what blogs can add to the party - discuss
 

I was just wondering what sort of successful implementations people have seen of using blogs to market their mud website, and whether to try this avenue myself. For example, is it better to have staff publish a blog on the mud site or encourage people to each make their own and create a sort of network. Maybe both, with a general developer's blog as the official one?

Seems to me that blogs can really be divided into two categories, the genuinely interesting ones and the cringingly seo spammy ones. For example, the_logos' personal blog is pretty interesting (the dude is in freakin northbeach san francisco where I used to work and live as a college student), whereas some of the seo spam blogs that are out there are pretty horrible imo. Does anyone have experience with what works, which mud-related blogs are read and interesting, and actually produce decent 1-1 discussion with the authors?

Cheers
Nass

Re: what blogs can add to the party - discuss
 

I honestly don't know what other blogs are out there other than "the_logos"'s one. It is something I have been rather interested in myself. Eventually I want to start one of my own, but right now I need to focus my very limited time on in-game content.

I know other types of blogs have "carnivals" and such, I wonder if any of the major MUDs have had a post in a gaming-related carnival. It seems like blog readers might be a good market to tap into, since they, well, like to read :)

Re: what blogs can add to the party - discuss
 

Hmmmmm

I must admit I hadn't seen it primarily as a way to "market" in that sense. For me, to try and put myself in the shoes of a non-immortal, ie as a normal web user, I'd find it much more interesting to see what the immortals are actually thinking. So a sort of ongoing "development" blog if you like.

I think it's a tough stretch to see "blog readers" as "conversion" targets. "blog readers" as a category is a pretty broad category :)

Re: what blogs can add to the party - discuss
 

Glad you find my blog interesting (it's really more of a work blog with some personal stuff occasionally thrown in), though I have to admit that my posts (with content rather than job openings) have been few and far between lately. When I'm super busy I find that I have to force myself to blog, which doesn't make it much fun. I'm hoping to have some time to write about some various things that are on my mind games/MUD/MMO-wise in the near future but we'll see!

Incidentally, I agree that it's got very little to do with trying to convert people to a MUD. The audience that is going to read a games blog is not a great one to convert into players.

As far as what mud-related blogs are read and interesing, there are a bunch though none of them focus on text MUDs that I'm aware of. My favorites are probably:

(Raph Koster's blog, obviously)
(Scott Jenning's blog...he was Lum of Lum the Mad fame, now a designer at NCSoft)
(Damion Schubert's blog...he's lead combat designer on Bioware's unnamed MMO. I hope it is indeed KOTOR Online. He won't tell me, even under the influence of a bunch of booze.)

--matt

Re: what blogs can add to the party - discuss
 

It's not exactly a blog, since I didn't think ahead (rather it's just a very long forum thread), but when I started writing my I think it generated a lot of essential early enthusiasm for the MUSH in development as a whole from other members of the JTS community, if only because I took time to chart my progress, show exactly what was going on in my mind at times, point out where I think I went wrong at some points, and generally give previews of what the game would be like when it entered beta at a time when information seemed pretty sparse.

In that respect? I think a blog could be successful in generating interest in a MU* or MU*s in general. Do I think it got a lot of interest from people outside of the community I was already working in? No, but that was also not my intent when I began to write. So I think it depends on what you want your blog's objective to be. Intracommunity promotion is different from trying to attract non-MU* players for conversion.