Of Alamaze Videos, the Alamaze Player Community, and the Success of Alamaze

[Maximus Dominus]

You know we have begun a social media avenue, and will have dozens of YouTube videos to help new players get into Alamaze. 

I don't play the other PBEM games myself: do they have $1 turns?  They seem evasive on that point.  

We are always advancing Alamaze, that's why outside of chess its one of a few games played 35 years after starting.

SOURCE DATE: 11-27-2019

Who better to quote than the original owner, creator, and designer of Alamaze, to get a discussion (hopefully) about Alamaze going?

Thus, let's go back about four years, and ponder aloud what Rick McDowell said in the above quoted message that he posted on the old Alamaze forum.

Now, where are these "dozens of YouTube videos" aimed at helping new players to get into Alamaze? By my count, there were 23 of them - and it takes at least 24, in order to reach the objective of having dozens (as in plural) of such videos.

You're in luck, because here's a link to 23 such videos:
https://www.youtube.com/@alamaze4217/videos

If you want to watch them all, which I have not (I've watched some of them, not all of them), it will require an investment of over 7 hours of your time (more than 457 minutes, not counting every last second). The longest video of the bunch clocked in at one hour, ten minutes, and and one second. The shortest of the bunch is one minute and forty seconds in length.

The most watched video of the bunch has, at the time that I write this, 459 views. And the least watched video of this Alamaze video collection? A mere 8 views.

But, wait! Aren't there more than 8 die-hard players of Alamaze? If so, then why aren't they all watching these Alamaze videos at least once?

Any why is it that even the most watched video of the bunch received zero comments on it, on the YouTube channel where it is hosted at? Making the videos was one thing, but what was the end reach of these 23 Alamaze videos? Along the same line of thought, what advertising and marketing of these videos was made by the previous Alamaze ownership, to push these videos into the public awareness? or was there any? 8 views on a video doesn't indicate much of a push, either from the then-ownership of Alamaze, nor from the Alamaze player community. So, this one guy puts all of this time into making almost two dozen videos about Alamaze, but then everybody else who loves Alamaze and thinks that it's a wonderful game doesn't really seem to have lifted a finger to push what is obviously a pro-Alamaze undertaking.

Now, tell me, again, why the Alamaze player community is still as small as it is?

My point is simply this - It's not one thing, one reason, why Alamaze's player community is small. Rather, the small size of Alamaze's player community is attributable to a number of different things. Or said another way, Alamaze the patient suffers from multiple maladies.

As for Rick's asking of what's known as a "loaded question," where he inquires aloud about other PBEM games that he admittedly doesn't play, and whether they have one dollar turns, before he then goes on to make a remark about others being "evasive" on that point, one might want to take all of that with a grain of salt. It's not that his question posed was not a valid question, but rather, it was injected into the middle of a forum discussion where his approach to doing things pertaining to Alamaze (or the lack thereof) had come under fire (aka criticism). Remarking about evasion while seeking to evade by injecting the remark made carries with it more than just a tinge of irony.

With regard to Rick's assertion of, "We are always advancing Alamaze, that's why outside of chess its one of a few games played 35 years after starting," how, exactly and specifically, did he or they (he did say we, after all) advance these 23 Alamaze videos that were created by an Alamaze player? I don't see any sign of it, and I've looked.

And as for games that are played 35 years after starting (being created), there's actually many - more than I can name. There's lots of board games (such as Monopoly, as one example) that have been around for 35 years, or more.

Alamaze now has new ownership, in the form of John Mulholland (aka Brekk). Has John bitten off more than he can chew, by acquiring Alamaze? Or will he rise to the occasion of ensuring that Alamaze becomes the success that the game deserves? John has already begun to chart a different path for Alamaze. But online gaming is a hyper-competitive industry. What makes Alamaze unique? More importantly, what makes Alamaze better than countless thousands of other games available for consumers/gamers to entertain themselves with?

Why should potential Alamaze players read a documentation-heavy game's textual offerings? Why should newcomers to Alamaze bother with investing considerable portions of their time learning to play Alamaze effectively? What forms of visual impact will Alamaze bring to bear, in order to tempt newcomers into joining the Alamaze player community already in place? Are sufficient resources available to fund the advertising and marketing campaign(s) envisioned? What is the projected time frame for transitioning Alamaze from where it is, now, to where the new ownership wants and prefers Alamaze to be?

The point of this posting is less about acquiring specific answers to the questions posed, herein, and more about nudging one and all to think.

What is YOUR role to be, in helping to make Alamaze a success? Think that YOU have no role to play, in the grand scheme of things? Think again!