22 Apr, 2012, Cratylus wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I think I'll just leave this here… http://tinyurl.com/drakkos
22 Apr, 2012, Idealiad wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
What can I say, I think it's pretty hard to dispute any of his points. On the other hand I have serious doubts anyone can (or should) put all text game players in one big tent. I think in many ways text is not really a defining trait of these games but just a convenient medium. It would be like making a site where the Impressionists and house painters could share tips of the trade.

On the other hand, I'm emailing him right now to get on board. Do I contradict myself? :D
22 Apr, 2012, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Honestly, I find what plamzi and orrin have been doing to be most interesting so far.
25 Apr, 2012, quixadhal wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Putting text gamers in one place is perhaps the only way the genre will ever evolve. In between the fights and witch hunts, the various platforms might learn something from one another.
25 Apr, 2012, Runter wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Putting text gamers in one place is perhaps the only way the genre will ever evolve. In between the fights and witch hunts, the various platforms might learn something from one another.


Disagree. Well, I disagree at least in the case of the author of the blog. He seems to be as entrenched in the mud-drama culture as much as anyone. Furthermore, he wants to do it under the banner of a project that was (in his own words) misguided about how to take muds forward, and also hasn't proven to users that it will be around for the long haul. In fact, it's proven the opposite. At least mudbytes, IMC, etc has offered some relative stability for people to gather and stay in the community even if just by a thread. For example, I myself perhaps only still deal in muds and mud related questions because of that stability. Not because I'm actively developing a game, or would otherwise constantly be looking for a new home for mud based discussion. He uses a slight against people like me and others in the community who aren't developing games as a reason for why places like mudbytes is basically full of trolls.

This is on a tangent, and completely my own opinion, but I think ultimately what can "save" muds is individuals making muds that are very popular and use modern mediums for play. Nothing will help the genre as a whole like bringing thousands of new, active players into it. It's not enough to make games that are reasonably well designed that people have difficult accessing or playing (because they can't type, don't know what an IP address and port is, or can't install software). I think the answer really lies in individual success rather than communal efforts. And we have a history of naysaying and avoiding any solutions that disrupts our sense of fidelity toward the purist mud experience. The first step I would suggest to anyone so brave as to shed this pious attitude about what a mud should be is to build a full GUI interface where the game can optimally be played without ever typing a command. The optimally part is important. Optional interfaces that aren't optimal is not enough. Start understanding the separation of CLI and text based gameplay and you'll be able to make something to appeals to people who like to read (many people) vs people who like to type for hours on end (probably only you). Make the CLI interface the optional interface. The only real way to do this is writing your own client, focusing on a specific browser heavily, or (the best route) using web based technology. De facto technology that muds use today (and have been for a quarter of a century) isn't good enough.
25 Apr, 2012, Idealiad wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
@Runter, I think the IR effort and your second point are related. Individuals making popular, new muds is all well and good, but it raises the question, who are those individuals and where are they coming from?

Certainly there are a few in our current community, but let's be honest, unfortunately only a few. It goes without saying that a typical young developer coming up today is most likely not making a mud.

Now I don't think we need to sway the interest of someone who really wants to make graphical games. But let's take the example of browser games, which certainly use a lot of text. Consider all those kids who want to make the billionth iteration of a Mafia Wars browser game. Are they likely to be more interested in text games? Yes. Are muds talked up in browser game circles? Not really. Why? Well, no special reason, we don't talk about browser games very much on mud sites either.

But a site like a revitalized IR, whose purpose is to pull similar genres into one place, can create those synergies, and give a young developer a fresh perspective on what's possible. What's more, like quix said up thread, that young developer will bring their own fresh perspective to muds. For instance, I'd wager they would be more likely to make an interface like what you're talking about.
25 Apr, 2012, quixadhal wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
All I can say is, if you try to bring a community together, you might fail. If you refuse to try, you've already failed. The text gaming community is simply not large enough to come together without some central rallying point. Back in 1995, sure… but the internet is a big place with lots of distractions and… Oooo, shiny!
25 Apr, 2012, Runter wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
All I can say is, if you try to bring a community together, you might fail. If you refuse to try, you've already failed.


Really? You don't think it's possible that there may not be any correlation between communal efforts and the popularity of a genre? I think what you said is sort of a platitude. So I'll say what I disagree with clearly for others to consider. Perhaps there's a route to success that's possible without declaring that without bringing a broad coalition together you've "already failed." It depends on what your goal is, but if we're talking about bringing more users into the mudding community I'll reiterate what I said before. I think rugged individualism is a better solution, and at face value hasn't been proven to be certain failure.


I should mention here that I believe a high tide lifts all ships with a regard to this issue. Just look at games that *built* genres from their success alone out of obscurity because of individual success alone. Not because they were the newest or constructed by a pious committee, but because they were popular. Like DOTA and tug of war games, etc. Even tower defense type games to some extent.
25 Apr, 2012, aelyah wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
I would say "text game people" rather than "players". This is what I noticed too: there are different types of "people":
1. players - competitive, seeing the text environment as a "game"
2. "run my own thing" - just because the current game doesn't run things the way I want
3. creatives - i like to come up with world ideas, lots of imagination; coding is a hindrance
4. coders - tell me what you want and I'll make it happen <- my cup of tea :)
5. role-players - they like to live the story rather than amass points <- another cup of tea for me :)

Based on the insane amount of moaning and b…ing on the game boards I would have thought people would jump to come up with ideas to be made reality.

So I went and built this site, mudsings :D. I had some quite technical articles about muds for coders and an IF game so people can "delve right in".

I tested it on friends and family :). I realized that what seemed obvious for me was light years from their background. I needed to start with something people understood. So I changed the site to accept stories: write->build->run.

This was too complicated also. It becomes clear when one posts a task on mturk and gets mostly junk :).

The breakthrough came when I posted a task asking for 149 character length writing prompts. Although I offered a very small reward, most of the entries were a pretty good quality.Even my post in this forum asking for quest prompts had pretty good participation.

Once a good repository of prompts was established I asked for stories based on the prompts. The quality of the stories coming from mturk and microworkers improved considerably.

What I find hard to do, is to make people connect the stories with the text based interactive world. To help with this I added the ability for people to add character, item and places descriptions based on the stories, the ability to add quest descriptions and ideas, so it is easier for those enjoying coding to find inspiration.

I added the ability to enter directly playfic stories. In this way the users have a full web based environment to experiment.

I would love to read a professional e-zine with scholarly articles about the topic. I would beg the permission to link/add the articles to mudsings. Among the most people though, they would still be received with a smile and a shrug.

What we would really need would be help with little things: write a prompt, give examples of great item/character and place descriptions. An example of a fun quest. Small inform7 examples directly related to memebers' contributions on the site, so everyone feels a bit of ownership. And reviews! Feedback is king and makes a site like writing.com successful. Did I mention there is a quite detailed review system on the site?

Posting a story, descriptions, live stories can be done anonymously. It is very fast and, based on what I have seen very effective in drawing people to the text world.

Would you have time to help ?

/A.
25 Apr, 2012, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
I kinda agree more runter. I don't think that I can talk friends and guildies to abandon their MMO's, flash games and social sites for anything that lacks and graphics and sound. Preferably an embedded client that they don't have to download.

I tend to bump into people who used to play MUDs in the 80's, 90's and 00's. They'll usually use familar words and phrases and I'll ask them if they played..then usually chat with them a minute.

Personally, I still think it could be fun having a game and cartoon, as 2 seperate projects that ran parallel to each other. With the cartoon series/characters/script and game events/npc's being linked to effect each other. I've been thinking lately that a stick style like Order of the Stick or Cyanide and Happyness, could be pretty cool..maybe one day. XD
25 Apr, 2012, quixadhal wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
I think rugged individualism is a better solution, and at face value hasn't been proven to be certain failure.


So, rather than having a common resource which can help fledgling developers think through ideas, discuss coding techniques, and perhaps even find and make use of toolkits and libraries, you'd prefer everyone suffer re-inventing the wheel from the ground up? You really think the odds of success are higher when developing in a vacuum?

Runter said:
I should mention here that I believe a high tide lifts all ships with a regard to this issue. Just look at games that *built* genres from their success alone out of obscurity because of individual success alone. Not because they were the newest or constructed by a pious committee, but because they were popular. Like DOTA and tug of war games, etc. Even tower defense type games to some extent.


While there are indeed a few games which defined their own genre, the majority of them did not poof into existence from nowhere. Many of them were built atop earlier works which were NOT successful. Others made use of toolkits that other people wrote and made available, rather than having to rewrite how to make a scrollbar widget. How many MORE unique games might have succeeded and spawned a more diverse gaming environment, if the people who tried and failed had been able to find resources to help them?

I don't think Drakkos is trying to make a MUD committee, with the goal being to create some UberMUD that will be the FUTURE template of all other games. I think he's trying to revive the idea of having a central place to go to have discussions, find interesting articles, and perhaps most importantly, have the hope that if you want to learn something, there are people there who might actually be able to teach you something. That's what I remember Imaginary Realities being, maybe you saw something else.
25 Apr, 2012, plamzi wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Following up on what Runter has said, I think I would like to see a community / site that is specifically designed for people to team up on MUD-related projects. Sleek-looking and competitive graphical clients require multiple talents, not likely to be found in one person. So how about a site that puts enthusiasts with different skills in touch and maybe even helps them organize a bit.
25 Apr, 2012, aelyah wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
"perhaps most importantly, have the hope that if you want to learn something, there are people there who might actually be able to teach you something."

I agree with Quix. Here is a list of articles I would love to read:

1. Live descriptions - what makes great "text entertainment" descriptions - characters, items, rooms with examples and counter-examples. How are they different from descriptions in a classic literary work. One probably could imagine a series of articles on this topic.

2. Designing quests - from idea, through specification to code. Examples and counter-exampes/patterns and anti-patterns. Probably worth a series of articles too.

3. From the book to the screen - how to transform a book/literary work in interactive text entertainment

4. A famous IF work dissected underlining the lessons to be learned - probabil a series of articles too.

5. The code snippet of the the week - a cool effect in lpc of inform7 explained

6. Add your favorite subject here

We probably have topics for the next 6 months to interest a larger public outside the mudbytes coding community :)

I could probably help with code snippets :)
26 Apr, 2012, aelyah wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
plamzi said:
Following up on what Runter has said, I think I would like to see a community / site that is specifically designed for people to team up on MUD-related projects. Sleek-looking and competitive graphical clients require multiple talents, not likely to be found in one person. So how about a site that puts enthusiasts with different skills in touch and maybe even helps them organize a bit.


Agreed. Here are some features that would help:

1. Community
- create a profile showing the interests
- the abilty to estalish "relationships" with like minded people
- the ability to create groups of discussions based on common interest (not only topics)
- the ability to create projects and invite/motivate people to participate
- a virtual currency system which can be used to motivate people to participate in a project or another
- the ability to publish "work" and solicit feedback

2. E-zine -
- a set of newsletters where the more experiencend could teach the youngsters :)

3. Entertaining and competitive
- participation can be solicited in the form of contests offering a bit of adrenaline rush, status and especially feedback.

Is this what you had in mind ?
26 Apr, 2012, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
There are some sites where people collab with multiple talents. For instance, there are some flash sites where people can recruit and upon submitting the client, can divide percentages of the ad rev sharing/sponsers.
26 Apr, 2012, aelyah wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Jhypsy - agreed - one of the features I thought might be useful on mudsings was ad revenue sharing. I configured a 90% ad revenue sharing on author's articles. Authors configure their Google publisher id in their profile and the ad is displayed 90% of the time when their work is visited. It even has a feature whe ads a not displayed on your own articles, to not violate the Google policy :)

Happy writing !

I was thinking to add a component where people can add projects and others can donate towards that project (crowdsourcing). I wasn't very sure for two reasons:

1. I wasn't sure if I should use the internal currency or hard cash (some people might want to invest time and work rather than cash)
2. The text world is traditionally free, so I wasn't sure how much success a quantification mechanism would have. Well, there are at least 2 of us thinking it might be useful…

Thoughts ? :)

/A.
26 Apr, 2012, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Was just thinking, it might be neat if there were any in-game cash shops willing to trade for game content. Might be a good outlet for writers who were wanting to start writing in an IF/MUD format. Was thinking, it might also a good promo tool for MUDs who would like to dump a few in-game tokens in their pockets. XD

I've worked with some sites, writing articles. They usually have a budget, a plan and know how to invest in it. If people have a plan and know how to manage funds then I don't see anything wrong with being freelancer friendly.

When I see an interesting mud project being developed, one of the first things I wonder (if it's not mentioned), is if they are developing a custom client. Especially the flash/flex. Flash games seem to get alot of plays quick..it can become very popular or get buried, in a relatively short amount of time. XD

Sometimes I see some text-based flash games that don't seem to have a mud codebase too. I wonder if a IF/MUD site could benifit from drawing these kind of people too.

Some of the flash game developers/artists seem to be used to the commercial aspect though.

I've played with a site that was set-up to auto split who-ever was involved in the project. Also it promotes the music from the soundtrack. The site might also help with sponserships. This was all done to seperate accounts on the site upon submission.

I've also checked out FGL, other game dev sites and freelance boards.

Like ya said, alot of the MUDs seem to be traditionally non-commercial. As far as I know it's still not common for MUD dev's to sign an NDA? Maybe that creates a barrier to possible collaboration? I've wondered that..
27 Apr, 2012, Tyche wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
He seems to be as entrenched in the mud-drama culture as much as anyone.

He uses a slight against people like me and others in the community who aren't developing games as a reason for why places like mudbytes is basically full of trolls.


Of course I just couldn't help myself with commenting on this aspect over on TMC. It looks like he has dialed it back a few notches. ;-)

My thought is the more mud sites the better. I get the resurrecting IR idea.
I have no clue what a gaming article site has to do with trolls[1] on MudBytes or TMC.

For the stat obsessed…
IR contained 233 articles, quite of few of which first appeared in some form or another (usenet and mud-dev posts).
TopMudSites contains 71 articles, TMC contains 26 articles, and MudBytes even contains a dozen or so articles.
I seem to remember MudMagic having a few. There are about 70 mud articles produced mostly in the pre-web era that are available in code repositories.

I get the idea of inviting IF authors, Rogue-likes, Browser gamers, IRC RP players, etc.
Sure go for it. Beyond creating a new useful site, the whole notion that meaningful "conversation" is fragmented and needs some centralized site is rather naive. Good luck with that.

Depending on article submission and editor policies, I would be willing to write some articles.


[1] Troll (noun) - Persons who annoyingly disagree with the brilliant crap I posted.
27 Apr, 2012, Idealiad wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
I was wondering about article license policies myself. It seems like you'd have to deal with a few issues, such as:

* what if the author wants to withdraw their article
* what if the site wants to modify the article after publication
27 Apr, 2012, quixadhal wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
This will come across as rather flamey, but it's cold this morning, so deal. :)

The author will be mocked and called a Lucas or Spielberg if they try to modify an article that's already been published. That's why editors exist, to catch mistakes before they hit the (virtual) press.

Honestly, I don't get this recent obsession with being able to "withdraw" or "change" what's already been published. Has the age of electronic writing turned everyone into spineless nits that can't ever just declare something "done" and move on? Once something ever hits the internet, it's 100% pointless to "withdraw" it, because somebody (somewhere) will have an archived copy that can be found, no matter how many lawyers you send out trying to burn them all.
0.0/27