Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post

The_Fury · 06-16-2008, 05:01 AM

This is may be true if the only person your marketing your game to is the existing mud player who understands the differences between clients and has over many years come to understand how one particular client works and no matter how much better something is, will not for the love of god give up his particular client. We all know those who play using gmud or telnet or something equally as stupid IMO.

On the other hand, if you want to market your game specifically to non mudders and to grow new players into a text based game medium then your going to have to offer them an experience that they can understand. A custom client download is one method and an really good web interface would be another.

For the game that I'm currently working on, i put in a lot of time into researching various aspects of the game design and connection methods by surveying 140 people from 2 different age groups that I have identified as being my target audience. (Sidenote: This also was used as my university statistics project)

The one huge standout from the analysis was that nearly everyone saw the 3rd mud client as a barrier that would stop them from playing a game and that it was very confusing. When offered a choice between a web client and a propriety client download, they would take the download.

I have also been able to run practical experiments with 70 upper primary students, (12 y/o). When offered a choice between telnet, mushclient and a webapp, they all connected via the webapp. Not one could connect to a game using telnet, or mushclient. When offered a propriety client as a download that was configured in such a way as to connect to the game either automatically or via a quick connect method then nearly all were able to connect and progress through creation. (for this part i used a pre-configured mushclient and portal-GT)

The smart muds will come into the modern age and will offer prospective players a custom mud that has either been designed with a single game in mind like BatMud which in my opinion is absolutely brilliant or they can offer a preconfigured mushclient or similar as a download to overcome initial barriers. Mushclient with its plugin architecture is the perfect client for use in such situations.

As for limiting access to only one type of client + a web interface, i am considering this for my own game. i don't really see the current mud player as my target audience, so potentially missing out on a few players that way is not really an issue to me.

06-16-2008, 05:01 AM	#26
The_Fury Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 57	Re: custom clients. Good or bad? This is may be true if the only person your marketing your game to is the existing mud player who understands the differences between clients and has over many years come to understand how one particular client works and no matter how much better something is, will not for the love of god give up his particular client. We all know those who play using gmud or telnet or something equally as stupid IMO. On the other hand, if you want to market your game specifically to non mudders and to grow new players into a text based game medium then your going to have to offer them an experience that they can understand. A custom client download is one method and an really good web interface would be another. For the game that I'm currently working on, i put in a lot of time into researching various aspects of the game design and connection methods by surveying 140 people from 2 different age groups that I have identified as being my target audience. (Sidenote: This also was used as my university statistics project) The one huge standout from the analysis was that nearly everyone saw the 3rd mud client as a barrier that would stop them from playing a game and that it was very confusing. When offered a choice between a web client and a propriety client download, they would take the download. I have also been able to run practical experiments with 70 upper primary students, (12 y/o). When offered a choice between telnet, mushclient and a webapp, they all connected via the webapp. Not one could connect to a game using telnet, or mushclient. When offered a propriety client as a download that was configured in such a way as to connect to the game either automatically or via a quick connect method then nearly all were able to connect and progress through creation. (for this part i used a pre-configured mushclient and portal-GT) The smart muds will come into the modern age and will offer prospective players a custom mud that has either been designed with a single game in mind like BatMud which in my opinion is absolutely brilliant or they can offer a preconfigured mushclient or similar as a download to overcome initial barriers. Mushclient with its plugin architecture is the perfect client for use in such situations. As for limiting access to only one type of client + a web interface, i am considering this for my own game. i don't really see the current mud player as my target audience, so potentially missing out on a few players that way is not really an issue to me.