Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"

Orrin · 04-21-2013, 06:47 PM

This forum isn't necessarily representative of MUDs, let alone MU*s or text games as a whole so I'd be wary of reading too much into some of the comments here.

I think you'll find most of the big commercial games do care about advertising, promotions and the like. I know for example IRE track their referrals through the different stages of character creation and tutorial so they can see at which points they are losing players. They also track how much referrals spend so they know the value of any particular advertising channel. We used to do similar tracking on the relatively small game that I ran and I think it's pretty standard stuff these days.

Hobby muds may be a different story and while Jazuela's point about most games not being able to charge is a little misleading, it is true that most MUDs are non-commercial.

There's also the issue that a lot of MUD owners just aren't that motivated when it comes to improving their new user experience, for all sorts of reasons.

I think that for many people MUDs are basically a retro experience and trying to modernise them would be pointless.

04-21-2013, 06:47 PM	#61
Orrin Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Name: Matt Posts: 141	Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century" This forum isn't necessarily representative of MUDs, let alone MU*s or text games as a whole so I'd be wary of reading too much into some of the comments here. I think you'll find most of the big commercial games do care about advertising, promotions and the like. I know for example IRE track their referrals through the different stages of character creation and tutorial so they can see at which points they are losing players. They also track how much referrals spend so they know the value of any particular advertising channel. We used to do similar tracking on the relatively small game that I ran and I think it's pretty standard stuff these days. Hobby muds may be a different story and while Jazuela's point about most games not being able to charge is a little misleading, it is true that most MUDs are non-commercial. There's also the issue that a lot of MUD owners just aren't that motivated when it comes to improving their new user experience, for all sorts of reasons. I think that for many people MUDs are basically a retro experience and trying to modernise them would be pointless.