[gruevy]

One thing I've been thinking about lately is why more people don't play muds. I think that there's a large market penetration issue (bad word choice intended) but that mostly, the problem is that it takes a certain type of person to enjoy a mud.

I really hate math. I hate it. I can do it, if I have to, but the way that I get my brain to do it is some inelegant, brute force computing that I'm really not comfortable with at any length. However, words, literature, and philosophical and political concepts are cake to me. I grasp them instantly. I can compose a graduate level paper and hand in the first draft and take one hour per five pages. I get words and concepts. I can understand visual art, because I've learned enough about it to know what they are getting at, but most art doesn't move me in the way that it does others. Some does, but not most.

I had a discussion with my friend that sort of blew my mind. He's a math person and machine language programmer, and he said that he can sort of visualize, or comprehend in some way, what all the variables in an equation are doing, or the functions of a program, etc. He can't write a paper to save his life. He doesn't get the point.

So I got to thinking lately about mudding. In order to mud, you have to easily take read textual data and transform it into meaningful congnitive data, and experience that data almost visually. I can learn the pathway between two town pretty quickly, and learn what's where, and what it does, and because I am most able to process written data over other types of experience, I don't think it's boring or hard. I experience the mud much like my friend experiences microprocessors, I'd imagine.

So the point is, can someone who is not an english major learn to mud? Would they want to? With this in mind, where should we be looking for a target audience? Any thoughts?