[MUD-Dev] BBG's a link to the past

[Corpheous Andrakin]

For those of you who don't know about them, BBG's are Browser Based
Games, much like the old school MUD's but with a graphical overlay.
They are seperated from the title of "graphical mud" (or at least in
my opinion and others) because they do not offer command line
interfaces and many are turn based as opposed to real time.

The question is, is this missing link so to speak, marketable?
Currently there is of course, not enough media flying around about
them to generate intrest from investors but if there were enough
stir in the small community as it is now I personally think they
could become popular enough to warrant investigation into them as a
"new" field of game (they've been around in small numbers for a
while).  To get a feel of what I'm talking about before reading
further I suggest you glance over http://www.mpogd.com to pick up on
some of them.  Having experimented with some of the games on that
site and lurked through many a game I've found that the communities
are MUD like in many aspects, usually forming small groups of
friends or allies and a lot of dev interaction.  Many people at work
usually run off a firewall or some such blocking tool, but these
games can work around that unlike full featured MMORPGs.  These
games could be a possible way to grab a bit of the action away from
regular surfers, a bit of attention to possibly a larger game design
(I'll talk about in a moment) or even a little bit of money
(commonly called Pay to Play).

Another question is can these types of games be used as customer
hooks and even testing modules? Many times games will have an
anxious community before the game even comes out.  Could those not
fit for beta or not in it because of size restrictions still be put
to use unwittingly testing out formulas in a BBG?  If the BBG was
detailed enough and modeled after a larger world you could easily
incorporate things actual game formulas and such into it couldn't
you?  It would also keep back some of the baying of the hounds
especially when you push back release dates ;)

Just looking to get some thoughts on this niche and see if anyone
else thinks this type of game has a place in the multiplayer gaming
industry.

-Lee

=====
Corpheous
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