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Subject: 
Re: A hard decision
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.gaming
Date: 
Tue, 22 Aug 2000 05:51:56 GMT
Viewed: 
1785 times
  
In lugnet.fun.gaming, Justin G. Radford writes:
Before I explain to you what I am talking about, I must tell you who I am.  I
am the creator of the slowly degrading Ultimate Space Lego Combat Sim, another
LegoWars clone.

Wow, you've done a ton of work on the site since the last time I looked at
it.  (You didn't mention the site URL in your message - just in case anyone's
interested: http://justinmain.homestead.com/uslcs.html )


I have a decision to make:  Shall I shut down the USLCS website?  I have
several reasons why.

If you do shut it down, I'd like to keep a copy of the game and make it
available on the BrikWars site, for archival purposes.


Second off, my brother and I have played really boring one on one game with
little or no terrain.  It's all the same:  WHoever has a base will be over ran
by super tanks and such.  In a matter of fact, infantry are useless in the
games we play.  And since there are nobody else (except one, hmmmm) that still
has Legos at my age, it gets monotonous.

Sounds like you know which areas need improvement.  You're lucky to have good
playtesters.


Also, BrikWars has a huge monopoly.  It is a great game.

Ha ha ha, yeah a huge monopoly of two, maybe three dozen players total, spread
across a couple of continents.  It's not really a big market to corner.

BrikWars was ignored for almost five years before anybody else decided to try
it out, but did I get discouraged?  No!  Why?  Because I didn't actually care
if anybody else ever saw it, I was just screwing around.  Not very inspiring,
I know, but here's what I'm trying to say.  USLCS isn't even a year old, so so
what if nobody's playing it yet.  Maybe your expectations have just been a
little unrealistic.


However, I like complexity and seriousness moreso then silliness.  Oh
well.  I have never seen anything about USLCS here, and all the
announcements I made were ignored, completly.

I keep increasing the silliness factor in BrikWars not just because it goes
well with the LEGO spirit (or what I percieve the LEGO spirit to be), but
because otherwise I'd be competing against a whole bunch of real miniatures
wargames that have things like publishers, editors, playtesters, marketing
departments, etc., - that is to say, games that are made by people who
actually get paid for their work.  When you go for complexity and seriousness,
shoestring operations just don't have the infrastructure to compete in a
market saturated with big-money games like Warhammer 40k.  Our only advantage
is personality.


And secondly, my web page design skills are really bad.  I can never make a
good looking website.  THis is insignifagent to the rest, but I had to say it.

Not as insignificant as you might think.  Websites are just like people.
Nobody really cares how pretty they are on the inside, appearance is many
times more important than content when somebody is deciding whether or not to
stay and see what you have to say or move on to something more attractive.

I can guarantee that BrikWars' "huge monopoly" has a lot less to do with being
a "great game" and a lot more to do with having a pretty site with pretty
little pictures.

I don't know anything about building sites with Homestead, but it may be that
they don't give you the tools you need to make the kind of site you're
thinking about building.  If web design is a serious interest for you, you
might want to look at other kinds of authoring and hosting tools.


I will close it.  That is a definite.  By why am I posting?  Because if any of
you has a reason that will make me keep the site up, then I will.  If no one
posts, or if I don't get convinced, USLCS, one of my greatest creations, will
dissapear of the internet for possibly good.

Hey, it's not our job to keep you motivated.  No amount of success will
satisfy you if you're only in it for other people's approval.  If it's not fun
for you regardless of whether anybody else cares, what's the point?  Your time
is valuable, you should be using it to do the stuff you enjoy for its own sake.

On the other hand, if you enjoy working on your game and your site, who cares
what the rest of us think?  People are idiots, whether they like something or
not has nothing to do with whether its quality is high or low. (To wit:
country music is still the most popular musical genre in America.  We all love
to eat at McDonalds.  Many otherwise intelligent people consider Tae Kwon Do
to be a valid martial art.  Etc.)  Leave the site up, keep tinkering with it
every couple of months, maybe one day it'll get popular and maybe it won't,
it's not like its existence is hurting anybody.  Even if nobody ever looks at
it again, the only important thing is whether you gain some private enjoyment
from it.


- Mike Rayhawk.


--------------------------------------------------
    Check out the Official BrikWars Home Page at
   http://www.teleport.com/~rayhawks/brikwars.htm
--------------------------------------------------



Message is in Reply To:
  A hard decision
 
Before I explain to you what I am talking about, I must tell you who I am. I am the creator of the slowly degrading Ultimate Space Lego Combat Sim, another LegoWars clone. I have a decision to make: Shall I shut down the USLCS website? I have (...) (24 years ago, 22-Aug-00, to lugnet.gaming)

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