Hi,
We're in the process of converting a Play-By-Email game we created back in 1995 into a modern App version. There have been several comparisons made with the classic game Masters of Magic (created by MicroProse/Simtex) although the games were developed independently around the same era. Both are turn based build, explore, expand and conquer type games requiring resource management and magic research. Heroes play an important part in each game Exploring Special Places, Finding Artefacts, Leading Armies and Casting Spells in Battle. The multi-plane maps are another common feature with War of Wizards taking place at Ground Level, in the Underworld and on the Astral Plane.
There don't seem to be a lot of Turn-Based Multiplayer Fantasy Strategy games around these days. Does anyone know any good ones? My approach to designing games has always been, make the game you would want to play. Hopefully we can get funding in place for this latest version of War of Wizards and we will be able to put a good option into this category.
Our full article from the most recent issue (#7) of "Suspense & Decision" gaming e-zine below;
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After 19 years of development, 17,000+ signups and over 100 individual games, WoW Games is launching a crowd funding campaign to develop a new interface for War of Wizards. (Campaign Page www.pozible.com/warofwizards )
BACKGROUND
War of Wizards the PBeM game was founded in 1995 the same year as two other internet start-ups; YAHOO and ebay. Unfortunately, the three ventures haven’t had the same trajectory over the past 20 years but I found it interesting to reflect on the changes in technology and the Play-By-Mail (PBM) genre over that period in the context of War of Wizards (WoW, with our version of the acronym significantly pre-dating World of Warcraft).
My first exposure to PBM was well before this through “G.M. – The Independent Role Playing Magazine” in 1989. Living in relative isolation on a farm the whole idea of PBM really appealed to me and I promptly designed my own. Being only 12 years old at the time it unsurprisingly was never launched but the seed had been sown.
1995 was my and Chris, my partner in WoW Games, first year at University where we both lived on campus after having attended the same country school. It was on a LINUX computer in the library we came across Atlantis 2.0 which we both played, myself having some basic success walking into a, for some unknown reason, unguarded region and making it my own. I found myself spending much of my week thinking about orders and desperately waiting for the turn reports to come back. At this stage I was hooked.
With Chris studying Computer Science he was keen to put his programming skills to use, so we decided to make our own Play-By-EMail (PBeM) game. Incorporating the game play I would personally want to see in a game WoW 1.0 was designed and programmed. With a small core of play testers the basic game was up and running. The game quickly evolved and a year later WoW 2.0 was launched which is the basis of the game which still exists today.
THE GAME
War of Wizards is a strategy, fantasy game involving wizards raising armies, managing resources and researching magic. As a player you can: Send heroes exploring towers, caves and graveyards, build armies and send them out to conquer your enemies, research the magic arts in areas ranging from Necromancy to Druidic, construct towns, defences and buildings such as Sages Guilds, Taverns, Ship Yards and Beast Pits, feed peasants generously or enslave them. Basically you can do as you wish.
The only restriction is surviving the onslaught of other wizards with similar megalomaniacal intentions. Diplomacy is the key, conversing with other wizards to trade resources, forge alliances and backstab others.
WoW 2.0 is set in a variety of fantasy worlds. You take the role of a wizard leading one of the many cities inhabited by one of the 16 races of the worlds of WoW.
Of all the games I’ve seen Masters of Magic, the turn based strategy video game by Simtex, is the closest match to WoW (in fact many aspects were so similar I suspected a former WoW player may have been involved in designing it, until I realised their original version predated ours). I noticed a recent Kickstarter Campaign for an updated version of Masters of Magic called Worlds of Magic, which is quite exciting but hopefully the upcoming WoW app will be even more so.
STRENGTHS OF THE GAME
Over its first few years of existence WoW had over 17,000 signups for free playtests and at its peak had over 150 paying commercial players. I believe there were a number of things we did right that lead to this growth (remembering this is in the context of the internet almost 20 years ago)
Player Interaction – WoW is not a game which can be won by working in isolation. Alliances and trade are key and I believe it’s the diplomacy (and sometimes back stabbing) which makes the game addictive. What separates PBEM from other Turn Based computer games is the amount of time and thought which goes into orders. With the usual space between turns being one week, this provides an extended opportunity to strategize with allies or negotiate with neutrals/enemies
Build a Community to contribute to the Development of the Game – There are a number of veteran players who understand the game better than I do as its designer. Over the years many of the new features (or fixes for old ones) have been due to player contributions. Not only has this been vital in the development of the game but it has also heightened engagement levels amongst players. The WoW Discussion Group (WDG) still runs today with players who have been with us for over a decade. Turn credits in commercial games or in game gold for free playtests are given as rewards for spotting bugs.
User Generated Content – While the base map and story was in place for each game, players were able to generate “Blurbs” which gave the story for their individual wizard and capital city and “News” which is an update that came out weekly in line with turn reports. To encourage contributions in game rewards of gold were made in free playtest games or partial turn credits in commercial games. Beyond contributions within the games, some players also took it a step further and designed their own maps and stories for others to play.
Rankings – Each game has a Rankings page showing comparisons amongst the players on a variety of metrics. Beyond this though was an overall rankings page combining points across games played (best 10 games counted). This led to quite fierce competition and obviously encouraged players to become involved in additional games. At various stages we also launched tournaments which again produced intensive periods of game play (particularly the 2 on 2 version where players entered in pairs).
WEAKNESSES OF THE GAME
Cumbersome orders – Text based orders don’t really fly in this day and age of point & click or drag & drop. While old school PBEM players are happy to continue typing orders, it limits the appeal of the game to the new generation (and even our most dedicated players lose enthusiasm in the later stages of the game with many regions occupied and pages of orders required to control them and their armies).
Drop Outs – While we had very impressive figures for signups and players entering free playtests, we have also had very high drop out rates as the game certainly isn’t for everyone and takes a degree of dedication to play. Drop outs in turn unbalance games as some players get to expand into unguarded territory while others have to fight for every inch.
Manual Processing Requirements – While the entire system had a degree of automation there has always been a degree of frustration from players who are waiting for tasks to be manually processed such as setting up games. The lack of automation also limited the amount we could expand during the boom times.
CHANGES IN TECHNOLOGY
Servers – We’ve come a long way from running the modem line to the telephone socket and waiting for the ding-dong, ding-dong…squelch tone to confirm we’ve managed to dial into the university server. By the time we had our own servers one of our old problems was the occasional brief power outage at Chris’s house where a bunch of old computers sat hosting the game. Cloud computing has removed those hassles and left us with options to quickly scale up whenever extra processing power is needed.
Promotion – Back in the day I think we landed a large number of hits from Greg Lindahl’s PBeM LIST site. I’m convinced that supply and demand was quite different for PBeM back then. We were also members of Web Rings, which are a concept you really don’t see as much of these days. Banner Exchanges were also big but to be honest I really can’t work out where 17,000 signups came from.
Revenue Streams – For advertising we had a deal that we would probably struggle to replicate these days with 80 cents per 1000 impressions and 15c per click through. For playing commercial games the charge was $2 per turn, which seems expensive in the context of a 99c App these days but is also still only $2 per week if you look at it that way. With so many other options for generating revenue these days such as micro-payments or crowd funding, there seems to be both more possibilities but also more competition for the gaming dollar.
Payments – How much easier would life have been back then had Paypal been in existence. Wiring funds, money orders, converting cheques into Australian dollars or KAGI (a downloadable computer program that encrypted credit card details to then be emailed) were our only options. Now there are so many 3rd party options in place now, we no longer need to look at opening a merchant account with the local bank.
WHAT NOW FOR WoW
For over a decade, a graphical user interface has been needed for WoW to achieve ease of game play. In todays world of Apps, with connectivity pretty much everywhere you go, there is certainly an opportunity to take, in my opinion, a great underlying game and modernize it. We are looking to maintain the same PBeM but provide an optional interface which will, lets face it, take a lot of the headaches out of implementing orders and jazz up the presentation of a turn report. The worlds our oyster when it then comes to how far we and the WoW community go with graphics and other features.
While this vision has been in place for a while, the time (and in my case skill set) hasn’t been available. Our proposed solution is a crowd funding campaign to enable outsourced development of the new game interface. Any assistance, either in advice or a pledge on our crowd funding page www.pozible.com/warofwizards is much appreciated!
After 19 years we hope to bring a new and improved game experience soon!
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