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Play by mail games are games, of any type, played through postal mail or e-mail. One example, chess, has been played by mail for centuries (when played in this way, it is known as correspondence chess). Another example, Diplomacy, has been played by mail since the 1960s, starting with a printed newsletter (a fanzine) written by John Boardman. More complex games, moderated entirely or partially by computer programs, were pioneered by Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo and George Schubel of Schubel and Son in the 1970s. The first such game offered via email through a major online service was Quantum Space from Stormfront Studios, which debuted on AOL in 1989. (Internet and BITNET email games predate 1989.) Play by mail games are often referred to as PBM games, and play by email is sometimes abbreviated PBeM -- as opposed to face to face (FTF) games which are played in person. Another variation on the name is Play-by-Internet (PBI) or play-by-web (PBW). In all of these examples, player moves can be either executed by a human moderator, a computer program, or a combination of the two. In the 1980s, play-by-mail games reached their peak of popularity with the advent of Gaming Universal, the first professional magazine devoted to play-by-mail games. A similar publication, Flagship, focused on British and European PBM games. Flagship has evolved into a general gaming magazine, with minimal PBM coverage. Bob McLain, the publisher and editor of Gaming Universal, further popularized the hobby by writing articles that appeared in many of the leading mainstream gaming magazines of the time. In the late 1990s, computer and Internet games marginalized play-by-mail conducted by actual postal mail, but the postal hobby still exists with an estimated 2000-3000 adherents worldwide. See also Play-by-post gaming or Play-by-Internet.
Postal gaming Postal gaming developed as a way for geographically separated gamers to compete with each other. It was especially useful for those living in isolated areas and those whose tastes in games was uncommon. In the case of a two player game such as chess, players would simply send their moves to each other alternately. In the case of a multi-player game such as Diplomacy, a central game master would run the game, receiving the moves and publishing adjudications. Such adjudications were often published in postal game zines, some of which contained far more than just games. The commercial market for play-by-mail games grew to involve computer servers setup 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. 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, more advanced games could last over a year. Game themes are heavily varied, ranging from simulations of running a street gang in It's a Crime, to playing a monster exploring a tropical island populated by strange plants and animals in Monster Island. Some PBM games developed into very richly defined worlds with massive amounts of background information that many players would only ever scrape the surface of. Tribes of Crane was probably the first of these, but the Dune-like power-plays of Where Lies The Power and the realistic medieaval political world of Delenda Est Carthago took this depth to even greater levels. Internet play-by-mail With the rise of the Internet, postal gaming and postal games zines have largely been replaced by e-mail and websites. Play by mail games differ from popular online multiplayer games in that, for most computerized multiplayer games, the players have to be online at the same time. With a play by mail game, the players can play whenever they choose. (This is sometimes called a turn-based game.) Some computer games can be played in a play by mail mode: you make your "move", mail a file to your opponent, who makes his "move", and mails something back. The first commercial play-by-email games offered by major online services were: Several non-commercial email games played on the Internet and BITNET predate these. See also | ||||||||
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