01 Sep, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Ok, this is the third time just today that i have tryed to sit down and write in one post many of the thoughts that i have had on how to move forwards, the trouble i have had, is separating all my thoughts into some sort of categories and making this whole post some what cohesively structured. As with most things game and internet related, a lot of how to advance the cause of text gaming comes down to promotion and it is with promotion that we lose out to other games genera.

While there are 4 main portal sites totally devoted to muds, something that I do not see is much of is targeted promotion of muds on non mud game sites and that the difficulty that all the portal sites have in this respect is that from their game lists it is somewhat hard to know what games are complete functional and have steady player bases and what games are in development and what games are just there because someone used to care about them.

I think for the remainder of this post i will focus on this aspect of how to move forwards rather than on things that each individual or various games can do, these things i think i will leave for other posts. I will probably also use Mudbytes as my example portal so if i do don't take this as an affront or personal attack against Mudbytyes because its not, its just things that i think a site could use to differentiate itself from the others.

The current approach is that any game can get listed on all sites in no time at all, but from a promotional standpoint this is a nightmare. How do i know that a game is complete and playable, (yes i know that most games never see themselves as complete and that they evolve over time, but what i mean as complete is that there is enough content that i can play the game from creation to end game) or how do i know that a a game is likely to have some players on it. If there was actually a list that separated out development games from playable games it would make it somewhat easier for a site like Mudbytes to promote individual games to a much wider audience.

Sandi and Co certainly had the right idea when it came to the Mud Quest site, by only allowing complete games to be listed on the site, it was sort of a shame that it never really made it, because this sort of thing makes it really easy from a promotion standpoint to get the word out about different games.

I also think that TMC had a good idea by doing actual audits of the games for listing accuracy, but i think it did not have enough scope and that it would have been nice to be able to differentiate games on a complete vrs development vrs relic sort of line so that end users can be given a good indication of the quality of the game and how active the player base might be.

TMS and MudRage (Formerly MudMagic) attempt to overcome this with their respective voting systems, all of these types of systems are so easily skewed, as a case point, Eldhamud was at one time ranked in the top 60 on TMC and TMS just because 5 game staff voted daily on each of those sites.This is hardly an accurate assessment of the game or how many players we really had.

So, what changes can be made to Mudbytes to help facilitate the growth of muding as a whole or to distinguish itself from the other portal sites.

1. Change the game list format to be 3 seperate lists,

A. Class 1 games: Games that are fully functional and playable from beginning to end, have no major holes in content, are not likely to have major redesigns happen at short notice or close down, have good uptime and availability, that have an active player community greater than 10 players online at any specific time of the day, they would also need a high degree of originality. Games in this section would have to pass a set of standards to ensure a high standard. This section would be broken into game themes.

B. Class 2 Games: Games in this section would be games that are mostly functional, are actively promoting and seeking players are mostly complete, have good uptime and availability, may or may not have anyone online at times through out the day, are actively maintained but have less than 10 players online at most times of the day. These games may be mostly stock or small friends type games. This section would be broken into themes.

C. Development games: Games that are not complete enough to play, have holes in content, may or may not have radical redesigns at any moment, are not stable and may face p-wipes at any time. Games in this section would not have to pass any standard. All games in this section would be lumped together.

2. To have promotional sections in the forums,
Having promotion sections in the forums here will encourage more people to use and visit this site, tho if this path was to be taken that there be a clear guide to posting and a template that shows how to make a suitable post here. Most of the other game sites that i frequent have posting templates that need to be adhered to for advert posts. It does not need to be complex just as long as its clear and easy to follow, something like this would be easy.
Quote
Game Name:
Game Address-Port:
Codebase:
Positions Vacant: Short paragraph outlining experience required and job details.
Game Description: 150+ words describing your game and vision.


3. Game Reviews,
Peer reviewed player reviews can do a lot to help a game get noticed, submission of a game review would need to be reviewed to ensure that its accurate and is not just about spreading liable about a competing game. To ensure quality of game reviews, each review should follow a template/style guide to outline how a game review should be done. I would recommend looking at Mud Quest game reviews as they are well done and contain a lot of usefull information.

4. Banner Rotaion,
Have the 1 of the banner rotation spaces purely for Class A games and also offer a banner exchange program where by displaying the Mudbytes banner on your site earns you banner impressions on pages other than the front page on this site. Its a 2 fold way to drive traffic here and to the games.

5. Site Promotion,
There are a number of really easy ways to drive traffic to a site, something that Mudbytes could do is to have a weekly news bulletin that gets sent to a number of games news sites, there are ways to automate this whole process so that its really just the time taken to write an article. This does not guarantee that it will get posted, but ones that do get posted will reach a larger audience than many other free promotional methods.


Well there is some of my thoughts and ideas, if i get time to post again latter i will continue with this theme and try my hand at what individuals and games can do to further the cause of muds generally. I would love to hear thoughts and opinions on this and even perhaps form further development of the ideas present or even some new ideas. I know some of the above might not be doable and i don't expect that ANY of them see the light of day, so lets keep tossing ideas into the pan and see what we can come up with.

HAHAHA I just did a HK, sorry about the length.
01 Sep, 2008, Kayle wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I'm inclined to agree with things, such as the promotions forum, and the split listings. Personally, I haven't added MW to any of the mudlists because we're still under heavy development, and I've wiped playerfiles 4 or 5 times now to accommodate new changes. And I see no point looking for staff/players aside from the core development team (those that have been there since the beginning) and those friends that get invited to help with things as they can when I'm constantly doing major revisions to how things work. If I could list, and people know it's under heavy development, I wouldn't mind listing. of course that means I'd need to put on my graphic design gloves and take of the coding gloves and design a banner.. but Eh.. I can handle that I think. :P
01 Sep, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
In no particular order…

Let's say that Mudbytes starts sending out these weekly newsletters. What will they contain? Why will people visit the site after reading them? What will they do once they get here?

It's been said a few times in various places that Mudbytes is a very developer-centric community. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's probably better to do one thing well than to try several and do poorly at them all. Does it really make sense to try to turn Mudbytes into a player community?

I agree that promotion needs to be done carefully, and it needs to be made very clear when a game isn't ready for mainstream consumption. A game that is advertised and visited, but is a developer's MUD without real content, can do harm to the entire genre if it's the first MUD that somebody sees.

Audits etc. are great as long as there are people to do them, and these people act consistently w.r.t. each other – i.e. auditors are not biased and have the same standards.
01 Sep, 2008, Cratylus wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
DH wrote:
Quote
It's been said a few times in various places that Mudbytes is a very developer-centric community. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's probably better to do one thing well than to try several and do poorly at them all. Does it really make sense to try to turn Mudbytes into a player community?


I also have this concern.

I'm not a wet blanket. I want fun, exciting new
things to happen. But this talk of listings at
mudbytes trips my warning LED's. Look at the
sites that pick up the most/most bitter criticism.
TMC, TMS, MM.

With MM, endless feuds about "unfair voting".
TMS has the unhealthy aspect of deeply
corrupting incest. TMC, for all its virtues, has still
blatantly succumbed to the call of money in its
search results…total sellout. And all of them
subject to bitter sniping between rival muds
competing for player eyeballs (Perhaps less so
with TMS, whose admins own commercial muds and
find it profitable to suppress this sort of thing).

If mud listings fix something here that is broke,
let's add them…I'm not opposed. But if we *do*
add them, let's have a clear eye of the sort of
bedlam we're buying for ourselves, and do it in
a manner that avoids those things we don't like
about those other sites.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
01 Sep, 2008, Zeno wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
I think any site would end up turning developer-centric community anyway.

How many players do you see on TMC actively post? Aside from the "looking for a mud" type post, I almost never see players post.
01 Sep, 2008, Cratylus wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
To respond to The_Fury:

Quote
1. Change the game list format to be 3 seperate lists,


I had actually not even noticed that muds are
already listed here. Color me oblivious. A casual look
at the listing does not make it clear to me what
order they are listed in. Anyone know?

This sequence tells me it's not chronological:
8/3/08
8/22/08
8/19/08

This sequence tells me it's not alphabetical:
Legends of Old
Avalon: The First Age
Dark Rifts

I'm a fan of listing by IP. That avoids muds
using manipulative names and allows for an order
that changes rarely.

If the listings are here to stay, they do seem
to need some kind of reorganization/refresh. I
find the current system confusing.


Quote
2. To have promotional sections in the forums,


If there's a listing, then we've already taken the
decision I warned about in my previous post, so
in for a penny, in for a pound. Not having a promotion
section, in this circumstance, is odd.


Quote
3. Game Reviews,


Sounds fine to me. Since this is a CMS, I have to
imagine that it's not that difficult to simply
accept reviews from anyone, which is probably the
best solution. An official elite cadre of testers
sounds good on paper, but something tells me it's
unwise to plan on it working.


Quote
4. Banner Rotaion,


Here you get into issues of judging and classifying
games that I don't find especially interesting, but
I agree that banners for games that suck is probably
a waste of real-estate and our patrons' confidence in
our judgment. Assuming they are free banners.


Quote
5. Site Promotion,


This thing involves real (part-time) work from real
people. Editing, then networking and cultivating
relationships with other communities, etc. This is
not trivial, and it has to be done by someone in
an official capacity for MB, not just "some dude
willing to do it for a while". It sounds good, but
it also sounds like getting ahead of ourselves.


To add my own brainstorming, I'd say that as a dev
community we might want to consider helping folks get
a feel for what it's like to set up and run different
kinds of muds, or provide a kind of temporary
environment to demonstrate code.

I know folks here have offered free hosting in the
past. I am curious, how hard would it be to set up
a "sandbox" hosting service, that allows folks to
sign up, install and set up and run a mud for, say
a week, then automatically erases everything and
deletes their account?

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
01 Sep, 2008, Davion wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
I think it's safe to say that MB wont be going anywhere near that player-centric community. In fact, an update to the mud listings system isn't even in the works! Any suggestions though will of course be considered. Our main focus is still providing a useful tool and resource to the developers of the community, not the players. Adding in voting and the like is simply a grab for more traffic and in our case, useless player traffic!

Cratylus said:
If the listings are here to stay, they do seem
to need some kind of reorganization/refresh. I
find the current system confusing.


They are ordered by the connections we've sent them (lowest first.) The more people who connect, the lower on our main list you'll become.

Cratylus said:
Here you get into issues of judging and classifying
games that I don't find especially interesting, but
I agree that banners for games that suck is probably
a waste of real-estate and our patrons' confidence in
our judgment. Assuming they are free banners.


We provide anyone a free banner rotation (almost 6 million rotations thus far), regardless of the quality/stage of the MUD. But honestly, the amount of clicks/rotations is directly related to the quality of the banner. Topping out the list is Legends of Karinth, and MudDomain.


Cratylus said:
I know folks here have offered free hosting in the
past. I am curious, how hard would it be to set up
a "sandbox" hosting service, that allows folks to
sign up, install and set up and run a mud for, say
a week, then automatically erases everything and
deletes their account?


I think this is an excellent idea.
01 Sep, 2008, Orrin wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Zeno said:
How many players do you see on TMC actively post? Aside from the "looking for a mud" type post, I almost never see players post.

I think if someone only plays muds and has no interest in development then "looking for a mud" type posts are probably all they would make anyway. I do agree with you that MB seems better suited to a developer community and I see no reason why you shouldn't concentrate on your strengths.

Perhaps some more introductory articles, as well as a dedicated 'newbie' section would be of benefit? I know there has been a lot of discussion on moderation lately but one advantage of a moderated forum should be that people feel less inhibited about asking elementary questions than they perhaps would on more volatile forums.

The code repository is a nice feature as are the articles, and these are certainly things MB can build on. Perhaps you should be looking to pitch yourselves as the principle site for developers with a range of content of interest to novices right through to discussion of advanced concepts for more experienced developers.
01 Sep, 2008, Davion wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
Perhaps some more introductory articles, as well as a dedicated 'newbie' section would be of benefit? I know there has been a lot of discussion on moderation lately but one advantage of a moderated forum should be that people feel less inhibited about asking elementary questions than they perhaps would on more volatile forums.

This is the type of document that could be created with our articles section, the only problem is getting someone to do it ;).

Orrin said:
The code repository is a nice feature as are the articles, and these are certainly things MB can build on.

The code repository and articles section will be the main focus for the next update (it'll allow people to document their code as well as existing code in the repository with quick links directly to the source of the functions.)

Orrin said:
Perhaps you should be looking to pitch yourselves as the principle site for developers with a range of content of interest to novices right through to discussion of advanced concepts for more experienced developers.

This is our main pitch, though we don't have all that much content to boast such a claim. Our discussion has taken off as has our actual accumulation of code (thanks everyone! :D). Said novice content just doesn't exist. We're all to much of the elitists to bow to such a level, it seems ;). Suggestions anyone?
01 Sep, 2008, Pedlar wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
All hail my 1337n355! ;);)
01 Sep, 2008, Varmel wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
The_Fury said:
Well there is some of my thoughts and ideas, if i get time to post again latter i will continue with this theme and try my hand at what individuals and games can do to further the cause of muds generally.

It might actually not be that difficult to advertise MUDs. Advertising within the MUD community is probably not very useful.

To advertise MUDdev outside this community there are great possibilities. Making a mmrpg is hard and a lot of people atleast used to ask how to make one in various gamedev forums. Making a MUD can be a lot easier and if limited in size it is certainly doable by one person or very small team.

You could add entries about MUD in wikis such as http://wiki.gamedev.net/index.php/Main_P... and http://www.devmaster.net/wiki/Main_Page . As many MUDs are games it means any gamedev website could cover the genre. That means writing articles about MUDs on large gamedev websites such as www.gamedev.net could increase awareness( http://www.gamedev.net/info/writers.asp ) - and of course you place links back in those articles to MUD community websites.
02 Sep, 2008, Sandi wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Davion said:
I think it's safe to say that MB wont be going anywhere near that player-centric community. In fact, an update to the mud listings system isn't even in the works! Any suggestions though will of course be considered. Our main focus is still providing a useful tool and resource to the developers of the community, not the players. Adding in voting and the like is simply a grab for more traffic and in our case, useless player traffic!


I respect your wishes, and believe focusing on what you do best is a wise decision.

However, I believe that since most of us are developing for players, and not just ourselves, a non-mudder friendly portal is something we all need if we hope to see our hard work enjoyed. There are the games, then there is the meta-game of gaming, and most of us in the current community have "won" the meta-game. We have reached the point where we've won enough other games to set out and make our own game. In other words, I think there's a natural progression in the life of a mudder that leads people to finally become at least STAFF, if not an Implementor, and thus without regular transfusions of new blood there won't be (m)any players left.

What I learned from MudQuest was that to fairly review a MUD, you should send in at least two anonymous reviewers to play the game to completion and then have them compare notes. Big, big time sink there. You still end up with a lot of "In the time I was there, I did not see…" comments. Like many others, I think a site full of good reviews would be a great benefit to the community, but it will take more than a few dedicated, experienced, people who, in essence, do nothing else with their 'gaming time'. (We did have a few, and I can't thank them enough for their help. They were wonderful!) Otherwise, you end up with a site that's nothing but book reviews written by reading the back cover blurbs. Player reviews are a possibility, but it seems to me you need a site the size of IMDB to gather enough personal opinions for a trend to become clear. The reviews on TMC suggest that's not going to happen, and the number of reviews will be so small that the results can easily be skewed by shills.

Now, I don't think all is lost. In the early days of MUSHing, Lydia Leong maintained a mudlist that featured a graph of a week's time and the number of logins per hour. This was possible because MUSHes allow you to see the WHO from the login screen. I remember that, as a player, this was a very useful tool in finding others to RP with. You not only knew how active the game really was, you knew when to log in to meet people. Mayhaps something similar could be developed for MUDs. While personal reviews are interesting, there are other metrics that may be used to consider a game's worth.

Davion said:
We provide anyone a free banner rotation (almost 6 million rotations thus far), regardless of the quality/stage of the MUD. But honestly, the amount of clicks/rotations is directly related to the quality of the banner. Topping out the list is Legends of Karinth, and MudDomain.
]
Uh, are the banners still there, or is FireFox over-protecting me? :wink:
02 Sep, 2008, Zeno wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
The banners have always been there…
02 Sep, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Sandi said:
Now, I don't think all is lost. In the early days of MUSHing, Lydia Leong maintained a mudlist that featured a graph of a week's time and the number of logins per hour. This was possible because MUSHes allow you to see the WHO from the login screen. I remember that, as a player, this was a very useful tool in finding others to RP with. You not only knew how active the game really was, you knew when to log in to meet people. Mayhaps something similar could be developed for MUDs. While personal reviews are interesting, there are other metrics that may be used to consider a game's worth.


This is an interesting idea, maybe someone could develop a spider to a higher degree where rather than daily, it does hourly or bi-hourly rounds and collects some game data like the number of people online. Anyone want to bash out a design that would be workable? Pro's, Con's.
02 Sep, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
It would be easier to add some kind of data-querying API to the MUDs that supported this kind of thing without having to create a spider. A spider would need a character, log in, "type" who, etc. If the MUD provided some kind of API up-front, perhaps using some kind of special character to indicate that the first line isn't a name but an API command, it could be handled completely transparently from the player's perspective.

It'd be pretty easy to implement such a thing, I think. Nick and Aardwolf have already implemented similar "hidden" calls by using telnet protocol features. But this could rapidly grow into a large protocol beyond its original use, in which case some thought might have to go into it.
02 Sep, 2008, Sandi wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
The way MUSHes do it, you can use four special commands at the login screen besides "connect". WHO and QUIT… and I'm getting old… :rolleyes:

I think though, anyone can do that easily, either where you log in or choose color. What we'd need, as we don't have the built in, standard format WHO the MUSHes have, is simply return a player count in response.
02 Sep, 2008, Davion wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Many people use a web who that prints their who list to a url. It'd probably be a helluva lot easier just to have them implement some form of a web who which the site can harvest and add to a database.
02 Sep, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Wouldn't a special command at login be easier than adding a web interface? A web interface also requires opening a new port, which some people might not be able to do (e.g. on hosting services)…
02 Sep, 2008, Varmel wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
Wouldn't a special command at login be easier than adding a web interface? A web interface also requires opening a new port, which some people might not be able to do (e.g. on hosting services)…

On intermud3 I think you can query for the logged in MUD players on each connected MUD. So another way is to get people to use intermud3.
02 Sep, 2008, Davion wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
Wouldn't a special command at login be easier than adding a web interface? A web interface also requires opening a new port, which some people might not be able to do (e.g. on hosting services)…


Then simply advice them that being with a host that doesn't provide webspace is a crime against MUDing! They should move to a real host that offers a public_html. Though, I may have not made myself clear. I don't actually mean bind to another port with the MUD, I mean output a file that's stored in your web directory and have the site harvest that.
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