E-Mail Games
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
E-mail games is a short common hobby vernacular for "Play by E-mail" (PBEM) games, a type of wargaming.
Play by E-mail games were the Play By Mail (PBM) industry's attempt to adapt to the emerging internet in the mid to late 1990s, when e-mail quickly began replacing regular snail mail. Prior to the mid-90s, from the early 1970s onward, a thriving cottage industry had grown up around computer-moderated, professionally-run commercial Play by Mail (PBM) games run by for profit companies, who ran wargames by post. The internet threatened the existence of these companies and they attempted to adapt.
The first attempt to adapt to changing technology was in the time period of 1991-1993, just before the big internet explosion. Some companies at that time began allowing players to code orders and save them to a floppy disk, then mail the disk to the game manager rather than hand-writing the orders on orders forms and mailing them. The game manager would then insert the received disk into his computer drive, rather than manually typing the player's orders into the program. This served to eliminate copying areas and mistakes due to bad handwriting; however it was soon made obsolete by the post-1994 internet explosion and e-mail.
The Play by E-mail concept survives and usually denotes a turn-based multi-player strategy or wargame of some sort; though truthfully, at this time, most are not run strictly by e-mail but rather by either a GUI interface, or completely online (web-based) where players submit game orders and commands. Most PBEM or "E-mail games" are now free, run, played, and managed by hobbists and people who just like to code and program, and most of the commercial PBM/PBEM industry has become extinct. In this sense, the "E-mail game" hobby has realized the dream of the internet.
[edit] Some Relevant Links
There are hundreds, possibly thousands or tens of thousands of PBEM type games out there on the internet, nobody has really counted them. Some start and fail or fade away, many have been running for ten years or more. Here are just a few links to some free PBEM sites:
E-Mail Games (EMG) is a website, run by Doug Greening, which provides several free play-by-email wargames. Most of the games on this site are Diplomacy based games and variants, orders are submitted by e-mail to a mailbot server.
Empire Forge (EF) is a website, run by Jeff Sullins, which provides a free play-by-email fantasy wargame of the same name. Orders in this game are entered by way of a form orders page.
Darkness of Silverfall (DOS) is a website, run by Peter Catling, which provides huge free play-by-email space wargame of the same name. The game has a complex GUI to view game data, and enter orders. Orders are submitted by attaching the orders file to an e-mail and sending it to Mr. Catling, who transfers it to a computer. DOS stands of interest as an original early 1990s for-profit PBM game that is now run gratidously as a free PBEM. According to Mr. Catling, Darkness of Silverfall has been running continuously in one form or another since 1983 or 1984.
