[MUD-Dev] Historical perspective (was: dealing with foul language)

[Brian Green]

An interesting discussion between Ola and Raph.  One thing in particular
struck me:
 
Raph wrote:

> To bring this back to mud-dum, do you feel that the commercial muds
> therefore matter less, innovate less, or are somehow less significant than
> the text muds? I'd say that history thus far is proving you wrong on this
> front. I wouldn't say they matter MORE, either, mind you.

First, I will reveal my biases.  I worked for the last few years on
Meridian 59; before that, I worked on a text MUD for about 5-6 years
before that.

I think in the grand scheme of things, graphical online games are at
least a bit less significant compared to text games.  Graphical game
history is rather short compared to the longer history text games
provide.  We only have a few major examples of successful graphical
games to look to currently, compared to the text-based games we admire
that were done without the benefit of multi-million dollar development
budgets.  In addition, we have only experienced a tiny amount of loss of
our comrades in arms (Dark Sun Online being the most notable example) to
see what has gone wrong.

Graphical games have had the blessing of large, commercial game
companies throwing funds behind them.  They've also hit a sweet spot
where there is a HUGE number of people online, and we see a wider
variety of people than the academics that populated the Internet of days
gone by.  In the traditional game industry, people often credit Myst's
phenomenal success to the fact that CD drives were just becoming all the
rage at the game's release and people wanted something to show those
off.

As far as innovation goes, the game industry itself is a joke concerning
innovation, with the punchline being the thousands of uninspired
FPS/RTS/RPG/TLA flavor of the month clones (and their sequels!)
inflicted on the market on a regular basis.  Yes, the graphical game
developers have done some amazing work and it's important to remember
that everything in a small text game doesn't translate to a large
graphical game easily, but the only real innovation we've done is to
bring an existing type of game in a different format to a wider
audience.  And, in general, large companies hate innovation because it
is so damned risky; without picking on my esteemed colleagues too badly,
I think the recent restructuring of a high-profile studio shows exactly
what one large company think of innovation.

To say that graphical games are as significant and innovative as text
games requires a large amount of hubris, in my opinion.  Yes, we've only
barely started the market, but let's not claim we've solved world hunger
yet.  This is not to belittle the accomplishments of the graphical game
developers on this list (including Raph's considerable work and even my
own small contributions), but we should remember our place in the grand
scheme of things.

Comments and feedback welcomed.

--
"And I now wait / to shake the hand of fate...."  -"Defender", Manowar
     Brian Green, brian at psychochild.org  aka  Psychochild
       |\      _,,,---,,_      *=* Morpheus, my kitten, says "Hi!" *=*
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_  
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'  "Ritalin Cures Next Picasso" 
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)               -The_Onion_, August 4th, 1999



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