[MUD-Dev] The Player Wimping Guidebook

[Matt Chatterley]

On Wed, 2 Aug 2000, Nathan Clemons wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Aug 2000, Michael Tresca wrote:

[Snipple]

> The MUD is never the player's, unless it's a pay-per-play. Which is a
> different dynamic altogether, IMHO. The 17hour downtime I would shrug off
> from a hobbyist MUD I agree with players who feel outrage because of on
> EverQuest. Not even so much that it is because it was down for so long,
> but because of the methods used (and NOT used). I got involved in a
> conversation when EQ came back up after the last patch fiasco and my
> opinion was "If I had this big of a problem on my MUD, I'd revert my
> changes back to the way they were before, and patch again later. Not leave
> the servers unavailable and spend a few hours finding and fixing the
> problem."

While I feel that Nathan's assessment of 'Mud ownership' is for me quite 
accurate and very valid, I thought I'd add a pondering of my own.

People play Muds (or at least, should!) because they enjoy doing so. For 
me, most of my enjoyment comes from designing and building the systems 
which form various parts of the Mud, rather than playing the actual game 
and using those systems. When it comes down to 'whose game is it anyway?' 
I always would say that it belongs to the staff (generally this is 
perceived to be the one or more 'head staff'). Each member of staff has 
contributed code or ideas which are their property in some sense to me 
(the law aside).

Of course, the game would be much different without the players, and it 
would be to an extent pointless to build and maintain a game with no 
players - but it might still be enjoyable for the coder(s) involved.

The only time that this ethic would change for me would be in a 
commercial venture, whereby the pressure to make a profit introduces a 
brand new dynamic - customer satisfaction, addiction and attraction 
become ways of life, not simply desirable or 'status symbols' (my Mud is 
bigger than your Mud!).

-- Matt Chatterley
".. You live for the fight, when its all that you've got .."
		Jon Bon Jovi; Livin' on a Prayer, as always.




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