Heh, funny that you'd bring that up. We donated a few thousand dollars to Toys for Tots last year in exactly the same kind of deal we did with Child's Play this year: we pledged a portion of sales for a period of time to them.

The exact same sort of bitter, frustrated schmucks flamed us then too. As now, it's their problem, not mine.

--matt

My god, I feel like I'm in high school. Are you telling me that TWO of you were offended, apparently on behalf of others that you appear to be claiming to speak for, that I didn't mention someone's name who made a post? For crying out loud, are you SERIOUS?! Are people's egos that fragile that not getting a mention for a post is going to offend them??

I don't even know what to say. Sometimes this board is beyond frustrating.

As for the rest, I'm not going to fall for your bait. All posting a list of what I think we do would accomplish is that certain of the more outrageous flamers on this site would start flaming us for doing it. ####, I remember at least one person flaming us for putting up, at our expense, on our network, a temporary replacement for Aardwolf (Achaea's main competitor on TMS) after it got knocked out by the hurricanes. If we can be flamed for that, and flamed for organizing a charity drive, there's just no point in talking about anything else.

--matt

Yeah I remember.   Do you remember how much Kyndig gave?  Tyche?  KaVir? Muir?  Scandum?  Spazmatic?  

It's the cheese that keeps on giving.

Different schmucks.  Same beef...

Hey I link to TMS too.  Right smack on the front page.  It bypasses all the vote counting hit counting traffic counting commercial horse manure and goes into the naughty mud forum organs of this site.  

I wasn't going to post again, but I noticed I was only one post away from attaining my long held dreams of a second gold star.   Whee!

I actually offered to donate not money, but some time/work on the writing side, since I'm a writer for a living, and a good editor. I'll make the same offer to anyone trying to spread the words on MUDs through articles, essays, etc. If you want feedback, suggestions, proofing on something like that, I'll be glad to help.

It would be nice to steer this thread back onto the original topic, since I'm curious what other people have done, and what tack they took in approaching it. Is it possible to hear some more about that? Are there magazines or other places that you think particularly approachable for something like this?

I wrote serial fiction for RPG Times a while back, but they also run columns on different types of RPGs and they're often looking for content.

Sanvean Nov. 30 2004,13:45
Glad you brought that question up again. As I already mentioned, I'm planning to write some slightly humoristic light articles about the quaint world of Text Muds,  with some useful links to Mud sites right at the end.  My plan is to try  palming them onto some paper Magazines, which sometimes accept freelance stuff, if it is reasonably interesting and well written.

But I am at a loss about what categories of magazines to best approach. And once I make that choice; is there a way to do web searches to bring up lists of these categories? And would there perhaps be any WebSites that might accept articles like that too?

Any input on this, anyone?

I doubt they'll post actual articles. But you could send letters to the editor to Computer Gaming World or PC Gamer (both have websites you can Google), and you might get some response. Some OtherSpace players did that last year and got published.

Computer Gaming World did do a half-page article about Achaea and gleam a few months ago, so they are, minimally, willing to write about text in certain circumstances. You're probably right though insofar as they almost definitely would not accept freelance articles.

Well, yeah, they'll do something about text if it's titillating and a little scandalous. They're unlikely to do something simply to remind people that these games exist, however, unless we appear to glorify drugs or something, it seems. Nothing against Achaea's coverage - publicity like that is awesome for a game. However, if the only way to get publicity from the mainstream game magazines is to push the envelope of cultural mores ... I dunno if that's the way we want to go to promote the genre as a whole.

Still, considering the PC games that get a lot of mainstream press - Grand Theft Auto, Leisure Suit Larry and even all the hubub about the JFK Reloaded game - and maybe I'm just thinking too moderately!

Yeah, I meant San Andreas. GTA 3 raised the bar for acceptable violence in mainstream video games and now it's kind of routine, so people don't cover the violence in San Andreas with anywhere near the same fervor they did for GTA 3 or Vice City.



Oh, for sure. We can't just repeat the same thing in different forms over and over. I'd also add 'new-sounding' to taboo/edgy. So, for instance, a game like A Tale in the Desert gets a lot more coverage than you might think it would judging by its relatively small playerbase, due to its relatively unique style of gameplay. I think a lot of the text MUD world is handicaped there by downloadable codebases though. When you're starting with what's designed to be a monster bashing game (which most of the codebases are designed to be), you're probably (there are exceptions of course) going to end up with a monster bashing game. (And please for the love of god, can we not start a flamewar about downloadable codebases?) A single unique or new system is probably not enough to garner a lot of attention, beyond flash-in-the-pan type attention. ATITD gets ongoing attention because it's entire game is fairly innovative.

--matt

I'd like to add that even getting a writeup in Computer Gaming Magazine has minimal effects.

Last year they did an "MMORPG Roundup" where they talked about all the current MMORPGs and those coming.

Threshold got its own little section and they talked about the fiercely devoted players, the RP focus, etc.

The affect of this writeup was hardly even noticeable in terms of new players.

I think I remember Logos mentioning somewhere that even the Gleam write ups did not have much effect in terms of actual users.

I think it would take a TON of mainstream write ups to help a text mud, or text muds in general. You need saturation.

Marketing experts know that it isn't until like the 5th or 10th or 100th time that you see some product mentioned that you actually become intrigued by it.

Right. The Gleam writeups didn't. The coverage they gave us on TechTV, on the other hand, did. TechTV has an absolutely massive following compared to the games magazines though.

--matt

Another couple of Sci-fi/fantasy literature sites:

sfcrowsnest.com
sffworld.com

Lusternia is advertising on both places right now, though not with very impressive results.

You can use my story if you want - I'm just not sure whether a non-mudder can even understand it...