(03-05-2023, 02:25 AM)Calidor Wrote: So did Maximus give up on Alamaze?
No, not by a long shot, though I did cease my exploration of it in this particular game. I've stayed in ongoing contact with the new owner, John (Brekk), but I don't allocate vast tracts of time to it. I very much would like for Alamaze to succeed. There's lots about it that I like, and I am hopeful that over the long term going forward, the number of players that Alamaze has grows considerably.
The things that Alamaze gets right are not the problem. That said, I think that there exists substantial room for improvement, not all of which are related to the programming of the game, itself. Rather, some involve processes -
aka chosen ways of doing things. For example, I'm no fan of Rick's chosen approach to pricing structure. I don't think that it was inherently conducive to growing the size of the overall player base. Rick's chosen approach never really struck me as presenting itself in a tempting way to potential newcomers to the game. In fairness to Rick, he tried a variety of different pricing structures, over the years. Yet, when all was said and done, how successful were they at getting the game's player base where it needed to be?
Alamaze's problems extend beyond just its pricing structure (my opinion, and no one has to share it). For example, Alamaze is a complex game - and complexity can frequently be a double-edged sword. Complexity cuts both ways. It can be a core part of a game's appeal, and simultaneously, it can be a barrier to the masses. In a nutshell, Alamaze can be a LOT to swallow in one bite -
particularly for newcomers.
Far from giving up on Alamaze, I much preferred that Rick sell it to someone else, than for it to wither and die off completely. And I really hated to see all of the work that Rick, Mike, and others along the way sank into what became Alamaze as it exists, today, lost and gone, forever. Alamaze is one of Rick McDowell's legacies, and personally speaking, while it may not have proven to be one of his more profitable legacies (new Alamaze, no the original Alamaze, which are actually a fairly popular and profitable thing, from what I know), nonetheless, it is Rick's legacy that I am the most familiar with, personally.
Something as simple as being unable to have the system automatically send a link to players, to enable them to reset their password for playing in games of Alamaze, is a sterling example of design flaw in process form. How many other online games these days require someone on the other end to manually reset a password that you've forgotten? The current approach is manpower-intensive (it shouldn't require a human support person to do, in the first place), it takes longer, and it's inherently inefficient. An excess of support personnel is not something that Alamaze has been famous for in recent years. Quite the opposite, in fact.
From my perspective, Alamaze has been suffering the death of a thousand cuts for some time, now. It's not really been a planned thing, but rather, things have just sort of turned out that way in a piecemeal sort of way. The chief (and only) programmer, for example, should focus upon programming. For one thing, programming can be a very long and grueling undertaking, one fraught with a need for hunting bugs. Chief programmers, and especially if you've only got one programmer doing all of the programming changes and such, shouldn't be wasted on general support activities. It's not a good tradeoff, plus it inevitably results in slower progress to programming activities. After all, there's only just so many hours in a day. One bug could take only minutes to track down and fix, but another could require days (or longer). And an owner that's disengaged from Alamaze will hinder the game's development and future progress, no matter whom that owner might be. You lose customers that way, and you lose the staff, also. It's a poison of its own sort, and it has a cancerous effect upon hope on the part of anyone who wants the game to live and to breathe and to grow and to prosper. That said, life has its own ways of reordering our individual priorities, and to Rick's good credit, he managed to reinvigorate hope within the Alamaze player community, simply by selling it to someone else.
Now, it's fate lies in other hands. I'm not the owner, but I remain an interested party to the whole affair. And I certainly haven't given up on Alamaze, not by any stretch of the imagination, Calidor.
To fix all of that which ails Alamaze requires will, resolve, resources, persistence, and foresight. I don't feel that it is a mission impossible by any stretch of the imagination, but Rick McDowell spent a lot of years trying to find the right approach, one which would effectively yield a self-perpetuating magic, one where Alamaze's success would be achieved and continue to grow for the foreseeable, if not long term, future.
Buddy/Ignore List
