Jim Pfleck wrote:
I think that the doubters have strong points. We are a niche group (turn based games) in a niche market (Civil War Games). Two things come to mind-
(1) what is the experience for our members? Are we finding opponents? Are we getting answers to our game mechanics and history questions? Are our members missing something from here they used to get? Are the administrative duties more work than the number of volunteers can comfortably handle? I think, considering our demographic and market issues, answering these questions positively should be a goal.
(2) There have been a fair number of real time and turn based Civil War tactical and strategic games that have come out in the last ten years that never really got traction here (I have no idea what the market for them is)--Grigsby, Ageod, Brother Against Brother, Scourge of War, Ultimate General, etc--are our members playing these games? Did we miss opportunities to meet new gamers by reaching out more to these communities? Is the time and effort to reach out and bring in new people conflict with point 1 above? In other words, if a vast majority of current members do not want to play these new games and are happy with the club, do we add games and complexity to the club to bring in new members who may never play the tiller games? Do we keep our current focus and let the club slowly fade over the next 5 years. Do we aggressively reinvent ourselves? If we want to be aggressive, we should think long and hard about whether it is worth the effort and what we have to offer players of other games that they do not get on the game company forums..
my 2 cents (and I am involved in the administration over at the NWC where we have similar conversations).
For item 1 I haven't had a problem but I haven't been keeping as many games going as I use too. I do wonder if new members are having a problem getting opponents since older players sometimes get stuck in a rut of playing the same people over and over again.
Item 2 is a more difficult thing to address. While there are a lot of games out there most except the RTS ones have been around for a long time. Most don't handle PBEM very well, either due to length or lack of email support. The only game that I know of that recently came out that is tactical and turn based for PBEM is Brother Against Brother. However, BaB reflects the current state of the CW game market. Not enough money in it to put enough development in the game to make it attract buyers. I have been active in beta testing of BaB and really like the game system but with only one large battle, First Manassas, and three small ones it just doesn't have the replay ability it needs to be a first class game. Not many people as a result have purchased the game which makes the problem worse since the developers aren't willing to put more manpower into the game to make add those battles that would make it a first class game system.
There have been some excellent RTS's like Scourge of War but these don't make good club games. They can't be played at leisure by PBEM. You must set up a real time connection between all players which is very difficult. Also many like the Total War series only play a subset of their game when using multiplayer option.
1. Obviously the best solution to this problem is more players which would create more demand, which would bring in bigger and better game companies with the resources to make first class games. One thing we could do is start a club Facebook group for the ACWGC. We don't want it to be a substitute for the web site but a link back to it.
2. From the club point of view expanding the games supported would hopefully attract more active members. Also, getting some volunteers to start putting out some posts so it isn't weeks between something new showing up on the forums would help. The War College had at one time a number of articles on tactics and specific games that were very interesting but the number of people visiting the site was to low to justify the work. We need to start putting these articles on this forum to help create interest and discussion.
3. We also need to see if their is any way to better integrate Game company sites into our site and/or the "Facebook" site. I am not to sure how to do this but Matrix maintains its own Forums for it's games and it would be nice to somehow include discussion there in our site or at least links to them.
Anyway my three cents worth (inflation).
