[MUD-Dev] selling Godhoods

[Raph Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> J C Lawrence
> Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 5:35 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] selling Godhoods
>
> I recall now that there was some discussion about the table at the
> CGDC dinner on the migration of such players away from the graphical
> games ala UO/EQ/AC etc to text MUDs among Christopher Allen, myself,
> you (Raph), and Richard Bartle (I may have missed someone else). My
> posit IIRC was that a possible cause for such a migration was a
> search for a higher signal/quality venue with a more uniformly
> dedicated (to the game) population (fewer twinks, troll, etc).

This is also the reason for the excitement over Bioware's Neverwinter
Nights, I believe. Players feel that taking the administration of the spaces
out of the hands of the game develoeprs and putting it in the hands of
fellow players who manage much smaller spaces will lead to more interactive,
narratively based experiences, with fewer twinks and grief players.
Personally, I have my doubts, given that in the text mud community (which
has higher barriers to entry, a more educated audience as a whole, and no
shortage of talent) those highly interactive narratively based experiences
are about as common as slugs at salt licks, and the twinks and grief lpayers
are all over the place. I don't doubt that NWN will be extremely successful,
but it may not provide what everyone is looking for.


> You mentioned earlier that players in Asia are almost uniformly
> PKer's.  Do you have any other demographics you could mention about
> the player bases there?

I can't think of any off the top of my head... I know that of the big three
MMORPGs, Asheron's Call is the one with the highest proportion of female
players--I think Toby Ragaini cited 30% at GDC. He also stated that this was
similar to the percentage of females on their development team, which I
found interesting.

-Raph




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