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BGonline.org Forums
Does Backgammon Need more Backgammon Servers?
Posted By: W Womack In Response To: Does Backgammon Need more Backgammon Servers? (Michael Petch)
Date: Tuesday, 1 February 2011, at 11:28 p.m.
I am a big fan of the on-line tournament formats, both the schedule a match with an opponent and tournaments scheduled at particular times. For the latter there does not seem to be good free options other than SHG, unless I am missing something.
From a "what's good for backgammon" perspective I think it would be great to have a really good, free, site for tournament play, rated play, and social play that the vast majority of players would want to use and that the online tournament host such as GZ, Warp, LOC etc. would all support as their preferred server. We could talk a lot about what this site should be like, but I am not sure such a site would ever work in the "real" world.
One of the issues to deal with is economic realities. A free site must either be funded and supported by an organization/individual/group of individuals or be funded through ad revenues. You might have a chance of bringing several sites together in some way in the first instance, but I am sure that there are enough differences of opinions in how things should operate on such a site that even that would be difficult. If the ad revenue model it generally benefits the site to take players from other sites to increase the traffic to their site so that they can claim a larger audience for advertisers. I suppose you could argue that some sort of massively connected site would allow for some sort of shared revenue scheme that would bring a much bigger pie for all to share in the end, but not sure that is the reality.
Another question is how many of the free servers are backgammon servers vs game servers that offer backgammon? There is a big difference in my mind between the two, and few are truly interested in backgammon beyond its ability as part of package to attract players.
With that being said, I would love to see a free server that could attract a good portion of the online backgammon community. What would such a server be like:
Usable on all OSs (or most at least)
Maintain a good chat interface for social/community interaction. The DC room at SHG offers a good example of this, at least at times. You will often find the regulars chatting about none backgammon issues or watching a sporting event and trading comments with each other. At other times you will see discussion of matches played, and a few times there has even been discussions related to live stream events on UStream, as happen during the Denmark v. World matches last year. All of this gives a sense of community that adds to the backgammon experience. This is not to say the mechanics of the interface needs to me like the SHG (and Zone) room structure -- but that seems like a pretty good way to do it.
Tournaments--Tournaments--Tournaments: Both tournaments at fixed times and tournaments like Warp, Gammon Zone, etc.
Somehow you would need to provide a way to sort out serious/semi serious players from just casual players without making anyone feel slighted. The room structure at SHG tends to do this naturally to some degree, it seems that most of the players that are hanging out in the DC/GZ rooms are at least somewhat serious about the game while those in most of the other rooms tend to be more casual (and the cove seems to be a mixed bag). Again not saying the SHG/Zone model is the best, but you need to have something that fosters that.
Super game play interface. Once you get down to actually playing the game the play interface needs to be something exceptional. Of course you will never please everyone, but all of the current interfaces have room for improvement.
A real backgammon focus. Not sure how to do this but the site would need to somehow make you feel like you are part of the larger backgammon community. A simple start would be to provide linkage between the site an sites like this one, but you would want to go beyond that somehow.
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