[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Ide I love the intarweb. Amitoune Flash Internet Client

You...rock. But not as much as confirmation that Flash can render text fast enough.

That client is a piece of crap and is buggy enough that every time I moved by browser view down to see the input box and buttons at the bottom it popped my view back up to the top of it, but that's just polish. The core functionality seems to be there, barring what I was able to find about it potentially really eating up memory.

--matt

[Lasher]

Originally Posted by the_logos You...rock. But not as much as confirmation that Flash can render text fast enough. That client is a piece of crap and is buggy enough that every time I moved by browser view down to see the input box and buttons at the bottom it popped my view back up to the top of it, but that's just polish. The core functionality seems to be there, barring what I was able to find about it potentially really eating up memory. --matt

I had the same problem with the moving the browser window down, but overall this is a very cool thing to see.

Been a while since I learned a new language, and I do have a fully licensed CS3 for other web work. Hmmm .... so many projects, so few hours in a day.

EDIT: Just found this link:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/...0000321.ht ml

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Lasher I had the same problem with the moving the browser window down, but overall this is a very cool thing to see. Been a while since I learned a new language, and I do have a fully licensed CS3 for other web work. Hmmm .... so many projects, so few hours in a day. EDIT: Just found this link: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/...0000321.ht ml

Sweet. Thanks for finding that.

It seems to require Flash CS3, which probably doesn't have huge adoption yet, but this shows that new Flash versions are adopted pretty darn quickly. Adobe - Flash Player Version Penetration

--matt

[Milawe]

Originally Posted by KaVir I think if players log on to a text-based game with the expectation of playing something graphical, they're likely to have a more negative response than if they're eased into it more gently with phrases like "interactive novel".

Sorry for the delayed jump into the discussion. I haven't read through the whole thread yet, but this struck me as very true. I've encoutered this a few times where someone likes the graphics on our site, logs on all eager to play, creates a character, and then start asking about how to get into the game.

It's probably even worse if they can actually create from the website while they're staring at the pretty graphics. If this happens, I think we've pretty much lost the player because then he or she feels as if s/he has been tricked.

Honestly, though, this hasn't been a wide-spread problem for us. Most of our players that recruit from the graphical games usually emphasize that it's a text, roleplaying-enforced game. I'm unsure, though, if having a disclaimer on our site would actually help. People seem to skim and then try to log on as soon as possible. It couldn't really hurt, though, if you end up with a player like me. I spent a week reading my first mud's website before my friends told me how to log in because they wanted to make sure that I didn't mess up.

[Hephos]

Regarding clients.

IMO, easy, fast clients do have negative effects as well. If you do not have to put any effort into gaining the game, you are so much more willing to throw it away if it does not look good immediately. If you have to download 100 megs to play the game (like most "normal" games) you tend to get people that are genuine interested in it. You might loose a bunch right before the download, but do you honestly think they would get hooked into the game anyways? I tend to say no (just a guess). The people that shows a real interest to try it, those are the ones that are going to stay.

A ****load of people may click a "click to play" button without having any clue what they are getting into, and when it is only text they shut it down right away.

I believe it is better to have people play the game with an already knowledge of what it is about. Show screenshots! You have to show the players what it is before they try it out. You wouldn't go buy a game in the store without some kind of idea of what it is.

I'm a strong believer that it is more of a quality than quantity thing with getting players hooked into text muds.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Mina It's probably even worse if they can actually create from the website while they're staring at the pretty graphics. If this happens, I think we've pretty much lost the player because then he or she feels as if s/he has been tricked.

With all due respect, that's like claiming that the cinematic trailers that video games put out pre-release don't help because they make players feel like they've been tricked since the in-game graphics aren't as good. You ever seen the original WoW trailer, for instance? It bears almost no relationship to how the characters look in-game and yet I'll bet you almost anything you want that it was very effective at peaking people's interest. There's a reason that Blizzard has, literally, an 85 person strong cinematics team.

It's about keeping people's attention, however you can within reason. The longer you can keep their attention, the greater the chance that you're able to communicate your true value proposition to them.

I also can tell you from personal experience that it works. When we implemented our fairly pretty Nexus client and took out our older, ugly-but-also-java-based client, there was a statistically indisputable increase in retention both in completing character creation and completing the first hour of gameplay.

--matt

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Hephos Regarding clients. IMO, easy, fast clients do have negative effects as well. If you do not have to put any effort into gaining the game, you are so much more willing to throw it away if it does not look good immediately. If you have to download 100 megs to play the game (like most "normal" games) you tend to get people that are genuine interested in it. You might loose a bunch right before the download, but do you honestly think they would get hooked into the game anyways? I tend to say no (just a guess). The people that shows a real interest to try it, those are the ones that are going to stay.

That doesn't make any sense. The people who are going to tolerate the 100 meg download are also going to tolerate the 1 meg download. At least some of the people who will be turned off by the 100 meg download will not be turned off by the 1 meg download.

A ****load of people may click a "click to play" button without having any clue what they are getting into, and when it is only text they shut it down right away.

Most of them will but that's not too relevant.

The point isn't how many quit, because the ones who aren't interested in text don't matter, and they cost you very little/essentially nothing since they quit right away. The point is the ones that do stick. Having a huge bloated client is, in absolutely no way whatsoever, an advantage. It may be necessary for a particular product, or at least the outcome of budget + circumstances, but it is in no way an advantage. I don't mean to sound like I'm just dismissing your point of view here...but I am. There's really no debate about this. A smaller barrier to entry will result in more players, all other things equal, than a larger barrier to entry. I mean, you can posit all the "what ifs" you want but I don't think you can point me to empirical evidence where increasing the barrier to entry in MUDs/MMOs has resulted in more players than lowering the barrier to entry.

If you don't believe me, try running a simple experiment. Track your conversion rate with your current client. Then, increase the size of the client by 10x by just including a bunch of garbage data. Are you seriously telling me that you think the larger client is going to end up getting you more players?

If you want some great examples of how important a low barrier to entry is when you don't have $20 million to spend on marketing, go look at Runescape, Gaia Online, Habbo, Neopets, Club Penguin, and so on. Now try and find me a single online game community with comparable development budgets (no comparing WoW, with its 9 figure budget, to Runescape, which started as one guy in his parents bedroom...and has more players than WoW today) that even approaches their size that requires you to download a huge client before you start playing. (No need to look. There are none.)

If you don't want to restrict yourself to online games, that's fine. Look at the 50 most popular websites in the world. Tell me how many of them require you to download and install a client to use them vs. using a client technology that almost all users already have installed (browsers, flash, etc). (Again, no need to look. There are none.)

--matt

[Hephos]

Having a huge bloated client is, in absolutely no way whatsoever, an advantage.

IMO, it can be. Text muds require a lot of more inital time before you can get hooked into them compared to graphic games. If you have downloaded a game, and spent some work into getting into it started, I believe you are more willing to give it a fair testing. At least i would. I'm so much more willing to shutdown a game if its started from within a browser, compared to if i have installed it off a cd or a download, (and even more so if i spent money on it).

However, I'm not saying light clients are bad.

You could have both worlds.

*Click here to play NOW!"* (opens lightweight java applet, or flash thing)

*Click here to download our FULL game, 1 gig* (real application, with an awesome screenshot showing the benifits of downloading)

Edit: ofc there have to be some content in the client, not just "bloated". I am pretty sure there will be people using the real app client over the browser version, and im pretty sure those are the ones that will be higher % getting hooked into the game...)

[Zhiroc]

Originally Posted by the_logos With all due respect, that's like claiming that the cinematic trailers that video games put out pre-release don't help because they make players feel like they've been tricked since the in-game graphics aren't as good.

Well, there's a difference. They are at least both graphic mediums. You don't see novels being advertised with much in the way of graphics or trailers.

I think the whole discussion should focus less on the players, and more on the medium. Books haven't gone away because they provide for a storytelling experience that movies can't match. So, what is the gameplay experience that MUDs provide that MMOGs can't match?

One is cost. It takes much less to create and run a MUD. This is passed on to players (hopefully) as games that are either free or cost much less too. Given that most MMOGs run in the $10-15/month range, MUDs should probably cost no more than $2-3/month. I'm not saying whether MUDs should be free or no, but just from a new-player point of view, this is probably the number I'd say you'd have to have to use price as a competitive advantage. (And if you know my previous posts, transparency about the expected costs is key too--pay for perks with an unlimited upside is a way to turn this competitive advantage into a disadvantage if people feel they've been duped.)

The next advantage is required bandwidth. I'm not sure how much this turns into an advantage though. But MMOGs are notorious for 100+ MB downloads that take some people forever, depending on their connection, particularly dialup customers, of which there are still many. Also, must MUDs are lag-free, something that most MMOGs can't say.

A possible new market, because of the text interface, is the thin mobile client. Let people play on PDAs and smart phones (though ease of input is a factor here). There are a lot more of those devices out there than computers. Also, due to low bandwidth requirements, that means playing on your laptop in a hot spot is perfectly reasonable.

But the above are all "structural" advantages. Where I think MUDs have to focus in on is why play a text game over a graphical one? And this is where you should start thinking the whole book/movie difference.

To me, it's RP. To have all the tools of RP (dialogue, emotes, personal descriptions, etc.) as being the fundamental interface of the game is what makes RP so much more possible on a MUD than in an MMOG. I take it one step further and only play on MUSHes, where there is no PvE environment to speak of, and generally speaking, a cooperative PvP environment (or player-run PvE) where there is often little in the way of coded combat/health. And, ironically, this is what makes any combat I engage in more weighty, as MUSHes almost all have permadeath.

After RP, it's a story that players can engage in. And by engage, I don't mean progressing along a static storyline that everyone else does, like an MMOG quest structure. A MUD should play like a interactive novel, not like the cloning of single player computer RPGs that you see in MMOGs. One thing that MUSHes do a lot of is player-generated content, as most allow players to create rooms, objects, and even NPCs. The low (almost non-existent) development costs for content, and the ability for players to create their own is what allows for a dynamic game environment.

Finally, in terms of "losing" aspects to try to get players... I don't really see having a complex combat system as being a draw. With a text interface, having to type longish commands to react to events seems like a losing proposition to people who play the MMOGs. Granted, maybe it's because I'm not a real fan of graphical twitch games, but if I'm going to play twitch, it'll be graphical. I'd say the same for a grind. If I have to grind up levels, I'll do it in an MMOG (though, to be honest, I refuse to play a grind anymore in any venue).

[Hephos]

A possible new market, because of the text interface, is the thin mobile client. Let people play on PDAs and smart phones (though ease of input is a factor here). There are a lot more of those devices out there than computers. Also, due to low bandwidth requirements, that means playing on your laptop in a hot spot is perfectly reasonable.

I'm working on a java client for my SE P990i. Not full of features. But will be nice to use as immortal to control the game server. (With a small qwerty, i think it will work nice on the p990).

[shadowfyr]

Actually, I imagine the experience of trying to run a game on a PDA and cringe. First, the screens are small enough that its not practical to provide 80 columns of text, any less of which is imho not optimal for playing a text game. Second, because of the screen size, graphics is actually probably easier to deal with. Third, unless its one of the newer phones, with complete keyboards, commands in games are often screwy enough that even the "guess what I am trying to type" system texters use isn't going to be that useful. And finally... Until there is some standardization in those devices, in both the file systems, APIs and code execution (which ain't likely to happen), there is no certainty at all that coding something that will run on a Palm, for example, will also run on a Nokia phone, or a Motorola, or what ever. You might manage to get the same language on the phone, only to find that the critical socket protocols are not accessable from *that* language. As someone that has tried to just code a simple calculation program to figure out what I have to charge + the broker fee, to match the current prices on the markets and EQII, and couldn't bloody find anything which didn't have an endless list of stupid limitations to it to do that, trying to code a web app for one gives me hives. lol But heh, good luck with that.

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by the_logos With all due respect, that's like claiming that the cinematic trailers that video games put out pre-release don't help because they make players feel like they've been tricked since the in-game graphics aren't as good. You ever seen the original WoW trailer, for instance? It bears almost no relationship to how the characters look in-game and yet I'll bet you almost anything you want that it was very effective at peaking people's interest. There's a reason that Blizzard has, literally, an 85 person strong cinematics team.

I think this is a very fine line. The comparison above isn't quite applicable, since at least a graphical trailer for a graphical game uses the same medium as the game to attract players. And even then, sometimes games do worse than they would have precisely because they raise expectations too high with trailers and intro videos that the game itself cannot live up to.

But like I said, it is a fine line. There is definitely a certain level of graphics (or sound for that matter) that can entice and maintain interest. An especially good client that provides some sort of graphical interface for the entire game creates enough continuity between the graphical web site and the text based game that the player won't feel "tricked."

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by the_logos If you want some great examples of how important a low barrier to entry is when you don't have $20 million to spend on marketing, go look at Runescape, Gaia Online, Habbo, Neopets, Club Penguin, and so on. Now try and find me a single online game community with comparable development budgets (no comparing WoW, with its 9 figure budget, to Runescape, which started as one guy in his parents bedroom...and has more players than WoW today) that even approaches their size that requires you to download a huge client before you start playing. (No need to look. There are none.) If you don't want to restrict yourself to online games, that's fine. Look at the 50 most popular websites in the world. Tell me how many of them require you to download and install a client to use them vs. using a client technology that almost all users already have installed (browsers, flash, etc). (Again, no need to look. There are none.)

This is such a huge and important point I think it deserves being quoted in full.

People get so focussed on WoW they fail to understand that there are actually a lot of games (and sites) out there that are enormously more successful - not only in terms of number of users, but in profits. WoW has a freakishly huge budget. They pay a lot of money for each customer they have. Club Penguin was just bought for $700 million (assuming the game reaches various sales targets) by Disney and is tiny in budget compared to WoW.

A lot of these successful games obtain their success by being ACCESSIBLE. Heck, even WoW owes a lot of its success to the fact that it was more accessible than its MMO forbears.

A nice, pretty UI is obviously very important, but easy of use and lack of complicated setup/download is also enormously important.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by Hephos IMO, it can be.

Based on what? Do you have some experience showing that simply, say, increasing client size by 10x increases conversion rates?

I mean, if you believe what you're saying you'd be busy packing garbage data into your client right now since you're asserting that bigger download is somehow going to get you a better overall conversion rate from people who view your site to people who stick in your game.

Text muds require a lot of more inital time before you can get hooked into them compared to graphic games. If you have downloaded a game, and spent some work into getting into it started, I believe you are more willing to give it a fair testing.

This misses the point. You're talking about the conversion rate of people who have already downloaded the client. I'd agree that the rate of people who stick who have bothered to sit through a fat download is likely to be higher than the rate of people who stick who didn't have to go through it.

That's just not particularly relevant. The rate you need to be concerned with is the rate of conversion between initial contact and sticking in the game and I don't believe you're going to be able to present a single piece of convincing evidence that demonstrates that pumping up the size of a client increases that ratio.

Again though, if you believe that a bigger client will increase your conversion rate, why not just fill your client full of useless data and pump it up to 100 gigs in size?

At least i would. I'm so much more willing to shutdown a game if its started from within a browser, compared to if i have installed it off a cd or a download, (and even more so if i spent money on it).

Yes, which again misses the point. You are talking about people who have already jumped the barrier to entry in the case of someone who has already downloaded the client or already spent money on the client (in the case of WoW, for instance). The point is that the higher the barrier to entry the fewer people will jump it. You might convert those few people more efficiently but again, what matters is how many people end up playing your game, not how efficiently the people who did download the big client stick with the game.

But again, I encourage you to test out your theory by pumping your client way up in size and comparing how many players X dollars in ad spending to people previously unfamiliar with text MUDs nets you compared to the same amount of ad spending when pushing people towards a thin client. If having a bigger client is, all other things equal, an advantage then you should find that the same ad spend gets you more players with the big client.

--matt

[the_logos]

One final point: There's nothing wrong with a full-featured client that looks great. That's fantastic. It should NOT be presented as a monolithic download though. Get the bare minimum to the player and then stream everything else in as-needed in the background. It's the initial download that is the barrier to the player, not what happens subsequently and (mainly invisibly) in the background.

--matt