Nostalgia

[Acererak]

Blockbuster video? Now there's a memory. Did Blockbuster have a chance to acquire Netflix for pennies early in the day and pass? "That'll never amount to anything, people love going to the video store."

[Ry Vor]

Blockbuster video? Now there's a memory. Did Blockbuster have a chance to acquire Netflix for pennies early in the day and pass? "That'll never amount to anything, people love going to the video store."

It's a sore spot for me.  I was SVP and Treasurer and they were opening a new EVP spot for Strategy.  This was in the first or beginning of the second year of Netflix (I left Blockbuster in 2003).  I wanted that job, whose primary initial mission would be to evaluate the Netflix threat and response.  I pointed out that we were paying rent on 7000 stores and paying 60,000 employees, and Netflix wasn't.  I didn't get the job as I was viewed as too confrontational.  The rest is the (brief remaining) history of Blockbuster.  The guy who got the job just parrotted what the EVP's wanted to hear - as Acererak put it, "People love going to Blockbuster and look at the boxes".

We'd love to have 1000 Alamaze players, but whatever volume we have, I enjoy the creative aspects and that however many people really find Alamaze to be an important and fun part of their lives means a lot to me.

Hey Peoples, get on your clan to get back in the game.  Alamaze.  Let's just get everyone back.  Email your old friends.

[Acererak]

Interesting story, thanks for sharing. Not too surprising that some couldn't see the future coming- old guard competitors rarely do. We're watching the Sears, the Penny's, the Macys of the world go through their Blockbuster now. Holding back innovation with wishful thinking has always been a tough task.

I'll work on my brother. You do a great job Rick.

[admin]

I pointed out that we were paying rent on 7000 stores and paying 60,000 employees, and Netflix wasn't.  I didn't get the job as I was viewed as too confrontational.  The rest is the (brief remaining) history of Blockbuster.  The guy who got the job just parrotted what the EVP's wanted to hear - as Acererak put it, "People love going to Blockbuster and look at the boxes".

Mister Confrontational, you really might want to commandeer the Alamaze page on Facebook, and use it as a blog, of sorts, for the game. Facebook sucks at many things, but it is very good at facilitating casual chatter and cross-posting.

[Paganknight]

Ever look back to the early days of PBM?  Does it bring you back to what else was going on in your life at the time?  So, if the mood strikes you, you can post a fond memory of back in the day.

I'll start it with the Dragon Magazine review of Alamaze.  The review doubled the Alamaze player base and brought us to 1000 positions, almost certainly the largest in PBM.  I was living in Ft. Lauderdale at a singles complex called Set Point.  I met my wife there, was #1 on the tennis ladder, was the honorific "Mayor of Set Point" and remember all my old friends.  After the review and the flood of new players, I rented another apartment that was set up as the Alamaze office.  For a while, we had five employees, getting mail from the PO box, a game master (Steve), staff manually entering turns from the order input sheets, sorting input into game files, setup requests into their files, stuffing envelopes, sorting 3x5 index cards, doing payroll, managing postage, other tasks.  Alamaze I started working on when the first IBM PC's came out.  It couldn't be completed until the next gen "AT" came out due to memory constraints.  Back then it took about 2 hours to run a game, and another two hours to print on a dot matrix printer.  We had four computers and printers.  Each generation of PC then was about $6000 a piece.

The review in Dragon preceded the Origins Awards and led to Alamaze winning that award; about the first time an outsider and first time designer had won Game of the Year.  I met Michael Gray, the designer of the outstanding Shogun "big box" game from Milton Bradley, the successor to Axis & Allies, and the author of the Dragon review there, we had dinner together with Paul Brown, the head of RSI.  That led to a license of Alamaze to RSI and the invite to design their next game, Forgotten Realms, which never got coded because the programmers were baffled, despite more than 200 pages of documentation.  The exercise did give me exposure to Ed Greenwood, the D&D designer of Forgotten Realms and long time Gary Gygax associate.

Here's a link to the Dragon Magazine issue if you are interested: http://annarchive.com/files/Drmg131.pdf
The review starts on page 18.  Here is an excerpt:

As a game designer myself, I'd have to say that this is one of the finest designs I've seen. Its roots are in Earthwood,
a fine fantasy game by GSI, but it is much more complex and sophisticated. Though I've had some problems with the processing of
my orders, the wrinkles are being ironed out on an ongoing basis. The designer,Rick McDowell, is a very conscientious
game master, quick to fix errors and always ready to improve his game. He doesn't leak secret information, even to
reviewers like me.

That article in Dragon Magazine was how I first heard of Alamaze, but it was at Gen Con '88 I believe (maybe '89) where I found a table full of Alamaze info and sign up materials. I took some home and persuaded my dad (I was 15 or 16 at the time and didn't have a checking account) to help me with signing up. My first game was #57. I still have a bunchof the old materials from my early games. In fact, I stumbled across my old Alamaze stuff in a closet last December while looking for something else, which prompted me to do a search and find out if Alamaze was still around. So here I am.

[Ry Vor]

Welcome back, Paganknight!  So you were in 1st Cycle shortly after the Dragon Magazine review.  How would you compare 1st Cycle to the current 3rd Cycle: The Choosing of Alamaze?

[Paganknight]

Welcome back, Paganknight!  So you were in 1st Cycle shortly after the Dragon Magazine review.  How would you compare 1st Cycle to the current 3rd Cycle: The Choosing of Alamaze?

While I'll always remember my first Alamaze experiences fondly, 3rd Cycle is quite an improvement over First. The more I'm learning, the more I like 3rd Cycle. The various companion brigades make things much more interesting. I always thought it a bit of a bummer that only the DR and GI were able to recruit without hurting their PCs back in the day. Kingdom traits are another big improvement too, giving that added customization. I like the additional naval missions like merchant trading (its incentive to not just scrap your navy early on). The extra flexibility of the High Priestess is another big plus in my book. Bless comes in handy for those magic- impaired kingdoms when Ward isn't available. 
Those are a few of the things that came to mind, I'm sure I'll think of more as I keep playing. Not that there was antlything wrong with 1st Cycle. I had a lot of fun in the games I played in. But I think the current version does a great job of keeping what was best and adding many cool new facets to the gameplay. I read a few of the posts about Maelstrom too, and I'm kind of excited for that.

[Thunderb0lt]

My first pbm were 'Its a crime' and then RSI had Hyborean War. While playing HW Rick evidently had met Paul Brown who i also did in Tempe AZ right about when they offered Alamaze, what a coincidence. They ran it for about a year or so and when it was gone i stopped playing HW and started playing with Pegasus Productions when it was based out of NC. I also played YouRule! by Llucky Llama games which was the only other game i found that offered enough complex components to make it a challenge. I was also into the Nintendo game consul back then playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms and still have it along with couple dozen games.

[Thunderb0lt]

I hate to say it but with the huge rise of online purchasing, we are witnessing the demise of the 'brick and mortar' stores. You can see this with all the closings of Sears and JC penneys and K Mart and all kinds of empty strip malls around the country. You can load up your merchandise in one warehouse and maintain less than 1% of the payroll costs and eliminate the property leasing costs and utilities etc. And with all the people who love their gadgets and computers those that dont work, like 80 million working age americans, will be sitting at home and doing everything online.

[admin]

Was still looking for my Flagship article on game design from more than 20 years ago

Is this the one that you're looking for?

http://www.kingdomsofarcania.com/StratsAndTacs.asp