Well I have bought the game and the gdg client worked fine, indeed it was nice to not need to wait for e-mailing of a code or any other such shenanigans and just get streight to playing. On the issue of connectivity, while I can see it would be a problem for people on dial up and so I do think the temporary license is a good idea, at the same time these aren't the days of dialup, heck with my own internet package I get free access to the horribly slow Bt wifi network, and of course there are now free wifi networks in many public places too.
Provided the net requirement wasn't too huge, and I don't see it being so.
Regarding price, I really don't get the arguement that "five dollars is too little to make selling the game worth the gd software" particularly with Yellowbonnet being a fairly casual game anyway.
One fun use for the Gdg client, as well as score posting might be some form of multiplayer or some specific goals based on tracking in game statistics of completed games.
So for example, suppose Traders of Known space and interceptor were both on Gdg. Well there could be a page tracking the progress of the war against the greys. Everytime a Traders' game finished, ten percent of the final over all cash went to the Federation in war taxes, and every game of Interceptor todded up how many ships had been destroyed.
When certain milestones were reached such as x number of ships or x amounts of cash, the war page could report news.That could be a really fun way to make the universe a bit more real to players, (sinse hay if you've got a universe for multiple games why not use it), and a nice use for the online connectivity as well.
Getting back to Yellowbonnet I did enjoy the game, however I noticed two things that were a bit wonky. First, I didn't realize that I was docked points for spending money, so I bought various things such as a haircut and some whisky just for the fun of trying them out. Second, I didn't realize that I'd completed as many jobs as I had so I wound up finishing the game before I expected. I also noticed a miner bug in that the game said "the barber cuts player's hair" even though I'd entered my name.
As regards the game, it was definitely fun, however one thing that mildly irritated me was having to keep exiting the interaction menu after doing something symple like searching or lookking around, sinse I'd need to be doing it on each and every square, indeed sometimes I'd hit escape too many times and open the main menu by mistake.
While I know the idea with Yellowbonnet was to have an easy pick up and play approach, keys for searching and looking around sinse these are such frequently used actions that you could just press once, get the message and then move on with would be really helpful.
I'd also like a way to have the bios from the manual on each character sinse I do remember the characters were really fun but I got a little lost in the game with who was who.
Here are my stats, hich as I said are probably worse than expected particularly sinse I didn't go around and pound any bad guys and I still used my cash.
I do agree with Aaron that perhaps making the stats a bit more fun might be nice, indeed one idea might be to have instead of your stats just recorded as a list, have them recorded as a little mini story, eg "so and so rode into yellowbonnet, punched out three no good drunken cowboys and snakes, helped out the deputy with a little problem and served a summons to court on that no good varnet frank Darby, got a hair cut right and propper" etc.
That would certainly make things much more colourful and interesting to read, even if only a few specific things were possible to track.
Statistics for Playthrough of the Yellowbonnet Game, on Version 6
The game lasted 26 minutes and 5 seconds and ended on Monday, June 15, 2015 at 12:16 AM - The player beat the game! woohoo!
Player, (a new hand), defeated 0 hazards, completed 6 of 6 jobs, moved 50 times, and finished up with 20 cash to her name.
final score: 29979!
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)