Chris – Reading your newsletter... this is not a critique, just a few random jottings drawn together into your headings. You are absolutely correct when you say that the internet is only useful if you can find what you want. I set my own pages up six months ago, and immediately set up a counter. I had almost no hits. I listed my page in search engines - still minimal hits. I placed a link in my email signature and started to get hits. I listed my site on the links pages of the bigger wargames sites and started to get hits. So what, I hear you say! Well, this goes a long way to proving you right. The majority of hits on my website are either direct (which usually means somebody has bookmarked me) or are linked from a short list of other sites (for whom I have a complementary link on my pages) or are from webrings. Perhaps as little or as much as 5% are from search engines. How does this help? Well, it says to me that most of the navigating on the net is by 'word of mouth'. I find a site I like, I look at its links and follow them, I find another site I like… and so I build my own list of sites that I visit. What should you do? A few things spring to mind. There should be a 'MatrixGamers' web ring - the Yahoo wargames ring has over 600 sites in it and generates a fair amount of traffic. My site gains perhaps 10% of hits from this ring, and I will often just hit the 'Random site' button on the links. If you like, I will set up a web ring for matrix games and publicize it on the matrix gamers list. As you suggested, there should be a hub. You have set it up, it looks a little 'rough' but it is functional. I think, and I'm not trying to be rude here, it needs to look more professional but that will come in time. (As an aside, one of the best wargaming 'hubs' around is the DBA one, http://fanaticus.jiffynet.net/ which links to all sorts of things) What should it contain? Links to the rules, links to the list, links to other players sites. Does anyone else publish matrix games? If so, link to them and tell them you have done so! Opportunities to play. Opportunities to watch. My own game gained a player (based in Italy) from the net - I published the first turn and he mailed me to ask if he could join in, so it is possible to gain players 'on spec' so to speak. As for playing directly from a webpage, this could be done. Forms which mail feedback on your site can be modified in many ways. It would be possible to modify the form the give space for argument, result, reason 1/2/3 and even to randomly generate dice rolls which would come attached to the mail… as many dice as you like. This would allow people to create their turns on the website - as you said, no commitment. In these cases, the whole game would have to be played out on site - since you may never know their email address - and so site updates would be important. So - where do I sit/stand/slump? Well, assuming that your nexus is intended as the 'coordinating coordinator, I would be willing to be a 'communication coordinator' and bring together all the links I can find to actual matrix games, in play or completed. No pay expected or accepted - I don't think this would be a full time job with the current size of the matrix game field, maybe an hour or two each weekend to check links and search new sites. Hopefully you could get someone else to author pages for commercial links, rules variations and suchlike, all linking back to the MG nexus. Okay, I should get back to work, so I'll end here. Mail me if you are interested... [Colin: Thanks for the info. All great ideas. We'll have to implement them as we can. I can just barely handle the MG Nexus now so it will be a while before I can do it. As always I invite other gamers to take up the banner of leadership by setting up sites! CE] Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #24 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com