A Diary of Scattered Thoughts

[Maximus Dominus]

This thread is not a call to action. Rather, it is intended to be a dumping ground of my Thoughts of the Moment. It will be a disjointed articulation of first one thing and then another, and there may or may not be a connection with any of the postings in this thread that came before. The thoughts expressed here are not about making sense. Rather, they will be little more than me thinking aloud, so to speak. And with that said, I shall now proceed.

1. In The Kingdoms forum section, as of the time of this writing, there are only two out of thirty-two kingdom threads which have any postings in them, aside from the thread starter posting that says:

Post your advice for playing this kingdom in this thread.

Thank you for contributing to the collective wisdom on how to best play this kingdom in Alamaze! 

Accordingly, experienced players need to begin fleshing out each of these threads in this forum section, in order to have a ready resource that newcomers to the game can pour over, in order to sharpen their skills playing the respective kingdoms witha  reduced learning curve.

[Wookie Panz]

This thread is not a call to action. Rather, it is intended to be a dumping ground of my Thoughts of the Moment. It will be a disjointed articulation of first one thing and then another, and there may or may not be a connection with any of the postings in this thread that came before. The thoughts expressed here are not about making sense. Rather, they will be little more than me thinking aloud, so to speak. And with that said, I shall now proceed.

1. In The Kingdoms forum section, as of the time of this writing, there are only two out of thirty-two kingdom threads which have any postings in them, aside from the thread starter posting that says:

Post your advice for playing this kingdom in this thread.

Thank you for contributing to the collective wisdom on how to best play this kingdom in Alamaze! 

Accordingly, experienced players need to begin fleshing out each of these threads in this forum section, in order to have a ready resource that newcomers to the game can pour over, in order to sharpen their skills playing the respective kingdoms witha  reduced learning curve.

The old forum had write ups on several of the kingdoms and they must be archived somewhere.  I think I did one some years ago and I know some other players did a nice job with some.  Maybe someone can retrieve them?  Of course they won't include the new kingdoms that were added last year.

[Strongwill]

With Maelstrom 2.0 it should all be redone.

[Maximus Dominus]

The old forum had write ups on several of the kingdoms and they must be archived somewhere.  I think I did one some years ago and I know some other players did a nice job with some.  Maybe someone can retrieve them?  Of course they won't include the new kingdoms that were added last year.

Is the info in them for 4th Cycle Alamaze (Maelstrom)? If so, then it would largely be a matter of tracking them down. We might could just merge old threads with new threads, for the same kingdoms.

With Maelstrom 2.0 it should all be redone.

Oh, lord, what is Maelstrom 2.0? Will that be 5th Cycle Alamaze? The more iterations of Alamaze that there is, the more the confusion index goes up.

As an example,:

"Do you want to try Alamaze (asking a newcomer)?"

"Sure."

"Which Cycle?"

"Huh? Say what?! It doesn't matter to me. What's a Cycle?"

"We'll go with 4th Cycle, then."

"Great! Let's play."

"Wait! You want version 1.0 or 2.0?

"I don't know. Either one, I guess."

"OK, we'll just stick with version 1.0, for now. What map do you want to use, when we create the game? Also, What rules do you want to use? No rules? 10 Man Steel? What Comm? We also need to know do you want the Explanatory option?"

"Let's just play something else, instead. Alamaze sounds way too complicated!"

NOTE: At some point along the way, most new players will be completely lost, by this point. Complexity in just getting started and creating a game can quickly turn into the death of a thousand cuts.

[Strongwill]

Maelstrom 2.0 is just a term to include all the updates and new kingdoms. Really not that hard to understand if you have followed in the forum. It's just the current and only game version available. All the other version have to be hand created for special nostalgia games if one was to be played, and to date none have been that I'm aware of.

You keep writing about new players and their inability to figure things out, most of which are in the forum pages or could be address in the rule book,(granted a few items identified in other posts need to be address). Everyone playing the game right now, started as a new player with these same resources. just saying. Maybe a great way to solve 90% of all these issues is to mandate a few duel games to get your feet wet and Alamaze IQ knowledge up before entering a real game. or a Mentor game with a new player being assisted by an established players, That's how many became good players anyway.

[Maximus Dominus]

2. How to attract more players (a lot more) to Alamaze?

In theory, even if there have been unintentional obstacles or impediments to growing the Alamaze player base crafted into the "system," as long as you can successfully reach enough people, then the Alamaze player base can still grow, even without fixing or refining anything.

That said, if you can't reach people, and if you can't persuade people to give Alamaze a try, then you're stuck in a rut. The problem certainly is not that there are not a lot of people in the world, nor is it that there aren't enough people with Internet access, nor is it that there aren't enough gamers in the world.

Outreach to a larger number of people/gamers is all fine and dandy, but without successful persuasion, you don't make progress in growing the Alamaze player base significantly. And if you have persuasion, but you can't reach people/gamers, then you're still up the creek without a paddle. So, it is a combination of things that can, collectively, yield noticeable success on growing the Alamaze player base.

If you only use Alamaze, itself, to grow the player base, the you are more limited than if you use other things to grow the Alamaze player base, also. The percentage of people/gamers who have ever even heard of Alamaze, much less actually given it a try, is minuscule. In a nutshell, Alamaze lacks widespread name recognition. Hence why I advocate in favor of utilize the name recognition already established and in play for other things to try and swing things in favor of growth of the Alamaze player base.

Lots of things in the world have widespread and longstanding name recognition. Many other intellectual properties enjoy this widespread name recognition. But, they aren't Alamaze, and co-opting them to promote Alamaze and to grow the Alamaze player base could very well be enormously expensive. But what if there were intellectual properties that enjoy enormous name recognition, but which it doesn't cost you anything to utilize them to attract people/gamers to Alamaze?

There is. It's called the public domain.

There's tons of different intellectual properties that are in the public domain, and which are free for the taking and use. The catch is that you have to make certain that which portions that you use are actually in the public domain. Material and intellectual property is either in the public domain, or it isn't. There is no middle ground.

I have on prior occasions mentioned The Wizard of Oz. Why? Because it is an intellectual property that enjoys widespread popularity across a wide range of ages. With a wizard and wicked witches and flying monkeys and such, it is also an intellectual property that should be fairly easily adapted to the Alamaze game engine. Alamaze, you see, isn't simply a fantasy game. It is also, whether you realize it or not, a game engine. While you can't use the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz movie that so many love and cherish, you can use anything from the Wizard of Oz books that have already fallen into the public domain.

Basically, I am advocating raiding the public domain.

You don't like The Wizard of Oz? Kids do. Adults do. Do both kids and adults love and cherish Alamaze in its current form?

Still don't like The Wizard of Oz? Still not a problem. Just choose from any other intellectual property that has already fallen into the public domain.

Take mythology, for example. Remember, the idea is to augment and supplement the strengths that Alamaze already possess by bolstering it with what it does not possess - namely, widespread name recognition. Consider the following:

Age of Mythology and other games have a similar concept as well that a deity provides various bonuses/penalties for worshipping them. 
- unclemike
SOURCE: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...9#pid47039

How about PAZUZU. It's demon name from Babylonian mythology and I know it's been used in D&D, and the Exorcist films. 
- Gamejunkie
SOURCE: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...11#pid8811

Speaking of Pine and evil - may I introduce you to my favorite mythological villain, Sinus the Pine Bender? He used to tie travelers to bent pine trees and let them go so they'd get ripped in half. 
- DuPont
SOURCE: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...8#pid76948

Descendants of Olympus.
- Ry Vor
SOURCE: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...0#pid44410


Not everyone, of course, likes the same thing. For example:

I'm not a big fan of having Elves, Sorcerers, Pharohs, Samurai, Olympians, etc... all together. 
- Calidor
SOURCE: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...4#pid44414


It's not about any one thing, any one intellectual property in the public domain, though. You don't want to mix mythological entities in with Alamaze's generic fantasy races? No problem, at all. Alamaze, as an intellectual property, doesn't have to limit itself to just being, and being about, various generic fantasy races and fantasy kingdoms. What's already in place doesn't actually have to change. Alamaze could also feature gods against gods and mythology against mythology, whether separate from the generic fantasy races, or mixed in with them, or both.

Norse mythology. Egyptian mythology. Greek mythology. Certainly, such would require effort, and some amount of programming, but it does lie within the realm of actual possibility. It's feasible. It's do-able.

To a degree, mythologies themselves are generic. The Wizard of Oz, not so much. Tell me, is the current tutorial popular with experienced Alamaze players, even after they master the playing of the full game, with all of its attendant mechanics and rules? As far as that goes, is the current tutorial fun to play, at all? If not, how do you expect a tutorial that isn't really all that much fun to be a successful persuader?

Alamaze in its 4th Cycle: Maelstrom form has LOTS of colorful variety, in its current form. How many different fantasy kingdoms can players choose from? No less than thirty-two. That's quite a lot. Would Alamaze be any the worse off, if it expanded its line of offerings by adding a few more kingdoms?

In a word, what I am talking about, here, is something called temptation. If you want to attract more people/players to Alamaze, then from my perspective, you need to do a better job of tempting them to come and try it, and also, to stay, once you finally manage to succeed at persuading them to come and try it in the first place.

Why should appeal to kids matter? Because of something called potential longevity. You do want players to start playing Alamaze, and to stay forever, right? Well, good luck with that, but if you can snag players with a winning concept early/earlier in life, then their long term play/stay in Alamaze could conceivably end up being longer, than if you attracted them and retained them at a much later stage of life.

The surest sign, in my book, that Alamaze (as a whole package, and not just the current game, specifically) isn't where it needs to be is that the most experienced players, the most diehard players continue to lament the small size of the player base.

Is there a magic cure for turning things around, and growing the Alamaze player base by leaps and bounds? Nope! Not that I am aware. Yet, what is currently being tried, and what all has been tried in the past, certainly hasn't worked. Thus, if what you're doing and what you've done in the past haven't proven to be the solution, then common sense dictates that you need to try something else.

Is there any guarantee that raiding the public domain will succeed, where everything else that's been tried in the past has failed? Definitely not!

That said, I do firmly believe that, sometimes, it's less about what you offer to the gaming public than how you offer it.

The Alamaze programmer, unclemike, already knows how to add kingdoms into the mix. Sure, it takes time. It can be time-consuming, but so can many other things that you could try. The programmer already knows how to program magic spells into the game. He knows how to create new characters. Coming up with ideas will always be quicker and easier than actually having to program them, in order to make them a part of functioning reality. But from my view, the hardest work is already done.

Now, it's more about marketing and getting the word out. It's about attracting eyes and winning hearts.It's about persuasion and the powers of persuasion. It's about temptation. It's about refinement. It's not about tossing the baby out with the bathwater. Rather, it's about repackaging and presentation. It's about name recognition. It's about doing the same thing a different way.

How badly do you want to attract lots of new players to Alamaze? Do you just want to throw money at the problem? Rick McDowell threw money at Fall of Rome, but that didn't succeed.

In its current form, Alamaze enjoys a smaller player base than some PBM games designed thirty or forty years ago. Alamaze has had a LOT of programming poured into it in recent years. It's not a horrible product. It actually has quite a bit going for it. How do you gain a LOT of new players for Alamaze, without braking the bank?

Intellectual properties in the public domain are free for the taking, and they also enjoy very widespread name recognition. To me, Alamaze might want to take advantage of such.

[Maximus Dominus]

Maelstrom 2.0 is just a term to include all the updates and new kingdoms. Really not that hard to understand if you have followed in the forum. It's just the current and only game version available. All the other version have to be hand created for special nostalgia games if one was to be played, and to date none have been that I'm aware of.

So, the Game Creator is wrong? It currently lists 3rd Cycle: The Choosing and 4th Cycle: Maelstrom both as game options available for players to choose, when creating new games of Alamaze.

   

You keep writing about new players and their inability to figure things out, most of which are in the forum pages or could be address in the rule book,(granted a few items identified in other posts need to be address). Everyone playing the game right now, started as a new player with these same resources. just saying. Maybe a great way to solve 90% of all these issues is to mandate a few duel games to get your feet wet and Alamaze IQ knowledge up before entering a real game. or a Mentor game with a new player being assisted by an established players, That's how many became good players anyway.

Well, you can't actually mandate that new players, or current players who are inexperienced, have to play a few Duel games. I already got my feet wet, long ago. The Duel game option, to put it plainly, just plain sucks big time! It's boring as hell. Not all actual game options are available to new players to try. Plus, too, one is very limited in the kingdoms that they can select to try their hand at, if memory serves me correctly. The Duel games are the very personification of boring. Why insist, by way of mandating, that players be subjected to such boring torture, over and over and over, again? Me? I would just say to hell with it.

Trying to force newcomers to subject themselves to multiple Duel games isn't going to teach them anything about the options that exist in the full version of Alamaze, yet which are not available in the Duel game. The Duel game isn't fun.

Of course, you can certainly try to force newcomers to play "a few" Duel games, in a bid to "solve 90% of all these issues. me? I think it would turn out to be a grand exercise in failure writ large.

I do keep writing about new players and their inability to figure things out. The overwhelming lack of new players streaming in is a visually persuasive thing, to me. I, at least, have some small degree of knowledge about Alamaze. If I had to guess, I've known Rick McDowell for twenty years or more, now. I first tried Alamaze decades ago. And I certainly realize what I encounter now, when it is confusing and nudges me away from it, rather than towards it.

As far as "everyone playing the game right now" is concerned, how many players is that, exactly? It has been my first-hand experience over the course of my life that everyone doesn't learnt hings in the say way - and that includes where learning to play games is concerned, also. How YOU might learn Alamaze it is NOT the same way that EVERYONE learns it. I've already learned a number of things about playing Alamaze by doing it my own way.

Part of my own process is to "share my thoughts aloud" as I go along. No one has to read them, nor does anyone else have to agree with them. If mandating that newcomers just play a few Duel games is the answer, well, then congratulations! Solving 90% of the problems is quite the accomplishment. Excellent!

Except, that's not the actual reality. Not by a long shot!

Me? I want to head off newcomers who haven't even arrived, yet, arriving at some point down the line, and them encountering things that I, myself, already find to be confusing. Ideally, the Confusion Index would be at zero. Right now, it's a long way from zero. That's just a fact.

Years back, Alamaze's designer Rick McDowell,  said:

This doesn't seem obscure.  Alamaze is not a shooter.  There's no good way to learn the game without reading the rules.  We have made the task less onerous by having the general components of play in a descriptive sense in The General Rules.

SOURCE: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...1#pid44201

Thus, by his own admission, the rules of Alamaze (back when it had a smaller rulebook) was onerous, and he felt that they had made the challenge of learning the game less onerous. Less onerous is not the same thing as the onerous aspect being eliminated, entirely.

Fighting complexity and rolling back the confusion that naturally attends such is a never-ending battle. I am more than capable of writing praise - when and where something warrants it. Likewise, I am more than capable of criticizing - and of continuing to criticize - when and where it is warranted. Reducing learning curves and eradicating (or at a minimum, reducing) confusion go hand-in-hand towards facilitating an easier point of entry into the game.

What if a newcomer doesn't like or want to be mentored? Do you believe that the quality of mentoring is the same across all experienced players of Alamaze? I don't. What if newcomers prefer to teach themself how to play?

Just play the Duel game, again and again. Just read the rules. You will never grow the Alamaze player base to any significant degree by adhering to that approach. Alamaze is doomed - utterly and irretrievably doomed - if that is approach that prevails.

Certainly, it would be a much easier thing if I simply ceased writing anything at all about Alamaze. I could just sit back and observe from afar (or perhaps better yet, simply cease to observe, at all). I've certainly stepped away from Alamaze, before. Yet, all this time later, Alamaze still suffers from the bulk of what ailed it back then. How is it that the Duel games and the rulebook did not fix the underlying problems in all that time?

I try to bring problematic areas and aspects to the fore. I don't tend to allow others to suffer under the delusion that everything is fine, or that the problems, shortcomings, deficiencies, and confusion will all just magically fix themselves. Do others ever get tired of reading things that I point out? Probably. I know that I certainly tire of saying the same things, over and over and over, again, albeit perhaps in a variety of different ways. Fortunately, reading requires an affirmative act on the part of the reader. If one has read it all before, then one is free to simply skip over the last installment of my critiques and my criticisms.

As I have stated before, elsewhere, all of the things that Alamaze gets right, none of those are the problem. The last time that I checked, the Alamaze forum is replete with all manner of different criticisms about Alamaze. A sentence here, a paragraph there. Perhaps I shall create a new thread, and as I encounter or re-encounter these various criticisms by others, including by very experienced and long-playing players. I'm fairly certain that, collectively, they would be a scathing indictment of Alamaze's shortcomings. They're just not all compiled into one spot for ease of access. Rather, they are scattered to and for across years of forum postings. I'm not inclined to just close my eyes and turn a deaf ear to all of those criticisms. You can't fix problems that way.

When all is said and done, the decision to do this or to do that doesn't lie with me, anyway. That is a consolation that one and all can take solace in.

Tell me, though, PTRILEY, wherein you said, "That's how many became good players anyway," what about the others, what about the rest of them? Also, how many was "many?" As I look about the place, and as I've pondered the sign-up lists for games over the past months as I've occasionally and intermittently browsed them, there doesn't seem to be very many players. So, how many is many, after taking into consideration all those who did not become players, as well as all those (both good and not so good) players that left, that chose to not stay?

Things that are obvious, or which may not seem to be confusing, to the game designer, the game programmer, or to very experienced players of the game who have invested a lot of time, already, experimenting with and learning the game, is not so obvious to the new, the uninitiated, or the inexperienced. It reminds me of engineers who choose to try their hand at crafting training manuals for individuals who are not engineers, nor who speak engineer-ese. Familiarity and lack of familiarity are very distinct things. They're like living on two different worlds. One can frequently be alien to the other, and vice versa.

SELF-CORRECTION: I went back to check, (after getting some of the grass trim work done, here at home), and I was thinking of the Tutorial games, and not the two-player Duel games, in my comments above. My apologies for the error.

[Maximus Dominus]

3. I don't want to burn through newcomers. I want to covert them.

[Maximus Dominus]

4. If it is desired that newcomers stay focused, then why potentially distract them with Game Variant choices that are disabled?

   


Distractions abound, as it is. So, why draw newcomers' minds off into nether voids of things that they can't do, and which that lead them away from what the actual choices are?

NOTE: 60% of the Game Variant choices listed on the Game Creator, at present, are disabled.

[Maximus Dominus]

5. The proliferation of abbreviations breeds uncertainty and confusion.

Newcomers lack knowledge and familiarity, when first learn of Alamaze. Lots and lots of abbreviations are in play, both in the Alamaze forum and in the game interface, itself. While watching a video, today, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miMeJNyYmBE) and listening and observing the player going through his turn and issuing orders for his next turn, one item popped out at me, all of a sudden. The 6:58 mark is a good place to start the video.

The player decides to use the #955 - Kidnap order to kidnap an Ancient Ones character, a Governor named Constantine. In order to issue the order, though, the player must select the abbreviation for Constantine, which is the first two letters of the character's name - CO.

The game interface tracks all of the character. Otherwise, it wouldn't be able to list them, when turn results dictate that they be listed, for certain order possibilities. So, why not show the entire character's name, instead of just the two-letter order code? The character's full name provides clarity that the two-letter order code does not. Forget being experienced and having such locked in your memory, and look at it from a completely inexperienced player's perspective, instead (if you can).

Every single thing that a new would-be Alamaze player has to remember extends the overall learning curve. The longer the learning curve, the more opportunities that exist to lose the new player along the way of trying to get them from a point of zero knowledge about the game to being very knowledgeable about the game. It's not about can new players learn everything that experienced players already know. Rather, it's about will they bother to stay long enough to reach a point where they feel comfortable in their knowledge and understanding of the game's package of things that one needs to know, in order to compete on an equivalent or near-equivalent level with experienced veterans of the game.

Alamaze does not have just one learning curve. Rather, it has many. Learning curves have a tendency to be very bumpy roads. The more bumps, or the bigger the bumps, encounter, the more chances that you have of losing them before they arrive at the destination that you want them to arrive at.

For those who think that I am nit picking, I am. To not nit pick is to forego opportunities to streamline processes, thereby retaining inefficiencies. Trying to get new players to play Alamaze, instead of any other game in any other format, means that the harder or more confusing or less clear that you make it on new players, the harder that you make it on yourself to achieve the objective of growing the Alamaze player base by significant numbers.

Internet users in today's era don't tend to be overly patient. One has to look no further than how long Internet users are for a given web page to load to know that. From what I have seen, to date, new players seem to lack the patience, by and large, to stick with Alamaze long enough to more fully appreciate the game. Learning curves, obstacles to entry, impediments to smooth understanding - these and other things are direct challenges to the patience of newcomers to Alamaze.

In the absence of having patience to hand to newcomers, one must look for other ways around that problem. Reducing (or if possible, wholly eliminating) learning curves, obstacles, impediments, and points of confusion are possible options that are available for Alamaze to overcome a lack of sufficient patience on the part of new players.

In the grand scheme of things, there will always existing competing priorities and availability of time and resources. This is nothing new to the realm of game design and game marketing. Alamaze isn't unique, in this regard.