[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #93 - 27 msgs

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

"Dr. Cat" wrote:
> 
> > [Ola wrote:]

> > I thought that was a rhetoric phrase...  Like "suits".  I still don't
> > understand the exact content. Examples would be nice.
> 
> While much of the world is still on the verge of discovering this (or far
> from even the verge, if you ask a bushman), there's one tribe that has
> been aware of this for a number of decades now, and even has units named
> for measuring this value in.  No, it's not a rhetorical term, human
> attention is quite literally worth cash money, and will become more so.
> 
> The units are called "CPM" and "impressions", and the tribe is the
> advertising industry.  A little bunch of wacky people tossing tens of
> billions of dollars around, funding broadcast television, etc.

Well, I don't know the units, but I guess I disagree with the basic
assumption.  The last I heard was that the effect of repeated advertising is
much lower than we, or the advertising industry, want to believe (maybe
except for diapers and such which have a regenerating market).  Attention
has only some limited inherent value, but you obviously need attention in
order to communicate.  I still don't understand how this applies
specifically to regular MUDs?  I still miss MUD examples.  If it doesn't
translate to something specific, then it will remain a catchy phrase to
me...

I would personally rank attraction like this:

- meaningful to me
- meaningful to those that are meaningful to me
- available                                 (you can get it here, now)
- fashionable / news item / yuppie factor (everybody are getting this!)
- ability to generate experiential interest (audio-visual, action etc)

In which "meaningful to me" and "available" are the ones I find most
interesting.  IMO most games seem to screw up in the "meaningful"
department. The game needs to be available (stretch out your hand and grab
it, easy to install, easy to use), but it also need to communicate that it
is meaningful to the user.

A user can instantly determine whether "deer hunter" means something to him
or not (even though the game itself is plain crap IMO).  A user cannot
easily determine whether Average-Text-MUD is meaningful to him or not.

But really, I want to run a religious sect, not an advertising campaign.  So
I want the users to be religious about the virtual world as well.  If I
manage to assign perceived meaning to the world and what happens there, then
I think a lot of the job has been done.  Nothing is better than
word-of-mouth (meaningful to those that are meaningful to me).  What is the
attention-potential in a cardgame for instance?  They still generate a lot
of activity.

> I think I have the core ideas worked out for a highly valuable way to use
> a mudlike environment as the core for some very effective e-commerce and
> targeted advertising.  That'll take a long time to grow, though.  We'll see.

After Hagel&Armstrong's "net gain" (1997, I didn't like it) you will get
many people to compete with (a lot of people seem to like it).  I think The
Palace is moving in such directions as well. Contains advertising anyway.
Last I read was that they have restructured their software and are adding
OnLive conferencing, so they are probably not dead yet. (not suprising,
AFAIK EC bought OnLive some time ago)

--
Ola




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