[MicroBob]

On last year's PPM cruise.


Me and GF and about 8 other drunks at some bar on the ship.
Some guy buys a round of drinks for the gang (drinks were not free...so this was a very nice gesture) and then a couple minutes later introduces himself as some Party marketing or something-or-other and was interested in various opinions on the site, how it could be improved, etc.

He was American (or had a typical white-guy, American accent).
I was interested in talking about software issues (the disappearing-buttons bug was an issue at the time), problems with customer-support, tourney-structures, etc etc.

But 2 really drunk guys were all gung-ho about, "How do we even know we're playing against real humans" and all the other "these cards aren't right...and I think some of the players are robots" type nonsense.

And then one super-drunk guy kept saying that Paradise was probably better...and why should he play on Party rather than Paradise.

I tried to cut in a couple of times when the opportunity arose...but it just wasn't happening. The drunks were too loud and stupid...and we were finished drinking for the evening anyway.


The poor guy was legitimately seeking input...but got nothing but idiotic garbage in return.
FWIW - talk of 'how the cards run' and 'cashout curses' was EVERYWHERE amongst all the party-players on the cruise. It was truly incredible.

The guy was EXTREMELY professional in handling the most idiotic of questions and I thought represented party very well.

he talked about fixing the structures of the speed-tournaments...and adding re-buy tourneys too (which tehy did shortly thereafter).

He also talked about 'player-profiles' where you could share your real name. Would people like that kind of personalization or do they prefer the anonymity?

And something about the ability to see how much each player had in their account or something weird like that...which I told him was a bad idea.
I was able to mention that I suspected that Party made interest on some of the money that their players kept in their accounts...and that if people could SEE how much I kept in my account I would very likely not keep as much in my balance.
he asked why...and I said that I just wouldn't be comfortable with the idea of people seeing me keeping a slightly higher-volume of cash in my account than most people.

This got a generally negative reaction...as well as some puzzled 'why the hell would you want to do that?' type of looks so I think they threw that idea in the waste-basket.


It was at this point that the 'gang' turned the convo almost entirely to bots and cash-out curses.

I was glad to see that they were trying to be creative and somewhat experimental.
But there are lots of current problems that I would like to see them address before they go about trying to add on more little things that aren't really needed.
(that was pretty much my reaction to the idea of re-buy tourneys...I didn't think party needed them and I wasn't too excited about the prospect of having them).


It was an interesting little half-hour or so though.
And if I happen to go on the cruise again AND wish to be more forthright about it I'm sure it would be fairly easy to sit-down with a party-rep and discuss your ideas.

(Mike O'Malley was on last year's cruise...but I didn't seek him out nor did I get around to introducing myself...I was too busy touring around Mexico, winning some money and getting drunk)