I think it's very possible that our low level of "user friendliness" is
what is keeping us from drawing in and keeping new players.
That agora is played over email is one of the reasons I like it. That
might just be me however. I like the simplicity that email presents
(rather than having to learn how to navigate through web interfaces to
learn a new game, all the time wondering if your missing some feature of
the game that you haven't found yet).
I also like the text based nature of the ruleset. It's hard to get more
flexibility. Consider a database that may not cope well with some of the
more imaginative changes that people can invent. Losing the ability to
make those changes easily I think would be a big loss.
Many of the newer nomics that are run over wikis or webpages are much more
active than
Agora. I don't know how people even find Agora nowadays, with our
non-public archive and lack of a beginner's page or FAQ.
I agree that finding new players (or having new players find agora) is
something that could be improved. I found agora through nomic.net (which
is google result #1 for 'nomic') after I discovered the nomic concept.
But, it should be noted that agora is not listed on the active games
page there, and that the Wikipedia page for 'Nomic' links to that page.
So, in this respect some fairly simple changes that could help here are:
* Listing agora on the active games page on Nomic.net,
* A wikipedia entry for 'Agora', or at least a direct mention on the
existing Nomic page (after all, Agora is the longest running game right?),
* Improving google results, most probably with a public mail archive and
improved agoranomic.org. IMO the wiki is probably the way to go as far
as improving agoranomic.org
Levi
