2001-09-04 - 11:54 p.m.

The End of Planetarion As We Know It

Good Lord. After all of yesterday's stupidity I thought that I could forget about Planetarion, but tonight a shocking announcement was made by the game's creators that's going to greatly change how the next round is played.

What did the creators do? Did they add new ships? Did they change the way the old ones worked? Did they add fantastic new features?

None of the above.

The announced that Planetarion, which had been a free game ever since it was started two and a half years ago was going to be exclusively Play-To-Pay. Some weeks ago there was some talk about having two versions of PA, one paid, the other free. Opinion was divided on that but this announcement made it clear: Planetarion was going to be Play-To-Pay (P2P) ONLY.

The reason for this was simple. In the last year or so, with the dot-com crash and all, the ad revenues from clicking banners has plummeted. The creators of PA simply couldn't live on the meager money the ad banners were bringing in any more.

Now, this news really does not disturb me. At most a Planetarion planet is going to be $10, and that's a ridiculously tiny amount of money. Heck, a weekend chess tournament costs $70, and that's for a cheap one. A big-money event might cost $250 or more. And that's just for a weekend! Heck, you can get MONTHS of misery and suffering out of a round of Planetarion!

However, I'm not your average Planetarion player. I'm much older and established than the norm. Your basic PA player is a 15 year old Norwegian kid, and $10 is not so easy for them to come by. Even more problematic: even if they have the money, how are they going to pay for it? They don't have credit cards!

It might reasonably be pointed out that their parents almost certainly do have credit cards. However Mr.-and-Mrs. Norwegian-schoolboy will probably take a dim view of actually paying for the thing that is keeping junior up so late on school nights. I've seem parents do all sorts of things to regulate the PA-playing of their children - like taking out their hard drives, stealing the power cords, etc.

Of course there are people who refuse to pay "on principle." Yeah, right. It's not the principle, it's the money.

Well, this is certainly going to make things interesting. One thing I know it's going to do: it's going to weed out a lot of the casual, less dedicated players. This is going to make the game a lot tougher. Well, good! I think this round is going to be all about separating the men from the boys. Er, figuratively speaking that is! Lily is determined to be a top female PA player this round, and I'll bet she'll do it, too.

Countdown: 7 Days Behind