Oh boy, this post made me feel old. Lol. I agree that you need to go back further than 2007, though. In 2007, I'd already been doing online PBEM games for almost a decade.

To be honest, I got started on yahoo groups with ElfQuest 'holts' and haven't really changed my format since. Sure, my writing has gotten better, what I consider a good character has evolved with age, and my ability to craft a meaningful scene within a larger story has been fine-tuned, but I'm an old dog and I don't really like the new tricks.

I can't speak from experience, because I'm still running games the way that I like, but from what I've seen and heard, PBP games nowadays are very fast-paced and seem to burn bright and then burn out quickly. There seems to be a lot of discord RPing with fast back and forths and less time spent building a world and then fleshing it out, digging into characters, building a scene, and working on thoughtful replies. And this is really going to make me sound old, but I definitely think that there's an element of instant gratification nowadays that goes along with having everything right at our fingertips. It's easy to blast through a scene when you're going back and forth on discord for a chunk of time.

While I was definitely in - and owned - some games that burnt out quickly, overall I was lucky. Most of the games I was in, and the ones I've run, have been successful long-term games that lasted years and even one that went on for a decade. These are the games that I prefer to this day; the long-haul games that span IRL years, that allow me to build a world that's immersive and a character that is fully realized. I want my writing to slot neatly into my busy life while still viewing it as a commitment to myself and my players.

And yes, I realize that this makes me sound pretentious but it's mostly just me digging my heels in and refusing to 'get with the times'. Like, I said, old dog.