26 Aug, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Vladaar said:
This is probably not going to get a good response, but I also think part of the problem is too many
coders are out there releasing piles of code and codebases. Do not get me wrong I have greatly
benefited from many releases over the years. However, when it gets so easy for anyone to make
a out of the box type mud, why work for someone else.

What we need to do is come up with a way to get people to realize that while yes you can start
your own game with little to no coding experience, that the failure rate is extremely high unless
you have strong support. Starting a mud is not a one man type of activity, though probably many
of us here did start it as one man or one woman.

I had more posted here, but removed it as it gave me an idea I am exploring.


As much as i agree with you and would like to see this sort of thing happen, in reality its not really something that will be workable for the great many people. Something i have always done is to approach other one man games or owners of failed startups and ask them to join with me, that by pooling resources and energies we could make a complete game. The trouble i have always found is that they usually unwilling to deviate away from their great idea and work with someone else to make a great game.

As you very well know, i like the idea of collaboration and have at times dropped in to see how your getting along or to assist in brainstorming out a problem, heck I was even going to code for your game until work took me away and well you got Tarl? whoever your main coder was back and i never pursued it any further.

As a further point, take a look at these 2 posts on TMC, Game 1 and Game 2 both of whom i have emailed with the intention of pooling resources and making one game. Both have replied and I am in the process of discussing things further to see where it goes. I have done this sort of thing lots of times, one day i will hit the jackpot. I also seem to get a lot of emails from people as well asking for assistance about various things, just last week i had someone ask me about simplemud and bettermud code from a post i made on Gammons site 4 years ago and just this week someone was after mapmaker after seeing that i had posted about it. In all these situations i try and make friends with the people and see where they are at with the game development and such.

Maybe I might throw my weight behind someone Else's project at some point and just tinker with Eldhamud when i feel like it, like this week when i got a few ideas on things i would like to add in that would enhance it somewhat.
27 Aug, 2008, Vladaar wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
So I was thinking the qualitymuds site that Sandy made was a good idea at the time, but I was disappointed
that it basically became a free advertising site, for muds that used it, and they stopped taking
applications. So I thought what would make it possible for the struggling muds out there to join
forces to work at making "super muds" like the big pay to play muds. Then I got an idea.

Anyway, on with my idea. I had thought it might be something I would want to tackle myself,
but looking at the scope of it, I just thought I would post the idea in case some people wanted
to band together to tackle a project of this magnitude with more time and resources then I can devote.
I would be glad to help, but don't have time to spearhead it. Maybe the likes of Erwin Andreason,
Andy Cowan, etc could be approached for help with resources or time because they maybe aware
of the mud community situation and want to see a breakthrough.

I was thinking of a project called Shared Vision Muds or svmuds.com

This project purpose would be to unite failing muds with muds that are not failing but struggling some.
Define the struggling muds visions for their mud, what features they want, what goals theme, etc., and
allow failing muds the opportunity to merge with the struggling muds. This would not be a mudlist by
any means, but a way to connect Game Admins and Staff who have shared visions of their pefect muds
with each other, so instead of reinventing the wheel with shoestring amount of players/Staff they can
join forces. Like a dating service website.

Shared Vision concept wouldn't stop at that but would promote:
sharing advertising costs - maybe getting mudlists to give discount for svmud members and allowing
svmuds to split costs.
sharing of code snippets/building areas/graphics - maybe some weird type of point system, if you share you gain
points and those with the highest points, get first pick at available staff looking for home, or get a cheaper
advertising rate.
I said earlier not a mudlist site, but could think about making a portal site like IRE - for shared muds that
also want to reduce overhead of advertising.

You as a game admin having read statistics on the website, and realizing how hard it is to gain players/staff
decide to register on svmuds.com. While you do, you are asked questions that get a solid feel for your vision
of your perfect mud. Also it is ascertained what level of quality/completion your mud is at now, and if you
would be willing to consider a merger with a mud that is closer to completion but has the same vision as you
or with a mud that is less then you but has same vision.

Anyway, these ideas I laid out are not very well done, I didn't make a mission statement or objectives and all
that, but sporadically laid my ideas out because I realized I didn't have the time to spear head something like
this. I think it is something that if some people could do successfully would consolidate the player base and
staff of muds that are spread to thin over too many muds, to a level that would benefit a lot more muds.

Vladaar
27 Aug, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Hmm, its an interesting idea, I would be interested in seeing you develop the concept further, its certainly new and original and that's something surely missing at the moment.
27 Aug, 2008, Vladaar wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
The_Fury said:
Hmm, its an interesting idea, I would be interested in seeing you develop the concept further, its certainly new and original and that's something surely missing at the moment.


I would be glad to, if there is enough interest in it. I am devoting already too much time to my game, so I am not interested
in spear heading something of this magnitude. Someone with website/php skillz who would be willing to tackle setting up a
site like that would be needed. I would be happy to design a business plan/goals of sorts for the website, and I could find
the time to work up graphics needed for the site. So basically what I am saying is this would be a project, that would require
a team to complete. The team would just have to be people who understand the state of muds today, and want to make
things better by giving back to the community.

Vladaar
27 Aug, 2008, Sandi wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Vladaar said:
So I was thinking the qualitymuds site that Sandy made was a good idea at the time, but I was disappointed that it basically became a free advertising site, for muds that used it, and they stopped taking applications.

It's not mine, I was a late comer, in fact. I'll take some blame for it failing though. In the end, I think it failed because we couldn't streamline it enough before everyone gave up on how tedious it was. I think, right now, it would take at least 6 dedicated people with a lot of time on their hands to resurrect it. And as soon as it got rolling, you'd want more auditors. If to think it's tough to find good builders….

I'd like to publicly thank everyone involved, especially Molly and Crystal, that made a heroic effort to make it work. It's just none of us realised how much work it would be.

I'd also like to dismiss the idea that it was "elitist". We never thought some muds were better than others, we simply thought some muds weren't finished. The original goal was to provide a shorter list than TMC's so newbies had a chance of finding a real game rather than one of a 1000 that wasn't ready for players. Then we realised that all "finished" games weren't newbie friendly, so the requirements tightened. In each and almost every case it was tough judgment call that spread over several forum pages.

As to it being just for the members, of Crystal, Molly and I, the last three standing, so to speak, only Molly's game is listed because early on we used it as a test case. Crystal and I never got around to putting our own games through the process ourselves.

I know some of you here were rejected, and I know there's some residue of unhappiness there. Because of the workload, we were required by the situation to adopt an "Iron Fist" approach for the same reasons Samson has seen such a thing work on larger sites. Opening up the process to peer review was simply beyond our limited resources. It was hard enough to write a "nice" letter saying we didn't like this and that. Re-arguing this and that (because, as I said, none of these decisions were easy) was simply not possible. In retrospect, perhaps we should have built more of that into the process, but helping other games reach our standards when they couldn't (or wouldn't) understand our standards (and our standards were, of necessity, rather arbitrary and only applied to our list) was beyond the scope of our mission.

Still, I'd do it again. I think a short list of "newbie safe" muds guaranteed to make a good impression on newcomers to mudding would be a great thing to have. Yes, we have exactly that now, but one of the crushing blows was realising not all the muds on the original list had been audited, yet it was time to re-audit the ones we'd done to keep things current.

Incidentally, Andy was very supportive, and thought it a great idea himself. I suspect he would offer similar support for the project proposed here. He'd tried auditing games on TMC and failed for pretty much the same reasons as we did. As did Game Commandos. I'd love to see a full-blown review site, but I think it would need to be done by players. Those of us developing muds never have as much time as we do interest.

Anyway…. not trying to be a wet blanket here, I think Vlad also has a great idea, but you really, really need to find people with TIME to make it work.
27 Aug, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm still a little bleary eyed from sleep, so keep that in mind, but I'm having trouble understanding the motivation. Let's say there's a "failing" MUD, and I run a "struggling" MUD. What's my incentive to take on staff? How much of my creation do I need to give up? Should I be asking questions about why the MUD is failing? I would be a little uneasy about these "mergers", although I suppose that had I listed myself on the site in the first place, I probably wouldn't be one of those uneasy people.

One comment I have that might sound harsh, but hopefully less so when I add that it applies to me too, is that creating a successful game with active players takes serious dedication that most people don't have or don't have the time to have. I won't go into details because most of us have heard the song before, but not only do you have to design the mechanics, which is hard enough, then you need to write the code, while building the world uniformly and cleanly; and as if that wasn't enough work, now you're saddled with the task of actively running the day-to-day operations, dealing with player disputes, etc. In some ways, running a MUD entails more drama than a forum (hard to believe, right?) because people have much more at stake: losing a dispute, be it with another player or with the administration, can mean losing a lot of hard work in the form of characters or equipment. While moderating a forum isn't my idea of a super fun thing to do, it's conceivable; moderating a game (having done it before) is something that would make me very seriously think twice (or thrice).

My point is that maybe the reason for failure of so many MUDs is that they are ultimately just hobbies and playgrounds for the staff. There's nothing wrong with that at all; you can learn a lot during one of these projects. But there is something wrong with thinking that a casual hobbyist project will turn itself into a grand success story. Adding more people won't necessarily fix the problem; in some ways, it might make things even worse.
27 Aug, 2008, Sandi wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Good points, David.

"Struggling", I can see where someone struggling might appreciate some help. A "failing" MUD is simply one where they've given up "struggling", so they're really equivalent, I think. It might even be suggested the ones running the failed MUD are the ones with more common sense. :surprised:

You are quite right about what it takes. But, I can tell you this from the music industry. You can't tell who's going to be a star. There's equally something wrong with thinking a hobbyist mud won't take off. :wink:

Still, I think you make the point well that matching the available time and commitment of all members is essential in forming a successful dev team.
27 Aug, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
You're quite right that one shouldn't think a hobbyist project is doomed to failure. I should have added that one shouldn't think it will become a success simply by throwing more people at the problem.

Sandi said:
It might even be suggested the ones running the failed MUD are the ones with more common sense. :surprised:

To some extent I don't want to agree, but I find myself thinking that you might be on to something pretty insightful here… :smirk:
27 Aug, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
@Sandi: I hope i did not offend you by saying that mud quest was thought of as elitist, that was the impression that many people had thought about the site. Thank you for clarifying a lot of things about it tho, because i don't think any of us were under the impression that the site was suffering from staffing issues. Knowing that now, it is understandable that new listings of quality games were not added to the list.

Auditing on TMS i think also eventually failed because of staffing. There were a few people who did a lot of audits, Averyn?(spelling) and myself, but others due to various factors did not do many. At the time i was faced with the option of resigning or cleaning up my controversial and flamer act. That plus the fact that Andy did not really want to go thorough the list with an axe sort of lead my hand to resigning. I sort of felt sorry for Andy in this situation, because i know that i generated a lot of complaints, not just for being an auditor but because people did not want their games audited. During that time, my own game would get daily logins from those who wanted to proclaim their hate for me and to cause trouble.

The thing that saddened me most was seeing all these really great games sitting idle, maybe close to 20 games i audited were brilliant, original and complete games, that had no one there except me doing the audit. In discussion with one of the admins, he said that he only kept the game running for posterity and would likely shut it down in due course as he was no longer interested in it, a 10000 room very original fantasy game sitting doing nothing.

I know that in other threads we have spoken about "How Do We Go Forward From Here". One was as i see it is to advance our own causes is to promote fully formed games like Mud Quest does. The whole argument is circular, players give rise to admin staff and game developers, to get players we don't need 100 developing games we need 100 complete games that can compete with the selling power of any game house. The games that currently have more than 60 players online average have enough pulling power to generate their own new players if they choose to, for the others in the 15+ player range it can be a struggle and is where a hybrid site that deals specifically towards the growing of those muds can be very beneficial.

Selecting best of breed games tho is hard, i tryed to get 20 across a number of themes and was hard pressed to generate interest other than from 6 Dragons who were more than happy to jump on board to such a project as they could see the benefit to their own player base.

Professionalism is also something that's needed, i agree with the notion that there is too much noise and i am part of that problem with my own hobby 1 man name being listed on all the main sites, i think i will have to delist it as it only perpetuates the problem further. Grrrr so much ideas comming i might need to spawn a new thread to deal with it all. LOL
27 Aug, 2008, Vladaar wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Well just thought I would throw the idea out there, it appears not too many people interested in it. It
would take a lot of work and require a team of people to volunteer to help. I do still at least like the
idea of shared cost of advertising though, if we could get 4 muds or so to go in on advertising cost
with the mudlists, I bet they would cut us a big discount if we bought a certain length of time.

Vladaar
27 Aug, 2008, Hades_Kane wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm going to be looking at advertising on the MUD Connector. (I won't advertise on Mud Magic as a moral stance against the policies of the Admin)

Considering that, if a few other MUDs wanted to see about collectively buying advertisement like Vladaar suggested, I'd be down for at least discussing it if not actually going through with it.
28 Aug, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
If you guys get something like this happening and you promote your games via a portal site, give me a copy of the banner and i will use it as my sig and get you some extra exposure for free.
28 Aug, 2008, Zeno wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
He'd tried auditing games on TMC and failed for pretty much the same reasons as we did

Wait what? How did it fail? We've done 300+ audits thus far.
28 Aug, 2008, Guest wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
The_Fury said:
The thing that saddened me most was seeing all these really great games sitting idle, maybe close to 20 games i audited were brilliant, original and complete games, that had no one there except me doing the audit. In discussion with one of the admins, he said that he only kept the game running for posterity and would likely shut it down in due course as he was no longer interested in it, a 10000 room very original fantasy game sitting doing nothing.


I can relate really well to this particular problem. Alsherok was one such game. We'd get a person or two once in awhile who would log on out of curiosity. Most of the time having found the link through my sig on various forums. We hit our peak of 50 or so people on at any given time sometime back in 1999. Then the MMORPGs came and within the next year our entire playerbase had dried up and disappeared. Most of the staff went with them. I kept the place running for posterity as well. Those few who logged on in recent years always complimented me on the originality and depth the game had and were amazed nobody was playing. I eventually closed it down to public access partly due to a lack of interest and partly due to certain situations in the community where I no longer felt like I belonged. The MUD ended just short of 10,000 rooms, 99.5% original. We had a couple of stock rebuilt zones.
28 Aug, 2008, Sandi wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Zeno said:
Quote
He'd tried auditing games on TMC and failed for pretty much the same reasons as we did

Wait what? How did it fail? We've done 300+ audits thus far.

Uh, sorry, just a matter of terms. What TMC calls 'reviews', we call 'audits'. I realise TMC "audits" games for listing compliance but that's not the peer review system they tried earlier before Game Commandos.

Here's a partial quote from an email Andy sent me:
Quote
I think the mud community took a beating the day Game Commandos shut
down, and I know TMC lost a good affiliate that day. We stopped doing
official site reviews some time ago due to the frustration of keeping a
working reviews team going and when we did Game Commandos stepped in and
we established a relationship with them to swap links, we linked some of
the mud listings to their GC reviews and they linked their reviews back to
our listings for the mud. …. Truth be told I have
been waiting for a reviews-oriented site to come about so I could continue
that sort of relationship.


There are some great games out there lying fallow. And there are more just around the corner. Amazingly well done games that just need another this or that before raising the bar for everyone. But if no one can find them…. if new players log into Aardwolf, then PooPoo's Private Pain Party (we not stock, we changed the log in screen! I ban u for that! just as soon as my rad coderz come on!), they're not, just maybe, going to keep trying long enough to find them. (not a bash at Aardwolf, it's a great place, but it's "old school" for sure.)

I think TMC is a great place, an institution, but it is what it is, and Andy's quite aware of that. His site is the HTML equivalent of the plain text mudlists that used to show up in usenet. He's added some bells and whistles, but in essence it's just a list of every MUD that will join, and nothing more. No amount of search engine massaging will change that. He has perhaps, taken it from the White Pages of the phone book to the Yellow, but what's needed is a travel guide.

Here's an idea from the MUSH world - they have a game, rather than a website, devoted to advertising MUSHes. You can log in and visit various embassies that the games maintain there, and hopefully there will be someone to talk to form the game itself. I can't say how well it works, but it's still being promoted after several years, so they still see it as their best bet. (if someone wanted to do this for mud MUDs, I'd recommend either using my DeepMUD codebase, or sticking my game.c and creation.c in QuickMUD so people could log in without the tedium of creating a real character)
28 Aug, 2008, Cratylus wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm a big fan of putting my money where my mouth is.
I invited folks to talk about where they think things
should go. I'm going to go ahead and risk a little
ridicule of my own by sharing my thoughts on this.

One of the most powerful tools in my project to
re-invigorate the LP community has been intermud.
Though the "old" i3 had a pretty bad reputation, the
tool itself was not at fault, but rather its
indifferent application.

With patience, and good humor, and good faith, Intermud-3
has become a kind of social hub that has an energy
of its own…independent of any one person's ministrations.
New muds get support, the weak are defended, and a
sense of community and warm camaraderie (even if on some
channels it looks like locker room ribaldry) has
developed that makes me feel very, very optimistic
about the chances of "a mud community" and maybe even
"The Mud Community".

This is one of the reasons I've worked so intensely
on supporting IMC2 on the codebase I develop. Even if
IMC2 isn't "my turf", I still want folks to have the
ability to spread out beyond the traditional bounds that
have divided communities. I want *all* intermud networks
to expand, intersect…maybe even interoperate?

There are lots of fears about intermud. Will my players
get stolen? will people be mean to me? Etc. That's fine,
it's natural to be wary of change.

My argument is that we are a community, and it is the
facilitation of communication we should be seeking, to
truly and openly exchange ideas, support each other,
and…you never know….maybe even have a little fun.

I propose that we consider a formally unified intermud.
I believe fragmentation and isolation are not to our
advantage, and this is one way to help strengthen
the community as a whole and improve the chances of
success for our individual projects.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net/intermud.html
28 Aug, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
You know, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that intermud is appropriate on a player-active MUD. If I'm the head dude, I would want my players to playing the game and focusing on local community, and I would want my staff to be doing their jobs. I don't really need a whole new world at the gates. I realize this sounds terribly anti-social, but it's something I've been thinking about and I'm not really sure what the right answer is.

That said, it is a great thing for development or early MUDs, and I fully support the idea of unification to whatever extent possible. The procedures and administration just need to be made very clear early on.
28 Aug, 2008, Cratylus wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
DH wrote:
Quote
You know, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that intermud is appropriate on a player-active MUD.


Lots of people feel that way…I suspect it just comes
down to personal preference. Even if you limit intermud
access to devs or admins…perhaps you just don't care for it.

For a few folks though, their avoidance of intermud
is due to some out of date information. A while back
I put together a FAQ entry to deal with some
of the common objections folks have to it:

http://dead-souls.net/ds-admin-faq.html#...

DH wrote:
Quote
I fully support the idea of unification to whatever extent possible.


Yeah…I think the question of "do I want intermud?" is
indeed separate from "is it good to unify the networks?".

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
28 Aug, 2008, Guest wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
I think a lot of folks on IMC are there because they don't like the atmosphere present on I3, in any of its forms. You've described at least part of why: "even if on some
channels it looks like locker room ribaldry". The problem is, this particular issue is on "the channel". The main one most people would use by default. Sort of the ichat of the I3 world.

I remember very clearly that I was not happy with the atmosphere on the old gjs network. Granted, it no longer exists (or does it?) but most of those people have migrated to the new one and brought their same attitude with them. It's why even though several Dikus had the I3 code installed they ended up on the Diku only channels where we didn't tolerate that sort of thing. It never got better and eventually when it began bleeding over to our channels I simply dropped support for the client and disconnected from the network.

I've always found IMC to be a much more relaxed and friendly environment and personally would not want to see any of what still goes on on igossip bleeding over on to ichat. I think a lot of other folks might agree with me on this and is why we've chosen to be where we are. Even if some of us are no longer using it as much, due in part to some of the issues I just mentioned. I've already had some private discussions with some people who have expressed a desire to form a new network that's not a part of all that. I hesitate to consider it though because it would lead to a pretty big split in what's left of the community.

On a technical level I've always wanted to see if making I3 interoperable with IMC at the server level would even be possible. The only thing that ever held me back though was the social fallout of doing so when the natural barriers come down. But they're largely gone now anyway so the technical end of it is probably worth exploring now. It would more or less be a client-invisible thing. Clients would keep using whatever protocol they already have. Only the servers would need to change to accommodate it.
28 Aug, 2008, Cratylus wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Samson wrote:
Quote
but most of those people have migrated to the new one and brought their same attitude with them.


Welllll….I think I addressed that in my post, so I'll
just let it speak for itself.

Samson wrote:
Quote
On a technical level I've always wanted to see if making I3 interoperable with IMC at the server level would even be possible. The only thing that ever held me back though was the social fallout of doing so when the natural barriers come down. But they're largely gone now anyway so the technical end of it is probably worth exploring now. It would more or less be a client-invisible thing. Clients would keep using whatever protocol they already have. Only the servers would need to change to accommodate it.


Yep, I've got a prototype in pre-alpha testing. The basic
functionality is not rocket science to translate and I've
got mudlists, channels, and tells working pretty ok.

It's completely doable, and wouldn't require much to
activate once I'm done with my translation code. It's
not at all a question of technical feasibility, but whether
we have the will to work it out socially.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
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