2000 00:00:00 +0000