There are some really complicated board games (particularly wargames) which are actually meant to be played by mail, because turns take so long you can't really conveniently play them with another person (unless you live together I guess). This later got developed into playing by email for computer games, a lot of early 4X strategy games had features supporting that.
With a game like that, you could conceivably have a really long campaign, although you'd probably need to be really into it in order to not lose interest.
Part of the reason for it being implemented via email specifically was unreliable and slow internet in the early days - properly connecting both players might not be viable in a lot of cases, but just sending along the data of the game state, and having players take their turn on their own, would be a lot easier. These days, most game companies operate on the assumption that everyone has a perfect connection (even if this isn't necessarily true, especially depending on where you live), which has also been used to justify the lack of LAN functionality in a lot of games, something which used to be pretty much standard for PC games (the actual reason probably has more to do with anti-piracy measures, but "surely you have good internet, you don't need LAN" is the publicly given reason at least).
Play-by-email itself is rather niche, since it's only really suitable for turn-based games, so that probably didn't do it any favors. You could likely improvise it in a lot of cases though, by just passing along save files manually (which these days is at least a lot easier to do, there's plenty of services for you to upload files to, and saves wouldn't really exceed size limits in most cases).
It seems like it'd be really nice for long turn based games, not having to text people that you've done your turn on constantly checking a program/website would be very convenient. It'd also be nice at work.
There are some really complicated board games (particularly wargames) which are actually meant to be played by mail, because turns take so long you can't really conveniently play them with another person (unless you live together I guess). This later got developed into playing by email for computer games, a lot of early 4X strategy games had features supporting that.
With a game like that, you could conceivably have a really long campaign, although you'd probably need to be really into it in order to not lose interest.
We should bring back playing games by email, why'd that ever go away?
Part of the reason for it being implemented via email specifically was unreliable and slow internet in the early days - properly connecting both players might not be viable in a lot of cases, but just sending along the data of the game state, and having players take their turn on their own, would be a lot easier. These days, most game companies operate on the assumption that everyone has a perfect connection (even if this isn't necessarily true, especially depending on where you live), which has also been used to justify the lack of LAN functionality in a lot of games, something which used to be pretty much standard for PC games (the actual reason probably has more to do with anti-piracy measures, but "surely you have good internet, you don't need LAN" is the publicly given reason at least).
Play-by-email itself is rather niche, since it's only really suitable for turn-based games, so that probably didn't do it any favors. You could likely improvise it in a lot of cases though, by just passing along save files manually (which these days is at least a lot easier to do, there's plenty of services for you to upload files to, and saves wouldn't really exceed size limits in most cases).
It seems like it'd be really nice for long turn based games, not having to text people that you've done your turn on constantly checking a program/website would be very convenient. It'd also be nice at work.
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