[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method

[s001gmu at nova.wright.edu]

On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, Leach, Brad BA wrote:

> On Tuesday, July 14, 1998 12:21 PM
> J C Lawrence <claw at under.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 13 Jul 1998 11:50:39 -0700 (PDT) 
> > Adam Wiggins<adam at angel.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > The answer is that it is invitation-only, and at its core a
> > > dictatorship.  This keeps quality up, but number of players low
> > > (have we ever had more than about 20 active posters at any given
> > > time?).  I think most here would agree with me that this is a
> > > desirable effect; you could do a mud the very same way as long as
> > > you didn't mind spending a lot of energy on it and after four years
> > > only having 20 active players. :)
> > 
> Has anyone actually tried running a mud as an invitation-only service?

I've been interested in doing so, but a bit leary.  Mostly, I'm concerned
about the same thing you point out below.  I'm concerned that to get
enough people to make it playable, we'd have to relax the admission
standards, or go through a LONG period of high amounts of work, screening
applicants, etc.

> How successful has this been? I am extremely impressed with the quality
> of this list, and at this stage I would like to run my mud as such a
> service. There seem to be a few issues with this, however. Do people log
> on for the "average 4 hour per day" as they do on other muds? Do they
> get bored and leave due to the lack of people on? Is the player base
> centralised a common logon time? [That question is important to me as I
> live in Australia :-) ]. How is motivation retained for the
> implementors?

All very valid concerns that I don't have an answer to.  I did like the
examples that Patrick put out, about running parts of the mud (guilds) as
invite only.  I will definately have to encourage/enforce that to some
extent.
 
> > The period when the list /was/ invitation only (remember, that hasn't
> > been true for several months now) was significant however.  It allowed
> > the list culture to evolve, consolidate, and to become deeply accepted
> > by the membership.  This is important to the extent that it provides a
> > commonly agreed upon and accepted premise for new members conform to
> > and join.  
> > 
> Imagine the fun you would have with such a player base for a mud. :-)
> From a personal point of view, the culture of a mud is one of the key
> factors for me. I have played an old EoD based Diku mud for years. The
> code is, well, primitive (Sorry Greg :-), but it has such a
> distinguished culture (to me). I continue to go back and play there over
> and over.

I've oft times wondered why it is that the EoD code still exists.  It's
certainly not the best code around (basically a tinkered-to-the-point-of-
SEVERE-instability version of Diku).  About the only common thing I've
noticed is that all the various off-shoots seem to have at least a fair
chunk of the players from one of the previous off-shoots, or the original
EoD.  That core culture is what keeps it going.  I wonder if it'd be
possible to transplant those specific players to another code base, and
then destroy all copies of the code, or if I will have to live with EoD
hanging around in my closet for the rest of my mud-life...  ;)

Of course, it is hard to resist the little ego boost I get when I log in
as Gwar and immediately get a tell from an imm asking if I'm _THAT_ Gwar.

> > In the MUD world this would be equivalent to having a
> > beta-test period to form a central knot of players for the new
> > players, once the game is opened to the public, to coalesce about.
> > 
> I can see my mud never getting out of the beta stage...

I don't think EoD ever did... ;)  I'm currently stuck in pre-alpha.  
Ah, well.

> [Closing comment snip'ed]
> 
> I would love to have a culture built up in my mud from this method, but

I'm very seriously considering having a short-term, open enrollment beta
test phase.  At the end, I'd then allow the testers remaining to invite
some friends for the pre-release version, to build up a solid culture.
After a few weeks to a month of that, I'd then open it to the public.
My concern is that there won't be enough people to build a culture up
before it stagnates.  As JC pointed out, just prior to this list going
public, it was dieing off quite a bit.  I'd like to think I'd be able to
notice when things get to a similar point, but I've never been in that
situation.  I have to admit, I was very leary of opening this list up,
even as much as it is now, but I'm quite glad it was done.  I firmly 
believe it would have died off, sooner or later, had we stayed
invite-only.

[...snipage...]

-Greg