Welcome back, PBM Kotters!
And in case you might be wondering, the answer is yes - I am listening to the theme song, right now, for the old television show called Welcome Back, Kotter, as I set about writing this opening editorial/introductory article to the readers of PBM Chaos.
Hardly anything, at all, has been included for this issue, as I write this. Basically, this issue is only comprised, thus far, of a few PBM Maze results and Glenn Harrold's feedback about Issue #31 that arrived in my e-mail in-box, recently. But I'm fairly confident that I'll "find" other stuff to add to this issue, to flesh it out. Just the way that things worked out, this time around, I find myself typing this editorial up (or at least starting on it) here on Thursday, January 18th, 2024. More times than not, this section of PBM Chaos is frequently the last thing that I begin working on.
But a thought struck me, and I didn't want to put off writing about it, because I would probably just end up forgetting what I wanted to talk about. And what, you might ask while sipping a martini or chugging down some scalding hot coffee (caf or decaf?), did I want to talk about that's so important, that it even mattered whether I remembered it or forgot it, at all?
Information.
Namely, the presentation thereof. More specifically, part of what is an anchor around the neck of the play by mail gaming institution (both the postal and digital components, thereof) is the "presentation of information." In a nutshell, for the most part, the PBM industry just plain sucks at its approach(es) to the presentation of information.
The Internet is a primary, perhaps the primary, conduit of information. We live in the Age of Information (one of many, actually). The Internet is a primary facilitator of "access to information" - which is a distinct and different thing to the chosen presentation of information that it facilitates access to.
But even the Internet must have information to facilitate the access to, in order to be of much use to anybody. Human beings, including gamers new and old and in between, are "voracious consumers of information." Where information is concerned, as a species, we are carnivores. Actually, we're omnivores, I guess that you could say, but carnivores often get all of the limelight for their voracious, meat-eating appetites.
Tell me, this. Whenever you go out to eat, or even if you choose to just eat at home, do you prefer stale food or fresh food? Information is a lot like food, in that voracious consumers of information tend to prefer fresh information over stale information. Yet, go to many different PBM websites, and what are you likely to encounter?
The same old shit.
The Internet was not some PBM Doom. The Internet didn't kill PBM, and the Internet isn't killing PBM, currently. Serving the gaming masses a menu and a feast that feature the same old shit - does that sound like a recipe for success?
PBM suffers, not from a terminal case of the "Internet disease," but rather, from failures. And by this, I mean that the PBM industry suffers from a MASSIVE amount of different failures. And from what I can tell, generally speaking with few exceptions, things are actually getting worse, rather than better.
If it's not improving, then by default, it's getting worse. The Internet, after all, is always in flux. It is a hyper-dynamic environment. It isn't kind to stale and dated and obsolete information. Just look at the Wayback Machine, if you aren't yet convinced that this is so. Yes, the Internet will even help you to preserve stale and dated and obsolete information. But an awful lot of PBM-related stuff hasn't aged well. You think that you're looking old? Well, take a long, hard look at PBM gaming's presence scattered across the Internet, sometime. Talk about old looking! Talk about ancient!
Like it or lump it, it's true. Anybody out there that wants to debate this, feel free to jump right into the conversation. How many examples do you want me to beat you over the head with?
If PBM gaming can't pull its head out of its ass, then society will do exactly what society has done - just pass it on by. What's that old Dionne Warwick song, again? Walk on by. Here, listen to it for yourself. I'm listening to it. Just because people on the Internet, however many billions of them that there are, choose to just "walk on by" PBM gaming does not mean, therefore, that the Internet killed PBM.
It's not the same thing, people. It's not the same thing, at all.
Am I preaching to the choir? Probably. Is anything that I say likely to change the PBM status quo and the PBM industry's entrenched way of doing things, at all? Probably not. Personally speaking, though, the more that I look for actual evidence that the Internet killed PBM, the less evidence for that there actually seems to be. People saying that PBM is dead does not make it so. It's not a "self-executing statement."
It's not about going back to the past, people. Rather, it's about charting a better way forward. I feel like a preacher, because I spend so much time writing - and delivering - sermons. PBM sermons! And the Big Church of PBM, as we all well know, currently suffers from habitual low attendance.
Other forms of gaming have actually seen a marked increase in attendance, since the Internet appeared on the scene. Yet, we are all to believe that the Internet is a serial killer of PBM games in disguise? Wake up and smell the roses (the truth), people!
The PBM industry reminds me of many things. One of those things is churches. Think about it. Why do so many churches suffer from low attendance? Not all of them are. Some have got a few old people in the pews (PBM has a few PBM gamers from days of old filling some of its pews). Do people attend churches to be bored? For the most part, is the way that the PBM industry as a whole presents itself to the gaming masses boring or exciting? This brings back a pleasant memory of my grandpa sleeping in church. It wasn't anything that my grandma's elbow couldn't fix, though.
There's some great, some absolutely fabulous, intellectual properties that exist within the overall ambit of play by mail gaming. Yet, how effectively are they being exploited to grow PBM gaming left and right? Or said another way, how effectively are PBM companies tapping into the full potential of those very same intellectual properties, in order to grow their respective player bases?
What is PBM Chaos? Oh, it's many different things, also, just like the Internet is many different things. For instance, PBM Chaos is an old-timey PBM tent meeting. My function isn't to make you sit comfortably in your PBM chairs. That just isn't my role.
But who - or what - appointed me to this role, whatever you want to call it? I'm called by faith - faith in the very essence of what PBM gaming once was, and the very essence of what it could be, once again. Me? I'm a true believer. I don't subscribe to false PBM doctrine. Am I a heretic for not swallowing hook, line, and sinker the all-too-convenient excuse that the Internet killed PBM? No chance it couldn't be chalked up to poor choices, bad decisions, lack of foresight, failure to adapt to changes taking place all around you, or to any of a number of other possibilities? Or is it just quicker and easier to blame it all on the Internet? From my perspective, if anything, the Internet has been the equivalent of life support - helping to keep PBM gaming alive and going, in spite of the PBM industries countless attempts to bludgeon itself into obscurity.
Make no mistake, PBM gaming isn't some kind of religion to me. PBM isn't something that I worship. I just like to write, and various terms that are often associated with religion do not place me in danger of immediate and irreversible damnation, simply because I find that they are dual-purpose or multi-purpose instruments of literary persuasion.
In case none of you out there trying to read this is aware of it, the whole world seems to be under siege by an invasion of woke zombies. But at least people notice the woke. Are people noticing PBM gaming? Fuck the woke zombies! Where are the PBM zombies? In the old days, PBM zombies invaded the gaming scene. Have all of the great PBM zombies died? Is the vast PBM horde no more?
The PBM industry is clumsy. It once developed a recipe for success. Then, like complete and utter fools (my opinion - it doesn't have to be yours), they abandoned it. And what they abandoned it for was, apparently, what you now see. Don't take my word for it, though. Feel free to browse the PBM scene for yourself, and see what the PBM industry's choices and decisions have wrought.
Who needs current PBM news capsules from PBM companies, when you can have dated-ass websites? Who needs a gung ho approach to PBM customer service, anymore, when you can replace it with ignoring e-mails sent to you? Who needs up-to-date PBM documentation, anymore, when you can just roll out dated PBM documentation that hasn't been touched or updated in a proverbial coon's age? And for the PBM rulebooks and other ancillary PBM support documents that have been updated in recent years, tell me this - did that do the trick?
PBM isn't dead. Rather, the PBM industry, to a large degree, is out of touch. It fell out of touch, and still hasn't managed to get all of the way back on its feet, yet? On the whole, the PBM industry seems to have embraced a defeatist mentality, long ago. Me? I'm just the PBM bastard that's willing to tell you that.
In spite of the colorful verbiage, though, I don't hate the PBM industry. There's no PBM company, nor any PBM GM, that I hate. Me? I'm just trying to find ways to rouse the PBM industry from its self-induced slumber. In an ever-changing games market, PBM gaming simply can't afford the luxury of doing nothing.
The Internet. It raised the bar, you see. It elevated the standard, where gaming is concerned. It provides all sectors and segments of the gaming industry with the exact, same tools and opportunities. What did the PBM industry choose to do with all that the Internet has brought to the table of opportunity over the years since it first came into existence?
Did the PBM industry not get any of the Internet's memos?
The PBM industry learned well, decades ago, the value of beating the bushes. PBM companies didn't just wait for PBM magazines to appear, and to do the spreading of the word about their PBM games for them. And if you're not advertising, your approach to communicating and persuading newcomers to give your PBM games a try is less than it could be. That much is obvious on its face. And if the PBM industry's advertising component is less than it could be, do any of you out there reading this think think that the PBM industry is more effective at promoting its games by advertising less (or by advertising not at all), as appears to be the case in at least some instances? Public awareness of your game products isn't something that the public just automatically inherits.
Can advertising be a drain of resources? Of course it can. It can also be a lifeline to future growth. Advertising is like the Internet or like a gun. It's a tool. HOW you use it, and WHY you use it, those are the things that matter, and which can make all of the difference in the world. That PBM companies and PBM GMs have voices does not automatically mean, therefore, that PBM's message is being broadcast, much less heard. Of course, one could say the same thing about PBM Chaos, I suppose. But as far as PBM GMs do, which PBM GMs do you believe are getting the PBM message across the best? At times, I wonder whether PBM GMs are bears, because it seems to me that there's been an awful lot of hibernating going on.
Again, don't just take my word for it, but ask for yourself and look for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. What are all of the different PBM companies and GMs that are still out there up to, currently? Are they growing their respective player bases, and if so, by how much? Do they ever give you a monthly report? A yearly report? A once in a decade report? Or is perpetual silence their answer for everything?
What's the hottest PBM game on the market, right now? What's the least popular PBM game of the past year or of the past five years? By providing the public with no real metrics, it certainly helps to reinforce the myth that PBM is dead.
Are your PBM games desperate for players? Are they in need of more players? If you don't tell people that, then how are they supposed to just automatically know? If they knew, then some of them might even take pity on you and your games and the last remaining vestiges of your player base.
Are your games overflowing with players? Why on Earth wouldn't any gaming company want to share information of that sort? Are players who have signed up to play your PBM games been waiting for weeks or months on end to begin playing? And if so, is that due to your games suffering from a shortage of interested parties? Or is it because you can't keep up with the sheer demand for your games?
Me? I question the longstanding narrative that PBM is dead. Even if it is dead, it's not like people can't start playing PBM games, again. Some, in fact, come back years or even decades later to play in some PBM games. I know this, because I encounter some of these very same people, from time to time.
Me? I'm willing to raise the dead. I'm quite willing to invest time and energy and effort toward that very end. Maybe your PBM games aren't dead. Maybe some of them, or even all of them, are in stasis.
Some PBM games have been running for years - or even decades - on end. That doesn't really tell you much of anything, though. What was it that Adventures By Mail said, in a PBM ad that it ran back in the PBM year of 1984?
Adventures By Mail has processed over 50,000 play-by-mail game turns professionally since our start in July 1981.
So, it isn't as though there's some magical and immutable law of the PBM cosmos that precludes or prevents PBM companies and PBM GMs from sharing such numbers and such facts with the gaming community. They used to, after all. Was Adventures By Mail bragging, when they said that? Sure, but they were also being transparent - transparent about how they were doing, as a PBM company. That's one of the ways to instill confidence and to attract even more players to PBM.
On a personal level, I don't really care about how much or how little profit that a given PBM company is making. How much profit do I make off of what I do with PBM Chaos, and with PBM Unearthed and the original Suspense & Decision magazine before that? Absolutely nothing. Not a dime. Not one red cent.
If PBM gaming has never been a way to make a noticeable amount of money, do you suppose that Adventures By Mail made any money, at all, off of those fifty thousand turns that they had processed in that three year span? Even when Rick Loomis transitioned to making less money off of PBM games than from some of his other business ventures, did he shut his PBM games down? Nope!
Why not?
If it is true that the Internet killed PBM, as some have suggested, then did it kill it all at once, or did the Internet poison or strangle PBM slowly? So slowly that PBM is still alive decades later, all of the way to the year 2024?
That's a pretty gradual approach to killing something, wouldn't you admit?
Tell me this, though - did the Internet have any accessories to this decades-long killing of PBM gaming? Didn't PBM companies gradually stop creating new PBM games? Didn't PBM companies gradually stop advertising? Yet, the Internet is what killed PBM? Are you sure about that? It seems to me that the list of possible suspects is one heck of a lot longer than just one - the Internet.
But what about Richard Jones' A dissertation on gaming? Or have you even taken into account any of the things that he said in that rather lengthy article that talks about play by mail gaming at length?
I'm on a roll, here, but that should be enough to tide you over until the next issue.
Until next time, happy reading and happy PBM gaming!
Charles Mosteller
Editor of PBM Chaos
P.S.
Oh, and lest I forget, I decided to publish this issue without as many of PBM image ads in it. You can each judge for yourselves whether you like this approach or not. The only way that we can know, for sure, is by actually publishing issues without them (or without so many of them). Is it better? Is it worse? Will anyone even notice?
