Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?

[faraday]

@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Did you read my whole post, or stop there?

Yes, did you read mine? I reject the assertion that there are "thousands of people playing MUSHes" when there just aren't that many MUSHes in existence currently. Unless you're asserting that there's some secret trove of hundreds of games out there that are not advertised on M.U.S.H/MUDConnector/here/any active MU's bboard/etc. in which case please share with the rest of us?

[Sunny]

Yesterday. Sorted down to 'mush' only. This is simultaneous connections. Given not every person logs in every day...

And this is ONLY the games that mudstats monitors.

ETA: This 'secret treasure trove of data' is mudstats.com

[faraday]

@Sunny Yes, and look at what MUDConnector actually counts as "MUSH" and you'll see a variety of social hubs and the more in-between things like Arx that appeal to a wider audience. The number of actual MUSH games is a smaller percentage of that. Counting alts and people connected to more than one game, and 1600 connections is a very different thing than "thousands of players".

As I said - we have different definitions.

[Sunny]

@faraday said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

@Sunny Yes, and look at what MUDConnector actually counts as "MUSH" and you'll see a variety of social hubs and the more in-between things like Arx that appeal to a wider audience. The number of actual MUSH games is a smaller percentage of that. Counting alts and people connected to more than one game, and 1600 connections is a very different thing than "thousands of players".

As I said - we have different definitions.

No. This data is literally by server type. Arx is not a mush, it runs on Evennia. Mush players are People Who Play On Mushes. There is a broader community. If this is the mushing community to you, that's fine, but I was referring to the bigger one that there is LITERALLY data to support my point.

ETA: Go look at the site I linked. Go look at the data yourself. There is a game called 'Olympus Mush' that is roleplay that I've never heard anything about. Just that front page there when I looked there were 5 mushes that are roleplaying games that have never even been whispered about here, and the list changes every few seconds.

ETA2: On that list there are 82 games running specifically on the MUSH platform. MUX is even separate. The majority of them are RP games.

[faraday]

@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

No. This data is literally by server type. Arx is not a mush, it runs on Evennia. Mush players are People Who Play On Mushes. There is a broader community. If this is the mushing community to you, that's fine, but I was referring to the bigger one that there is LITERALLY data to support my point.

Data is numbers. It's how you interpret the data that matters. Reasonable people can interpret the same data differently.

For instance, MUDConnector lists Arx under "MUSH" even though it's a different server type. It lists 80-some MUSHes, by their definition.

MUDStats goes by server types, so yes - there are folks using MUSH servers for other things like RPIs, or "M*U*S*H" the social hub or defunct games that haven't been open for business for years. It also lists 80-some MUSHes, by their definition.

By my definition, which has nothing whatsoever to do with MSB and everything to do with the kind of game, there are far fewer than 80-some actual MUSH games open. And way, way, way less than "thousands" of people playing them.

You're allowed to have a different definition. Just recognize that we're talking apples and oranges here.

[Sunny]

@faraday

Cool. When I refer to the broader community of mushers, I am referring to the people who roleplay on mushes. And by that definition, there are thousands of people that play, and MSB is a drop in the bucket.

ETA: I mean, does Shang not count? Anyone is welcome to spend the time browsing the data; the majority of the games in question are RP-focused and so on, rather than RPIs or whatnot, based on some quick poking at it. It takes like 5 minutes to tell that the majority of them are mushes just like any other, they're just Star Wars or Greek Myth or some other setting that doesn't tend to get much traction on MSB. Seriously. mudstats.com -- everyone should go look for themselves. It's super eye-opening if you think the hobby is tiny and insular.

[faraday]

@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Cool. When I refer to the broader community of mushers, I am referring to the people who roleplay on mushes. And by that definition, there are thousands of people that play, and MSB is a drop in the bucket.

Great. And when I refer to the broader community of MUSHers, I am referring to the people who roleplay on MUSHes based on a different definition of what we call a MUSH that has nothing to do with server type and everything to do with the kind of game they're running on that server. And by that definition, there are not thousands of people that play, and MSB is a larger percentage of them.

Aren't we glad we cleared that up?

[Three-Eyed Crow]

An aside, is mudstats still updating its listings if you email them or use the submission form? I got the impression it'd become pretty spotty as far as getting something new up but not like I've tried in years.

[Sunny]

@Three-Eyed-Crow

No idea at all if it takes new submissions.

[Ghost]

@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Yesterday. Sorted down to 'mush' only. This is simultaneous connections. Given not every person logs in every day...

And this is ONLY the games that mudstats monitors.

ETA: This 'secret treasure trove of data' is mudstats.com

No offense, but this is a little bit misleading. Those graphs don't contain details on how concentrated that some "1600" logins is.

If you go to browse, you can sort games by server type and population. When you do that, you learn that 1600-or-so logins includes over 550 of them at PenDes, followed behind by 2 Heroes/Multiverse games in the 70s, and then quickly becomes a whole lot of games in the 20s trickling down to the games with 0 logins.

Goddamn Porn, right?

There's a data center where I live that hosts the web servers, database servers, etc for Pornhub. We call it "The House that Porn Built" because it was pretty much overnight that they went from a quaint little colo to a multi-million dollar data center with employees getting free tickets to the Las Vegas porn conventions and the yearly pornography awards ceremony.

Anyway, that number is skewed heavily by hundreds of logins for a game that allows simulated pedophilia. The simulated pedophilia game is killin it.

-the gif goes here. In spirit.

[Pandora]

For the record, NONE of my close friends that play MUSHes (not MUDs or RPIs) are on MSB. Some might have usernames, but haven't posted in months if not years. MSB is a small community of people who play the games made and run by the people in this community. There are mushes that aren't on TMC or mudstats, that don't have forums (but still have Discord servers, alas). Imagine if everyone on Arx was active on MSB? Then imagine if everyone on every MUSH was active on MSB? MSB is a loud droplet in a much bigger pool than many of you may think.

[Ghost]

Also, to add. Mudstats boasts 900+ logins to MUX servers. Shang and CoH top those out right now at 377/165 bits connected, respectively. Those numbers drop sharply to 38 on Tenebrae and then trickle into the 20s until it hits single digit logins by entry 12 of 40 on the page.

Both of these put together (if you factor # of allowed alts and total numbers; right now it's 6pm in NYC.) I think shows evidence that there may not be thousands of mushers in the hobby and that attendance at games isn't all that spread out.

I mean, if Shang allows for 5 alts, and if each player had 5, that 377 comes to around 70 players total. Either way it's highly unlikely that these 377/165 numbers are individual logins.

Regardless, I think it's highly probable that the same mushers share server space regularly.

[Derp]

I'm with Ghost and Faraday. Outside of MUDs, this hobby is a couple hundred people, tops, not the thousands that we'd like to believe, as many people connect to different games at once and thus skew those numbers.

And I very much disagree that most people in this hobby don't know of MSB. Some people will play ignorant because of social stigma dating back to WORA, and others will give snider remarks about how they don't follow such things, but the population that hasn't heard of this place is almost assuredly in the minority.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

Eh, while I don't know if it's thousands, the openings at Spirit Lake and Gray Harbor recently (Ares games) lead me to believe it's way above anything like 200. There are different pools of players in different genres that seem to rarely touch each other and it can be dramatic when they do.

[Grayson]

Hell, there are different pools of players in the same damn genres. I played on several oWoD games, and yet looking through the various playlists here there are a lot of people I was never on the same game as.

[faraday]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Eh, while I don't know if it's thousands, the openings at Spirit Lake and Gray Harbor recently (Ares games) lead me to believe it's way above anything like 200. There are different pools of players in different genres that seem to rarely touch each other and it can be dramatic when they do.

I would agree. My ballpark would be in the high hundreds, maaaaybe just over a thousand of us, counting super-casual players. It's a guess, but an educated one; I don't think there's any way for us to establish definitively.

Mudstats lists 120 games in the MUSH/MUX category, but when you actually look at the list -- there are entire pages of games that may still have a server port open but haven't been active in years (Otherspace, TGG, Firan, etc.), are social hubs (M-U-S-H, 8BitMUSH the ansi art place, etc.), are porn places (as Ghost pointed out)... once you tick them off the list, there just aren't many MUSH games.

But it also comes down to how you define "a MUSH game". Was Battletech 3065 (basically a coded mech simulator, very MUDlike to me) a MUSH just because it ran on TinyMUSH? Is Shang? What are the essential defining characteristics of "MUSH" compared to other online text-based game types?

We could go round and round on this all day and each reach different conclusions because we're not starting from the same set of definitions.

[Ominous]

The real question is do I enjoy this hobby more than the other hobbies I am able to pursue, and sadly the answer is yes.

[Sunny]

@Ominous said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

The real question is do I enjoy this hobby more than the other hobbies I am able to pursue, and sadly the answer is yes.

That's a really interesting response and I appreciate it. This is not sarcasm; thanks for sharing. It's definitely good food for thought.

[Wretched]

My other hobbies rarely allow for this level of creative story outlet and interactivity.

Edit because I forgot how to sentance.

[Ominous]

@Sunny Thank you,

You can't evaluate how you spend your time in a vacuum. You have to weigh its pros and cons with the pros and cons of the possible alternatives. I work not because my job is interesting and enjoyable. I work because I don't want to live on the street. I play MUs not because it is the most enjoyable hobby. I play MUs because it is free and doesn't require me to have RL friends living nearby.