[MUD-Dev] Bay Area Press re: UO, the good the bad and the Ugly.

[Myschyf]

On Friday, June 02, 2000 8:06 PM Raph Koster wrote:

> Ordinarily I'd appreciate the compliment, but this guy needs help and I
> don't think I want his compliment. He's way off the curve for UO players,
> btw, who average 1/4 of that much time (average of 20 hours a week for
both
> UO and EQ players, give or take an hour or two. I don't have figures for
> Asheron's Call. Anyone track this for their muds?). A major goal for me is
> how to broaden the audience of these games (which means pushing the
playtime
> down) without losing the longterm retention. I don't like this sort of
> serious addiction. :P

You know, Raph and the rest of you, this guy is an aberration.  He's not the
normal MUD or MMOG player.  To get upset over one person's addiction is
silly.  If it wasn't UO it would be something else for this guy.  There
isn't anything you could have done to prevent it.

Someone else asked if you are designing games that take up way too much of
the player's time (I'm paraphrasing because I'm too lazy to go back and find
the exact quote).  The answer is yes you are.  It takes a lot of time to get
ahead in these games.  That doesn't mean 600K of us are going to quit our
jobs, let our homes become pigpens and our bodies turn slothful.  These are
pretty complex games and the more you put into them to be conquered and
understood the more time will be needed to umm... 'win' (as it were).  So
what?  If the games were not that complex you wouldn't have players sticking
around for years and years or people paying 10 bucks a month for the
privilege of doing so.

I try not to post to this forum too often but it kind of bugs me to see you
dev types getting yer knickers in a twist about one guy who is so far from
the norm.  It makes a good story y'know?  No one wants to read about Bob,
with a wife and 2.5 kids, a good, stable job as a sys admin for a defense
contractor, a house in suburbia, who mows the lawn and takes out the
garbage, and gets together with his buddies 3x a week and plays an online
game.  That's about as exciting as reading about him going bowling 3x a
week -- or golfing -- or whatever.  Of course if Bob got addicted to bowling
or golfing or whatever and lost his house and job over it then it would be a
story.  But it would be a story about Bob -- not about golfing or about
bowling or, in this case, about UO.

--Mys








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