Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned.

the_logos · 01-10-2009, 03:28 PM

Runescape was fifth most searched for term on Yahoo last year. WoW has 11 million players. They're not as mainstream as, say, baseball, but they're clearly having a major impact on a LOT of people. There's a difference of multiple magnitudes between them and even the biggest text MUDs.

I'm not sure where you're getting this impression, but it's very outdated. Some of the biggest companies in the world have major gaming divisions. Sony, Microsoft, etc. The biggest publications in the world talk regularly about video games (NY Times, Newsweek, the Guardian, thousands more, etc). There's a tv channel in the US devoted to video games. There are a couple in Korea devoted just to WATCHING other people play videogames (Starcraft and such). Video game conferences draw over 100,000 people to them and attract billions of dollars of investment. Major retailers like Best Buy devote massive amounts of floor space to video games.

Incidentally, according to the 2008 annual ESA study on gamer demographics, the average US gamer is 35 years old, and 65% of heads of households play video games.

I will someday write a 10 page or so history of Iron Realms. Wikipedia can choose to use it or not (I'd imagine not) but it'll be out there as the authoritative history of Iron Realms as far as people I care about are concerned. Whether the Wikipedia page reflects some, all, or none of that info doesn't make it less available. Just makes it less available on Wikipedia! Wikipedia isn't the only place to get info after all.

We'll see! The only likely challenger was Google Knol, but it hasn't gotten very far.

I don't know what Wikipedia's rules are regarding this, but I'd imagine it's a scale thing (multiple orders of magnitude between TMS/TMC and Rotten Tomatoes) and that pointing out what a movie's rating is on Rotten Tomatoes isn't used to establish notability (though I could be wrong...I don't think they should be used to establish notability but my opinion doesn't matter to Wikipedia) in any case, but as a fact about the movie/game/whatever.

--matt

01-10-2009, 03:28 PM	#155
the_logos Legend Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Mill Valley, California Posts: 2,305	Re: In defense of all MUDs. Our genre's noteworthiness is being questioned. Runescape was fifth most searched for term on Yahoo last year. WoW has 11 million players. They're not as mainstream as, say, baseball, but they're clearly having a major impact on a LOT of people. There's a difference of multiple magnitudes between them and even the biggest text MUDs. I'm not sure where you're getting this impression, but it's very outdated. Some of the biggest companies in the world have major gaming divisions. Sony, Microsoft, etc. The biggest publications in the world talk regularly about video games (NY Times, Newsweek, the Guardian, thousands more, etc). There's a tv channel in the US devoted to video games. There are a couple in Korea devoted just to WATCHING other people play videogames (Starcraft and such). Video game conferences draw over 100,000 people to them and attract billions of dollars of investment. Major retailers like Best Buy devote massive amounts of floor space to video games. Incidentally, according to the 2008 annual ESA study on gamer demographics, the average US gamer is 35 years old, and 65% of heads of households play video games. I will someday write a 10 page or so history of Iron Realms. Wikipedia can choose to use it or not (I'd imagine not) but it'll be out there as the authoritative history of Iron Realms as far as people I care about are concerned. Whether the Wikipedia page reflects some, all, or none of that info doesn't make it less available. Just makes it less available on Wikipedia! Wikipedia isn't the only place to get info after all. We'll see! The only likely challenger was Google Knol, but it hasn't gotten very far. I don't know what Wikipedia's rules are regarding this, but I'd imagine it's a scale thing (multiple orders of magnitude between TMS/TMC and Rotten Tomatoes) and that pointing out what a movie's rating is on Rotten Tomatoes isn't used to establish notability (though I could be wrong...I don't think they should be used to establish notability but my opinion doesn't matter to Wikipedia) in any case, but as a fact about the movie/game/whatever. --matt