welcome to page 16... braught to you my AFM.... Arms For Mice.... serving the worlds mice fo two pages.... keep those donations coming...

I spit on your fatwah, Trib. There's been a fatwah out on Salman Rushdie forever it seems, and if you guys can't track down some old-ass author, then I feel pretty safe here in my fortified bunker.

Besides, all your fighters are literally pussies...

And BSmoke, Furry Kiss is a perfectly acceptable porno name for you.

Not "straight" porn of course, but still...

My kitties may be pussies, but they have been carefully selected and purrrrfectly trained in the meowtial arts. And those that have the explosive cat dung strapped to their little bodies know that their ultimate sacrifices will bring them thousands of dime bags of virgin cat nip on the other side. Be afraid.....be very afraid!!!

uh oh................. i didnt know about the explosive cat dung..... hey cd and IAB i might need to readjust me rates for hello kitties..

Peace -

Can you give us a hint about the amount of "policing" that will be in the game? I'm tired of being swarmed by multies and force-turners in GC (just happened two games in a row - roonis/pes4renaldo teaming/multies and then colonel clink/krakken/majestikk teaming/multies).

Will there be Admins like in the good ole days of GC who will be able to disable chronic cheaters? Or, will game creators have more power to kick cheaters after a game has started, or have more tools to screen for multies, etc before a game has started?

Perhaps some kind of "trial" system would be a good idea when people are accused of teaming or other forms of cheating...... a trial by "jury" of fellow gamers?

Of course.

Strategy Gamers employs a number of mechanisms to ameliorate undesirable behavior. The first thing is a clear Terms of Service policy that must be agreed to prior to activating an account. All account types are subject to it and this includes paying customers. Second, the game rules are well defined with no room for interpretation. There will be no need for endless forums on etiquette, however if an overlooked issue arises, at least you'll have someone that actually listens and responds to member ideas. As I am running a business and not experimenting with programming languages (not that there is anything wrong with that), I take customer service seriously.

Those elements are passive. Active elements are more powerful at preventing the problems that occur with undesirable behavior. The most powerful is that any game that contains a Trial account player will not count toward member records. This allows for the playing of impromptu games without any worry of records manipulation, either from abusive newbies or by way of players targeting newbies for easy victories. If you discover that the players are buttheads you can quit the game as it will simply not count against your records.

A second tool, actually a set of tools, are the game settings. These include six participation options, the later four have a range of choices.

Invitation Only
Subscribers Only
Minimum Player Rating
Maximum Player Rating
Minimum Games Played
Minimum Membership Length

Two more game settings: Non Scored Game, allows you to play with unfamiliar paying members to gauge their manner of sportsmanship. Automatic Turn Expiration (optional) eliminates turn forcing altogether.

And yet one more game setting, Competition type, in conjunction with the rules, acts to further reduce buttheadism. When a game is created it can be created as a game of Individual effort (the default) or a Team game. Team members show up as a group on the game pages. Game settings are clearly displayed on the Join Game page and accessible in the game pages. This makes the game style unquestionably clear. And even if a butthead has the zeal to behave poorly despite all of this, clear game settings make poor behavior stand out more prominently for admin adjudication.

Two more things, not related directly to scoring, are mechanisms designed to make Strategy Gamers an unattractive place for buttheads. Trial accounts can not post messages in the community forums, nor can they post in game forums unless it is a game in which they are participating. No more spam from non-members and no more butthead commentary. Additionally, playing for free gives no rank, no score, nothing and is severely limited in the number of games that can be played, one concurrent game of each brand (except one particular brand). A trial account is designed not for use as a device to use the site for free on a permanent basis.

A third tier is of course admins. I will not employ admins initially, at least until the site is running in full mode. I do not expect a sizeable number of problems given the above mechanisms. However, I have created tools that allow admins to pause games in order to research issues, delete games, roll back game turns, reset games, and best of all, restart games which means the game board returns exactly as it was on turn one. This last mechanism is design in light of the occasional attempt by players to sabotage games in order to get a game layout (via reset) that is more beneficial to them.

Should a trial account or subscriber account be involved in shenanigans, admins can disable them through a console that also allows them to input notes about the circumstances. These notes are visible to all other admins, as is the name of the adjudicating admin. Admins that fail to provide details will no longer be admins. Additionally, every admin action an admin takes is recorded in a log for all other admins to see. This is in essence a check on admins and a means for me to gauge who are the active admins and what are the prevalent issues that they deal with.

In total, I believe that the site will not be an attractive place for the sort of buttheads that plague GC because I have eliminated or severely limited the ways in which they can inflict their negative behaviors. Those that show up anyway will have no effect on rankings. The additional game settings available to paying customers offer a significant amount of control in filtering who you play with.

As for a "trial system", that presents itself as an exclusionary practice and is antithetical to the tenor of Strategy Gamers. The game settings are your trial tools. Subscribers remain free to post their personal Good/Bad Players Lists in the forums.

Wow, all the ideas we gave Bryan and he ignored, plus some I see at other sites I play at. Great start PM.

Might I suggest an automatic mechanism to delete fast games (if there will be fast turn games, that is) if the creator or X% of players go offline or quit? Also some sort of auto-purge of games that no one joins within some multiple of the turn length?

Timed auto deletion is in the mix. The other option is a bit awkward programatically particularly because it requires very frequent rechecking of game membership which would increase as the site grows. That has the potential to slow the system. It also has negative repurcussions for those with unreliable net connections like AOL subscribers. You heard me; AOL sucks and they still owe me $30-something dollars from the class action suit from many years ago.

aol totally sucks. i am constantly surprised at how many people still subject themselves to its patheticness. my guess is that it's people that receive the discs in the mail and think it's pretty so they use it.

seems you are well on the way peace...so am I looking forward to some
spring evenings at the computer by an open window playing at your site , drinking beer and smoking ? ( witohut the ciggarettes tht is, i was stupid enough to quit)
Or will it more be hot summernihgts trying the site out ?

thanks for your post peacemaker....i have a question and a couple comments..
the question ,, will i have problems with only having a dial up connection? sometimes my connection drags with page loading.
the comments... i guess i will miss out on the multi killing. i have always kind of like it when we found out multis then went after them. so as for buttheads can i be ( the one ) to hunt them down and say hello.
the other thing is about pick up games.. will it be similar enough to GC in that there will be 1 and 2 min games.... and will they always have to be against subscribers to count toward rating.. i am not sure i understand that part.. it would seem to me that every quik game would have a nonsubscriber in it.. just wondering about that cause i think i am a better player at quik games than at long term game. thanks

As quick, pick-up, games, are the #1 venue for mutliers and turn forcers, and all around buttheads, I made it such that if the game includes even a single Trial account, then it does not count toward ranking. This is the only sure mechanism to protect paying customers that work hard for their rank, and protect newbies from being targeted for easy points toward rank. I thought about leaving it purely as an option, whether to count a game against Trial accounts, but that then opens the door for newbie targeting again. As my intention is to give prizes for various rankings, I want to make sure that the ability for players to manipulate the records is eradicated in every possible manner.

None of these prevent you from playing your favored type of game. In fact, they make it such that you can play them without the hassles that are found on GC. And BTW, there will be fast game tournaments.

As for your dial-up connection, the site has not been fully speed tested yet. Looks good so far for the Risk-like games. The others have more to them. My number one design goal is speed so I will do what I can.

All I can say is

AWESOME !