Talk:Play-by-mail game

message: Is the last sentence correct -- Does Civilization IV include a PBEM option?  The newest version I own is Civ II Gold, which has an online option, but the communications are port-to-port connections, not e-mail such as SMTP sending and POP receiving.  That would seem to be ridiculously slow and inefficient.  Perhaps an editor is confusing games played specifically by e-mail (such as sending Diplomacy orders to a Judge by formatted e-mail messages) with any game played via the Internet.  Barno 01:54, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Civ 4 PBEM?

message: From the article, I don't really understand how a game like this would work. It would be better with an example or a description of how a typical PBM game round works. ike9898 03:04, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a "Mechanics" section which attempts to explain exactly how these games actually work.  Of course, the problem is that this varies so heavily between each game, so it's very hard to state in general terms how games play out. Nonetheless, hopefully this will help. -- Slordak 13:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article doesn't completely explain the subject to me 

message: I feel I owe you all an apology. I was new to Wikipedia when I posted the external link for AGEMA, and didn't understand why it was removed so posted it again. I now understand and even discovered I'd become involved in what is termed an edit war! (At least I think I was!). I guess like some others I didn't read the guidelines properly in my enthusiasm to join. Then again it still seems like you need a degree to actually post something new without getting it objected to and taken off - reckon I'll leave such stuff to academics with the time to do this! Sorry again to all concerned.
Richard at AGEMA. 
82.20.212.140 (talk) 09:04, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  An apology! 

message: "from Neolithic Enterprises who accepted e-mail turns from all of the major e-mail services including CompuServe in 1983."  Why is "including CompuServe" relevant here? Statalyzer (talk) 07:48, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importance of CompuServe 

message: Putting this unsourced material here for now since I don't want to summarily delete it but I'm not sure how much it adds to the article right now. I'm going to try to overhaul the history section and then I'll revisit it afterward and see how it might fit back in. 
:"The commercial market for play-by-mail games grew to involve computer servers set up to host potentially thousands of players at once.  Players would typically be split up into parallel games in order to keep the number of players per game at a reasonable level, with new games starting as old games ended.  A typical closed game session might involve one to two dozen players, although some games claimed to have as many as five hundred people simultaneously competing in the same game world.  While the central company was responsible for feeding in moves and mailing the processed output back to players, players were also provided with the mailing addresses of others so that direct contact could be made and negotiations performed.  With turns being processed every few weeks (a two-week turnaround being standard), more advanced games could last over a year.
:Game themes are heavily varied, and may range from those based on historical or real events to those taking place in alternate or fictional worlds.
:One of the most successful and longest running PBM games is TribeNet, a strategy game with themes of exploration, trade and warfare.  TribeNet was launched by Jeff Perkins as a PBM in 1985 and was transformed by Peter Rzechorzek into a PBeM when he took over the game in 1997. Peter has remained in charge for over twenty years.
:The onset of the computer-moderated PBM game (primarily the Legends game system) inevitably meant that the human moderated games became "boutique" games with little chance of matching the gross revenues that larger, automated games could produce." 
Airborne84 (talk) 05:19, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Storing unsourced material here for now 

message: Am moving final unsourced material here. Most of it's not worth keeping, I think -- the PBEM aspect is captured in the history, but it could also be described in a level 3 subsection under "Description". A lot of it is just fluff. In any case, ideally, the material would have a source to reintroduce into the article. Airborne84 (talk) 05:39, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving final unsourced material here 

message: I moved another editor's addition of a passage in the lede to a different part. It was wording of a game lasting years. The original addition was added in the "disadvantage" section of the lede as a consequence of delays in turns. It's problematic since the lede is just a summary of the article and the source in the main part of the article didn't draw that particular conclusion. I wouldn't automatically draw the conclusion that too many game turns => possibility of game in years => "drawback". I suspect that many PBM gamers go into games not concerned about the possibility that the game could last years, or expecting games will last that long. For an open-ended PBM game, "too many turns" makes little sense, since the game goes on until the player decides to stop, and I doubt that few people have played Monster Island for less than a year, for example, unless they made a mistake or ran into some kind of hardship.
In any case, my opinion is irrelevant: it's what reliable sources say. So, I looked for a source that talked about the length of PBM games in years and found one in an issue of White Wolf Magazine—but she actually noted it as an advantage.... I moved the note under advantage, but it would be fine alternatively to simply state somewhere in the article that PBM games can take years. My thoughts anyway. Airborne84 (talk) 05:02, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Length in years advantage/disadvantage 

message: Something to add to the article in the future is the fiction aspect. That's missing right now. Airborne84 (talk) 04:07, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fiction 

message: I reverted the removal of the mention of the current PBM magazine, Suspense and Decision in the lead. Removal from the lead only does not properly summarize the article. And removing mention of the current PBM magazine from both the article and the lead (if that is what was proposed) reduces the encyclopedic value for readers. All PBM information sources, past and current, should be stated in the article. Airborne84 (talk) 17:41, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current PBM magazine 

message: I think there should be some description of these - as they make for a very different game play experience - something similar to the text below maybe?
If you have simultaneous play - then there is usually a deadline by which you need to submit your orders, and the time prior to that is used planning and perfecting (possibly as a team) what moves should be made. But missing a deadline means missing a turn, possibly with some default orders, or an ally submitting (imperfect) orders for you.
If you have serial play - then there is usually a limit on how recently you can have processed orders, for example you may not run orders if your most recent results were less than 7 days ago. Which allows you to deliberately wait until after one of your allies has given you information before submitting your orders, and that can lead to greater complexity at short notice. With a trade off between good enough orders vs perfecting your orders and the time spent (usually in days/turns) since that information was valid. 
Being unable to submit orders on a particular day doesn't 'miss you a turn' but can push back the plans of other players if they are waiting on some information from your results.
EdwardLane (talk) 07:18, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Advantages and Disadvantages of Serial vs Simultaneous play