Back in Sept, I created a Facebook app where Facebook players can play my MUD via a flash client. A number of people came to me asking how to do this etc and I've seen a number of apps like this pop up over time.

I had someone ask how many players I'm pulling in with this. Facebook says I have 1,079 total users and 736 Monthly Active Users. Neither of these are accurate it seems, as another part of Facebook says I have 0 total users. Monthly seems about right.

Now of course that doesn't represent the number of people who tried creating a char, just those who accessed the app. So I've created statistics from my MUD on all of this.
http://biyg.org/graphs/newplrs.html
The darker bar inside the bar is the # of people who were from Facebook. Overall, it's like a good 80% of new players are from Facebook.

Awesome stats Zeno!!

Seriously. That's awesome. Well done.

The conversion ratio would be more interesting. Getting 1.000 connections is nice, but if the players don't stick around it's a futile exercise.

Agreed, particularly as most Facebook games tend to be graphical with very simple gameplay.

On that note, I've had a few players connect over the last year who became quite irate when they realised the mud was "only text". I've no idea where they came from (they always quit before I could ask) but it always comes to mind whenever I think about adding a Facebook client application.

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a good idea. But I wonder if there might be a bigger market for simple graphical minigames that are tied in with the mud.

Well his graph shows how many people from facebook complete the newbie area. Which I think is the greatest challenge a MUD has. If they complete the newbie area - They're willing to play. Once you have them at that point, it's up to the quality of the game to keep them around.

Even if facebook only gives 1 user that completes the newbie area every two months, I say it would be worth it. There are others who won't play the game, but it will stick in their mind. "Dude, I tried out the dumbest game today. It was all text bro! What kind of stupid game is that?" - It's exposure and that's enough to get others interested enough to check it out.

I think it's definitely worth doing. It doesn't cost anything beyond the few minutes it takes to create a basic facebook app with a web client in an iframe, so there's nothing to lose and everything to gain as far as I can see.

I've been thinking about creating a client with a game selection frontend for MudGamers so I can put that on facebook to promote MUDs in general.

There's no reason why you couldn't do both. The facebook app process can be quite annoying at first to get a handle of and maintaining several mini-games in addition to a MUD might just more work than some might be able to handle. :stare:

See:


Players can't save until they complete the intro area.

You know Orrin, you'd be a god among Mud dev's if you made one where the Admin's could pick a game. IE. DragonballAT Game. They click and the top says it's created by MudGamers, click here to see our other MUD games etc. But, it's a client that connects directly for say DragonBallAT's game. Much like our 'portal's are, but in a wrapped FB app. It could keep the Mudgamers link above, with credits etc, even scrolling info or what have you. I wonder what kind of boost the entire Mud community would get if they all had access to that…

Ps. Correction, a bigger god among Mud devs ;).
The Mudgamers portal is phenomenal and greatly appreciated.

I was thinking more of a generic Mudgamers client with an initial screen that would mirror the website front page so visitors could pick from a selection of games to try out, rather than as an app which each individual game could use. I think that would fit in better with the original concept for the site which was to make MUDs more accessible to new players, and in terms of trying to reach a wider audience it might be better to concentrate efforts promoting a bunch of games (via Mudgamers) rather than everyone doing their own thing. Of course if games want their own apps then it's really not that difficult to create one using an iframe with a Flash or Java client in it. You can pretty much ignore the Facebook API and all the profile stuff if you want.

I've been following IRE's flash adventure with much amusement: http://www.kongregate.com/games/IronReal..., judging from their usage statistics they're still beating their head against the ten feet thick wall that separates the mud community from their target demographic. One small success seems to be creating a niche gaming genre for the small portion of blind people that aren't analphabetic, but it'll probably be another 10 years for a literate blind generation to emerge, assuming they'll throw braille out of the window.

What are you saying here? Are you talking about blind people who can see enough to read, but are legally blind? (That's a pretty broad range of people, by the way, and many people who are legally blind can still use computers almost exactly the same way that a perfectly seeing person can.) I'm not sure what you mean by "literate" here because if a blind person can write and use a screen reader, they'd be considered literate by pretty much everybody I know… Also not sure what you mean by throwing braille out the window, either.