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Old 04-23-2013, 12:42 PM   #76
plamzi
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Join Date: Nov 2009
Home MUD: bedlam.mudportal.com:9000
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Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"

The whole point of having a graphical client is to engage people who don't see themselves as someone who would play a text-based MUD. Are you worried about definitions or do you want young people to play your game and talk about it with their friends?

If someone can play your game with a text-only client, then it's a text-based game, even if someone else can play it with a hybrid client. Many people may disagree with that, but the reasons they do are either because they are purists (people who not only want to experience the world as text, but who also want everyone else to experience it that way) or because they are looking for an excuse to do nothing, or both.

A lot of us are so steeped in MUDs that we can't even imagine what it is like for someone who has never played one before to be seated in front of one and given 5 min. to level up with no help. If you have a teenager in your surroundings who fits that description, try a little experiment with your client. I would be shocked if they somehow knew to click on the numbers inside the text window that don't look like either buttons or links. In fact, I would be shocked if their first reaction was something other than "Well, first of all, this doesn't look like a game. Where the hell is my character and how the hell do I move around or attack?"

Then I'm not going to feel that my point has been debunked. Although I wish it had been.

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that there is now no stigma against playing classical or retro games. Maybe that's true among older gamers, and maybe that covers all games up to 8-bit *graphics*. It doesn't seem to apply to games that look like chatrooms. And it's not really about the stigma. It's mostly about the fact that picking up a text-based game without prior experience is extremely hard. It was nerdy/geeky even back in the 1990's.

You should take a look at the subscription packages on . Also, you can add at least 100 more images for free by browsing .
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