Popularity of PBM/PBEM

Bob A King (bak84123@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu)
16 Sep 1995 16:57:18 GMT

Rich Skrenta (skrenta@pbm.com) wrote:
: I don't think marketing could make PBM/PBEM a popular hobby. I think that
: PBM games are difficult to play, by nature. Relatively few people are
: willing to study large rulebooks before they can make their first turn, and
: wait days or weeks to find out how they did. Most people just don't think
: that's fun, and no amount of flashy ads in Dragon will change that.

You've made a very key point here. (Note - for brevity's sake I'll use
PBM to be PBM/PBEM) There are many PBM games which make a long form 1040
with a dozen schedules seem like a trivial exercise. However you
distribute the medium, there is only a fixed (and small) percentage of
the population that will be interested.