[MUD-Dev] Wired, UO, and Internet Gaming (was Re: OT: Birth announcement )

[Mike Sellers]

At 10:45 PM 4/29/98 -0700, John Bertoglio wrote:
>>>> I suspect the lengthy article in this month's WIRED magazine about
>>>> social ills in UO might pertain to the topic as well...
>
>Being a great reporter is hard work. Being an average one is pretty easy.
>This is the direction the Wired article went. The went on and on about
>Richard Garriot (aka Lord British) who is goofy enough in his personal life
>to allow a writer to generate a lot of paragraphs without saying much.
>(Perhaps I chose the wrong profession...) Another story followed with a
>reporter keeping a diary of his adventures in UO. More balanced in some
>respects, but still full of the "pack journalism" stuff you see elsewhere.
>I really expected more from Wired.

I just skimmed Raph's comments on this.  I agree with him wholeheartedly.
Amy Jo's article basically got eviscerated by the editors at Wired.  In
case there was any doubt, style has truly overcome substance -- possibly
accompanied by Wired's all-too-telling move of its editorial staff from
California to New York. =20

>Interesting tidbit. I have on my desk an advert for a four figure report
>from the Jupiter Group on Internet Gaming. It mentions the most obscure
>games on the net and misses M59 and UO. These are the experts talking! (90%
>of the time I hear someone in the media talking about something I qualify
>as an *expert* on, they are wrong. Does that mean they are just as wrong
>when they expound on things I know little or nothing about?)

It might surprise you to know that even UO (much less M59!) is a relatively
small fish in the overall online gaming world.  There are some *huge*
stakes being played in this arena by people who have never heard of a MUD.
Once again, I'm somewhat abashed to point out the small, insular, and
really pretty parochial state of the MUD community (whether hobbyist or
commercial, text or graphical), no matter what CGW and Wired say.  MUDs are
high commitment, high cost, high risk, highly targeted, massively
multiplayer games.  I'm still convinced that in one form or another they
represent the next step in how we spin epic tales, and I have a lot of
hopes for the future of both hobbyist and commercial mudding -- but they
are far from the center of the Internet gaming universe. =20

I'm not sure I'd buy the Jupiter report for the money they're asking,
though I'm pretty sure I've seen the one you're talking about, and like
most of them, it's quite informative.  The folks at Jupiter are
well-informed and are not stupid, but they're not always right either. =20


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