STORY

MailGamer application is a type of PBeM (play by email) games, also known as PBM (play by mail). This is an e-mail correspondence gaming application, dedicated to bring you and your friends a great gaming experience, where you play with your friends directly inside an e-mail messages, not involving an application itself.

According to  Wikipedia we know, that the first such game offered via major e-mail services was WebWar II (based on Starweb and licensed from Flying Buffalo) from Neolithic Enterprises who accepted e-mail turns from all of the major e-mail services including CompuServe in 1983.

Before that, correspondence paper chess has been played by mail for centuries. The boardgame Diplomacy has been played by mail since the 1960s, starting with a printed newsletter written by John Boardman. More complex games, moderated entirely or partially by computer programs, were pioneered by Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo in 1970.

By the way, play by mail games are often referred to as PBM games, and play by email is sometimes abbreviated PBeM — as opposed to face to face (FTF) or over the board (OTB) games which are played in person. Another variation on the name is Play-by-Internet (PBI) or Play-by-Web (PBW). In all of these examples, player instructions can be either executed by a human moderator, a computer program, or a combination of the two.

With the rise of the Internet, email and websites have largely replaced postal gaming. Play-by-mail games differ from popular online multiplayer games in that, for most computerized multiplayer games, the players have to be online at the same time — also known as synchronous play. With a play-by-mail game, the players can play whenever they choose, since responses need not be immediate; this is sometimes referred to as turn-based gaming and is common among browser-based games.

An increasingly popular format for play-by-email games is play-by-web. As with play-by-email games the players are notified by email when it becomes their turn, but they must then return to the game's website to continue playing what is essentially a browser-based game. The main advantage of this is that the players can be presented with a graphical representation of the game and an interactive interface to guide them through their turn. Since the notifications only have to remind the players that it is their turn they can just as easily be sent via instant messaging.

Opposite to browser-based games, MailGamer  uses email as a full graphical representaion of the game including interface and playboard where user can play directly inside the email, without redirection to the game's website. MailGamer uses redirection only to accept the turn from the user and moreover this process is comlpetely automated, so the user is focused on the email.