[MUD-Dev2] The Great Mud Survey

[Matt Chatterley]

A while ago, as part of another thread, I nattered on for a bit about the
idea of attempting to conduct some research into what players like and
dislike about Muds (in specific, and in general) - that seems a bit
wishy-washy now that I repeat it back, so I'll try to nail it down a little
more.

I, like many others, have lots of ideas about what "might be great" in a
Mud/MMO game. What I don't know, is what other people (even a small
community of others) truly think of these ideas. In very general terms, this
is where market research fits in, and it's something that as a hobbyist
developer, is difficult to do.

So, the upshot is that I intend to have a stab at creating a simple
community site where questions can be asked and answered, and statistical
results collected based upon the answers. The current theory is to use a
sort of "credit based" system whereby, as long as you've answered a decent
amount of open questions, you can download a decent amount of data as well -
all answers would be anonymous when retrieved, and the information collected
would probably be held under something like the creative commons license
used for posts on this list (almost certainly the exact same, infact).

I'm posting here, because I hope that some of the folks out there who
participate in this list (and participated in it's predecessor!) will be
interested in getting involved - at this point I'm curious to know whether
this idea has enough potential to be worth following through - and I'd also
like to collect some sets of questions which you might ask, so that I've got
a small set to work with from the offset.

Notionally the idea is to have both "owned" and "public" surveys - so that
you could either post up your own set of questions together as a single
survey, OR contribute questions to a (moderated) public survey. Registration
would be required for use - to ensure questions are only answered once per
email address, and also to make moderation viable.

My initial suspicions are that questions will range from the ludicriously
simple to the quite complex, e.g. from "Do you prefer to play a Mud which
permits PK (Player Killing)?" to "Which UI mechanism do you prefer to use
when operating a 'fishing' feature in a game......". Odd example, I admit.

Anyway, theres the gist - I look forward (as always) to hearing your
thoughts - and for those of you who celebrate it, Merry Christmas! (Happy
holidays to those who do not?).


Cheers,

-- 

Matt Chatterley