AccessDenied.Net History

The focus was on four different genres of multi-player gaming: role-playing, board, computer, and PBEM games. We expected a fair distribution of all four types of gaming, but as time went on certain things were revealed. At first we expected a decent amount of usage for finding computer gaming players, since I had been observing an increase in internet playable games. Many of these games, such as CivNet, had no match-making ability so players were relying on ICQ lists, email lists, and web-based challenge boards. However, this kind of service for computer gaming decreased in need. There were match-making services like Kali, then MPlayer, MS Gaming Zone, GameSpy, etc. Then it became much more popular for computer games to provide their own match-making services in game (e.g. Battle.Net). Contrary to this decrease in need, it also became very clear that demand for this kind of service for RPGs was very big. Hence, the majority of the database is dedicated to RPG entries.

However, there was little time and manpower to put into the website beyond development. The demos portion of the page was quite popular, but difficult to upkeep. Eventually the demos portion was dropped, and the gaming news idea never really went anywhere. The free pages were also dropped for other reasons. The database was the primary focus, but was also a niche based concept. Although the site still gets a good amount of traffic, one of the main reasons it is still around is because it runs itself and only requires minimal administration. The content is user-driven. This was one of the original requirements.

Later some other features replaced those that had been dropped. Some are not popular, but most are consistent with the theme: providing a resource for multi-player gaming. For example, Game Links is a user-content driven database of game links. The Challenge Boards provides a game-specific threadless "message board" for posting game ads. The Web Wargames page was added when we got addicted to these types of games, particularly Earth: 2025. It provides a list and brief summary of this genre of gaming.

On July 14, 2001, the database averaged approximately 10 new profiles a day (over 10,000 total). There were 1,761 different games listed, of which 706 were RPGs. There were 3,350 different cities listed, in 115 different countries. Traffic was about 100,000 hits a month. There are many more interesting points in AccessDenied.Net history; perhaps they will be divulged at a future time.

Admin
July 14, 2001

Update - June 9, 2002: Around the beginning of 2002, approximately 1900 profiles with dead emails were purged (previous experience has suggested that 20% of emails go dead in a year). On this day, there were 11,294 profiles growing at 8 a day. There were 1,971 games including 762 RPGs. There were 3,253 cities in 120 countries. Traffic was about 75,000 hits.

Update - September 12, 2006: The old school friendly/open website design has been updated. Unfortunately, web crawlers have been using the website to harvest emails for spamming, so the website has been changed to require a login cookie, and contact is only via indirect emails. In addition to this major change, approximately 22% of profiles with dead emails were purged. There are now approximately 10,700 profiles growing at around 4 per day. However, there is now a new email validation step to minimize the occurrence of bad emails.

Update - Feb 2, 2008: There are approximately 11,500 profiles growing at approximately 3 a day. Approximately 20% are assumed to have dead emails. There are 2145 games including 802 RPGs. There are 2,863 cities in 127 countries. Google AdSense added to the website, just for fun since this website is hardly maintained for profit.