Promoting mudding in general
Nass
As a longtime mudder, I'm always rather amazed that we don't get more
people at our games. After all, we spend hours, days, weeks pouring love
into our games, and it annoys the heck out of me to see commercial games
waltz along and get a bazillion players. My guess is that we (muds) as a
genre just arn't that good at promoting ourselves.
Well, I'd love to do something about it. I don't quite know what it will
take, probably a natty domain that is calculated to make a lot of noise
on our behalf. Is anyone into this? Would anyone be willing to help with
hosting, site design, content, graphics etc? I for one would, and I
guess we can all chip in to buy a domain name (hell they're not *that*
expensive.
FYI: I recently did the site below, so I know my stuff when it comes to
html. If anyone is interested, mail me at xv...@dial.pipex.com, tell me
what you would bring to the party/ideas etc etc etc
--
"Nass"
http://www.wotmud.org/
Free, fast & furious gameplay
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Ilya
>
> As a longtime mudder, I'm always rather amazed that we don't get more
> people at our games. After all, we spend hours, days, weeks pouring love
> into our games, and it annoys the heck out of me to see commercial games
> waltz along and get a bazillion players. My guess is that we (muds) as a
> genre just arn't that good at promoting ourselves.
>
> Well, I'd love to do something about it. I don't quite know what it will
> take, probably a natty domain that is calculated to make a lot of noise
> on our behalf. Is anyone into this? Would anyone be willing to help with
> hosting, site design, content, graphics etc? I for one would, and I
> guess we can all chip in to buy a domain name (hell they're not *that*
> expensive.
>
> "Nass"
Nice looking site. Neither my clients nor I go in for dark sites much,
but they do seem to work for certain niches such as this.
We'd be happy to help with our own domain, which we host and pay for
out of our own pockets (the Game Commandos I mean). Or perhaps even
something at orpg.com (+.net and .org) which we picked up last week.
But I don't think this is the way to go about it, honestly. Strange,
I suppose, for someone whose livelihood depends on creating effective
websites. But that's the way it is!
What _is_ the way to go about it? Hmm. Print advertising is probably
a good thing, likely targetted at colleges and secondary schools and
places those types hang out.
Whether the play-for-free model helps attract people or not is unclear.
Not being in possession of any studies on the matter, I'll just give
my gut feeling -- it doesn't help at all. It hinders.
A related concept was made so clear to me at least some years ago.
A friend was trying to sell a trailer for about USD 2,500. He
advertised it for some time, slowly lowering the price and not
really generating much interest. After he got to somewhere
around fifteen hundred dollars, he decided to try something
funny. He raised the price to five thousand dollars.
He sold it a few days later at the much higher price.
The moral of this story? Changes in price don't exactly affect
the desirability of a product. They DO affect who it is that
is considering buying. So my friend changed the price and got
an entirely different group of people looking at his product.
This pricing lesson does not apply to commodity items that are
essentially indistinguishable one from another. But then muds
and ORPGs are absolutely not commodities, especially if we leave
stock muds out of the picture. And so the pricing lesson
applies. Free games attract a different group of people than
pay games. Not more, in fact probably less, and different.
One other thing while I'm at it -- "not-for-profit" is, you must
surely know, not the same as "free to play." Indeed, being
not-for-profit is not necessarily enough to satisfy either the
Circlemud license (whose authors you give credit to in the credits
section) or the DIKU mud license (whose authors you do not give
credit to in the credits section). For example, not-for-profit
entities can and do accept donations, often giving tax or other
benefits to the donors.
Sorry, this has gone on much too long! Best of luck in finding
a way to attract players.
--
Ilya (at) gamecommandos (dot) com a mud list & review site
www.gamecommandos.com for online roleplaying games
Peter R. Sadlon
games. However, this is the difference. While there are only a few
commerical online games out there, there are 1000s of MUDs. Most of which
are quite terrible. However, if you just include the good ones and
combine the population we would surely rival a commercial site.
Also keep in mind that people are idiots and would rather have graphics
then words to read. They need that little flashing light to tell them
'look here' otherwise their tiny brains would not be able to solve the
simpliest puzzel.
On Thu, 23 Dec 1999, Nass wrote:
> Hi =)
Nass
that with some of their products and were staggered by the prices
people were prepared to pay. Seems to be the case that if it's priced
high, people are prepared to believe that it's good. Then that's people
for you =).
I guess a couple of the people that replied gave me a glimpse into the
answer. people just *like* dinky point'n'click games with graphics
(some of which look very good, I admit). Also, our total playerbase,
spread between 2,000 or so MU*s, might be far larger than we think.
Lemme think, we have ~5,000 registered characters. That's ~1,500
people: if multiplied by ~2,000 that's a lotta folks... maybe we're not
doing that bad after all =)
Btw, It's not me that has problem getting players for my mud, I just
read that concern all over the place (ie that thread at kanga, etc, the
new stuff at tmc re websites etc). I was just offering to help do
something altruistic on behalf of everyone, and muds as a whole =).
Still interested, if anyone else is...
In article <38626390...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com>,
Ilya <il...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com> wrote:
> Nass wrote:
> >
> > As a longtime mudder, I'm always rather amazed that we don't get
more
> > people at our games. After all, we spend hours, days, weeks pouring
love
> > into our games, and it annoys the heck out of me to see commercial
games
> > waltz along and get a bazillion players. My guess is that we (muds)
as a
> > genre just arn't that good at promoting ourselves.
> >
--
Peter Register
>The thing to remember is that we get many more players then comercial
>games. However, this is the difference. While there are only a few
>commerical online games out there, there are 1000s of MUDs. Most of which
>are quite terrible. However, if you just include the good ones and
>combine the population we would surely rival a commercial site.
>
>Also keep in mind that people are idiots and would rather have graphics
>then words to read. They need that little flashing light to tell them
>'look here' otherwise their tiny brains would not be able to solve the
>simpliest puzzel.
>
Also keep in mind that most online game players came to the internet
table well after muds were among the few types of networked
multiplayer games. I'd imagine one of the reasons many people
don't try muds is because they aren't for sale at CompUSA or some
other large commercial computer/software house...and they aren't
advertised in PC Gamer or any of the other big advertising
tools aimed at our target audience.
Graphics don't hurt, either. ;)
-peter
murmur@nightmare
Marc Hernandez
: Also keep in mind that people are idiots and would rather have graphics
: then words to read. They need that little flashing light to tell them
: 'look here' otherwise their tiny brains would not be able to solve the
: simpliest puzzel.
Perhaps it is attitudes like this that keep people from
playing? How many MU*s run entirely without colour? The same statement
could be made for that.
Graphics can be better for presentation of data, and yes it can be
pretty and nice to look at. Is that somehow wrong? Is Dali's work
somehow lessened because of Shakespear's?
There is certainly room for good games with graphics as well as
good games with text or even a mixture.
Marc
Ilya
>
> The thing to remember is that we get many more players then comercial
> games.
Could you provide a bit of background to support that? I'd be
surprised if it were true, but willing to find out.
Ultima Online alone has reported an active paying subscriber base of
over ninety thousand players. I have never heard or read of any free
mud anywhere that ever claimed a player base of that size, either for
a single game or for all muds combined.
> However, this is the difference. While there are only a few
> commerical online games out there, there are 1000s of MUDs. Most of which
> are quite terrible.
Precisely!
<snip>
> Also keep in mind that people are idiots and would rather have graphics
> th[a]n words to read. They need that little flashing light to tell them
> 'look here' otherwise their tiny brains would not be able to solve the
> simpl[e]st puzz[le].
>
Their brains are pretty much the same size as everyone else's!
But I won't quibble with the assertion that most people suffer
from lack of energy or ability or interest in written communications
of all kinds.
Cheers,
Ilya
>
> Gotta agree with you there Ilya, the company that I worked for tried
> that with some of their products and were staggered by the prices
> people were prepared to pay. Seems to be the case that if it's priced
> high, people are prepared to believe that it's good. Then that's people
> for you =).
Strange, but true!
>
> I guess a couple of the people that replied gave me a glimpse into the
> answer. people just *like* dinky point'n'click games with graphics
> (some of which look very good, I admit). Also, our total playerbase,
> spread between 2,000 or so MU*s, might be far larger than we think.
> Lemme think, we have ~5,000 registered characters. That's ~1,500
> people: if multiplied by ~2,000 that's a lotta folks... maybe we're not
> doing that bad after all =)
It's always a possibility! Efforts to come up with anything like
meaningful numbers have, to my knowledge, come up with nothing so
far, since any one person could have many characters on any number
of games (I'm sure you're already aware of that). My favorite case
is Realms of Despair which probably has only 30-60 players at any
time while having a who list of perhaps five to ten times that many.
Yes, this is an example primarily of multiplaying, but it does
highlight the difficulties we face in getting a reasonable census
of the field.
>
> Btw, It's not me that has problem getting players for my mud, I just
> read that concern all over the place (ie that thread at kanga, etc, the
> new stuff at tmc re websites etc). I was just offering to help do
> something altruistic on behalf of everyone, and muds as a whole =).
> Still interested, if anyone else is...
My apologies, I misspoke (mistyped?). It is often a concern, no
doubt, and I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to work together to increase
the exposure of our field (orpg-ing/mudding) in pretty much any
manner likely to get results.
We are willing to help too, though not in possession of gobs of
free time to support it at present. Soon soon!
Daniel A. Koepke
> The moral of this story? Changes in price don't exactly affect
> the desirability of a product. They DO affect who it is that
> is considering buying. So my friend changed the price and got
> an entirely different group of people looking at his product.
More likely, I think, is that your friend changed his price and got some
sucker who just started looking for a trailer. It's anecdotal and not
exactly analogous at best; coincidence strikes me as the best likelihood.
UOLs advantage over your standard issue Mud is:
* It was advertised to a much wider audience than any Mud has ever
been, and thus pulled in people from the mainstream. I suspect
that the vast majority of UOL's players are not Mudders, or did
very little Mudding before committing themselves almost wholly to
UOL;
* Aside from the advertisement, it has a brand name behind it. I
think EverQuest (Sony?) has had decent success, as well;
* Aside from the brand name, it had tradition -- Lord British and
Ultima go back a long way, and Ultima is one of the most
recognizable names in gaming history. Ultima tagged onto damn
near any product can attract at least the initial attention of
the shopper or create a frenzy nearing the game's impending
release. Ultima sells because it's Ultima;
* It's actually better than most Muds. This might not be true, but
I suspect it is. Not just for graphics and sound, but for the
entire gaming experience. By contrast, maybe only 1/10 of the
public Muds offer an experience that rivals or betters what UOL
has to offer;
* It has graphics. No, I don't mean graphical games are better, or
that they're the only thing players are really interested in (it
has been proven time and time again that good gameplay sells
better than good graphics). However, they're much easier to
advertise for and attract attention. I *love* a screenshot. I
think they're great because they show the prospective customer
upfront what the game looks like and they imagine the gameplay.
They see the picture and they think about what they'd be doing.
A picture _is_ worth a thousand words, and they look much more
active than just text.
I don't think people expect software, especially on the Internet, to have
a price attached to it for it to be good. That doesn't account for the
popularity of Netscape and MSIE over Opera, even when Opera is, by many
counts, a much better product and it costs more than either of those two.
It's not about cost, it's about perceived quality. I don't think quality
perception is based upon cost. There's been many instances where the
cheaper product won out over the higher-quality brand name product. Why?
People like good deals. If you can convince them that you're giving them
that, then they'll love you. UOL does it well: they attract players by
the handful and many are just awed by the very notion, not having previous
indepth experience with Muds. End result? It's the greatest thing
they've ever seen, and it's really not that expensive... What a great
deal!
It's not utterly hopeless to break into the public eye when you're little
known -- id Software and Apogee did it with Wolfenstein 3-D. But there's
was a game unlike what most people had seen before, and the sheer mass of
shareware trading that was going on in that day made it very easy for a
company from nowhere to suddenly be in the minds and on the hard drives of
a great many people.
-dak : Remove the S...P...A...M...!
Ilya
>
> On Thu, 23 Dec 1999, Ilya wrote:
>
> > The moral of this story? Changes in price don't exactly affect
> > the desirability of a product. They DO affect who it is that
> > is considering buying. So my friend changed the price and got
> > an entirely different group of people looking at his product.
>
> More likely, I think, is that your friend changed his price and got some
> sucker who just started looking for a trailer. It's anecdotal and not
> exactly analogous at best; coincidence strikes me as the best likelihood.
>
It was an analogy, so I don't mind it being called one. And no
analogy is exact. It might have been a sucker, and it might have
been coincidence. Maybe not.
There are plenty of other illustrations that could support this,
and indeed, there is further detail even to this story (he got a
larger number of calls, a larger number of people looking at it,
etc., which reduces the likelihood that he just found a sucker at
the right time). A similar story happened with some sort of alcohol
(sorry, I don't drink, but it had a VO in the name), and a matter
of public record. In fact, it gets written up all the time as
an illustration in management training, or so I've heard. Allegedly
they raised their prices, talked up how great it was, and increased
sales without doing anything to the product. Perhaps advertising
could be given some of the credit, but it's a bit too convenient
to explain increased sales away that way, without any further data
to back that up. At the very least, in all these cases, they
stand in contrast to the implication "lower price (or free) is
more desirable (all other things being equal) or more likely to
attract clientele."
My own experience in business backs this up as well -- with some
variables unavailable for control (making this an inexact study
at best) I know of cases where the exact same project was sold
to a high-end buyer when low end ones wouldn't buy at low end
prices. When the price was raised, it had the effect of changing
who was looking, rather than a direct function of cost vs
desirability.
Indeed, that was the primary point of my first meandering, and
I'll stick to it -- changing the price changes your audience.
Raising prices is not unavoidable equivalent to driving away
clients/customers. It just means you are evaluated by different
ones.
As for your general statement "I don't think quality perception
is based on cost" -- well, for some it is, and for some it
isn't. But my main point that changing price simply changes
your audience is perfectly compatible with either possibility.
Or, to put it another way, the equation is not "high price=bad;
low price=good." Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
Jon A. Lambert
>
>Also keep in mind that people are idiots and would rather have graphics
>'look here' otherwise their tiny brains would not be able to solve the
>
That's a good answer.
However, note that this aversion works both ways.
--
--* Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD Email: jlsy...@nospam.ix.netcom.com *--
--* Mud Server Developer's Page <http://jlsysinc.home.netcom.com> *--
--* "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." Thomas Jefferson *--
Marc Hernandez
: "Daniel A. Koepke" wrote:
: > On Thu, 23 Dec 1999, Ilya wrote:
: > > The moral of this story? Changes in price don't exactly affect
: > > the desirability of a product. They DO affect who it is that
: > > is considering buying. So my friend changed the price and got
: > > an entirely different group of people looking at his product.
: > More likely, I think, is that your friend changed his price and got some
: > sucker who just started looking for a trailer. It's anecdotal and not
: > exactly analogous at best; coincidence strikes me as the best likelihood.
: It was an analogy, so I don't mind it being called one. And no
: analogy is exact. It might have been a sucker, and it might have
: been coincidence. Maybe not.
: There are plenty of other illustrations that could support this,
Wedgewood in the middle 1750s created a line of dinnerware. With
a partner he raised prices on certain lines and put them in nice
showrooms. Started selling more of both lines. Raising prices actually
helped with sales and with the image of all his products.
Marc Hernandez
Angela Christine
>What _is_ the way to go about it? Hmm. Print advertising is probably
>a good thing, likely targetted at colleges and secondary schools and
>places those types hang out.
>Whether the play-for-free model helps attract people or not is unclear.
>Not being in possession of any studies on the matter, I'll just give
>my gut feeling -- it doesn't help at all. It hinders.
If you believe your time is valuable, investing some of your money with
your time may give you a sense of security. On a free mud you pretty
much have to put up with the way things are. You shouldn't bother the
admins, they are busy and only have so much time to work on the mud. If
the site has massive lag, or crashes all the time, or just folds up and
disappears one day there is nothing you can do. In effect, the admins
are doing you a favor by letting you play there.
If you paying to play you are a _customer_ not just a player. You feel
you have a right to customer service, so you can pester the admins all
you want. With the game having a steady income, there is no excuse for
it to be slow or unreliable. You have paid to be there, and if the
admins don't provide a good product you will go somewhere else--you
don't owe them anything.
A pay-to-play game can afford a good dedicated machine and a fast
connection. It can afford to advertise in magazines, increasing it's
exposure--this in turn increases the chance that it will get noticed and
reviewed by game magazines. Potential players have several ways to find
out about the game. Some games, like Ultima Online, have "brand names"
and a fan base that will attract players.
For free muds, potential players first have to find out that muds exist
at all (not necessarily easy, most people I know in RL think that the
whole Internet _is_ the web, chatrooms and email). The find a mud
address, and probably try to connect with raw telnet. *shudder* They
find out about client programs, and hunt one down. Then they may have
to sift through dozens of muds to find one that really suits them. And
mud directories may not be much help if they don't know what "pk" or
"rp" means, they probably don't know what exactly they want in a mud
until they have tried a few.
Commercial games may not be any better than free muds, but it is easier
to find and choose between a handful of popular commercial games than it
is to find and then choose between hundreds of obscure free games.
Angela Christine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~aca(at)telus.net~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the time it has taken you to read this,
your personal computer has become obsolete.
cl...@cp.net
> How many MU*s run entirely without colour?
Haw many of use makre sure that the very first thing we do when
logging on to any new MUD is to turn off the colour support, and
then immediately logoff if we can't?
--
J C Lawrence Internet: cl...@kanga.nu
----------(*) Internet: co...@kanga.nu
...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...
Jacob Hallen
>Hi =)
>
>As a longtime mudder, I'm always rather amazed that we don't get more
>people at our games. After all, we spend hours, days, weeks pouring love
>into our games, and it annoys the heck out of me to see commercial games
>waltz along and get a bazillion players. My guess is that we (muds) as a
>genre just arn't that good at promoting ourselves.
>
>Well, I'd love to do something about it. I don't quite know what it will
>take, probably a natty domain that is calculated to make a lot of noise
>on our behalf. Is anyone into this? Would anyone be willing to help with
>hosting, site design, content, graphics etc? I for one would, and I
>guess we can all chip in to buy a domain name (hell they're not *that*
>expensive.
The observation that we need to make a lot more noise to attract more
players is correct. The observation that we are rather bad at it is
also correct.
However, the idea that this can be done by making a website is about
as far from correct as you can get. A website about muds will attract
people who know about muds and want more information. Places like the
Mud Connector and others do a rather good job of catering for these
people.
What we need is exposure to people who don't know that they want to
spend eons of time hacking up monsters and having virtual relations
with people they will probably never meet in real life.
To me that suggest that we need to go looking for them, since they
won't come looking for us. Things that come to mind are
- articles in internet and gaming magazines
- propaganda in IRC, chatrooms, schools and other fora where likely
customers have their haunts
- swapping ads for a website with similar interest groups
- talk shows on the radio and on TV (did you really marry someone you
met on the Internet?)
Jacob Hallén
Jacob Hallen
>In rec.games.mud.admin Marc Hernandez <ma...@graphix.cs.uoregon.edu> wrote:
>
>> How many MU*s run entirely without colour?
I don't know how many that do, but Genesis is one where ANSI colours will
never be allowed. Most CD based muds have the same policy.
Genesis can be found at genesis.cs.chalmers.se 3011. If you want colours,
you can have your client add them.
Jacob Hallén
M. Whittington
wrote:
Armageddon uses one color, grey I think, to set some features apart.
This is, at least, to the best of my recollection.
Harshlands uses two colors. Green for objects, and magenta for NPCs
and PCs. Too much color, in my opinion, detracts from the gameplay,
and gives me a headache. No color at all is dismal (again, just my
opinion) and uninteresting. Besides, it's easy enough to turn off
ansi.
Reginleif of Harshlands
Anders Strandløv Elkjær
> Harshlands uses two colors. Green for objects, and magenta for NPCs
> and PCs. Too much color, in my opinion, detracts from the gameplay,
> and gives me a headache.
You are simply going to _hate_ 'Unreal Tournament'.
Anyway, people say the gameplay is cool in UT. My
computer is wayy to sucky to play that game, so I stick
with MUD.
Using colours can greatly improve the perception of
a screenful information. Using them randomly will
ofcourse disturb your perception.
My opinion is that if you know just a tiny bit about
presenting stuff and mixing colours, this is a means to
make life more comfortable for the players and maybe even
more fun. You will not ruin the gameplay in any way.
On the contrary.
But chances are, that MUD-wizards do in fact not know
anything about graphical design and presentation so
you better stick to the dull black/grey text-presentation.
I mean, green and magenta is propably the ugliest
combination of colours on a computer screen. Heh.
Imagine a room description with npcs and objects
interleaved, green magenta green magenta, yikes! :)
> No color at all is dismal (again, just my
> opinion) and uninteresting. Besides, it's easy enough to turn off
> ansi.
At least with no colours you don't leave the
colourblind people out. ;)
-Anders.
Omicron
Ilya <il...@spam.free.gamecommandos.com> wrote in article
<snip>
> What _is_ the way to go about it? Hmm. Print advertising is probably
> a good thing, likely targetted at colleges and secondary schools and
> places those types hang out.
>
Heheh, you would not get very far there, because the college sysadmins
would run you off of campus in a minute.
It's been a while since I was in college, but I know they work hard to
prevent "frivilous" use of the campus resources, and I can remember more
than once getting my TinyFugue session cut by an admin looking at usage and
stuff.
Omicron
Daniel Urquhart
> anything about graphical design and presentation so
> you better stick to the dull black/grey text-presentation.
>
> I mean, green and magenta is propably the ugliest
> combination of colours on a computer screen. Heh.
> Imagine a room description with npcs and objects
> interleaved, green magenta green magenta, yikes! :)
Frightning !
But I do think that color has a place in most muds. It is especially
helpfull to mark headings or in large stat displays. I would hate to think
of a mud that does not allow you to turn them off thought.
Martin Keegan
>Frightning !
>
>But I do think that color has a place in most muds. It is especially
>helpfull to mark headings or in large stat displays. I would hate to think
>of a mud that does not allow you to turn them off thought.
Did you like HarperCollins' colour edition of "War and Peace"?
Mk