PBEM v94 n06 (30Sep94)

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Survey: What's the most hated PBM Game?
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It seems that every gamer has a game that they hate, for some reason
or another. Some of these reasons are irrational; every moderator can
tell you a horror story about the Customer Who Would Not Be Satisfied,
and some of these reasons are legitimate complaints about design,
implementation, moderation, customer service, et cetera.

I ran a survey on the Internet group rec.games.pbm over the last 2
weeks on this topic. I received a slim 13 votes. With so few votes,
you should not consider the votes statistically valid in any way,
shape or form. But I voted for #1, so I'm pleased that the results
matched what I thought they would be.

#1, with 5 votes, is Beyond the Stellar Empire, a commercial PBM game
run by Adventures by Mail. No one even bothered to explain why they
hated BSE. If anyone wants to know my reasons, there's a file in the
PBM Games forum dating from 1986 explaining (in some detail) why I
quit the game. A friend recently mailed me a copy; I had (blissfully)
forgotten most of my reasons. In fact, reading that letter prompted
this survey.  But I digress.

#2, with 2 votes, was the free Internet game Atlantis. One vote was
for a flaky mailserver. Maybe you should ask for a refund! One vote
was for design; the voter complained that as he grew more powerful he
had to run too many units. Success can be bad.

Honorable mentions go to: Middle Earth PBM, It's a Crime, VGA Planets,
Duelmasters, State of War, Heavens Above, and Game Plan, with one vote
each.