[MUD-Dev] Re: META: What are you looking for in this list?

[S. Patrick Gallaty]

As a mud developer of many years, external tester of most of the big online games and 
one-time game designer and programmer my interest is to come here and talk shop
about current games in development, game theory, ethics of game affordances, social
engineering in game theory, and the like.

I want to discuss with this mostly highly initiated crowd the current state of commercial
ventures such as Everquest, UO, M59 and the upcoming games like middle earth, BG,
Asheron's Call, and so forth.  I expect from my audience maturity and a 'wizard' mentality
as opposed to a 'player' mentality.

In many ways this list is like the 'wizshout' channel on a mud.  I want you all to have the
big picture with regards to games and groc the game zen thing.  If you don't understand
that I can't explain it any better.  There's a weird knack that game designers, programmers
and sometimes producers share which allow them to create these fictions - I am looking 
for the crowd that shares that gift/curse.

In a way, I want to talk to people who have enough of an established common experience
in games to have an eclectic vocabulary.  
I would hope that the laissez-passer here was experience.  I get very little from discussions
where people here have in some cases spoken from obvious lack of experience.  That seems
better suited to the rec.games newsgroups that we are specifically not engaged in.

So while I do advocate open access to the archives of this list, I don't believe that inviting the 
uninitiated is going to allow us to maintain the level of productive conversation that we have
become accustomed to.