How does a Mu* become successful?

[faraday]

@Thenomain said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

Wait, are you talking about the code? Oh, momentum mostly. Evennia is the closest thing to a Mush replacement we have these days, and even it has a development barrier too high to just pick it up and run with it.

That's basically the same problem I've had with Ares. Making something nifty and modern imposes a huge barrier to entry when you're dealing with folks who are already intimidated by runningmake install from a Linux shell. Modern code = many moving parts = difficult to manage. That's why DevOps is A Thing in the real software world.

I'm also not convinced that you'd be able to get a critical mass of players for a modern web-based MUSHing app. We talk about these hypothetical masses who might give MUSHing a try, but who's going to build games for them? Who's going to play with them? I talked about this a bit in my most recent Ares blog post:

In a community where people boycott games based on what channel commands they use and fight holy wars over which MUSH client is better, is it reasonable to expect that they’ll welcome a web-based MUSH platform that works very differently? Color me dubious.

Sure you can say "screw the dinosaurs" and build something completely new and different, like Storium. But then it's not really a MUSH any more. And you're potentially losing out on your most enthusiastic and experienced players. It's a big gamble.

[Lithium]

This almost does make me want to make a persistent NeverWinter Nights World and tie it to a MUSH use the MUSH for RP, but all combat and leveling and such happens in the game.

Sure it's a separation of things but really, you can even RP in the game if you really want to.

[Thenomain]

@faraday said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

Sure you can say "screw the dinosaurs" and build something completely new and different, like Storium. But then it's not really a MUSH any more. And you're potentially losing out on your most enthusiastic and experienced players. It's a big gamble.

Starting any new game is a big gamble. My advice is always: Be excited about it, and have others who are excited about it.

I mean, I don't use Evennia, yet I'm excited about it, in part to hope to get people using it.

Sorry that this isn't Ares, but I don't know enough about it to be excited about it. I mean, I think we all just want to tell stories, and the lower the barrier the more likely we are to jump into it. I've worked with your code for long enough to know that you get what it is that people want and like, and can code both directions (Penn and Mux) at once.

And really, the Penn channel system isn't so bad that it would stop me from playing somewhere, but I didn't hold back on the initial Mux mail system before it was re-created either. And people complained at me when I kept asking the same questions over and over about it on channel.

It's about creating momentum.

(edit to note: This is why I'm trying to get my code together so that people can just go, bloop, new game. Maybe. Some. Year.)

[faraday]

@Thenomain said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

Sorry that this isn't Ares, but I don't know enough about it to be excited about it.

Oh, no biggie. Evennia is much further along and much broader in scope and ambition. I'm totally an Evennia supporter, but we have different goals.

[Ide]

I for one didn't realize Ares was so far along. It looks really nice from looking at the dev blog just now.

[faraday]

@Thenomain said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

(edit to note: This is why I'm trying to get my code together so that people can just go, bloop, new game. Maybe. Some. Year.)

Sure, but that's not enough. The FS3 codebase has come with a starter DB and installer packs for years. While some folks have taken it and run with it, there are many more who are thoroughly intimidated by the idea of installing it, or come to me after it's installed and ask: So how do I (do this thing that requires MUSHCode knowledge). Anything using the current tech still has a really really high entry barrier, even if you give them a full-fledged package.

[Thenomain]

@faraday

Yeah, but FS3 also isn't plug and play. Some assembly required to fit the game it's installed for, unless that game is Space Pew Pew Cadets. (I honestly don't know what other implementations have been coded besides BSG.)

I'd say more your Faraday Code is what I'd compare what I'd want to do. Or the sandbox pre-loaded database that Mux has, and Ambryl's Mush counterpart, which is awesome by the way.

And then, a one stop add-on for WoDness. Slight coder required. I and @Cobaltasaurus and occasionally @Sammi invlooving ourselves in game setup. You got no small praise helping out another server, recently. That's what we can do for now. So ... Go us.

[Apos]

I'm actually a little optimistic for the future, even though I share pretty much your concerns identically.

I think the MU format offers something unique that's very difficult to duplicate in any other RP format, but the way it's designed right now is extremely difficult for anyone new to get into, it has no way at all of introducing people to it except by word of mouth, and almost any change in format alienates its shrinking pool of enthusiasts.

Those are are definitely problems, but I don't think they are insurmountable ones. I think they can be addressed. But as much as I want to see the hobby do well, and grow again, and be in a healthy place, I think there's another problem any kind of next gen game would have to address- surviving it being extremely popular. There's definitely enough role-players out there, like just looking at a popular play-by-post forum I counted tens of millions of posts and they had around a hundred thousand users. An enjin website for guild wars 2 role-players had about 13,000 users. That's a niche community site for a single MMO that doesn't even officially support role-playing at all. What would happen if 10 percent of the population of either of those sites decided to give a single MU a try?

Right now, I think even one percent would probably overload most games. The unique things MUs really offer is hands on GMing to let players pursue their own stories in a collaborative environment with others, and I don't think any staff is big enough to handle a hundred new players showing up out of the blue. More to the point, there's not a whole lot of incentive for game runners to introduce new people to the hobby- their hands are generally full, and when it comes to telling the stories they find fun, they can only deal with so many people at once. So after a certain point they are either going to be sandboxes with increasingly distant staff, or games using heavy automation.

There's definitely worse problems to have, and I think most games could handle it if they have enough time and preparation. And overall, I actually think it's a good sign. I mean if there's hundreds of thousands of role-players out there on random sites that have never ever heard of MUs, and there very obviously is, then there's plenty of role-players. Just need to decide whether they want them or not.

[faraday]

@Thenomain Yeah when I said the "FS3 codebase" I was talking about the Faraday Code. People started calling it the "FS3 code" even though it's more than just FS3. :helpless shrug:

Anyway, it's a pre-loaded database that has everything already set up just waiting to be configured, including FS3. That's what I used to help @tangent set up the Marvel game.

I mean, yeah, you've still got to configure it but that's no different than your WoD setup right? You don't have to write new code to switch it over to Game of Thrones or Wild West, you just change the weapons and skill list.

And it's modestly plug-and-play-able. For Marvel, I removed maps and groups and a couple other things they didn't need just by running +uninstall. It's not perfect, not by a long, long shot, but I think it's pretty close to what you're describing.

[Griatch]

@Thenomain

Was there some particular thing you wanted me to comment on?

@thread

There was a mention earlier in this thread on sharing the login session of the game and the website. This has been on our todo list for quite some time and now that our latest big webclient development push has merged, I'm actually just looking into this - and finding it to probably be a lot easier to do than I thought it was, so that looks like it'll happen soonish.

To be honest we have really not spent as much time on the django-web side of things compared to other code. We have been focusing on making a good and expandable base server. But there's a lot of possibilities on the web side. Just two days after the webclient infrastructure changes merged, an industrious user made a client GUI using Construct 2 that bounced and swayed around. Not very useful in itself, but a fun proof-of-concept! Should have saved the anim-gif they made of it.

To stay on the topic of this thread ... From my perspective as a server developer:

People regularly show up at our shores setting out to create their dream Muds/Mux/Mushes/Moos/Muck/IF/edu/whatever games in Evennia. They discuss and learn and code and socialize (and help us fix bugs and suggest features!). Some are grizzled coders, others never touched code before. One guy just found this neat thing called "a mud", another is a MUSH veteran of 30 years. Some just want to rebuild their favorite game but better, another come at it with the idea of doing all things differently.
Even though many of these won't ever reach a finalized game for all the normal reasons, they are mostly having a swell, creative time along the way. In my book, that's success right there.
.
Griatch

[Pondscum]

Everytime I see this thread pop up, I misread it as "How does a Mu* become stressful?"

End of off topic posting. Carry on!

[Lotherio]

@faraday said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

@Thenomain Yeah when I said the "FS3 codebase" I was talking about the Faraday Code. People started calling it the "FS3 code" even though it's more than just FS3. :helpless shrug:

Anyway, it's a pre-loaded database that has everything already set up just waiting to be configured, including FS3. That's what I used to help @tangent set up the Marvel game.

Heh, now I'm oddly curious how that one is set up. I used FS3 for Coral, and its supers. I'm curious how you set it up to handle powers versus how I went about it. It @tangent's place up and running to have a look?

[Arkandel]

@Pondscum said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

Everytime I see this thread pop up, I misread it as "How does a Mu* become stressful?"

Well, you log on.

[faraday]

@Lotherio Actually tangent wanted a stat-less system. So, in a fit of great irony, it's the thing everyone calls the "FS3 codebase" without FS3. Lol. I guess I should have come up with a better name for the softcode platform besides Faraday's Softcode.

[Lotherio]

@faraday said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

@Lotherio Actually tangent wanted a stat-less system. So, in a fit of great irony, it's the thing everyone calls the "FS3 codebase" without FS3. Lol. I guess I should have come up with a better name for the softcode platform besides Faraday's Softcode.

You do have a lot of the great globals that seem standard plus a lot of your own that, including some of the new standard globals like tracking PB or porting to wiki. I admit I used it for Realms, but stopped at FS3 to make something towards the Chaosium d20 for the stat code.

And Double Dang, I was curious how they went with the attributes and skills to account for powers too, because I wanted the system this time.

[faraday]

@Lotherio said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

You do have a lot of the great globals that seem standard plus a lot of your own that, including some of the new standard globals like tracking PB or porting to wiki. I admit I used it for Realms, but stopped at FS3 to make something towards the Chaosium d20 for the stat code.

Thanks. But yeah - that's what I was referring to about the system being plug and play to an extent. You can ditch or replace FS3 or pretty much any AddOn and it'll work OK. Changing the Core packages can be done, but you have to do some surgery to resolve the dependencies that other Addons have on them. So it's not completely plug-and-play, I get that. My only point was that even having a MUSH-in-a-box softcode package still doesn't help people get over the installation and configuration hurdle, nor are they comfortable managing it without a coder.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Apos said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

Those are are definitely problems, but I don't think they are insurmountable ones. I think they can be addressed. But as much as I want to see the hobby do well, and grow again, and be in a healthy place, I think there's another problem any kind of next gen game would have to address- surviving it being extremely popular. There's definitely enough role-players out there, like just looking at a popular play-by-post forum I counted tens of millions of posts and they had around a hundred thousand users. An enjin website for guild wars 2 role-players had about 13,000 users. That's a niche community site for a single MMO that doesn't even officially support role-playing at all. What would happen if 10 percent of the population of either of those sites decided to give a single MU a try?

I hate to be the barer of bad news here but if 1,300 new players decided to give a MU a try, the sad result would likely be the collective MUSH staff of the world would collapse. This is not even a code thing but a people time thing.
Even if we figure there are 50 active mushes (not sure how many their are but I would guess that to be on the high side) that would be an average of 26 new players each. Staff getting 26 new apps all at once would certainly slow things down, but then you have the question of how many games could assimilate that many new players all at once into the culture especially if all were new to MUSHing in general.
At that was the mall side of your numbers example. If tens of thousands join then MUSHing becomes the side project of the play by post community instead of being anything that unique because the current players would be a small minority in the hobby.

You are more optimistic then I in the ability of games to handle large influxes, the hardest things to maintain in this hobby is the relationship between staff and player base a large influx not only changes the player base side of that equation but also the staff side as more staffer need to be brought in, some of which will be great at it some of which will be horrible.

[Arkandel]

@ThatGuyThere Why are you assuming if suddenly there were a thousand new players interested in MUSHing in the mid/long term the result wouldn't be more games being created?

In the 90s there were quite a few more MU* around than there are today, some with hundreds of people online.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Arkandel said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

Tue and things might work out well but I think that many new player would definitely change MUSHing as a whole in was we likely would not even think to guess at.
New players coming in is great but more new players coming in then currently exist all at once?
Sorry I am a pessimist by nature and have seen real life social groups destroyed by a large influx of new people.
I will freely admit a new influx could usher in a golden age must neither side has any sort of hard evidence to back up a positive or a negative outlook so I will stick with desiring small growth over large.

[Lotherio]

When the sword was pulled from the stone, and the current generation all learned grammar and spelling instead of thumbing shorthand for smart phones and devices ... a golden age of MU'ing was ushered in. Kids realized they didn't need graphics to be entertained and had more control over their role-play and stories in a more free-form setting. They were entertained and MU'ng as we know it was changed. OOC drama was at an all time low, everyone got along, no one argued over rules and interpretations, we all said please and thank you, everyone had awesome plots and no one dropped on each other in the middle of plots and scenes in favor of their favorite video game of the week.