|
Wes Platt is not only a long-time friend and colleague of mine, but also someone who has made incredible gestures toward strengthening the text-based community. He's spent time organizing and hosting the semi-annual Andy Awards, he's created his own MU* Index, written invaluable articles and gone to great lengths to bring text-based roleplaying into the limelight. He's informed readers of his books about The Mud Connector, written letters to both computer and popular magazines that present MU*s as alternatives to EverQuest and formed websites that tout the genre as interactive fiction rather than simple games. He's asked his coders to help other projects implement some difficult chunks of code when they're short on resources and has met with me (and assuredly others) countless times to help shape thematic and roleplaying structures in projects of our own.
With this particular post, however, Brody's character and motives don't matter--they're inevitable red herrings. Neither do the motives of those who have voiced an objection.
Regardless of intent, this post is designed to promote games and it seems to be doing a fair job of that. Take away all the fluff and nonsense and it becomes a simple argument over semantics--different interpretations of the word "underdog." The objective point of reference of Miriam or Webster with a common phrase such as this fails to cover the gamut of the expression. Wes isn't talking about the quality of the MUD nor making a judgement about playerbase size--he's simply providing a service.
|