[Hephos]

I'm just curious is there somewhere a larger scale poll or other type of investigation for figuring out which type of people that play muds? Please post some links if you know.

Like what age, gender, occupation and so on...

We've done our own, but that usually only spans up to 100 participants or so... i'd like to see some larger scale stuff.

Have fun!

[the_logos]

Although it focuses almost exclusively on graphical MUDs, check out Nick Yee's "Daedalus Project." It's got some problems, particularly involving the fact that all data gathered directly from players is done via opt-in methodology, but it's probably the best research on the psychology of MUDers available.

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

[Hephos]

Hmm yeah, i tend to believe there is some difference betwen people that play graphical muds and people that prefer the text games. It would be fun to see which type of people that actually play text games and have some statistical research to back it up.

I think every mud owner would benifit if some of these larger community sites (tmc, tms, mudmagic), or games with larger pbases could do some survey on the matter... Just a simple webpage where people can fill in their data... and everything is displayed in some nice statistic page for public (not individual surveys of course, but overall stats).

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by (Hephos @ June 01 2005,18:07) Hmm yeah, i tend to believe there is some difference betwen people that play graphical muds and people that prefer the text games. It would be fun to see which type of people that actually play text games and have some statistical research to back it up. I think every mud owner would benifit if some of these larger community sites (tmc, tms, mudmagic), or games with larger pbases could do some survey on the matter... Just a simple webpage where people can fill in their data... and everything is displayed in some nice statistic page for public (not individual surveys of course, but overall stats).

It'd be nice, but pretty useless overall, I suspect. It's an opt-in poll, again, and the demographics that would take the time to participate in a poll on one of those sites aren't the same as the demographic of mud players generally. These forums are a good example. Probably half the people on them are admins on MUDs.

--matt

[Soleil]

Originally Posted by think every mud owner would benifit if some of these larger community sites (tmc, tms, mudmagic), or games with larger pbases could do some survey on the matter... Just a simple webpage where people can fill in their data... and everything is displayed in some nice statistic page for public (not individual surveys of course, but overall stats).

We have a poll page off of the Medievia web site with such things.  We used to have a more extensive poll that got wiped about a year ago.  But, the link does give some basic info.  As the_logos stated, it is an opt-in poll, so may not be a good representation of the population of MUDs as a whole.

In addition, I did my Master's thesis on Medievia's gods a few years back.  The study and website can be viewed here.  It is not really what you are looking for, but I did gather statistical information about each god surveyed that can be viewed in the appendix if you feel like it

[Hephos]

Thanks to the link from the_logos

That site is a survey of 35.000 mmorpg players. (http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_intro.html)

It says:
[code]
The average age of a player is 26 years.

Only 25% are teenagers.

50% work fulltime.

36% are married.

22% have kids.

They play in average 22 hours/week.

60% said they have played more than 10 hour continously.

22% play together with a romantic partner.

28% play together with a family member.

85% are male.

50% say they are addicted to the game.
[/quote]

As logos mentioned this survey is basically mostly players from 3D games such as WoW and EverQuest etc..

How do you people think the text-based gamers differ from the 3D mmorpg gamers?