How old are MU* players?

I have no idea how other people got started, especially seeing as I'm the only one in the 18-24 age bracket, but I know a lot of people my age that play MU* generally start on MUDs, then migrate over to MUSHes afterwards. I know a ton of tabletop players I hang out with who would love MUDs, but getting them to go straight from nothing to pure roleplay without a little bit of mechanical influence first is pretty difficult.

I think there's a huge market to bring younger people of that sort into the hobby, it's all about marketing and offering the right thing, we just haven't yet.

Misadventure

Now I want to make a WoD themed (not necessarily the same game system) MUD.
+feed
+intrigue
+influence
+live large

Rinel

@arkandel said in How old are MU* players?:

I'm pleased to see a wider demographic of younger folks than I expected. Not sure how newbies get into MUSHing these days but somehow it's happening.

Someone randomly recommended Arx to me after I quit an absolute disaster of a Neverwinter Nights RP server. But generally speaking, I'd done MUDs before (mostly Achaea), as well as forum RP. And Arx seems a bit more MUDdy than most MUSHes, thanks to the absurd coding powers who work there, so it was an easy transition.

(28 years old, for reference. So not really young by any standard, but younger than you decrepit antediluvians)

@tinuviel said in How old are MU* players?:

@arkandel More importantly, who brought them here?

Bad luck and worse choices.

Rinel

@sab said in How old are MU* players?:

I think there's a huge market to bring younger people of that sort into the hobby, it's all about marketing and offering the right thing, we just haven't yet.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I don't know if Gaia Online is still the incredibly active flaming dumpster-fire it was in my teens, but there's no shortage of younger people eager to RP through a text medium. Quality, of course, is highly variable, ranging all the way from horrible to unspeakably bad. But it's not as though people born in the 90s are incapable of RPing through a purely text-based medium. Forum RP is still pretty popular.

Apos

@sab said in How old are MU* players?:

I think there's a huge market to bring younger people of that sort into the hobby, it's all about marketing and offering the right thing, we just haven't yet.

I think MUs can offer things as an RP format that other formats just can't match, and I think a lot of people would find them very compelling, but the flip side is the very story driven 'table top writ large' type games just have a sharp ceiling on how many people they can really support. Like most MUSHes that aren't a 'do it yourself' style sandbox would just flat out collapse if their player bases doubled or tripled, which makes games always want new people but at a pretty controlled and steady rate, rather than huge influxes.

Tinuviel

@apos said in How old are MU* players?:

Like most MUSHes that aren't a 'do it yourself' style sandbox would just flat out collapse if their player bases doubled or tripled, which makes games always want new people but at a pretty controlled and steady rate, rather than huge influxes.

We see that quite often when The Next Big Thing (tm) opens. Big influx at the start, interest peters out, and a happy medium is sometimes met.

There's a distinct barrier to entry too, with MUing. Getting a client, finding a game, learning the ropes, etc etc. Very few games have actual... 'friendly' tutorials like a standard video game does.

SunnyJ

@apos I think our hobby, as a medium, has failed to explore a lot what distinguishes it from tabletop. I know one thing that drew me to WoD MUs was wikis, for example. Looking at characters and places, reading stories formated almost like in a pdf. It felt like I was reading the book of a setting.

Another thing with our hobby, though is... how massive it is, comparatively.

On tabletop, players are assumed to be special, and that is why they get cool powers, unique plot hooks, and kill the villain in the end. They move the world, but they are few, and they are OOC friends. They play Frodo, Gandalf, Legolas, etc and go save the world.

How does that translate into a MU? If everyone is special, is -anyone- special? This goes for powers that should be unique on a tabletop setting feeling like a casual/required buy on MUs. Unique plot threads being doled to dozens of players until secrets start to feel like basic info to get onboard with the metaplot.

I feel that to grow, MUs need to figure this one out. I don't see many trying to, either.

Tinuviel

@sunnyj And I, unfortunately, fall on the opposite end of things, to at least your first point. I used to super dislike (read: hate) the mandatory adoption of wikis. I grumble about it, but it is what it is now. There are too many things to worry about now that are seemingly mandatory: Wikis, log posting, running your own plots, etc. It's a lot to deal with, and generally it's all regarded as mandatory.

I'm not saying the old days were better, or simpler, lord knows that's not the case at all. But I know I'm not alone in being a bit of a philistine in these regards.

The main problem with our little community is that there's recently more emphasis on bigger and better, without any agreement as to what better is and the pervasive assumption that to be a success a game has to worry about log-in numbers over actually telling an interesting and fun story. Naturally these are all generalisations, but they're still there.

surreality

The most interesting complementary question I can think of here to age is 'when did you become involved in the hobby', and perhaps 'have you come and gone somewhat, or have you maintained some level of involvement throughout'.

What brings someone 30 to this now, if they started to play this year, is likely different than what drew them here if they started when the were 12 (and there are a fair number of folks that describes).