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Shadowfyr wrote:
No, techonlogy tends to be spoken about and dealt with in English in Western countries. Few people in China, South Korea, or Japan talk about technology in English except when specifically speaking to a Western audience, and then only if they speak English (most do not).
Most people who play MUDs (text or graphical) don't speak English. Most people who play text MUDs might, but that's largely because most text MUDs have zero appeal to people who don't speak English. The gaming scene in China, South Korea, and Japan skipped right over text MUDs and went onto graphical ones instead.
It has? China has not banned MUDs. In fact, China's government has taken a far more active interest in encouraging MUD development than Western countries have. There's even a government office devoted to MUDs in China.
Again, this is probably the case where you live, but the whole world isn't a copy of your back yard.
English doesn't even approach being "universal." Most of the world doesn't speak it, you realize. Further, if we limit ourselves to internet users, it is also not universal, though it may enjoy a slim majority, currently (as long as we're including ESL, since the number of native speakers of English on the net is already, I believe, less than the number of native speakers of Chinese using the internet), that will not last long at all.
You might also consider that the biggest MUD in the world has more native Asian users than American and European put together, and that nearly all of those Asian users choose to play in their native languages, not English.
There's a reason that companies localize their MUDs to different markets, and it's not because "English is nearly univerrsal."
--matt
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