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

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

Raph Koster wrote:
> 
> The normal MMORPG player is online 20 hours a week. What else do you do for
> 20 hours a week? 

Karate and skateboarding (yes, twenty or more hours of EACH). Both of
which are reasonably healthy pursuits. ;)

> it serves as therapy if it teaches the person something
> about themselves, if they somehow learn new skills (interpersonal,
> technical, whatever), if they move past it in the end because the void it
> filled is no longer there.

We need statistics on *that*. Seriously. When people log onto some game
and get addicted, we *only* hear about it when they spend far too much
money at eBay and lose their jobs and their houses look and smell like
shit and basically their lives are so hosed they can never recover.
That's news. 

What about me? I met the most fantastic woman I've ever known on a MUD.
We've been together almost five years. I moved from D.C. to Seattle to
be closer to her. She moved from a small town in Oregon to Seattle to be
closer to me. We're extremely happy together. Isn't that news? Does that
happen all the time? Don't people deserve to hear something GOOD for a
change? 

Of course not! They'd rather hear about FAILURE. Who met the psycho on
the net? Who's being stalked? Who got cheated out of a bunch of money?
Who's being harassed? Who's pissing their lives away en masse by
ignoring the real world in favor of the virtual one? Who are we *better*
than?

The first rule of statistical analysis: You GET what you MEASURE.
Measure the criminal element and the losers of the world, and that's
what you get. Measure success and progress and growth, you'll get that.



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