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[MrWiggles]

Spoiler: Conversation on the State of mu*ing Hobby and its Playerbase (click to show/hide)

<Public> Quasar says, "Might be a worthy goal if the MU* community wasn't imploding"
<Public> Wiggles says, "Folks say that, a lot. But we appear stagnate."
<Public> Quasar says, "A single game is more than most people can manage"
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "Its not imploding, its just not expanding."
<Public> Wiggles says, "And stagnation, itself, can be bad."
<Public> Wiggles says, "We just need some mu* to woo folks from outside the hobby, on purpose."
<Public> Quasar says, "I feel there's still an audience for these types of games but to reach it, we need to let go of telnet and MU* clients and embrace the web."
<Public> Wiggles says, "Evennia cant embrace the web anymore then what it does."
<Public> Wiggles says, "If you ask most folks on how they found out about mu*ing, most of them say that it was word of mouth."
<Public> Quasar says, "I meant that more from the perspective of the player"
<Public> Wiggles says, "And then a few will say they found it by accident."
<Public> Quasar says, "I learned about it by word of mouth. My cousin's room-mate introduced me to MU*s way back in 1990 or 1991"
<Public> Quasar says, "That person being Sorsha"
<Public> Wiggles says, "Nintaku introduced me to TFOS Mux and DBZC Mush."
<Public> Wiggles says, "THat was '00."
<Public> Wiggles says, "'01?"
<Public> Wiggles says, "No no. He got me to build on Ashriva."
<Public> Wiggles says, "THEN told me about TFOS Mux and Dragonball Z: Chronicles Mush"
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "That was 20 and 10 years ago, people."
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "Experiences about being exposed to MU*ing are ancient history from those periods."
<Public> Ninja dinosaur qa'toq was first introduced to mushing by one of his friends in 2001, when i joined PDX and downloaded pennmush and built my own crappy little stuff
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender learned about MU*ing on a gopher site.
<Public> Quasar says, "Yep, and nothing has really changed since then, other than server stability, new functions and other code features"
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "People have, and reasons."
<Public> Wiggles says, "Thats not true Quasar."
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "Shoujoai gets people going to their MUSH because they see something about it on the forum site."
<Public> Wiggles says, "Internet access and computer access has greatly increased."
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "Its a forum community that sometimes has crossovers to the MUSH. Same for IRC."
<Public> Wiggles says, "Overall computer literacy is up."
<Public> Quasar says, "That has nothing to do with how MU*s work, and how you interact with them, only how you access them"
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "And that's a highly popular animu topic."
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "No, it has to do with how to get people on them."
<Public> Wiggles says, "There way more potential players then ever before."
<Public> Wiggles says, "They just dont know that we even exist."
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "Exactly."
<Public> Quasar says, "Just because there are more people online than before, does not mean that there are more potential MU* players than before, because most people are perfectly happy to stick with MMOs and FB"
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "Build an accessible web based community, or a facebook community, first."
<Public> Player Type: Moon Ender says, "Drive them to the MU through a frontend that either explains how to grab potato, or is Banana-like,"
<Public> Wiggles says, "Lets say that our percentage of the pie (of internet users), is the same, as it was in the early '00s."
<Public> Wiggles says, "The pie is overall bigger."
<Public> Wiggles says, "So there overall more folks."
<Public> Quasar says, "But overall MU* populations have declined except on the sex MU*s and a few others (WoD games for example)"
<Public> Wiggles says, "I've staffed a few games with triple digit character characters almost triple digit Player counts."
<Public> Wiggles says, "Its there."
<Public> Wiggles says, "Most games /never/ do any advertisement."
<Public> Wiggles says, "I got that listing on Mudconnect."
<Public> Wiggles says, "And declare themselves finished."
<Public> Quasar says, "Go talk to Brody from OtherSpace or Bryce on SerenityMU* about the things they habe done to try to pull in players, and how well those things worked"
<Public> Wiggles says, "I have talked to Brody"
<Public> Wiggles says, "He does some very neat things."
<Public> Wiggles says, "I love his weekly Headwizard video where he answers questions and chit chats."
<Public> Wiggles says, "If even a fifth of games put in his effort, mu*dom would be wholly different landscape."
<Public> Wiggles says, "Folks dont put in the effort, then wallow and whine about why they dont have players."
<Public> Wiggles says, "And we also havent even touched on the benfiets that mu* get from obscurity."
<Public> Quasar says, "Not all themes are equally capable of pulling in players. Compare a Star Trek MU* with a WoD MUX, for example. It's not always due to a lack of effort"
<Public> Wiggles says, "They dont know unless they try. AND any games that try to bring in new players just bring in exposure to the hobby."
<Public> Quasar says, "Unless the initial first experience is a bad one"
<Public> Wiggles says, "Its not unreasonable to say that someone looked at mu*ing for WoD or a sex game, and went, "Hey that smaller niche places seems cool" and sticks with that one."
<Public> Wiggles says, "Advertising your mu* benfiets mu*dom as a whole."
<Public> Wiggles says, "How many folks that would happen to? No idea. But any new blood is better then WORA circle jerk."
<Public> Quasar says, "bah, WORA"
<Public> Wiggles says, "Dude"
<Public> Wiggles says, "You're totally being WORA right now."
<Public> Quasar says, "I'm just realistic about the state of the hobby."
<Public> Wiggles says, "Its not realism, its a self fulfilling prophecy."
<Public> Wiggles says, "If we want to get really marketing savvy"
<Public> Wiggles says, "Any mu* would probably have much better luck hitting up Sight Impaired Communities or Hearing Impaired Communities."
<Public> Wiggles says, "We're one of the few gaming experiencing that they can really engage with."

[quinnr]

Some pretty interesting conversations there.
You are definitely right about the whole "hitting up the sight impaired communities" though, it seems the one or two games I play that really focused on those communities always had a pretty large playerbase. But yeah, the MU* communities are getting pretty stagnant, I would agree. I think a part of it is that each MU* remains pretty separate from the others, it's like a community that may be a pretty large size overall is shattered into a hundred fragments, and you don't really see players from one MU* on another very often, people tend to stick to their own homes. It's a pretty interesting situation, but I don't really know how one would go about to change it.

[MrWiggles]

Well, getting new players just to look at mu*ing well help, I think greatly.

And what spurred this conversation was my concept on doing Mu* Network. Where multiple mu* share and populate a webspace. THere various games that try doing a forum, but a forum is a community space for your mu*. Mu*s are social by their nature, so it renders the forum space redundant.

Though if multiple games were sharing a forum space, and because its populated from multiple games, then you have reason why players would use the forum. That would then also expose each mu*s playerbase to each other. It also would make any mu* part of the network seem bigger then it actually is.

[quinnr]

Oh! That reminds me, there does exist a kind of protocol for cross-MUSH chat channels, but I've only ever seen it implemented in one location/codebase, and never used on the game or two I've played with that codebase. I wonder if something like that being used more often would help with establishing a community between games.

[MrWiggles]

There was a thing called MudNet and its being resurrected by a dude named hellspawn.

It has 30ish game on it right now.

[quinnr]

There was a thing called MudNet and its being resurrected by a dude named hellspawn.

It has 30ish game on it right now.

Oh! Yeah, that was exactly what I'm thinking of. I should pop back into some of the MUSHes I used to play and see if they still have it set up.