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Old 05-04-2013, 03:50 PM   #121
plamzi
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Join Date: Nov 2009
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Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"

I think I can put it really simply. *I* am primarily interested in teenagers. *You* don't have to be. But I think you do have to be interested in understanding what it means to run an online game in 2013.

If your answer to the question posed in this thread title is 'No,' then, really, that is a conversation stopper, and all it takes is one post to convey that point. Shooting other peoples' ideas down, especially without bothering to address their substance, is not productive.

It was not my intention at all. Instead, my intention is to understand why you and ArchPrime draw a 'line in the sand' when it comes to making a MUD more appealing to a broader audience. In my opinion, there is no 'line in the sand'. We are not slaves to definitions that none of us can agree upon. We are game designers, and the measure of our success is in how well we marry our vision with our audiences.

Maybe it's worth re-posting those ideas in this thread. Otherwise, the impression I get is that your comfort zone is in ignoring most of the points made here, reducing points about graphics to absurdity and then shooting them down. Graphics is not the only suggestion on the menu. Taking your existing "successful" game and "warping" it into a teenager romp-fest was never on the menu. In general, telling other people what to do is not on the menu. What is on the menu is to get past shouting 'No' and talking about things we *can* do to appeal to contemporary gamers. Those gamers include not only teenagers, but their moms as well, and their dads, too.



Once again, you are assuming the person judging your game is an experienced mudder. But what if the person is one of the 99,999 who believe that any game has to have some kind of graphics, and for whom the only way they'd ever get to experience "the strengths of the genre" is if they were treated to some visuals first?


A heavy graphical interface is by far the best way to appeal to a wide range of newbies of any demographic. There are many simple reasons for it, but I'm going to pick the simplest one: Most people are monolingual, and they don't want to have to learn a language just to play a game.

I think I've already agreed that teenagers are not the only target audience and explained that just because I'm interested in them, nobody else has to be. Now, it would be nice if you agree with me that even among teenagers' moms, having a more graphical interface means more people would be likely to stick around long enough to begin to value the content.

You don't have to lift a finger about it, but it is an indisputable fact that the more visual the game, the broader its appeal is among pretty much any demographic. If you have numbers to back up the idea that teenagers' moms are somehow more likely to play a text-based game than a graphical one, I would be very interested to see these numbers. Otherwise, I will continue to advocate that a graphical UI opens doors to any demographic, and the more visual it is, the more doors it opens.

I hope we share an understanding that this is a civil, if spirited, dialog and it in no way diminishes my respect for you and your game.

Last edited by plamzi : 05-04-2013 at 04:02 PM.
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