[Spoke]

I have read these boards for a number of years now and I have noticed two things. The time when most of the action occurs is when there is some sort of controversy going on, be it the Unshackling of Medievia, Policy changes regarding voting, the (ab)Use of the review system, etc. New topics turn up very often when there are people who seemingly naturally dislike each other giving opinions on issues (theLogos vs Molly comes to mind, but again, check I used the word "seemingly".)

Other issue is that basic topics have been discussed before and older forum users might not feel inclined to revisit them (been there, done that, kind of thing). It is my opinion that if people (developers) were more prone to discuss their games and their approach to games, it would both be beneficial to them (if they are interesting at least :P) and it would let the random visitor know there is something to be learned on the site (I will put KaVir here as someone who frequently and openly discusses game mechanics and others, at least more noticeably than most.)

Finally, I believe the graphic games are a big threat to text games, but given that now cell-phones are starting to be internet able and have a computing power greater than the computers many of us started playing MUDs in, I think cell-phone mudding is not something that is that far away (I have seen a few people who already sort-of do this). This means to me that even as new technology comes out, the allure of text games may be reignited.