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BGonline.org Forums
Does Backgammon Need more Backgammon Servers?
Posted By: Michael Petch In Response To: Does Backgammon Need more Backgammon Servers? (Stanley E. Richards)
Date: Tuesday, 1 February 2011, at 10:12 p.m.
Good Questions Stanley, and partly at the heart of where I was likely going to take this thread.
The Money sites no longer number that many. From what I have been able to tell for instance is that all the Logic Empire sites although having different brands, utilize the same technology, and also seem to share the same player base and tables. In some cases there may be an area that is unique to a site but by and large a lot of the match making is cross brand. TMG appears to be the same way. The www.tmg.com site and other sites that have rebranded like playwsob.com seem to share the same player base. From what I can tell the player base is the same, but there are unique areas that can only be accessed by the playwsob side (but not from the TMG side). This is also not uncommon in the poker world. For example there are a multitude of rebranded sites that fall under the "Merge" group, then you have FullTilt, Pokerstars and a couple others.
The main point on money sites is that the fracturing is not as bad as one might first think if you were to look at all the the different names. So what is the problem I have with money sites. Well, they allow for non money play but anyone who plays for free at these sites will soon realize the obvious - the free play enticing them in but the primary purpose is to convert a percentage of them into money players and the newbies become the new fish for the sharks gobble up. The money sites may have a community of numbers, but it doesn't feel like community. They all lack the social atmosphere. There are no lobbies to chat and talk in, and shoot the breeze. Running independent tournaments on these type of servers is generally not the norm.
My opinion is that the exclusively non money sites(social and socially competitive) are getting it wrong. These sites that are often driven by politics to not work together, or the belief that they can do it better than the next guy. The net result is a bunch of different clients with separate player bases.
This was less of a problem even 5 years ago. And you may ask what was different back then. At that time there had been a server running for about a decade, free of charge, a multitude of games (including backgammon), and under a well known, and trustworthy name "Microsoft". As you may have guessed I'm referring the MS Gaming Zone, the MS IGZ, and its predecessor the Village. Under Microsoft we affectionately called it "The Zone". Steve Murch convinced MS to buy out The Village from a few developers in the US. The Village and Subsequently the Zone was built on the premise of providing free social gaming in a friendly atmosphere.
The Backgammon client was simple, had hideous colors, buggy, did have a match log feature, had a flawed ratings system (the 1pt rounding bug), had no Automated match resolution for rated games, and until I show a proof of concept the dice could be manipulated.
Despite all of its failings the match making was very intuitive, was easy to use for a novice, and the separate lobbies allowed for a very social atmosphere to develop. Microsoft encouraged people to host on their site and created the Zone Endorsed Hosting program. It was not difficult to qualify but third part tournaments did have to adhere to some rules, and in general the rules weren't a great burden. They allowed hosting groups to have their own rooms.
Microsoft at its peak in the early 2000's would have upwards of 100,000 players online across all the games. The biggest group was Spades, followed by backgammon. You could find 2-3 thousand Backgammon players online at once.
In 2006, MS made a business decision to change their gaming to web based software, removing the lobbies that made the game very social. There are players who play the Backgammon on MS still, but they will admit its not the same. There are no tournaments, and no sense of community. For MS it was the right move. Maintaining a large volunteer force to make sure the site remained civil and under control cost a far amount of money.
After the zone disappeared WGCenter picked up the immediate slack, GamingPeak (originally spades), RenGames, SHG, Piranha and a few others. There is a lot of politics and bad blood among some (not all) of these sites and working together is a tough sell. I won't elaborate on what I mean, but anyone who reads this will understand what I am saying. Yahoo games and Pogo existed while MS was running (and still exists today) but yahoo has a different culture. And the culture is less than friendly.
After the Zone died a lot of people I know simply gave up online gaming. Backgammon Numbers that have once been in the thousands have dropped to the hundreds. I lost an interest in Tournament backgammon myself. If anyone reads the BIO of Gregg Cattanach on one Simborg's sites, you may discover that the zone and its closure had an impact on his online play too.
I can only say things are just not the same. We now have a fractured backgammon community on the social side, a lot of choices, and small selection of players.
In being asked to develop software over the years (I did start, but pulled the plug) for online gaming I realized that doing so would likely make the situation worse.
Because of fracturing, to match make I have to have several clients installed on my system, all with different messaging systems, and I have to keep an eye on multiple communities just to to find an opponent at times (I do play the occasional web based tournaments - and the choice of server is left up to the players. One thing I know is that as long as there is a free alternative for Backgammon, charging money in the future (even if its 20/year) will keep people from ever joining (no matter what perks). They will simply choose somewhere that already exists.
I have been contemplating recently a push to develop a distributed environment with a well defined public interface that would allow separate sites to interface to one another but keep much of their identities. Messaging could be distributed, Selected game lobbies and chat could be distributed, and matchmaking could be cross site.
I'm likely going to send emails to the sites about such an idea. I'm not sure how well received it would be, or whether there would be interest in working together. I'd prefer such an endeavor to fall under the FSF's GPL (Same license as GnuBG).
FIBS would unfortunately be an odd man out, although there could be alternatives but I'd have to talk to Patti about them.
I have a preference for trying to bring people together, not breaking them apart or splitting them up even more.
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