Have a look at this graph, which represents Google trends data on the frequency of people searching for 'muds':

That's not pretty.

--matt

Hmm. I do not think it is that bad.

This is a quote from how that trend finder works.

The graph is proportional. The total number of people using google is probably going up. Even if the same amount of people searched for muds as did at the beginning of 04 it would be going down.

But on the flipside, checking trends for words like mmorpg, online game, online rpg, all show increasing graphs. I have been to alot of the popular MMOG and MMORPG sites and I have found links to muds on those sites before. I know it dosent mean everyone that searches for those terms will go to text games, but I bet at least a few do.

Also I just did a check on "text games" and "text game" and they yielded steady results. I think a person newer to the text scene is probably more likely to search for text game rather than mud myself.

Not only would new people possibly try text game, or text games more than MUD, but people that are not new to the mud scene likely don't use google to find muds...we use mudconnect, topmudsites, and/or mudmagic.

I was just thinking about how I came into knowing about muds. In high school my friend showed me some MUD that I cannot even remember now. I did not even know it was called a mud for that matter.

I especially had no idea that there where websites that ranked or rated the games I kept using search engines to find.

I think I would do searches for "text rpg" or something along those lines. (Text rpg in that google feature gets a graph that has a less sharp decline as well)

I wouldn't worry about it too much. As others have said, those that really know about muds look for them here/TMC/etc. Those of us that care about Google hits, just need to make sure we use the right keywords.

For example, the have had 212 hits off Google so far this month. None of those have been for MUDs, and the majority are ones directly looking for us. The rest of the hits have come from things such as "Godwars" and many "random" fantasy related searches. Last month we even got a few that were actually searching for features of Oblivion, which apparently I've added to the Ilyrias design without ever playing or seeing Oblivion.

Just FYI, TMS gets about 300 visitors a day from search engines, with almost every search having the word "mud" in it in some way. Here's the top 10 searches for this month so far:

Search Term/# of Searches
1. mud 664
2. top mud sites
3. muds 272
4. topmudsites 208
5. mud list 161
6. top muds 157
7. free mud 119
8. free muds 83
9. top mud 82
10. mud games 74

While these are the top 10, there are hundreds of search terms that make up this total.

That is interesting synozeer, thanks for putting that info up. I have been running comparisons of different terms in there when I get bored. Alot of them do not show me actual numbers though which is frustrating.

I wish there was a solid way to tell approx. how many people are playing in this community. I have seen muds that are not even in the top 20 have 60+ players on at times.

It feels to me like the number of people is actually increasing or at least remaining fairly steady.

The top 20 on TMS isn't a reflection of the most popular MUDs. In fact, except for Achaea, Aardwolf, Discworld and possibly Imperian, I don't think any of the MUDs on the front page are in the top 10 most popular text MUDs, as you have to add in there:
* DragonRealms
* Gemstone
* Batmud
* Shangri-La
* Materia Magica
* Medievia
* And some others.

Remember that TMS's rankings list functions as a traffic exchange. The more traffic you send TMS, the better your position and generally, the more you'll get back. Many large MUDs don't spend effort getting their players to vote, so they aren't on here.

--matt

--matt

Matt is quite right in there, we're a perfect example. We have 0 players, as we're still in development, but currently ranked 13th.

To get in the top 20, it takes around 300 votes. That means only 10 people that vote twice every day.

EDIT: Forgot it resets every 15 days or so, not monthly.

Re: Google trends data for MUDs
 

The graph, its trend and everything else is total bunk.
The majority of those 'hits' are MUDs=municipal utility districts. Clearly, Google isnt filtering very well.

Detah

Re: Google trends data for MUDs
 

Even more alarming :P