MSG Game Sites

ig GAME CENTER	Real time play. Huge variety of unusual MAGs. igGameCenter is a very interesting game site. Uber programmer and proprietor Arty Tchebotaryov has taken the industry by storm, quickly amassing over a hundred modern abstract games, many found nowhere else. igGameCenter has a distinct international flair, with automatic chat translation into many languages. ig Game Center enjoys a large, intelligent, and quickly growing membership. Sign up, start up a game of Oust or Hex Oust, and say hi to Arty. Tell him Mark Steere sent you. MSG games: Oust (square grid), Oust (hex grid), Flume (square grid), Atoll, Cephalopod, Tanbo, Dipole, Crossway.
GAMES.WTANAKA.COM	Relatively new, real time game site. Proprietor Wesley Tanaka is a very adroit programmer, always adding new features to his site. There's a playback function for stepping through archived games - very useful in studying gameplay. MSG games: Oust (square grid), Oust (hex grid), Flume (square grid), Cephalopod, Tanbo, Diffusion.
JIJ BENT	Excellent players. Dutch site Jijbent has highly talented players and a lot of them. It defies the maxim that larger game sites have fewer good players. If you enjoy a real challenge, go to Jijbent and post a challenge for Atoll or Dipole. There'll be a number of members on hand who, in all likelihood, can send you on your way down the slippery slope of declining ratings. Proprietor Bram Schoonhoven is a fantastic programmer, as well as an all around good guy. He's involved with his site at the ground level and maintains a personal presence there. Very accessible. Jijbent has more good players in its membership than any other game site in this list, but Bram will always respond to your emails, usually within a couple of hours. One nice thing he did was to put an MSG logo next to my boards, linking back to the MSG website. I get a lot of Internet traffic from The Netherlands because of that. You have to learn two or three Dutch words to get a game going at Jijbent, but almost all of the members speak perfect English so you can chat while you play. MSG games: Atoll, Dipole.
SUPER DUPER GAMES	The largest collection of MAGs on the web! SuperDuperGames specializes in MAGs to the extent that there are no classics on the site such as Chess, Backgammon, or even Reversi (Othello). Proprietor Aaron Dalton deserves special recognition here. He was the first to program any of my games for the web, and he programmed all the games I had at the time, giving MSG a big boost in recognition. At one point early on, I think about 75% of SuperDuperGames's games were MSG games. MSG games: Oust (square grid), Cephalopod, Tanbo, Dipole, Scribe, Crossway, Diffusion, Jostle.
GAMES BY EMAIL	Masterful programming. Large collection of MSG games. Proprietor Scott Nesin is a master of the game interface. Game pieces are emphasized, with bold but not gaudy color, and maximum size. The game boards are correspondingly de-emphasized. Mouse interaction with the pieces is ultra smooth and intuitive. Every detail of the game interface has been optimized in some way. His Cephalopod implementation is a tour de force. Nobody does the game interface like Scott. One day Scott notified me that he was planning to program all of my games for GBE. That's something I never mind hearing. MSG games: Oust (square grid), Atoll, Cephalopod, Tanbo, Dipole, Scribe, Crossway, Diffusion.
ITS YOUR TURN	Great Tanbo site. Tanbo is an important MSG game and ItsYourTurn is an important game site, primarily because of its gargantuan membership - by far the largest in this list. Tanbo has a small but very enthusiastic following, both in the real world and online. You should be able to find a well matched opponent without too much trouble at ItsYourTurn. I've found good Tanbo players there, although, being a large American site, a lot of the members are more social minded than strategy minded. MSG games: Tanbo.
YUCATA	Skilled players. Yucata is a full featured German game site with a selectable English interface. It enjoys a large membership that harbors a lot of talent. There is a wide variety of games at Yucata, many of which are abstract. Programmer and artist extraordinaire Sven Hilscher did an outstanding job of programming Atoll in a variety of board sizes, creatively naming the boards after actual islands. Nice. Sven has created "skins" for the Atoll boards - basically controlling the appearance of the board and pieces. Most Yucata members are skillful players who speak perfect English. Yucata has active forums in German, and a big chat window in the home page in which conversation flows in both German and English. Proprietor Kay Wilke is a down to earth guy - pleasant and easy to talk to. He maintains a personal presence at Yucata, both in the chat window and on the forums. MSG games: Atoll.
VYING GAMES	Professional, artful programming. Eric Idema, proprietor of Vying Games, is at once an excellent programmer and an excellent graphic artist. Vying features large game boards and pieces with well chosen, complementary color schemes. Games can be played in real time or slowly, over the course of several days, or both, alternating between the two speeds while playing. Vying has a small site feel, but a lot of game playing takes place there. You shouldn't have any trouble finding a game. MSG games: Cephalopod.
YOUR TURN MY TURN	American gaming hot spot. YourTurnMyTurn, founded by Bram Schoonhoven of Jij Bent fame, is a hub for talented American MAG players. It's newer and has a smaller membership than Jij Bent, but there's a high proportion of good players at YourTurnMyTurn. MSG games: Atoll, Dipole.
BOITE A JEUX	"Marines v.s. Aliens" Cephalopod. Proprietor Fred Meurrens has taken a unique approach to programming one of my most popular games, Cephalopod. Marine (military) faces and alien (outer space) faces are used in place of dice faces. It gets better. The number of large teeth protruding from a combatant's mouth (1-6) signifies its value. BoiteaJeux has a considerable membership, so you won't have any trouble getting a number of games going. In France, as in many European countries, English is spoken as a second language. So if you want to tear it up on a Marine v.s. Aliens Cephalopod board, BoiteaJeux is the only place to go. MSG games: Cephalopod.
BRETTSPIELNETZ	German game site. Brettspielnetz recently added Atoll, increasing Atoll's presence in Germany. Atoll is skyrocketing on five game sites in America, The Netherlands, and Germany. Germany is essential to advancing Atoll strategy on an international scale. MSG games: Atoll, Dipole.
GAMERZ NET	Email based game site. Intelligent membership. Richard Rognlie's email based GamerzNet was the first MAG site on the Internet, before the web game sites even existed, and it's still going strong. You type your move into the email subject line. The game board, illustrated with text characters, is sent to the players in the body of the email. A graphical interface was later added for some of the games. Richard deserves special recognition here for being the first to program any of my games for the Internet (email, not web). He started with my first two games, all I had at the time, Tanbo and Quadrature. Later he added more of my games. There's always been a lot of talent at GamerzNet. It has yet to be knocked off its perch by the fancier graphical sites. MSG games: Oust (square grid), Cephalopod, Tanbo, Dipole, Crossway, Scribe, Diffusion.
BOARD SPACE	Snappy real time interface. Available opponents. There's always an air of excitement at Boardspace, a true, real time game site. The realistic graphics contribute to a very life-like experience. I've personally had a lot of fun playing Dipole at Boardspace. MSG games: Dipole.
IGFIP	Big boards. Lightning fast, reliable interface. Igfip simply has the best real time game interface on the web for MAGs. The game boards are big and bright, and board synchronization is ultra fast and reliable, facilitating tremendously life-like play. Programming powerhouse Daniel Savarese is a master of Internet communications, an essential part of a realistic experience. MSG games: Oust (square grid), Tanbo.
GOLD TOKEN	Iron fisted moderation. "Dear Leader" management. The most prominent feature of GoldToken is its maniacal control over its discussion forums. If you type "omg", for example, the omg turns red and the Send button grays out. Conversations that develop an off color tenor are instantly expunged and replaced with stern warnings of "further action". Gold Token once attempted an "anything goes" forum. No topic was to be off limits. The new forum was online for about ten minutes, as I recall, before being permanently dismantled. Discussion of the short lived forum was then curtailed. OMG! GoldToken enjoys a large, very sociable membership that doesn't seem to mind the Orwellian atmosphere. Exchange cake recipes, discuss your critical ailments, and receive electronic sympathy cards. GoldToken has a large number of abstract games, a great many of which are minor variants of Checkers. GoldToken has a remarkable scarcity of good players, considering its large membership. It has now formed affiliations with professional game associations in an effort to turn around its sappy image, but it's got a long road ahead of it. The master plan is to create a hub for world class players who are well mannered and compliant - all five of them. MSG games: Dipole.