[MUD-Dev] NEWS: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies -No, Really! (By R. Bartle)

[ceo]

Richard A. Bartle wrote:

> How many times are people going to split the umbrella terms before
> we get one that everybody can agree on?

> This is the MUD-DEV list, because at the time it was begun MUD was

Yep, and whilst the world has moved on, the name is static. And
that, for me at least, has been an occasional nuisance - sometimes I
find myself saying "MUD" as an umbrella term simply because I'm
thinking after the name of this list. And yet almost everyone sees
MUD == text (as you pointed out).

Shrug. From everything I've learnt about naming things, there's
likely nothing practical one could do about that now (without
opening cans of worms), so we're stuck with it. So I tend to just
accept it as the way the world is, in this one special case :).

> I needed an umbrella title for my book, and used "Virtual World"
> because that was the best on offer. Now you're saying that we
> can't use "Virtual World".

I think VW was not the best choice for your book, unless you were
deliberately making reference to the past rather than the present
(which, up until now, I thought you were). Simply because it (seems
to?) conjures a very different image in the minds of non-experts.

VW is plainly not used by the majority (...of people in the market,
including all players and developers...) in the way you use it. And
I would hazard your minority is not just small but very small
(albeit plausibly consisting of a hugely disproportionate number of
the specialists/cognoscenti).

> OK, so what do YOU think we should use when we want to refer to
> things like MUD1, LambdaMOO, UO, EQ, SL etc.? Or are you saying
> that there shouldn't be an umbrella term because they're so
> different that we shouldn't lump them all together?

I'm tempted by "online game" which I've seen creeping in as the
general gaming press (and even mainstream press) get more
comfortable with the gamut of things in this arena, and gain the
experience and ability to make their own terms.

Literally, "online game" is very confusingly similar to any
multiplayer game. But colloquially this phrase is very strongly
associated with "non-multiplayer" if only because "multiplayer" is
so well-established that people would wonder why you didn't say MP
if you meant it. Through MMOG/MMORPG/MMOFPS/MMORTS it's also gained
a fairly solid association with the general concepts (it's the part
of the names that is common across multiple genres).

It also appeals because I forsee the "MM" part being downplayed over
the coming years, as developers move more towards making small
online games and worrying less about launching with 30k subscribers
and more about making a game that can be maintained indefinitely on
a small budget and high profit percentages. But that's just personal
guesswork.

It sounds quite "weak" (i.e. excessively vague), and I don't like
weak names - they tend too often to mean too many different things
to different people. But maybe that's exactly what you want in an
"umbrella" term? I have very little experience/knowledge of trying
to make new genre-defining terms.

Adam M
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