Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Everything else looks good, but why in the world do you have compulsory PvP in there?

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Because in my observations it is what most players (being teenage boys) expect to get. To be clear, they expect some form of PvP and they expect it to be available easily to them as soon as they master the basic controls. The only way to deliver that, for us devs, is to implement some form of compulsory PvP, or else the newbies who are eager to fight may not find opponents, and the momentum is lost.

I should add that in my observations, a tactic that is hugely successful in mobile games is enabling online players to fight offline ones. Of course, there's protection from being attacked more than once in a row. I think this feature belongs to a separate list: what devs can implement in a 21st century MUD to improve momentum and viral presence.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Hmm no, actually, I'm assuming that when confronted with something they have never seen before, users need a visual cue. Not only teenagers, but anyone. Even I, who know what MXP is and how it works, would need a cue that *this particular part* of the text is clickable. If there's no such cue then this functionality will be discovered only accidentally, or if someone reads the help files. Of course, if you're aiming your UI at people who read help files in order to find hidden functionality, then you should by no means provide any visual cues. Or, you could just make those numbers look like buttons or links.

It's pretty obvious to me that you're not really big on mobile or social playing yourself. When I play on the cell phone, I definitely fall into your category 1) without ever leaving category 2). I'm not a teenager, but I suspect that most teenagers in your category 2) are also category 1). They want to play a game with an "intuitive" interface, not learn about obscure protocols. Their attention span will always be shorter than you'd like it to be, simply because your game is one of thousands out there and you only get 30 seconds to make an impression.

If you mean my mobile app, it enables a person to experience the game in its fullness. The first person to have max-level characters in all 14 classes used the app 100%. But the UI looks like nothing anyone has seen before, and the complexity is simply too great for most mobile players. There are also many unique challenges stemming from the fact that the screen is so small.

There are 'MMO's' in the app store that look like Bedlam mini-games and have more players than all MUDs combined, then multiplied by 10. I'm trying to tap into those audiences by providing something that looks like those mini-games, but that goes on to deliver surprises long after the first 15 minutes.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

(Regarding compulsory PvP:)

I'm ok with optional PvP and temporary registration based PvP, but in my experience anything other than optional PvP is nothing but a hassle. I'm more than content to let those teenage boys congregate somewhere else for the time being, and if you can provide them an outlet that keeps them away from my servers I'm all for it.

I may try to build a PvP centered world at some point, but it will be independent and isolated, away from AA.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I share your reservations. The game I started out with several years ago was pretty fundamentally co-op PvE, and most of its veterans generally liked it that way. But I think there's a way to preserve the "we're in this together" feeling for those who actually feel it, while making PvP a viable alternative, so I'm going to try a side-by-side approach over the next couple of months.

One thing I saw in some mobile games was PvP in which stats and penalties are somewhat separated from the PvE stats. Those are generally very basic games with 3-4 main stats, so this is pretty easy for them to do. The idea is that PvP doesn't have to inhibit PvE. Instead, one can do PvP while waiting to recharge batteries for PvE. And one can do PvE while waiting for a PvP event.

Also, 'compulsory PvP' sounds harsh but there are ways to implement it that really take the edge out. PvP defeats don't have to involve huge penalties or downtimes: they can just be a point for the winner, short downtime for the loser. If someone attacks and defeats another PC, or several other PC's in a row, they should be OK with making themselves a target, even if they log off in their attempts to avoid repercussions. One can still be given the option to turn off a PvP flag after they mow down a bunch of other PC's, but that flag can come into effect only after someone has been given a chance to attack them and take revenge.

I'm actually pretty excited about the PvP changes, especially the challenges of implementing some form of combat between online and offline PC's.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

No, actually I didn't. However, whatever you 'think' might be more visually appealing to today's teenagers may very well not. The concept of appeal is wholly subjective. And, at the end of the day, if the 'gameplay' sucks, then no beautiful graphics will keep players around any longer than the initial "holy cow, this is a beautiful game!" stage.

Its been a long while since I have been a teenager, and as a matter of fact, I have two of my own. And, they have friends. They all play games. I will tell you for sure that the teenagers who love FPS type games aren't interested in reading the amount of text required of MUDs. Any teen who has grown up with a console controller in their hand really won't give two ****es about MUDs. On the flip side, the teens that love to read and roleplay/cosplay actually do enjoy MUDs, regardless of needing to read walls of text. How well do you know your intended audience?

I'm not sure why you're so hung up on today's teenagers(as a whole). They really seem like the wrong target audience for this genre. You're more likely to have better success in marketing to their mothers. Based on what I know the teen masses love to play, you'll have the change the genre a *lot*. Once you evolve it far enough, though, its really no longer a MUD, right?

Hmmm. You know, I think there are only a few things holding MUDs/ MUD Community back:

1). The MUD community.
2). The MUD community.
3). The MUD community.

Of course, those are the same reasons MUDs haven't died out entirely.

While I whole-heartedly support the notion of writing custom clients and servers, ditching telnet and branding a MUD through its UI, giving the game a nice window-wrapping, etc, I cannot support the idea of removing the input/command line or removing the scrolling output while still attempting to classify the game as a MUD.

Whatever the case, good luck with your endeavors, Plazmi. Oh, one last note: It will be a long while before my favorite MUD closes its doors, and here's why: They have a superb game that their small, curated community absolutely loves; the MUD is also run as a business - that means the owners will do everything in their power to keep it running. Strong user community, niche target audience, commercial - three ideas to keep *your* favorite MUD afloat, and you won't even have to change the UI. :-)

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Well, duh, but we're talking here about really good games, some developed for over 20 years, that currently present today's teenagers with 0 or next-to-none visual stimulation. In this context, isn't it a bit of a no-brainer that *any* visual stimulation allows the game to reach people who would have otherwise disqualified it at a first glance?

Again, I'm not talking about ditching the text UI necessarily, just pointing out the painfully obvious fact that when 10,000 teenagers talk about a game being "immersive", only one of them means "like a good book". The rest mean "professional graphics that excite me long enough to find out how good the game actually is." How can it be a waste of time to try and tap into those wider audiences?

To me, what you've written above boils down to another argument for doing nothing with graphics, of which we've already had plenty in this thread. Let me be direct. You don't need justifications for doing nothing, just go ahead and do it. It's fine by me, and I'm sure it's fine by everyone else. But don't try to sway others to do nothing with the argument that, at the end of the day, what they are doing may not work. That's just nay-saying, and not something any of us knows.

What we *do* know is that doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome doesn't work. If you expect the same outcome, the same <100 people logging for decades, then you're fine. But this thread is about engaging wider audiences.

This is a version of the "two categories" argument we already got from ForgottenMUD. The problem with this kind of thinking is not so much that it's super-simplistic, but that it is actually pretty clearly another justification for doing nothing to broaden your game's appeal. Dividing teenagers into "those who won't play my game no matter what" vs. "those who would play my game without me having to change a thing" is very easy. It affirms that you are an infallible game designer, and reveals that you feel comfortable with whatever you have already achieved so far with your game. The argument makes no sense for anyone who is actively trying to reach more players.

I have spent 3 years observing my intended audience. It includes people who love to read as well as the majority, who don't, and have to be eased in. It includes people who want to play for 12 hrs straight as well as people who have 5 min. while standing in line, want to pop in, do something meaningful, and pop out. It includes people of many categories and of varying desires, who on any given day may behave like casual players, or hardcore ones, play on desktop in all text, as well as on the GUI when they are on the move or in the park.

What I've learned by observing my audience is that there are many things I can do to cater to different tastes without compromising the quality or depth of the game. I'm trying to share some of that insight in this thread in order to encourage others to think out of the box a little bit.

I'm hung up on "post-desktop" players in general more than just teenagers. But teenagers are the Holy Grail because they ensure a healthy influx of people who have a long playing career in front of them. Teenagers are the vets of tomorrow, and they wield the most viral power. But their mothers would also be nice. And in fact, it is one of the things that is already happening in my game, cross-generational gameplay. It's pretty commonplace, thanks to the game offering visual means to play *as well as* supporting all traditional text-based clients (many with enhancements).

On the topic of graphical clients alongside text ones again, I just want to wrap up by saying that it doesn't matter how many people tell me that 1 + 1 < 1. I will not believe it. More different clients = more reach. That's what I believe.

It's not at all about giving the masses what they want (Madden NFL #26?). It's about giving them what they didn't realize they were missing. Wrap a great game in the same packaging that they are used to not throwing away immediately, provide the most visually appealing first 10 min. you can, the lowest learning curve, and *then* begin to unravel the depth of the game. The genre doesn't have to change in the least bit--the presentation absolutely must!

I'm going to pretend you didn't just insult my favorite genre horribly :) But seriously, are you the same person who wrote this description of AoA:

I notice that whoever wrote that didn't mention at all that the game is a MUD. And that is the right move, because when you walk two steps outside of this very tiny hovel that we call the MUD Community, no-one knows or cares if a game is 'fully qualified' to call itself a MUD.

I agree. And part of the problem is people jumping on devs about their ideas/projects not being real MUDs instead of jumping to point out to *broader audiences* out there how MUD-like some of the most successful MMOs are. The former just makes people who do innovative things on the client side want to leave this community. The latter, who knows, might actually get us some new players!

I feel discussions of MUD clients that remove the input command line and the scrolling output absolutely belong under "Advanced MUD Concepts". If the site admins side with you on that one, we may see this thread deleted. If not, I will continue to argue that a game doesn't stop being a MUD just because one of the ways to play involves less than 60% reading, 80% typing. Or 70% reading, 90% typing. Or, <increase the percentages here until your own game stops being a MUD :>.

Thank you. I'll try to keep everyone posted once in a while. My nick is 'plamzi'.

I already have that. Now I want a superb game with a *huge* community that more and more people absolutely love :)

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

There is probably not a single demographic I am *LESS* interested in serving than teenage boys. As a group, they:

I consider the average teenage boy to be a NET LOSS to my community.

PLAZMI: I have no idea why you are obsessed with attracting teenagers to MUDs. Very few people want that.

It is a fallacy to think that to keep your industry alive you have to infuse it with youth.

Big Fish Games does a couple hundred million dollars a year in sales, and 2 million game downloads a day. They did this by catering to women 30+ years old. They've grown 11 years in a row.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I think this excerpt belongs to another thread: "What can we do to prevent today's youth from polluting our RPI games." I'm sure it will actually contain posts from people interested in the subject since the majority of the people in this thread seem far more excited about ways to keep people out than in. If the above thread title is too long, another suggestion: "Do MUDs need to be 'taken back to the 15th Century'".

I have no idea why you think I'm obsessed with teenagers, but it could have something to do with the fact that you haven't gotten my name right after more than 2 years, so you can't possibly be reading carefully. As I've already explained, I'm using teenagers as a proxy for "a tough 21st century customer" who is also the customer most likely to bring other customers. If that's not someone you want to target, fine, target someone else. But don't use teenagers as the straw man to advocate targeting nobody except the people who would already play your game as it is today.

Again, if you are fine with what you have, great. But then, why even read this thread, let alone post to it? This should be a place where people share ideas about doing stuff. I think we've all heard enough about what you (and several others) think is the "wrong way" to modernize MUDs. What do you think is the *right* way?

I haven't claimed that. But it is definitely *one of the ways* to try and keep your industry alive. It is infinitely better than doing nothing, or doing nothing differently and expecting different results.

On the other hand, we have your claim that teenagers are actually *bad* for your game. That may be generally true for an RPI game, but they are a net gain for the community as a whole. Please refer them to me the same way I refer people looking for RPI to you.

And did they do that by refusing to provide graphics because otherwise their games may not be true MUDs or immersive enough to the 0.01% who are graphics-averse? Or did they do so by providing a *complete and easily accessible experience* that appeals to the biggest percentage of their target audience?

I take one look at their offerings, and they cannot be more visual or more different from what we're doing here. Heck, it would be a huge plus for us if we even had a MUD game portal of this quality that we can jointly promote, even if we show just screenshots of telnet sessions for our games. So what is your point here? That there are other target audiences than teenagers? Yes, agreed, there are. And most of us are doing nothing substantial to appeal to those, either.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Plamzi:

MUDs have already *evolved* into something modernized: Graphical MMO games. Putting a graphical UI on top of a MUD has already been done in various ways. Does Everquest ring a bell? Runescape supposedly started out as a MUD, but evolved into something highly graphical. I don't know about (or really care about) the underlying implementation; what I care about is the fact that neither EQ nor Runescape were marketed as MUDs. Nor have they survived in the minds of the players as MUDs; they are, to gamers at large, graphical MMO games.

Go surf the net, and see what the general population posts when someone says something like "Hey guys, have you ever played a MUD?". You will see responses like -- "Oh, you mean those multi user text games? Yeah, I used to play them back in college...". They never say something like, "Yeah! I used to play Runescape/Everquest/WoW". I think it is safe to say that history has already written upon the general player conscience what constitutes a "MUD" - good luck changing that.

No one is holding you back from doing whatever you want. It's interesting to note that Graphical MMO games, in whatever form they are, have been attributed to the decline of people playing MUDs. So, the very path of evolution you suggest is the same path commonly cited for the decline of that you wish to save... ironic, yes? ;-)

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

As this conversation is at its heart how to attract new players to an old medium, I thought I'd way in a little. Briefly, I mentioned recently in my intro thread, I play muds as games, I'm combat oriented for the most part. If I want intensive RP, I will go to the other Mu*s (Mushs, Mux, Mucks, etc.) to find what I want.

I can tell you from that environment, the goal isn't looking to lure in new people based on 'graphics' as the delimiting factor on how to draw in new players. Some use web-based clients embedded at their sites to stimulate connections, but at its heart it comes down to they are still text based 'games'.

The biggest factor I have noticed over the last 20 years of Mu*'ing, in attracting and maintaining larger player bases, is content.

I'll say it again, its the 'content' and not the 'presentation' that attracts and holds players.

Quick example, 20 years ago, star wars and star trek were large draws. Then something happen, White Wolf came out, appealed to modern interests by theme and genre, and, as it happens, most World of Darkness oriented Mu*s tend to do fairly so long as they have active, dedicated staff.

For instance five years ago, as these Mu*s waned. The successful ones of the genre might average 40-75 players on-line at peak - and considering there is no real grindy game code/mechanics and its all purely RP based, that's pretty good. By comparison when the original Shadowrun mush was popular, it hit 100-200 players on-line at peak times. The trend is down in general.

However, White Wolf did something recently, they finally updated/changed their rules and now have New World of Darkness, a complete rewrite of their genre. A year ago, I started playing on the 1st Mush/Mux/etc of the NWoD genre and, during the day, non-peak, there was 150+ players on-line.

Another example, two years ago, String Theory was on the market as a Mush based on the Heroes TV series. Similarly, daytime activity was 140+.

Blood of Dragons, recently advertised in the threads here, they hit 30-40 players during daytime hours. But, 3-4 years ago, there was maybe 10 people (2 staff, 4-5 idle, and a few might be RP'ing actually). Last year, they were drawing 100+ during the day. They got popular after the HBO series launched.

Content - most text gamers are currently and will continue to be young to middle aged adults and not teenagers. They will like to read. I hate to go here, but the single most popular text based game I have witnessed ever is adult based content. I won't say its name, but the most popular one I have seen averages 500-600 players on-line with peak times hitting 800+. Its all text based RP, they offer nothing graphical and I have not seen a web based client embedded anywhere specifically for this Mu*.

On a brief side note, as a staff member at a couple of Mushes, I have asked younger players how they came to find Mushes and stay at it. Most say they enjoyed the MMORPGs but find them severely lacking in true RP content and wanted more richness, and indeed, control, in their RP content and made the switch back from graphics to text simply for the purpose of more fulfilling RP.

I think, and I know I might get some hate, but the content of many Mu*'s are about 20 years old and the genre's they uphold were created by young adults then and haven't been updated. If we asked most readers today both familiar with Game of Thrones and Tolkien-verse which they liked better, I dare say the trend might be towards Game of Thrones vs Tolkien. However, I wouldn't be surprised if statistics (and this is a guess, I have no real numbers) if most Muds had a tendency to favor older genre/flavors of fantasy/etc.

Demonstrating right along, I think everyone realizes the concept of 'elves' that most Muds embrace - tall, elegant, beautiful - is dated. It came to start raising in popularity with Tolkien, was probably further enhanced when D&D changed from proto-typical (short, fae, woodland) to Tolkien (with the launch of their Dragonlance). I would dare to say it may be on its way out with the rise of popular new fictions (Game of Thrones - the Children, GRR Martin's tribute to 'elves' are short once more, and Rise of the Guardians, its not Tolkien fantasy anymore).

Most muds say they're 20 years old, but how many of them have actually completely wiped their 20 year old world/maps/rooms and started from scratch on content aimed at younger generations?

I think this conversation is debating apples to oranges when the topic might be fruit trees. I think content would need to be modernized to appeal and retain more players, for those Muds that think they might be struggling, before some flash bang graphics are slapped on to present as more appealing only to find the content is still outdated. I mean, I'd hate to buy a new mustang to discover everything beneath the exterior is really from a 1975 volkswagon bug, to be honest.

Than again, for those that are successful with 100-200+ players at peak times - Threshold, Ateraan, etc. - don't change anything.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

As a fun experiment, read my posts in this thread (including the list of ideas that don't relate to graphics) then look at the screenshots of what I've been doing, and then tell me that what I'm suggesting is going back to Ultima Online, 1997.

I have to admit, though, this is the most deeply philosophical argument conjured up so far in favor of doing nothing: "History has already happened. Any move you make is just bound to repeat it. There is nothing new under the sun."

I wonder, is there properly sad and slow music that goes with these lyrics?

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Plamzi:
Why would I tell you that what your suggesting is going back to Ultima Online 1997? That's not at all what I meant. MMOs have evolved further. Look at WoW(and that's even old now) -- practically every graphical mmo game since WoW's success has tried to copy/emulate it and has utterly failed. Plenty of them have had WAY better graphics, sound and "immersive" experience. I'm not saying "do nothing". I'm just saying that ... eh nevermind. Good luck with your project.

Lotherio:
BINGO. Truly, content is king and you've just made some really good points. Aside from content, you mentioned a couple successful MUDs -- and I think they are successful because they are properly curating their community of players - Threshold and Aateran both do a really good job at knowing their niche, and they draw success from that.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Go back and read your posts. You've mentioned teenagers a zillion times.


I'm sorry that my typo offends you. "Plazmi" just rolls off the fingers easier than Plamzi.

Obviously I didn't typo your name out of malice.

Instead of being a douche about it, maybe you should remember that I'm one of only eight people who backed your .


First, I started the thread.

Second, read the thread title. It is perfectly viable for someone to post in this thread "No, MUDs are just fine. They don't need to be brought into the 21st century." They don't have to post ANYTHING about modernizing MUDs and yet they would still be completely on topic.

Third, just because people think your ideas aren't good doesn't mean they haven't posted their own ideas. Personally, I've posted tons of ideas - sometimes even in convenient list form. I don't think piling a bunch of graphics into a UI is the way to go. In fact, I think that's the WRONG way, because it actually distracts from the strengths of the medium and the genre.

=> Would MUDs do better with newbies if the interfaces and gameplay were more accessible and easier to pick up? Absolutely!

=> Is a heavy graphical interface the only way to accomplish that? Nope.

Are you serious? That's what you thought the point of my bringing up Big Fish Games was? I was talking about demographics and the fact that obsessing over teenagers is not great business.

Come on man, sheesh.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Is it just me, or did the_logos just rescue this thread? :)

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Um, sure. However, I still see in his screenshots a command line input and a large output window. Tee hee.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I think the important point of his post is not the client features and how much or how little graphics IRE is using. It's the user testing. I wonder how many muds have made detailed analyses of 100s of player transcripts and do so on an ongoing basis?

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I see you're missing not just my points :) You and I both have clients that look similar to what he's shown us. The far more important part is that he's given us a professional take on what it means to try and stay competitive in the 21st Century. One hint: it doesn't involve assuming that people who don't already play your game (or who haven't played a MUD before), never would.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I think I can put it really simply. *I* am primarily interested in teenagers. *You* don't have to be. But I think you do have to be interested in understanding what it means to run an online game in 2013.

If your answer to the question posed in this thread title is 'No,' then, really, that is a conversation stopper, and all it takes is one post to convey that point. Shooting other peoples' ideas down, especially without bothering to address their substance, is not productive.

It was not my intention at all. Instead, my intention is to understand why you and ArchPrime draw a 'line in the sand' when it comes to making a MUD more appealing to a broader audience. In my opinion, there is no 'line in the sand'. We are not slaves to definitions that none of us can agree upon. We are game designers, and the measure of our success is in how well we marry our vision with our audiences.

Maybe it's worth re-posting those ideas in this thread. Otherwise, the impression I get is that your comfort zone is in ignoring most of the points made here, reducing points about graphics to absurdity and then shooting them down. Graphics is not the only suggestion on the menu. Taking your existing "successful" game and "warping" it into a teenager romp-fest was never on the menu. In general, telling other people what to do is not on the menu. What is on the menu is to get past shouting 'No' and talking about things we *can* do to appeal to contemporary gamers. Those gamers include not only teenagers, but their moms as well, and their dads, too.



Once again, you are assuming the person judging your game is an experienced mudder. But what if the person is one of the 99,999 who believe that any game has to have some kind of graphics, and for whom the only way they'd ever get to experience "the strengths of the genre" is if they were treated to some visuals first?


A heavy graphical interface is by far the best way to appeal to a wide range of newbies of any demographic. There are many simple reasons for it, but I'm going to pick the simplest one: Most people are monolingual, and they don't want to have to learn a language just to play a game.

I think I've already agreed that teenagers are not the only target audience and explained that just because I'm interested in them, nobody else has to be. Now, it would be nice if you agree with me that even among teenagers' moms, having a more graphical interface means more people would be likely to stick around long enough to begin to value the content.

You don't have to lift a finger about it, but it is an indisputable fact that the more visual the game, the broader its appeal is among pretty much any demographic. If you have numbers to back up the idea that teenagers' moms are somehow more likely to play a text-based game than a graphical one, I would be very interested to see these numbers. Otherwise, I will continue to advocate that a graphical UI opens doors to any demographic, and the more visual it is, the more doors it opens.

I hope we share an understanding that this is a civil, if spirited, dialog and it in no way diminishes my respect for you and your game.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Yes, because that's the defining characteristic of our MUDs. Redesigning our MUDs to work in a fundamentally different way would be worse than a waste of time. It'd alienate our existing playerbase and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Far better to start on a new project in that case, which is exactly what we did when we decided we wanted to make a graphical MUD. We built an engine for 3d MMOs and then built designed a game on top of that infrastructure, which was built with the audience size and fundamental game experience in mind.

What I'm interested in is development and publishing patterns for building and publishing online multiplayer games (almost all of which are equally valid for games run as hobbies, so it could be phrased as "for building games that can attract an audience at least at critical mass size"). I know what the pattern looks like, roughly, for most of us would call text MUDs catering primarily to MUD players, as I've done that commercially for 16 years now. I know what the pattern looks like for what most people would recognize as 3D MMOs, as I've built them and run them too.

What I don't know yet are the patterns for:
* Reliably and repeatedly marketing to and converting non-MUDers into players of MUDs. This is a non-trivial problem. 10 years ago, we could slap up ads on online comics sites and we'd get multiple times are money back in credit sales. The market for online games is completely different now from 10 years ago though. Click-through rates on display advertising is at least an order of magnitude lower than it was before, and being a "free online multi-player game" is no longer a selling-point, as it's the default model for games. Beyond that, the online ad market is much more efficient today. You can't afford to buy users at any kind of scale (even the small scale that MUDs operate on) unless the lifetime value of your users is very high, since then you can afford to pay more for a user than the other guys. In our case, we have extremely high LTV and so in theory we should be able to profitably acquire users, but it's a matter of really smoothing out the onboarding process for new users, and that is a lot of experimentation, testing and work.

* Successfully publishing a hybrid product, like one that was shown earlier in this thread. Layering 2d graphics that are supposed to be at all representative of what's going on in a text MUD experience is just a bad idea for the most part. It kills your ability to produce content quickly/cheaply while delivering very little in the way of additional benefit to the end user. A static graphic that doesn't reflect what's happening in the game isn't of much value in my opinion. I would love to see a game that has somehow managed this (ie attracted and kept a critical mass of players across time) that isn't Kingdom of Loathing, as I don't their 'hand-drawn' (to be generous) graphical style really works in games that take themselves seriously (ie most MUDs). That's not a slam on KoL, just a function of their content style and audience. That audience loves breaking the fourth wall, loves meta-puns, etc.

To bring it back to the start, the reason I'm not willing to mess with the core of how users interact with text MUDs is because I've seen no evidence that publishing hybrid products works, whereas I know how publishing and developing more traditional MUDs work. I believe the first of the two problems above is much more solvable and with less up-front risk than the latter.

--matt

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

It's a combination. The client is meant to help users transition more gracefully into a full-blown text experience because ultimately, that's the way they'll experience our games for 99.9% of their lifetime.

The way we learn how to transition them into our games is by testing and by tracking. We use KISSMetrics to track events happening with our games and then slice and dice the data, particularly by cohort (so that we can look at how a group of users that started this month performs compared to a group of users that started 3 months ago before feature Z went in, for instance). It's extremely useful. Mixpanel is another alternative there. Unfortunately, neither are free, but you can get Google analytics to do a lot of what they do for free if you're a ninja about it (GA just isn't as good for dealing with the entire user acquisition funnel and you can't drill down to the individual user level with it). You can also roll your own tracking system, though having been down that route previously, I can tell you it's a lot more work than it may initially seem.

Beyond that, it's just a load of work in-game. Imperian is the furthest along of our games, and they've completely revamped their newbie intro, revamped their newbie areas, etc. When we first redid their newbie intro, we A/B tested it too, meaning that we sent half the new players to one intro and half to the other to see which one performed better. Then we'd refine the better one, and test the refinements against itself pre-refinement. Rinse and repeat. That method won't help you build a great game, but it'll definitely help you figure out, objectively, how to bring newbies into your game more efficiently.

This subject, which I actually think is the key to "bringing MUDs into the 21st century" is much more about process than content, graphics, though content, mechanics, and the graphical packaging you put around your MUD (website, client) matter, a lot. I strongly believe (and am putting my money where my mouth is) that MUDs have the potential to appeal to a LOT more people than they do today. The trick is finding ways to effectively reach those people, and then ensuring that you keep as many of them as possible by making the newbie experience as compelling as possible.

We might fail. It might turn out that we're spending all this money and time and we still don't discover how to profitably acquire users. We're making measurable forward progress on the problem now, but who knows if we'll run into effectively a stonewall where we're not far enough yet and we can't figure out how to move the needle further.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I'm curious what you make of the long list of , as it seems to me that there's something we could learn those among them that have been more successful than any MUD has ever been. I understand you feel the way most people feel here about graphics, but to me it seems that by giving up a little bit of ability to produce content cheaply, you gain reach, and that hundreds of thousands of people seem more prepared to play a game with "A static graphic that doesn't reflect what's happening in the game" than one with no such graphic.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

One of my games - Earth Eternal - is on that list, so you're preaching to the choir a bit there! That game started as part of Iron Realms before I spun it off into Sparkplay Media and raised a bunch of money to build it. We sold it, and it's been shut down since (I think, it was running in Japan after being localized to Japanese for awhile).

However, being in a browser or out of a browser is irrelevant except for user-acquisition. Earth Eternal ran in a browser and as a download, for instance. Runescape could be bundled up and run as a standalone if they wished. Earth Eternal was, on a broad functional level, identical to WoW. Sharded game experience built to scale, 3d quasi-seamless world with instanced areas, etc etc.

I don't feel one way or another about graphics really. I've built 3d games, I've built text games. It's about product-market fit. I don't believe there is any product-market fit for what is fundamentally a traditional real-time text MUD experience with 2d graphics on top. If someone proves me wrong with a commercially successful product (or even a very strong and popular hobbyist one), then congratulations: You've just gained yourself a well-funded competitor, because we will immediately start building multiple games like that. I don't believe it's going to happen though, so I'm not going to spend the money to figure out how to do it right. If someone else takes the risk and succeeds, awesome!

The thing about most of the games on that list you referenced is that they don't require that you just "give up a little bit of ability to produce content cheaply." Iron Realms spent over half a million of our own money building Earth Eternal, and then we spent another nearly $8 million of other people's money. And we the conclusion I came to was that I should have raised more money, because it wasn't enough to build a competitive product in that space. That's a long way of saying that you have no chance as an individual of competing with the biggest games on that list because the up-front investment is too large, unless you unexpectedly strike gold, which is what happened to both Runescape and Minecraft. However, you couldn't release Runescape today and hope to compete (the market 13 years ago was very different), and neither of those games are primarily text in any way. Minecraft barely even has text.

There is one genre of text-based game that has done well and still does pretty well in some cases particularly on mobile: Mafia Wars-style games. They're basically just text with lesser or greater amounts of graphics plopped on top of them, where the 'game world' is completely abstract. What they distinctly are NOT, however, is anything that I'd recognize as a MUD or MMO, regardless of whether some people might legitimately stretch the definition to include them. And, the genre has moved on to the point now that it's probably not enough to just have text. You need a compelling mini-game to support it (like CSR Racing on mobile - $12 million revenue in its first 6 weeks, but it cost them a couple million, at least, to build it).

I don't think we're really talking about MF-style games though.

Which games on there are you really referring to as examples? I know how most of the successful ones on there were built, and none of them are really anything like what I think we're talking about (which I think is what I'd consider a hybrid model where most of the game action is real-time text, with selected 2d graphics overlaid on the experience).

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Sorry about the multiple replies, but I wanted to expand slightly on something I said in the last post.

It's not that I don't believe that if you could take a text MUD and have, for instance, thousands of illustrations representing thousands of rooms on a more-or-less one-to-one basis (so that players aren't seeing the same small set of graphics repeat), that it wouldn't add net value to the game - I think it would. I think you'd be able to attract and keep more players that way.

And I mean, we may underlay generic environmental pictures beneath our room-by-room map in our client, and we have a background picture sitting behind all the windows, but those are mere ornaments - they aren't really intended to do anything but add some graphical interest to the game for newbies. Once a player has played long enough, he/she won't be particularly interested in whether those are there or not.

The thing is, producing all that graphical content is -very- expensive. It's not a matter of slowing new area production or any content production down by just a little - it's slowing it down by potentially an order of magnitude or more, or uncertain gain. When almost all of the actually important information in your game is conveyed via text, you better be conveying a lot of relevant info graphically (vs mere ornamentation) to justify taking the focus off the text - and conveying relevant info graphically means situationally-aware graphics, which means having a hundred illustrations or whatever won't mean much (except, again, as ornamentation, which I don't mean to dismiss the importance of - we've spent $30k+ on art that is there purely for ornamentation).

Just my opinion of course.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

The list was just meant to illustrate that there seems to be a pretty wide level of comfort with games that present static 2D graphics. That wiki page is dated, for sure.

The Mafia Wars-style games you mentioned are the mobile counterpart of desktop browser games like . I have studied one such game in particular, , and what I'm imagining is something very much like a MUD server at the core of such a game, but wrapped in a UI that enables non-realtime and social gaming as well. It's basically an answer to what you're correctly identifying, for people who have outgrown the shallowness of a typical time-refill game.

As for the real-time UI, I am imagining 2D graphics and 2D animated attacks with overlaid real-time text that provides flavor beyond what the static graphics can show. Basically what I've already done with the Bedlam app, except that it won't have to support 500+ commands, endless numbers of NPC's, or an endless number of items, etc.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

It's not about static 2d graphics. It's about presenting a MUD-like game (ie real-time synchronous multiplayer) with static graphics on top. I've not seen an example of success there.

Once you go abandon real-time synchronous gameplay, you're making something else entirely that's probably not got a lot to do with this forum.


Sounds like AdventureQuest (battleon.com) or Dragonfable, from the same company (Artix). I suspect what you'll find is that the people (largely kids and younger teens) that are interested in that aren't interested in reading a lot of text, so you'll need to convey the game to them primarily graphically, which is expensive if you're making anything but a tiny game ala Fruit Ninja or something.


--matt

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Can you provide examples of failures? I'm trying to envision exactly what you're referring to, and I can't quite get there.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Me neither. But I haven't seen too many attempts other than my own that have an actual MUD server driving the UI, where the UI actually does away with the wall of text. One thing that I think makes my example non-indicative is that I've spent exactly 0 dollars and 0 cents promoting the app. So if you know of any truly commercial attempts to do something similar, I'd be very interested to know about them.

Not at all abandon. Rather, layer some non-realtime game activities on top of the realtime world in order to make the game more versatile in appealing to casual and social gamers. For instance, I'm currently building a web-based Guilds module that will allow people to perform most guild-related functions without actually entering the world with one of their characters. Having something like this is, I believe, a good move for any mobile MMO (and probably for many web-based ones as well), even for those that boast a realtime world. That's because even the most hardcore players of this century would prefer to be able to have short sessions in which they behave like casuals.

And btw, this seems to apply even to mudders in love with RPI, as I've seen a number of LFM threads where they state they want an RP game that lets them log in for 5 min. sometimes and still do something meaningful. A lot of mudders nowadays are people with families and jobs, as opposed to students, and time is precious.

Yeah, it can get prohibitively expensive (at least for solo indies) if you're using all-original art. But if you go with stock art for NPC's, rooms, and objects, the biggest expense by far is time. Luckily for me, collecting and mapping static artwork is work I've already done. So, in the next year or so, I'm planning to put that to different uses. For those who may be curious, I have about 1,300 static images covering about 13,000 entities, so not terribly repetitive, I hope, and definitely a bit more expansive than Fruit Ninja :)

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I think it would be like a multiplayer roguelike with a static illustrated tileset instead of ASCII.

edit: On a related note, Oryx is now selling a static tileset with thousands of tiles for $35.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I can't imagine a conventional MUD world visualized with a roguelike tileset. Seems like you'll need to have a co-ordinate based world with collision detection. You also can't have an arbitrary number of entities in one "place". At that point, I'm tempted to say what other people have been saying, that you may as well write a different kind of server.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Actually, you can have 2D tiles whilst keeping an abstract number of entities. This is done in strategy games:

1) In Heroes of Might and Magic (which looks like a 2D RPG), you move around the world map and entities are grouped in one tile, represented by their leader, and there is a different screen for battle which shows all the entities.

2) In Civilization, the entities are individual but stack. No collision.

3) In Pokemon, you don't even see the creatures. Only NPC's.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

To me, this raises more questions than it answers. It seems like you're assuming that each tile will represent a room. If that's so, then how do you visualize (any number of) PC's, NPC's, and objects, all in the same room? Stacking them on one tile will make it impossible for PC's to target individual NPC's, which pretty much any typical MUD allows you to do. Of course, you can choose to impose a set of constraints that make stacking possible (by implementing collision checks that keep NPC's, PC's, and objects on separate tiles, always have NPC groups with leaders, etc.) but it will not be very long before the domino effect kicks in and you find yourself needing a very different world and a different set of rules.

Civilization does have collision checks, in the sense that another player's units and your own cannot occupy the same tile. Like roguelike games, it assumes that when you try to occupy the same tile, you are attacking. In any game, this leads to limitations on how attacks and targetting works. This in turn has implications for the kinds of attacks (be they weapons, spells, or skills) the game can implement.

I don't know how Pokemon does things exactly, but if you mean that it doesn't show your own avatar, then this really simplifies very little in an online game where you have to show other players' avatars to enable co-op or PvP play.

I thought about these challenges a lot 3 years back when I was designing my app UI. My goal was to visualize a typical Diku world design rather than throw away years of extremely creative content. It was part of my project to try and dust off this content for a new generation of players, so I wanted to visualize it in a way that forced no major redesigns. I could see no way to achieve that goal by using a roguelike tileset.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

No, I haven't either, but I do think that in order to do away with the wall of text, you have to simplify the game to the point that the content and system-creation advantages you get from a primarily text game, or at least you have to change it enough that it may look more like a deep strategy game than a MUD. One of the reasons MUDs are still around is because of the breadth of things they offer as much as the depth, and it is very expensive to develop graphical interfaces, of which you need many to accomplish the kind of range of things a MUD can.

Again, that's not at all opining that it can't be done - it's just an increased up-front burden which means a lot more risk.

Apologies for not knowing more about your example, but when you say you've spent 0 dollars and 0 cents promoting it, that's the case with most apps. If you've seen success while spending nothing to acquire users, that's awesome and you should double-down on whatever you think is causing your app to act virally.


Yeah, we had that in Earth Eternal too, but that kind of feature is purely a convenience thing - it won't help you attract and hook users. It's a commodity function, not a attraction-feature.


What you describe isn't short session gaming though. Short-session gaming would be something like including a match-three game that they can play on their phone or Facebook to earn currency in the main MMO. Just checking info won't move your needle at all. You can read the news, check messages, send messages, etc both on our website and with a chrome plugin, and that's great, but it's not a needle-mover if you see what I mean. It's peripheral to their interest, not the focus of their interest.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Then apparently you weren't reading, because what the_logos posted was almost identical to what I and some others have said is the way to go.

Improve the interface. Make the newbie experience easier. But don't kid yourself by trying to do a full, or even partial, graphical skin of the experience.

MUDs are still about a command line interface and scrolling text. Organizing it like in the screenshots the_logos posted is definitely handy for people.

Note that all the features he describes don't take away from the core MUD experience that current players may know and love. It just adds a few convenience features that help ease a neophyte into the game.

Again, that's exactly what I and others have specifically talked about in this thread, and you kept hammering on about graphics, graphics, graphics and finding ways to get teenage boys to play MUDs.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Plamzi, does the above sound familiar? =>

To sum up:

1) The MUD experience can be improved with good UIs that organize information well, provide clickable command options, a pretty window dressing, etc.

2) A full on graphical front-end for your game will likely alienate your existing players who kept you running all these years. If you want to make a fully graphical game, then make it! Just do it as a new game, not a retro-fit onto your existing MUD. Be aware that it probably won't be perceived as a MUD at that point.

3) Hybrids are probably too expensive to justify their cost if done well, and will get you "" more likely than not. People who want a graphical game still won't like all the text, and people who want a text game will find that the graphics slow down content development, kill spontaneity, hinder imagination, and simply aren't what they came for.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

The way I see it, the "call to graphics" isn't a call to graphics as such. Back in the day, command lines were the normal way of interacting with a product. You even typed in "win" on the command line to run windows! This day has passed, and the accessibility expectations have changed. MMOs tell us that we can still communicate (and, indeed, perform complicated scripting actions) via a command-line option, but that there are other methods of control for movement and better methods for displaying real-time information.

Why, in this modern day and age, do we satisfy ourselves with having five status prompts on the screen at once, four of which are obsolete?

This seems to be the very thesis that Plamzi is aiming to test. I wish him all the best.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

There's no reason why you couldn't use a roguelike tileset as a graphical replacement for an ASCII map - drawing the world, but not the creatures and objects within it. It's not uncommon for muds to offer ASCII maps, and this would serve the same purpose, it would just look more attractive.

If you wanted to use additional icons within each location, you could use a single monster image to represent the presence of one or more monsters, a single treasure icon to represent the presence of one or more items of loot, and so on - more symbolic than anything else. Or you could use some form of stacking, as ForgottenMUD suggested.

But even if you just stuck with the map itself, and ignored creatures and objects, I still think it would be a significant improvement over an ASCII map.

To be fair, it's becoming increasingly common for people to use energy bars and icons instead.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I agree that it works great for a map. Probably a lot better for a coordinate-based world like yours or a strictly chessboard world like Aardwolf's. For worlds like mine, I find the "cell-type" map design to be cleaner-looking. Which leads to better results when you overlay the map on top of the world view UI.

Kaz makes some excellent points here. You can set the whole "some graphics vs. no-no-no to graphics" debate aside and instead ask yourself purely functional questions. What does the best possible UI for a MUD look like to you, with all your individual/unique considerations in mind?

When I asked myself that question 3 years ago, what I had in mind was a mobile app. What is a mobile game in which you can't play normally with just tapping, dragging, and dropping? It's a huge pain in the a## is what it is. And so, you need visual representations on screen for anything that must be manipulated for normal play. Now, that's a tall order even for a hack'n'slash MUD. But if you expect people to play an app on their phone by typing in commands, you quickly find that even veteran mudders will just log in to chat, if they use it at all.

Now, I believe that some of the same considerations are true for web apps. People are used to performing most in-game (or even in-browser) actions with the mouse. They are used to seeing visual representations of things in the game that they can click on, scroll, etc. That is what I was getting at many pages ago when I said that we need a MUD GUI for the web that "looks like a game".

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

To me, the best possible UI for a MUD is one that provides needed information to the player without compromising the spirit of text based game play. Minimaps, health-bars and other indicators are sure bets. Quite frankly, if a MUD developer has attempted to try and make some sort of ascii representation of something, then that something may be a great candidate for a graphical representation. Graphical representations, though, are meant to augment the text based play experience and not replace it.

Also, any task that isn't directly related to playing should be turned in to a specialized UI 'piece' that people are used to. For example, writing MUD mail could be done with a GUI similar to any given email client vs. employing a command line editor where the intended "mail input" is mixed with the rest of the game output. Granted, people write a mail in some other software (notepad?), then cut/paste that mail into the command line. But, that's really not 'user friendly'. That is people adjusting to and working around limitations that don't define game-play and are nothing short of annoying. Posting messages, selecting skills, shopping, logging in, selecting characters, etc -- all those activities are easily and better handled through a GUI without compromising the general text-based game play. For the most part, the ultimate UI is not just about a bunch of graphics --- it is about proper segregation of information and interaction. Without a doubt, the main game play would still happen through scrolling text and command input. Command line input could be augmented with certain UI elements though -- like the minimap could be clickable to move --- and I am sure there are plenty of ideas on other input handling mechanism.

Finally, the best possible UI would be one that visually brands the game. When I look at your client, the window borders, scroll bars, buttons, background and all the 'dressings' would immediately stick in my head as something that identifies *your game*. In terms of look and feel, the UI should also leverage today's advancements in typography, fonts, colors and layout options. Heck, where the 'telnet client' was the king of yesteryear, the web browser is just about to the point where it should be *the* client layer/container.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I agree with all of this, for whatever it's worth.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

Everything I've managed to read through tells me that although it is possible to run a MUD in a smartphone app, it doesn't sound like a very good idea.

A list of reasons why it could be trouble to make a MUD app.
1. Graphics interface would take up a lot of room, and limit the amount of detail that can be given in the text. The length of player posts would also be limited do to the smaller text area.
2. Event without a graphics interface, the smaller screen of the phone will already limit the text area.
3. To get event close to the number of player options in a MUD, the Graphics interface would need list withing list within list of choices.
4. Event if the touch based interface is limited to the basic direction and a graphic of the current room, details, choices and text will be covered up by the in-phone keyboard.
5. Event if connected with a website, the app will always feel limiting to older players.

The things that make MUDs better that most graphic based games is the level of interaction, the variety of player choices, and the number of options available to a player at any given time.

At best you could have multiple apps that let the Player gain access to aspects of the Character, and do mini-game style activities such as; crafting, quick skirmish combat, access guild/clan/house information, or do basic explaoration of part of the world.

Apps are meant to be quick and simple, while MUDs are indepth, long-term, detailed, and full of choices.

Aside from the traditional wall of text over a basic graphic background, it will be hard to contain the rich tapestry of a good MUD.

For those of you who want Your MUDs on the go with your smartphones, just look at your phone's keypad and screen to see the basic problems there.

While I do like the Website based MUDs I have seen, the play style, and the basic way the MUD works is still all the same underneath all the graphics.

Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"
 

I am trying to address this very issue--I think bringing new blood (or bringing back old blood) is the most obvious concern for keeping the MUDs we all love alive and growing.

I just released an Android app specific to one mud, that is integrated tightly to that MUD. The mudding experience is the same as it is from a telnet client or other traditional Mud client--but bringing in custom hooks from the MUD to create a touch interface that directly interacts with the MUD, beyond just "dumb" buttons. I hope other MUDs find it interesting enough that they either create their own interactive clients (or talk to me about creating a version for them!)

Check it out if you have interest, just released, but so far I have quite a few thrilled users!