I think that everyone here is addicted to muds to some extent, but for most of us, I imagine that addiction is mostly a healthy one. However, in playing muds I’ve come across a lot of people with very unhealthy addictions, and I’m sure that most of you have too.

In this light, I have a few questions.

To anyone who runs a mud – how responsible do you feel to prevent unhealthy mudding addictions? I know that some games offer something like a lock command that allows the player to lock their own account for a specific period of time, but do you feel responsible for having any other checks and bounds? A common response is if you don’t like it, don’t play but do you agree with that as being the extent of things? Obviously, a game’s administration can’t catch everyone, but should they be trying to (and if so, how hard should they be trying?)? Finally, what do you think that the proper response to said addiction would be?

I do not feel responsible for any part of the choices someone makes on how to spend their time.

As a MUD admin you create a playground for people to (hopefully) enjoy. You provide the server, content, back story and code.

Each player has to make their own decisions on how much time to spend online playing games. If they endure hardship do to their decisions then that is entirely their own responsibility.

I, as an admin, cannot (and should not) check their credit rating, call their place of employment or contact their significant others to find out if their choices are causing problems. Problems (if any) noted by family and friends should be brought to the persons attention by the family and friends and any addiction addressed.

I have seen people that dedicated themselves to a game, or persona they created within a game, to the point that I found it bordering on mental illness. I am not a psychologist, but I would guess that their real life was self-perceived as so mundane (and they felt so powerless within it) that this was their chosen form of escapism.

I would rather see a person addicted to a social form of communication (like MUDs) that involved thinking, goal creation and interaction then to spend their time doing harmful substances or forms of "entertainment" that are criminal and much more destructive to society.

MUD addiction to the point of "harm" to a person's personal life is likely self-correcting. If they do not show up for work they will be fired. Spend to much time away from the loved one you end up alone. Become the top player and you are chained to an OLC ball where you are forced to build for eternity or glued to a coding chair with coffee stains on your teeth...

It all works out.

-Dan

In the case of an adult player, I think it's intrusive and condescending to limit or restrict someone's access purely because you feel it is excessive. Allowing them to "lock" an account seems odd to me as well-- if someone asks you to lock it for a week, then later asks you to unlock it because something came up (maybe some plans got canceled, and now they have plenty of free time), why are you willing to honor their first request but not their second one?

If I own a large grocery store, and I start taking chocolate bars out of the carts of obese customers, I could argue I'm just trying to be medically helpful. I'd also be completely out of line, and I'd probably lose those customers immediately.

All in all, if someone in need of escape goes on the Internet and they end up spending a lot of time playing a free, interactive game with a high emphasis on literate creativity... that's pretty harmless. At least they're not completely isolated, emptying their bank account, doing anything illegal, or God forbid, discussing American Idol.

(The above paragraph argument goes double for a minor. We discourage minors from playing Carrion Fields, but we recognize that it's impractical to enforce a hard rule. But if your child is logging on the Internet and the most disturbing thing they see is our game, they got off easy.)

Running a MUD may make you a game designer, but it doesn't make you a medical professional. Are you trained in the psychology of addiction? If not, leave diagnosis and setting boundaries to someone with training. RL friends and family are in a much better position to decide if a referral or intervention is necessary in any event.

As a player I'd most certainly take offense to any admin trying to tell me when I could and could not play. It would definitely make me leave that mud, since it would be really condescending, and also an intrusion in my private life and free choice.

I tend to play in spurts, sometimes staying online  almost around the clock, when there is some particular goal I want to reach, (usually to solve some tricky puzzle or quest). Also on occasions when I have unlimited free time, I sometimes play a lot. But only sometimes. At other times I might just log on for some minutes a day, to socialize with friends, and this passive mode can go on for weeks, because I have more interesting things to do off line.

But it's my choice, based on my conditions and my mood, and who would know about those better than me?

However, in one of the muds I play, I have sometimes seen the imms telling players to quit, but in a sort of joking, friendly manner. They'll say things over open channels like; 'Boffo, you really should go to bed now', or 'Buffo, shouldn't you be studying for those exams? Do you want me to DC you to make it easier?'

But I put this down to the mud being a very 'social' one, where the imms seem to care a bit more than usual about their players. I've never seen anything similar in any other mud, and relations like this are probably only possible if the playerbase is relatively small.

And by the way, I totally agree with Valg that there are a lot of worse things than a mud that kids could get exposed to on the internet, and in the Real world too for that matter

We offer some support for mud addiction.

I have an article on mud addiction on our website, which about 5-6 players from our place compiled together for us. I always link people to read it anytime the forum gets one of those "I'm messed up IRL, so I'm quitting"-type posts. Also with the IRC chat letting players contact each other fairly easy, they'll tip each other off when they notice a peer has been spending an awful lot of time on mud.

Nothing actually happens in the MUD itself, that being enforced as completely IC. The only thing we did of note for in-game itself is to provide surges (periods of double exp/gold/training rate that run every 40 hours, for 2) so that people can still make/train a successful character without being logged in a ton of hours for it. The play time is naturally spaced out by the surges. These work out best for people who just don't have much time to play, they don't do much for people who're already about a lot. Its been a great way to stave off full-blown mud addiction for a lot of players, including me.

We have had a few people occassionally ask Immortals (praying) to deny/ban them because they were addicted.. I've always told them there should be no need to go to that length since if they accept help just staying out of the realms, they're admitting weakness and lack of self-control, which'll just make them feel worse, and that usually provides the kick they need to get off the comp and on with the IRL.

So basically, in-game we let them instigate talks, out-of-game (forums, especially IRC) we sometimes intervene. Its usually them telling me. =p Actually I should probably give this a read again right now.

I agree that protecting people from themselves is a flawed concept. Games, however, shouldn't be designed to be addicting.

Everybody wants retention, but we shouldn't strive to keep people past the point where they're not having fun anymore. They should want to come back because the game is good and they're enjoying it, but once that stops being true, they should feel free to leave, or to stop playing and just keep in touch with friends.

It's insulting to human dignity to tell people when they can and cannot play, but it's equally insulting to lock them in a Skinner box. Sounds like a no-brainer, but sadly there's enough games out there that do exactly that.

Could you cite an example of a game design that is designed to be addicting, yet not because it's just fun? It seems like one of the roots of 'game addiction' is that the game is perhaps designed too well, and playing it appeals to a particular person more than more practical matters, like showing up at work or attending to nutrition or personal hygiene.

I guess Tamagochis (sp? the 'virtual pets' things) could fall into this realm. My niece and nephews had them at one point, and the devices would essentially nag you to pay attention to them ('feeding', 'walking them', etc.), or else dire things would happen to your virtual pet, heaping guilt via sad cartoony images onto the poor child. Basically, you can't play one "only a little" as I understand things.

If there are analogous abusive practices in MUDs, that's an interesting topic to open, and I'd like to hear more about it.

I haven't seen any even semi-conclusive research that would label games as addictive. That they can lead to habitual play is unquestioned, but that's not at all the same thing as addiction. Addiction as a concept is thrown around, in my opinion, far far too lightly.

Incidentally, you guys might find it interesting to know that China passed a law last August or so that forces MUDs in China to implement a system whereby characters get diminishing returns on xp gained after a player (not a particular character, but a player, so as to avoid having them just switch characters) has played X hours within Y timeframe. I BELIEVE it may only apply to minors, but I've read conflicting reports there. The idea is to reduce the impetus to play really long hours all the time. I have no idea if it's accomplished its goal or not.

The government is also, in order to support this, supposedly creating some way to try to link (with reasonable confidence, if not perfect confidence) online gamer identities to real people, so that they can track players rather than characters or accounts.

--matt

Tamagochis, and by extension other pet games, such as Neopets, are a good example because of the emotional blackmail they exert on (mostly underage) players.

But we needn't go that far. Rents for lockers our housing, upkeep costs for clans, expiring equipment are all instruments of 'unhealthy' or 'unfair' retention.

Fedex quests are in many implementations little more than pushing the button to make the cheese drop - how much fun is it to run through the same quest for the 100th time? It can be argued players don't have to do it, but if the game is designed so that the rewards for repetitive questing are essential for building a character, they are forced to resort to this behaviour - of their own free will - and subject themselves to the gradual conditioning.

On a deeper level, grind, virtual property or equipment, any player investment can keep people in a game past their 'staying point'. To some extent, it is unavoidable in achiever games, but is more pronounced in games that reward patience and time (or money) investment, rather than player skill. Then you get players who stick around just because they have invested so much into their character already.

I'm sure there's more examples, but my quest timer is up and I still need to max 'create rose'.

I disagree with this completely, incidentally. I don't see anything unfair or unhealthy about them. You put the words in quotes, but if you didn't literally mean unfair or unhealthy, what did you really mean? For instance, to claim that expiring equipment is unfair seems strange when it's a facet of the real world. Is it unfair when your car rusts? If so, how is that unfair unless you just equate unfair with "this sucks?"

--matt

I meant:

"Bleh, I don't feel like playing at all, but I need to pay for my locker so that it doesn't expire."

"I would have quit this game years ago, but I play to keep the clan I founded running, even though I get no fun from playing anymore."

"Damn, I really should do homework today, but my breastplate expires tomorrow and I don't have a replacement!"

In all these cases, the player doesn't really want to play, either at the moment or at all, yet the game mechanisms push him to log on (despite his better judgement).

I just wanted to point out that this is easily implemented if it is just made as a player command. In Aardwolf, there is an option to freeze self for certain number of hours, and many people make use of this feature.

The reason for having this is twofold as well. One is to allow the players to not be able to log in their characters for the time the allocated, and the rule is clear saying that it will not be reversed by an IMM save by a typo (freeze self 2400, instead of 240).

The other reason is that when the game is interfering with your personal life be it at work, study or relationship, people formerly had to choose between learning to moderate their playing time (yeah right) or to stop playing completely (completely for a week at most for the majority) OR delete their own characters so that they would actually leave (in some cases to recreate within a week). If you do not want to deal with players who have invested thousand of hours in your game who delete themselves asking you to restore your pfile or claiming they were depressed and if you could please restore it ..., then having the freeze self option is good.

In short, I think this is a non-intrusive way to do it, by giving players the tools to self-moderate themselves, but making rules around the moderating tools in such a way that they are actually effective (in this example, not reversing the command). I also think this is about as much as I would "expect" an ADMIN to go in trying to "help" players with addiction, although they probably would take special cases into consideration independently.

Take care

I used to play a mud like that, back in 1994.  After playing for several months I'd managed to collect a pretty nice set of equipment, but the further I progressed the more difficult and time-consuming it was to pay the rent for that equipment.  In the end I was required to play over an hour each day just to earn enough gold to keep my equipment until the next day (plus I had to earn extra for the weekends, or else catch the bus to University for a couple more hours of play) - it was either that, or lose the rare equipment that had taken months to collect.

In the end I decided it just wasn't fun any more, and moved on to another mud.  I never played another rent mud again though.

Right, I understand you now. I still don't agree that that kind of thing is unfair or unhealthy, but I can understand the inclination to feel that way.

--matt

Switch MUD with gambling and MUD admin with 'casino owner' and you've got an interesting argument.

Personally, I think that a major MUD should provide some means to help people with an addiction. No, this doesn't mean that they should have to do a credit check and monthly interviews with each of their players, but maybe something as simple as pointing them to online resources and a 'freeze' command.

It's a tough issue, because on one hand, anything can be addictive, so I don't know.

Just some thoughts.

The problem with having some sort of "solution" to addictions to game is that everyone has different levels of control, different lifestyles, and different methods of dealing with their gameplay (unfortunately, some people have NO methods for dealing with that).

With every command you have in to "help" players control their impulses, there is an override. For example, we used to have a command that locked people's accounts for however long they wished to be gone. 9 out of 10 players would mail before their "estimated time lock" would be up and ask to have their accounts unlocked. People who would delete their own characters (when this command was available) would end up asking to have them restored. Basically, the commands ended up being useless except for a very few people. In the end, we decided people would just have to be accountable for their own decisions rather than doing something rashly and expecting an admin to fix it.

I do agree, however, that having things such as rent for equipment is a crutch for good game design. I've never played a mud that had equipment rent, and from what KaVir has described, I probably never will. I don't, however, believe that it's a bad idea to have a day to day cost for certain in-game things if a character has the option to deal with it while offline. It's not a bad thing to be able to reward the people who do log in to play for a few hours every day.

I do believe that addiction is a word that's thrown around pretty easily to take responsibility off the person who is "addicted" to something. There are professionals that provide help for people who have addictions, and mud administrators are NOT the people to go to solve these psychological issues. We are not licensed to identify, treat, or even to diagnose when someone has an addictive personality or an addiction problem. To try to do so would be a disservice to the person with the problem.

Well, I mean, how long does it usually take for a car to rust?  A long time, provided your car isn't sitting in a vat of salt water.  However, somehow some pauldrons just disintegrate to nothing in a few months real-time.

It's not really incorporated well into the game's environment, it just feels sort of forced on.  A more accurate system would be equipment that disintegrates over a year or so real-time, not sure how that translates into game time, but it's much more reasonable so far as something made out of steel or leather is concerned.

I mean, how often has one of your pairs of pants just disintegrated after little more than a year?

Well, timeframes are completely up to a game's designer. The claim wasn't that short decay times or long decay times are bad, but that decay times period are bad, and that's what I take issue with. There are almost no universals in game design, I believe. Perhaps none at all, though I'm hesitant to make an absolute claim like that.

--matt