In-Game Email, Or Real Email?

[skeezix]

I wish I could make this not take up a frontpage slot on gp32x, but what can you do

I'm undecided between these two options for the game I'm working on; ie: Client is for Pandora, but I'm also designing so that it'll work fine from your desktop as well, when your Panda isn't around.

The question for this email is -- given I want to have a lot of communicationm 'in game' (player to player), and 'double blind' (you don't know the players real email addresses unless they reveal them; you only know their made up game-name.)

I had planned on in-game 'email' =-- you pick a player from the drop-down and fire him a message; you can do this as much as you like, for negotiations and diplomacy; but I had a brainfart -- one of the reasons I dislike Facebook, for example, is that some peopel like to use it instead of email, and its a terrible email client. (Just love having a 17" monitor, and getting a 4" wide column for my content; likewise, no traditional email tools, and using their editor instead of my preferred editor, and so on.) Anyway, same logic applies -- by making a pure in-game email system for doing in-game email, I impose my own crappy 'mail client' upon the player.

The alternative that pops to mind is doing 'in game mail' via the players normal email client (be it gmail, or a real desktop client) --- or as the case may be, their pandora's email client (or pandora using gmail/etc).

I could implement this easily, by simply offering an email alias on my server (its a multiplayer server/client game _anyway_)..

ie: you woudl email gamename@mydomain.com, and your subject line would be:

Subject: [gamename][playey name] I hate you and need to destroy your empire!

My server would then figure out which real human mailox to forward to, alter the From and such to be my server again, and forward it off; they would get an email from my server, which if they reply to woudl then go back to my server. ie: I'd switch the Subject line to be the From playes name instead of the to-player, so when they hit reply, it just goes right back to the right guy.

This woudl let you use any email client you want, and saves me implementing the whole in-game email system beyond the double-blind forwarder.

My question is:

1) Do you like this idea?
2) Or do you think this will break the immewrsion?
3) Or do you think it means you'll be runing the game client in one window, and switchign to anemail client.. just too much hastle? ie: Maybe you just want a little popup notification that an in-game mail arrived and read it ingame?

Please let me have your thoughts ASAP

jeff

 

[peca]

Hmm, don't you use XMMP for messaging? Then every player can have ingame XMMP account and can choice if use ingame messanger and/or external XMMP client (like PSI - my favorite).

 

[jlepley]

Sounds genius to me. On the other hand, could you give each player their own "game" email account and give them the option to automatically forward messages to their "normal" email account?

 

[rabidpoobear]

I think you should have both ingame and out-of-game. out-of-game is good for another reason - it lets people have history of their messages in their e-mail clients (eg. I have a lot of e-mails saved in my gmail account). Otherwise you're stuck with the history yourself.

So say someone receives a message from a player: it will e-mail it to them automatically. Then, if they are also logged into the game, it will pop up and say you have a new message and they can read/reply through the game if they want.

Some people don't like getting lots of e-mails though so you might offer a no-email mode where it will just queue up messages until the player logs on and then they can read them and choose whether to reply. that keeps you from having to save too many back messages from them but still keeps people from receiving a bunch of e-mails if they don't want it.

I go long periods without going on to sites though so if I can receive RSS or e-mail of my status I'd be happy. I have it set up to automatically e-mail me when someone replies to a post I make on gp32x, and I get hundreds of e-mails a day, but I don't really care because gmail automatically threads them for me and it lets me know if I should go to gp32x and reply without having to bother with the slow site (gmail is tons faster for me).

 

[God Ginrai]

I think you should have both ingame and out-of-game. out-of-game is good for another reason - it lets people have history of their messages in their e-mail clients (eg. I have a lot of e-mails saved in my gmail account). Otherwise you're stuck with the history yourself.

So say someone receives a message from a player: it will e-mail it to them automatically. Then, if they are also logged into the game, it will pop up and say you have a new message and they can read/reply through the game if they want.

Some people don't like getting lots of e-mails though so you might offer a no-email mode where it will just queue up messages until the player logs on and then they can read them and choose whether to reply. that keeps you from having to save too many back messages from them but still keeps people from receiving a bunch of e-mails if they don't want it.

I go long periods without going on to sites though so if I can receive RSS or e-mail of my status I'd be happy. I have it set up to automatically e-mail me when someone replies to a post I make on gp32x, and I get hundreds of e-mails a day, but I don't really care because gmail automatically threads them for me and it lets me know if I should go to gp32x and reply without having to bother with the slow site (gmail is tons faster for me).

I was basically going to suggest something similar to this.

@skeezix: You could have "short mail" which would be for little one liners. (i.e. "You free? I want to go to a dungeon on Lambda server and need a Wave Master. Meet me in Carmina Gadelica if you are interested.") Players can choose whether those mails are also forwarded to their e-mail in options. For sending things, you can do it completely in game, or if you don't have time to boot up the game and send the message, you can use your "use your own e-mail client" method.

Basically, what I'm suggesting is the Flash/Short Mail that exists in dot hack with the ability to forward it to your own e-mail address. http://dothack.wikia.com/wiki/Short_mail

-God Ginrai

 

[Alpha2]

If you;re not expecting people so send long rambling pleas for diplomacy you can just use canned phrases for in game emails. it would make the game simple and not risk someone missing an email due to a spam filter or get lost amid a bunch of other emails.

 

[skeezix]

The trick is.. trying to optimize time as time is ever tight; writing both an ingame and an outgame system is pretty redundant

However, seems like everyone likes the in-game idea.

As such, I can always add an email proxy, or add POP# or other messaging support right to the game server, etc and so on later.

So it seems.. people would like an in-game messenger, and optionally an out-of-game messenger; but the 'must have' one is in-game.

Thats the feel?

(ie: this is a slow paced strategic wargame, so in-game mail is like sending a courier to the others, so you can negotiate, do diplomacy, gang up on others, etc.)

jeff

(ie: Its nolike the mail volume will be trouble, or that writing a mail system is hard;l its actually pretty easy. I'm just going through the pain of trying ot nail down my client and UI requirements, so I can design the UI. It is a challenging thing, to come up with a UI that encourages the workflow the game wants, so you're not stumbling over every action; I'm tempted to post another topic to ask for ideas on the UI, but figure I better take a better stab at it myself first, so I can present options etc

 

[God Ginrai]

The trick is.. trying to optimize time as time is ever tight; writing both an ingame and an outgame system is pretty redundant

However, seems like everyone likes the in-game idea.

As such, I can always add an email proxy, or add POP# or other messaging support right to the game server, etc and so on later.

So it seems.. people would like an in-game messenger, and optionally an out-of-game messenger; but the 'must have' one is in-game.

Thats the feel?

(ie: this is a slow paced strategic wargame, so in-game mail is like sending a courier to the others, so you can negotiate, do diplomacy, gang up on others, etc.)

jeff

(ie: Its nolike the mail volume will be trouble, or that writing a mail system is hard;l its actually pretty easy. I'm just going through the pain of trying ot nail down my client and UI requirements, so I can design the UI. It is a challenging thing, to come up with a UI that encourages the workflow the game wants, so you're not stumbling over every action; I'm tempted to post another topic to ask for ideas on the UI, but figure I better take a better stab at it myself first, so I can present options etc

That's generally how I feel about it.

-God Ginrai

 

[Monk]

In-game for immersion

 

[Tempel]

I feel like in-game email is important, but I can't think up a compelling reason why. Keeping game messages separate from personal emails is one reason, I guess.

But if you made the game message account accessible via IMAP, that would help.

 

[skeezix]

OKay, thanks guys.

In-game it is -- just a simple system; and later, time permitting, I can possuibly build an in-game to out-game proxy.

jeff

 

[multiplex]

Email-to-email also increases spam concerns, and you'll probably need to scrub HTML content and attachments, etc. Email notifications are generally a good thing, but should always be optional, IMO. An RSS feed would work pretty well, too.