Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing

Ghost

But also, let's not gloss over issues the MU community needs to try to solve (to help keep new blood) by generalizing that all online cultures have problems, or by confusing the issue by claiming MUCK, MUD, MOO, MUX, etc all have entirely different cultures.

I kinda feel like this topic is heading off in a tangent that is avoiding focusing on working on solutions.

I'm pretty sure "people being creepy, elitist, stalker assholes" is a unifying concept most online hobbies deal with. Perhaps one could look to see how some of those communities deal with similar problems to help find good policies?

Then again, let's be fair. Having good policies is one thing, but having staff who enforce policies on MU despite their friendships or agenda to keep the game running and populated is another.

Arkandel

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

But also, let's not gloss over issues the MU community needs to try to solve (to help keep new blood) by generalizing that all online cultures have problems, or by confusing the issue by claiming MUCK, MUD, MOO, MUX, etc all have entirely different cultures.

You're going too far, I think. Just the fact we have all these terms - MUCK, MUD, MOO, MUX - is a barrier to entry.

Auspice

@Arkandel said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

But also, let's not gloss over issues the MU community needs to try to solve (to help keep new blood) by generalizing that all online cultures have problems, or by confusing the issue by claiming MUCK, MUD, MOO, MUX, etc all have entirely different cultures.

You're going too far, I think. Just the fact we have all these terms - MUCK, MUD, MOO, MUX - is a barrier to entry.

But it's not.

If you log onto a game like WoW (or another MMO), there is so much slang and weird acronyms and concepts. If it's your first time, the General chat is just a mass of confusing 'W2B BBQ WTF ASAP $$$555 SPM'

Yet new people join those games all the time. The 'lack of a common knowledge glossary' is not remotely a barrier to entry.

But speaking to @Ghost and his post: what most multiplayer games offer is a vacuum. I can log onto SWtoR and play without talking to anyone. I can team up with someone to clear out an area and never say a word.

They make it very easy for those who are anti-social and social to co-exist. And while people can go onto games and shut off all channels, page-lock the game........ by nature of what we do it's harder to be involved.

Ghost

When I first got into the hobby, I would browse games on Mudconnector. As a new player I didn't give a shit if a game was a MUCK, MUD, MUSH, MOO, etc. I was purely in "I don't care what the nerds call their site. I want to play an RPG.*" mode.

And, honestly, after spending more years in the hobby than I care to count, I still really don't care about the difference between a MOO and a MUCK. I'm willing to bet, though, that the negative social BS on any Mx game similar.

Griatch

@faraday

I still think it's the persistent 24/7 world with mostly-live scenes that is the principal defining quality of MUSHes compared to other online RP, but that's just me.

... and you just described an RP-heavy MUD.

We are all dealing with text-based, multiplayer, persistent worlds for [various degrees of] role playing. That's enough for me. Those terms encapsulate what I enjoy about this sub-genre of gaming.

I see games made in Evennia as Evennia games. Arx is this an Evennia game to me. AresMush makes AresMush-games. Penn/RhostMush makes Penn/RhostMush games, LambdaMoo makes LambdaMoo games. There are DIKU-Mud- and Circle-Mud- and LPMud-games along the same veins as there are Unity-created platformers (yes I know you can argue that DIKU is less of an engine and more of a source code you rewrite, but ...)

The variation of game-styles created on each engine is so big that, in my view, the engine name is really the only relevant thing grouping them together. Trying to let the engine name represent a game style is not only confusing (and why no-one can agree on what a 'Mush' truly is in here), it also leaves other types of games made with the same engine in limbo ...

gryphter

I don't care if you call it a MUD, a MUCK, a MOO, a MUX, or a Fred. If I can engage with the story of a game and feel like my character is part of it, that's what I'm looking for. I don't code at all and I won't be interacting with the codebase. Do I like the story? Cool. Is there a character available that sparks joy, or can I make one? Awesome. Is the climate of your game healthy to be on? Perfect.

I strongly doubt we're living or dying on specificity of terminology here.

surreality

@faraday What I mean is that the different stories on HM run at different paces. One may be 4:1, one may be 1:2, and so on. It varies, and sometimes it's 'this week will be the month of May, and next week will be all of 1942'.

A number of consent games have arguably had a timeline that people more or less ignore completely (or don't enforce). Some haven't had one and just let things unfold in their own time.

Instead of looking at it as a shared timetable/timeline, I'd think something like 'a shared history' is maybe a better indicator. As in, however fast or slow events occur, they exist in the shared history of the world all the characters occupy.

Ghost

People play MMORPGs because it provides a feeling of reward. It's baked into the psychology of the format: You level up, you get gear, you clear missions, you make progress dozens of times in a single sit-down session of an MMORPG.

MU can be rewarding, yes, but it also can be sitting around for a few hours to find roleplay to begin with, navigating the myriad egos in the hobby, and then spending hours of your day/night trying to accomplish a much smaller number of things in the hopes that it will feel satisfying.

I just don't see this all as very complicated and think a higher-level approach makes it easy to mentally grasp:

MU isn't as immediately or frequently rewarding as most other online forms of entertainment.
It is difficult to not bump into the social issues on MU. There are large egos, pushy everything has to be my way players, creepers, etc.
Unless people are going to commit to working out policies that they intend to enforce and check their own behavior in a meaningful way that involves COMMITTING to identifying where they are part of the problem...theres little point in discussing this.

If #3 is going to be "Everyone else is stupid but me, and I'm not the problem" then you may as well all sign an agreement to meet up once a year for a headcount to see who died that year as the hobby slowly marches off into extinction and further irrelevancy.

People leave the hobby because of people and timesink, and when GOOD players leave because of people(the juice isn't worth the squeeze), the % of people who are hard to deal with (in the population) rises.

And I think the reason why this topic has gone into subtangents about MUCKMOOMUDMUX and into talking about Ruby/Perl etc is because the people in this conversation know that trying to get people to knock it off with obsessive/ego behavior isnt a task, it's a war that will be more difficult and trying than it's worth; it would likely result in the community at each other's throats.

There's so much thin skin in this community you could print a bible on it, so the hopeful sense of things is trying to improve it in some way that doesn't involve actually addressing the behavior of some of these dinosaur players who are the core of this community and this forum...which is why the hog pit is such a cowardly arena where people can throw barbs at each other over minutae.

Ganymede

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

And I think the reason why this topic has gone into subtangents about MUCKMOOMUDMUX and into talking about Ruby/Perl etc is because the people in this conversation know that trying to get people to knock it off with obsessive/ego behavior isnt a task, it's a war that will be more difficult and trying than it's worth; it would likely result in the community at each other's throats.

I think this reason is trite and judgmental, and, as I've said, there's nothing at all novel about what you have proposed.

Grousing is pointless. Nagging will get us nowhere. Acting in accordance with precepts that we have been pounding into our screens for a decade is the only thing that will get young blood into the hobby. And I think we know, or should know, this.

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new."

This is why I will defend the doers rather than the critics. This is why I discount or ignore discussion of the ad nauseam et infinitum recitations of what is known in favor of discussing where the hobby is going, if it is going anywhere. Whereas you may neither understand nor appreciate why members are engaging in sub-tangents, I appreciate absorbing the discussion so as to see, or perhaps foresee, where things may be going in the future.

But right now, absolutely nothing of what you previously posted will get the hobby any closer to attracting new blood. Braying and screeching about common problems isn't going to make anyone want to connect to the games that some of our community have pumped a lot of time and effort into. This, of all threads, is not a place to criticize.

surreality

I have to second Ganymede on this one.

"Everyone is awful and terrible and everyone is nothing but the worst sort of hypocrite at all times," is bullshit.

Plenty of folks actually walk their talk. Most actually do it most of the time, and fuck it up once in a blue moon.

Are there folks in the hobby that couldn't take responsibility for their actions if their life depended on it? Yes. Are there folks who are never willing to consider any perspective but their own, whether it's founded on evidence or 'just a feeling' or whatever else? Sure. Are there folks who try to avoid consequences for bad behavior by trying to play the victim in spasms of passive aggression and melodrama? Ayep! (This could go on and on.)

These people exist everywhere else, too. This hobby can no more 'solve' them than we can fix the problem they represent in any other aspect of life. People handle it in the same ways: avoid these people, constrain their interaction with them to a tolerable level, or leave whatever game they're presently infesting.

If you can deal with these people in other aspects of life, you can deal with them here. If you realize they exist in other aspects of life, being somehow surprised they're also here is absurdly naive, as is thinking they can be barred from entry or participation or creating the occasional disruption the same way they do in any other aspect of life.

Should there be strategies to manage crap behavior? Yes. Should the people responsible for administrating an environment apply them when needed? Yes. This is all 'duh' material. This is not grand revelation. This is not news.

faraday

By no means do I think that terminology is our biggest problem, but it is kinda interesting to talk about. I also think it's relevant. Being able to coherently describe what it is that we do, and how it differs from Play By Forum/Tumbler/Storium/MUDs/etc. is useful when describing the hobby to new folks. Imagine a conversation with a friend that starts with: "Hey, you should try out MUSHing." "What's MUSHing?" "Welllllllll....."

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

is because the people in this conversation know that trying to get people to knock it off with obsessive/ego behavior isnt a task, it's a war that will be more difficult and trying than it's worth; it would likely result in the community at each other's throats.

I talk about technology because that's something I can control. Changing social behavior is more of an individual effort. We can't control how crappy staffers run their games, but we can certainly control whether we play on them.

faraday

@Griatch said:

and you just described an RP-heavy MUD.

Double post sorry... @Apos expanded the description in a good way. I do think there’s a subtle distinction between the two. But they’re points on a continuum not too far apart.

Tinuviel

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

And I think the reason why this topic has gone into subtangents about MUCKMOOMUDMUX and into talking about Ruby/Perl etc is because the people in this conversation know that trying to get people to knock it off with obsessive/ego behavior isnt a task, it's a war that will be more difficult and trying than it's worth; it would likely result in the community at each other's throats.

No, the reason why this topic has gone into subtangents is because: 1) Literally every topic on this board does, that's basically our remit, and 2) We like discussing the minutiae of our hobby because we have a vested interest in it. It's not that complicated.

MSB, as a unit, isn't going to solve any problems. Some of our membership might well do, be it with technology or cultral shifting, but MSB isn't. There are too many incredibly smart people here, and too many smart people gathered in one place don't make decisions, they make arguments.

Apos

Things we can control:

Community resources that makes starting games easy
Community resources that help people find games they'd be interested in playing
Support for game runners trying to solve issues on their games, best practices
The games we're actively involved with

Not much else. Categorizing games might be boring to other people, but it's not irrelevant. There's a world of difference between someone that comes from a very freeform, prose driven RP environment that would like Ares games that really supports that and hammers it home in a fantastic way, versus someone that's transitioning from RPIs and would feel lost in something without some coded immersive world. Knowing the differences does help us nudge people to games that work for them, or at least explain the difference.

Ghost

@Tinuviel said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

There are too many incredibly smart people here, and too many smart people gathered in one place don't make decisions, they make arguments.

No. This isn't what smart people do, and perhaps as a culture it would be better if we didn't apply presumed genius to a group of people who can't get along. Smart people who are invested in a hobby are smart enough to ultimately understand that the hobby would work better if people weren't so constantly distracted with OOC PVP infighting and drama.

It's healthy to question whether or not you like hearing that you're smart or if you're actually using your brain. In this case, we are discussing why new players dont often stick with the hobby. I can ensure you that it's not because the people are just so smart and I was okay with the social issues because everyone was so smart and that's just what geniuses do; they argue.

If you ask me, the social issues have less to do with dogmatic scientific community discourse and more classic high-school territorial pissing contests, but the pissers often liken it to their intelligence or talent because doing so makes it sound less ego-driven than it usually is.

surreality

I think, re: terminology, it's more useful to focus on describing intended play style than anything else, aside from the specifics of theme and setting. (Tabletop simulator, freeform collaborative shared world writing space, etc.) This info is probably going to be more useful to a newcomer than the specifics of the codebase it's built on.

The new arrival doesn't care about the difference between MOO and MUSH or DikuMUD historically, why they're different, or how they've been used, why this game is different than the other MOOs before it. They're interested in the kind of play they can find there, and how to do it.

Tell people that.

Auspice

@surreality said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

The new arrival doesn't care about the difference between MOO and MUSH or DikuMUD historically, why they're different, or how they've been used, why this game is different than the other MOOs before it. They're interested in the kind of play they can find there, and how to do it.

And I think, honestly, obsessing over these is a form of gatekeeping.

When people ask me what I'm doing, my go-to answer is: 'text-based roleplaying.'

It's a phrase that encapsulates the overall idea and if they're interested... then I go into more detail.

But I feel like needing to be absolutely specific in terms of what code-base and what systems-code and....

is akin to:
'Oh, you like the Seahawks? I do, too!'
'Really? So who did they recruit this year and why?'

If you (general you) know the full history of MUing and its code bases and.... great, that's awesome (and I'm not being sarcastic here). But don't expect me or anyone else to do so.

faraday

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

When people ask me what I'm doing, my go-to answer is: 'text-based roleplaying.'

That's great unless you're also talking about people who are already into text-based roleplaying (e.g. forums, storium, discord, tumblr, MUDs, etc.) It can be helpful to have some way to explain how MUSHes differ from that, and how MUSHes differ from each other.

For example - in Storium there's a standard template that games fill out to establish things like:

Writing tense
Is power-posing allowed
Expected speed of moves (though nobody pays attention to this one in practice)
Trigger warnings
etc.

That kind of thing helps get new people involved.

Thenomain

@faraday said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

When people ask me what I'm doing, my go-to answer is: 'text-based roleplaying.'

That's great unless you're also talking about people who are already into text-based roleplaying (e.g. forums, storium, discord, tumblr, MUDs, etc.) It can be helpful to have some way to explain how MUSHes differ from that, and how MUSHes differ from each other.

The same can be said about coding. There's style and there's language and there's goal and AIGH!

So perhaps we can treat it like we do coding: We start with "I code" and go from there. There is always a level deeper we can get, and that's okay.

Darren

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

When I first got into the hobby, I would browse games on Mudconnector. As a new player I didn't give a shit if a game was a MUCK, MUD, MUSH, MOO, etc. I was purely in "I don't care what the nerds call their site. I want to play an RPG.*" mode.

And, honestly, after spending more years in the hobby than I care to count, I still really don't care about the difference between a MOO and a MUCK. I'm willing to bet, though, that the negative social BS on any Mx game similar.

^^ this.

I never let the type of server dictate whether I would play a game. If it sounded fun, I would give it a shot. Neither have I ever noticed any meaningful difference between a RP heavy MOO, MUCK, ColdMUD or whatever and a PennMUSH/MUX. Culturally they are so similar that the differences just didn't matter. Things don't really start to get different until you get into genuine MUDs, where game-play revolves around gearing up, gaining levels, questing, etc instead of RP.