Sandi
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#31 Posted Sep 26, 2008, 10:55 am
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Conner, I don't see anyone asking for "drastic changes". 
I'm reminded of Lydia's "Almost-Complete List of MUSHes", which was on her webpage that also was mostly aimed at developers. It became "the place to go" when looking for a new game. The fact that this site is prone to geekish expositions dos not mean that mere players won't come here. They might even consider a list here to be more informed or more accurate than the others available.
However, once more I have to point out that a list that is not periodically pruned becomes nothing but a historical curiosity, a directory of "names that were once taken for games".
I think the suggestion for a separate box to separate thread topics from promotions is a good one, and is in keeping with the site's purpose by separating out a side effect. I think a list is a good thing if it's maintained, so I guess I'm asking for some volunteers.
MudBytes is not just the admin. The content is ours, and we need to actively make it good. I think the posts lately have been great, and we're seeing more activity follow from that. While the focus of this site may be devs and their needs, promotion is something we all need sooner or later.
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......................... The Witch of Tir na nOg
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Zeno
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#32 Posted Sep 26, 2008, 11:18 am
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Sandi is right. A MUD listing isn't exactly a promotion tool. Over 2 years and my MUD listing has only been viewed 444 times (358 banner clicks). Compare that to a period of a month where I received 298 visits from onrpg.com alone.
We need a good MUD site for promoting MUDs. TMC uses an ugly flat file system, TMS seems to be dying (downtime, no efforts, can't code in new review system), MudRage is dead, FindMUD is just a MUD listing, etc.
And MudBytes is already halfway there. It wouldn't be a drastic effort to continue improvement of the site to include MUD promotions. I'm not saying aim at players instead of admins (that would be almost pointless) but right now it seems like we're push players away.
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Fizban
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#33 Posted Sep 26, 2008, 11:40 am
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mudgamers looks to be shaping up to be a quality promotional tool.
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Igabod
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#35 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 5:00 am
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Zeno said:Sandi is right. A MUD listing isn't exactly a promotion tool. Over 2 years and my MUD listing has only been viewed 444 times (358 banner clicks). Compare that to a period of a month where I received 298 visits from onrpg.com alone.
We need a good MUD site for promoting MUDs. TMC uses an ugly flat file system, TMS seems to be dying (downtime, no efforts, can't code in new review system), MudRage is dead, FindMUD is just a MUD listing, etc.
And MudBytes is already halfway there. It wouldn't be a drastic effort to continue improvement of the site to include MUD promotions. I'm not saying aim at players instead of admins (that would be almost pointless) but right now it seems like we're push players away.
and lets not forget that every single admin started as a player, well, maybe not EVERY, but i find it hard to imagine someone running a mud having never been a player. who knows, maybe attracting players to a developer heavy site could increase the amount of people wanting to BECOME admin. maybe if we attract players to this place where there is an abundance of socially mature people, it'll rub off on them.... maybe.... but we don't want to appear to push players away, even if we don't cater to them by becoming a promotions heavy site.
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Chris Bailey
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#36 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 6:50 am
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Igabod said:
and lets not forget that every single admin started as a player, well, maybe not EVERY, but i find it hard to imagine someone running a mud having never been a player. who knows, maybe attracting players to a developer heavy site could increase the amount of people wanting to BECOME admin. maybe if we attract players to this place where there is an abundance of socially mature people, it'll rub off on them.... maybe.... but we don't want to appear to push players away, even if we don't cater to them by becoming a promotions heavy site.
This might very well be an unshared opinion but I think the last thing the mud community needs right now is more developers. We seem to have an abundance of poor ones that do little more than clog what might be decent listings sites with worthless muds. I myself haven't put anything online for just that reason.
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......................... If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.
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Igabod
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#37 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 7:30 am
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so let me get this straight, you don't upload any of your work (which i assume to be at least decent) because of all the shoddy stuff put out by poor coders? you're part of the problem then. we need more good coders out there to upload their quality stuff so there's less of a percentage of shoddy stuff. and by not bringing in new blood, we don't get as many new ideas because the ones that have been doing it for years have probably already done some of their best ideas already. sure there's still some new stuff coming out but if we get more people into it imagine how much more good ideas will come out. you're basically saying "all the good coders are already doing it and the ones that aren't won't be any good if they try" and i find this view to be very flawed. there's probably a whole bunch of people out there that COULD be excellent admin types but they either haven't been mudding long enough to get interested in it, or they just haven't been introduced to the admin side of mudding. either way, there is some talent out there and we could use more of it here. not to say what we have isn't great, but we could have more.
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......................... Join the rest of the Dark Warriors in the struggle to be the greatest.
Bored?? Click THIS and you too can build your own mini city.
Every man has his follies, and often they are the most interesting thing he has got - Josh Billings
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. - Albert Einstein
I have a love interest in every one of my films... a gun. - Arnold Schwarzenegger
Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. - Ronald Reagan
I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. - Fred Allen
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Orrin
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#38 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 8:25 am
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On the subject of promotional sites I will just mention MudGamers again. It's still early stages but there are now more MUDs using the Flash client and I hope to add some 'big name' MUDs to the listing soon.
I'm still undecided on whether it will remain a completely open listing site or whether I will take a more selective view on which games are included in the future, but right now anyone can list their game as long as it is largely playable and original.
I agree with Samson that I see Mudbytes main focus as a developer site rather than as a mud promotional site, but I guess with any community site it's going to focus on what the community members want.
I do think it's important to remember that the 'MUD community' we often talk about is not necessarily that representative of MUDing as a whole. Sites such as this one, TMC and TMS have always seemed very 'dikucentric' to me, and you rarely see any contributions from the major muds such as Simutronics, Iron Realms, etc.
Edit:
On the comments about voting sites, I think a lot of people are missing the point. I had always thought that voting sites were less about providing a reliable means of rating games and more about driving traffic to the voting site itself in order to make it more attractive to advertisers.
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Last edited Sep 27, 2008, 8:48 am by Orrin
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Sandi
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#39 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 9:29 am
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Orrin said:I do think it's important to remember that the 'MUD community' we often talk about is not necessarily that representative of MUDing as a whole. Sites such as this one, TMC and TMS have always seemed very 'dikucentric' to me, and you rarely see any contributions from the major muds such as Simutronics, Iron Realms, etc.
Funny, I don't think of them as "major muds", I think of them as corporate raiders sponging off a bunch of hobbyists. True, they are online games, and they owe and much to MUD as DIKU does, but as a part of "the community" they definitely seem to be the part that wants to take, not give.
Orrin said:On the comments about voting sites, I think a lot of people are missing the point. I had always thought that voting sites were less about providing a reliable means of rating games and more about driving traffic to the voting site itself in order to make it more attractive to advertisers.
Well, yes. Hence, the ratings don't work for their purported purpose. I think you're at a crossroads, here.
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......................... The Witch of Tir na nOg
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Fizban
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#40 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 11:43 am
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Quote:This might very well be an unshared opinion but I think the last thing the mud community needs right now is more developers.
I doubt it's unshared, I know I share it to an extent, not only do we not need a ton more admin, what we really need are more MUDs, about as much so as I need a bullet in the head in fact. I'm not saying no one should start up a new MUD ever again... I'm saying the vast number of POS MUDs out there discourages new MUDders and dilutes the playerbases of MUDs. On the same line not only do i not want shitty developers not starting their own projects, I don't want them working on projects at all, because once again it leads to a shitty MUD attracting players and scaring them off.
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Last edited Sep 27, 2008, 11:45 am by Fizban
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Fizban
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#41 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 11:46 am
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Quote: Sites such as this one, TMC and TMS have always seemed very 'dikucentric' to me, and you rarely see any contributions from the major muds such as Simutronics, Iron Realms, etc.
You're right on Simutronics, but uhh, Matt is a moderator of TMS and has 'tons' of posts there, and him and Junin both post quite often on TMC as well.
Quote:Well, yes. Hence, the ratings don't work for their purported purpose. I think you're at a crossroads, here.
I don't really think so. Mudgamers has ratings, not voting, each person can only rate each MUD once. Not once per day, once, period. As such it certainly isn't at all the same as TMC's and TMS's voting schemes which you vote daily in and do raise the sites traffic.
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Last edited Sep 27, 2008, 11:49 am by Fizban
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Orrin
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#42 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 12:36 pm
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Sandi said:Funny, I don't think of them as "major muds", I think of them as corporate raiders sponging off a bunch of hobbyists. True, they are online games, and they owe and much to MUD as DIKU does, but as a part of "the community" they definitely seem to be the part that wants to take, not give.
That's pretty emotive language to use without any kind of explanation. In what way do you think commercial games are sponging off of hobbyists?
Fizban said:You're right on Simutronics, but uhh, Matt is a moderator of TMS and has 'tons' of posts there, and him and Junin both post quite often on TMC as well.
Yeah I had forgotten about Matt Mihaly, but then I don't think he posts as much these days and of course he no longer runs IRE. I suppose my examples weren't great, but the point I was trying to make was that I think sometimes people on MUD community sites lose sight of the fact that there are a lot of popular games out there beyond the ones represented here. Perhaps it wasn't really relevant to this thread, I guess reading a few recent threads here (I am thinking the mud celebrity one in particular) gave me that impression.
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David Haley
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#43 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 1:20 pm
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Right, we don't need more admins just for the sake of having more admins. As people have said, it dilutes the quality of the genre. Of course, we can't really do anything about every random person who wants to start their own MUD, but personally I'm not keen on encouraging people unless I feel there's something different about them -- not their ideas, but the person.
The problem with putting quality work online is that reception tends to be somewhat poor or limited. Even developers have comfort zones about what kind of code they like to tinker with, and if something leaves that zone it won't get much attention. There's actually a fair bit of stuff going on in the MUD world, IMHO, but somehow on this site we only really hear about the Dikurivative type stuff. That's probably largely due to the crowd here, but even so I'm not sure how willing people are to leave that comfort zone. As a result I have less incentive to produce and publish certain things because it's likely to be ignored. :shrug:
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The_Fury
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#44 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 5:32 pm
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Fizban said:
I'm not saying no one should start up a new MUD ever again... I'm saying the vast number of POS MUDs out there discourages new MUDders and dilutes the playerbases of MUDs.
Does it? I have heard this argument 100's of times and at one point would have said it myself as if its the truth. I actually find no evidence to support the argument at all. Of the 15 or so regular players and staff that used to be on Eldhamud The Oakland Chronicles only 2 are no longer text gamers and lets face it, as far as games go it was a pile of crap. On another game that i used to play, similar story, from a player base of about 10 only 1 is no longer in Muds. A lot of the people who i have met in muds are all still involved in mud at the player, staff and developer levels. Those that have left have done so because of work, new hobbies or other games like WoW et al, not because of a poor experience on a mud or because the game was shit or closed down.
Fizban said:
On the same line not only do i not want shitty developers not starting their own projects, I don't want them working on projects at all, because once again it leads to a shitty MUD attracting players and scaring them off.
That's a rather discriminatory/elitist thing to say to what is mostly a hobby genera. Sounds to me like its ok for you to have your project but not someone else based on your failed assumption that its shit and will scare a player off? This is mostly a hobby genera and not wanting people to enjoy their hobby and participate is what will lead to the hobby being a fail. What keeps a hobby vibrant and active is people, new people especially. Without new people a hobby is going to wither and die.
I like to mountain bike and am part of a club. I have a bike worth $4000 and as a club if we required members to also have similar bikes we would have 3 members. But we don't, we allow and encourage everyone to join, even those on $80 bikes from Kmart and as such we have a healthy and growing club of over 350 members, who also bring their non club friends on rides aka word of mouth that further enhances our club and the experience we get out of it.
A hobby like mudding is no different, if you want it to grow as a genera you need to encourage people to participate and make them feel welcome and wanted. Not alienated with statements like above.
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Chris Bailey
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#45 Posted Sep 27, 2008, 7:17 pm
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It's not that I don't want the mudding community to grow, that would be self-destructing considering that it's one of my favorite hobbies. I just think that the community as a whole needs a bit of consolidation before expansion. It seems to be spread so thinly lately and it's only getting worse. If 500 gas stations opened up in a town of 1000 people you would end up with a couple loaded down with customers and 450+ failures. What good would it do to build 100 more stations? And while a terrible mudding experience might not scare off most people, it certainly scares off some. I played a rather non-newbie friendly mud for 10 years, I loved every aspect of it. I had a few friends of mine with very similar interests try it out and they *hated* it. They were never interested in mudding again because they had such a difficult time with the first one they tried. First impressions go a long way. If I decided to try out Mountain Biking with Fury and he took me on an advanced trail down a steep mountain side filled with potholes and I ended up breaking my tail bone, I probably would never want to go mountain biking again.
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......................... If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.
Quote:[ichat] Twisol@Talon: Do me, do me.
Last edited Sep 27, 2008, 7:17 pm by Chris Bailey
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