Awww I am sorry your piratey romance didn’t work out, people can definitely turn out to be different from their pirates, but I hope Puzzle Pirates (my game) was overall a positive experience for you. It’s nice to see it mentioned on HN. It’s still online today with a crew of quite salty pirates ;)
Overall, this relationship and all the others on YPP were a net-positive for me, and I had immensely wonderful times playing "the social puzzle" as well as blockading, and pretending to be a wealthy mogul, and "governing" an island on behalf of the flag.
I did indeed fall in love with the sound of her voice, and if it had been a malicious ruse or "catfishing" I would've been crushed. But, having been an Internet user since 1989, I like to think I'm fairly savvy. I mean, some of the "hot girls" I had interacted with turned out to be fat, smelly dudes, but they never really surprised me!
Eventually, I bowed out when I realized that the game had become quite solitary for me, grinding out solo puzzles every day without really socializing anymore.
But at that time, 20 years ago, I was holed-up in my little apartment and not socializing much, due to the broken leg injury, the extreme heat, and poverty. So, in many ways, this MMOG helped to socialize me and kept me sane, at that critical juncture in life.
Since then, I've managed to adapt better, socially, to real life, and I can get out and interact with real people on most days of the week, so that's a big win.
And my ex-fiancée did find the man of her dreams, after all, and it seems that she got what she wanted out of the experience as well. No regrets!
Puzzle Pirates was a very big part of my growing up. One of the first online games I had the pleasure of playing. I still download and check in every few years :)
The aside about mailing lists is well made: with the exception of SMS, email is the one method of customer contact not mediated by big tech networks (save arguably Gmail) and portable across service providers. In games it’s the best way to keep in touch with players, much better than discord where the dots accumulate and most members ignore most server updates and notifs.
Bring back site specific forums, too ;) But most businesses’ customers don’t have enough to talk about for a forum.
Context: Charles Stross 2005 book Accelerando features simulated Lobsters that achieve consciousness and, with the help of the central character, escape their Russian servers for the cosmos.
2005! Didn't realize it was that long ago. Have been thinking about that book every time I read about people that move to "100% AI coding" in their work. Sure, they might have an increased output, but what happens when their "computer is ripped off their face" like the main character?
This is common practice in gambling and now games, too: Zynga has 'VIP' teams for high-spending free to play game customers, they would talk on the phone at length, get to know them, fly them to Vegas for jaunts, etc.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-does-zynga-hunt-for-whales...
> "We've done so much experimenting at Zynga with VIP. We know what's the frequency of contact. We know what call types work. We know what times to call. We know exactly who to call and when. We know who has a higher propensity to be more susceptible to our call."
This redistribution of revenues from new to old has also taken place in games: ~90% of time in games on PC is spent in games older than a year, ~50% in games 5+ years old like Fortnite, CoD, Roblox etc. Around half of revenues are 'free to play' [1]
This is why making a new game is probably a terrible idea... but hey, world is casino!
This is my earliest memory. When I was two, and did not yet know how to swim, I was visiting with family who had a place right on the river Thames near Henley. I was running around with my seven cousins, but I was the youngest and at some point found myself alone. I wandered out onto the towpath beside the river, where they had a small jetty.
Earlier an older cousin had been out in the canoe and it looked easy enough. I put one foot in and realised my error immediately, toppling into the water. I remember clearly the water bubbles going by and thinking 'Oh dear, my mum is going to be so angry about this.' I came back up and saw a couple now running up along the path -- they had seen me go in.
I don't remember anything else. I'm told the man fished me out and then there was a great kerfuffle as I was hung upside-down and coughed a bit. My cousins got a massive earful from my mother, who was furious with the eldest in particular for losing track of me. My father taught me to swim.
The man was thanked profusely, but we don't know his name. I hope he had a wonderful life and I'm grateful for mine.
Yes. See 'Thinking in Bets' by Annie Duke for a good summary of why Poker is interesting / useful. World is Casino!
Blood on the Clocktower is great! My 15yo son is always trying to get a group of 8+ together for a game.
Came here to recommend Skull, a quick and easy to learn bluffing game, of which the designer said he was aiming for 'the feelings of poker without the money or luck' and I would say succeeded.
If you have not, do read Cory Doctorow's 'The Lost Cause': it features a rebuild like this (no robots tho iirc.) You might like his mid-singularity novel Walkaway, too :)
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