Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing

[saosmash]

Code solutions to social problems don't really work but code solutions to accessibility, ease of use, or other mechanical problems do.

[Ghost]

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

And that's ignoring just, the usual social maladaptive shit that's so common on games that it's just taken for granted, the people who have no idea how to interact with anyone who isn't broken the same way they are and the way that geek social fallacies are like burned into the fabric of everything and not to be questioned

I've had conversations with mushers (former and current) about how mushing could stunt social skills outside in the real world, and I think this is a great point. Human behaviors outside of the mushing environment aren't exactly the same, and I think it could definitely be off-putting to someone who is "new blood".

[Apos]

@Prototart pretty much the entire reason Arx is as big as it is was because of the hardline stance that @Kanye-Qwest took against many of those elements. Like people assumed that banning early and often would shrink a game but the opposite is true when those elements alienate regular players.

[saosmash]

@Apos Like pruning! I assume. My plants don't live all that long.

[Deleted]

@Apos No... Arx exists solely because Firan does not.

[Lisse24]

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

@Apos No... Arx exists solely because Firan does not.

I mean, I wouldn't say that, but Arx definitely benefitted from ex-Firan players networking with each other and with their other RP-groups.

It also benefits from giving players something to do, having a large playerbase already, policies that nudge players towards finding RP and breaking out of cliques, and, yes, not being shy about banning problem players.

Arx isn't quite the game for me, but it does a ton of things right and all of them contribute to its success.

[Ganymede]

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

And that's ignoring just, the usual social maladaptive shit that's so common on games that it's just taken for granted, the people who have no idea how to interact with anyone who isn't broken the same way they are and the way that geek social fallacies are like burned into the fabric of everything and not to be questioned

I’m going to say this in a non-repulsive way in response.

If you think you can avoid MUSH maladaptive behaviors in real life, you are either tremendously naive or stupidly optimistic. You might as well admit that you live in a box if you can honestly and introspectively believe that real life is any less dysfunctional.

[Thenomain]

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

This community has been talking about 'the new code hotness' for as long as I've been a part of it.

If by “the community” you mean “Bane and Canink”, sure. You know, people who are no longer here and never offered up code to solve any problems they identified, and rarely offered up as much as an idea for a solution.

In the meantime: Rhost. I don’t know when @Ashen-Shugar went from “The most secure mush codebase or I will eat your soul” to “Kitchen sink? Why stop there?”, but there are a lot of problems that Rhost solves.

I mean it’s still mushcode, but can execute from the command line now too. So...yeah.

And the new code toys never solve the problems.

Yeah, I’m with @Tat, here; we are only now trying new things, and I’m not sure what problems you’re thinking about because besides “Telnet Is Bad LOL”, I don’t think anyone ever agreed with anyone else what those problems were.

[Apos]

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

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

And that's ignoring just, the usual social maladaptive shit that's so common on games that it's just taken for granted, the people who have no idea how to interact with anyone who isn't broken the same way they are and the way that geek social fallacies are like burned into the fabric of everything and not to be questioned

I’m going to say this in a non-repulsive way in response.

If you think you can avoid MUSH maladaptive behaviors in real life, you are either tremendously naive or stupidly optimistic. You might as well admit that you live in a box if you can honestly and introspectively believe that real life is any less dysfunctional.

I think this one is worth talking about.

For anyone that works with people in conflict- anyone involved with the law, bouncers, people that field complaints or work in customer service or terrible parts of retail. Yeah sure, you see maladaptive behaviors on a daily basis. And for leaders or managers responsible for organizing other people and making them get along, they see social dynamics and the same atrocious behaviors of the worst aspects of MU communities.

But most people honestly don't. A lot of 20 somethings trying to get into an RP community for the first time might have never been seriously creeped on before, or stalked, or had someone be violently combative for no good reason. Yeah, these people are out in the real world, and a lot of us have to deal with them in our day jobs, but that can also make us easily forget how many people go about their day to day lives and work jobs where they almost never meet the worst aspects of humanity over and over again.

Some of us definitely have to run into those behaviors time and again, day in and day out. Others just don't. And we shouldn't let that skew our perspectives and make us tolerant of it on MUs, imo.

[mietze]

Considering how many of the under 30 folks I know work jobs in which they are private contractors or in the service industry professionals I am pretty sure that most have seem pretty bad entitled maladaptive behaviors from people my age and older. Even if they have not yet had the opportunity to be involved with PTA, church, or other community orgs in leadership--and I will hp a step further in saying that I see far more young adults doing that now than I did when I was often the only young adult on a sea of middle aged people.

That may be why people nope out. Not because they are scared away but because they already have to deal with rude middle aged people incorrectly identifying them generationally and blaming them for shit we or older people fucked up after benefitting from what we fucked up leaving them with nothing. They have to deal with that all the time, why would you tolerate more.

Let's call it them having better things to do with their time than we do.

[Apos]

@mietze What I more meant was there might be an expectation that MUs are much better structured and more tightly policed than they usually are. Anyone coming from a different RP environment might be expecting something that's more cohesive and friendly.

[Ganymede]

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

Let's call it them having better things to do with their time than we do.

That’s fine. I don’t like having to deal with real life levels of dysfunction all the time.

But I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t exist elsewhere. I don’t play MMORPGs or games like Fortnite because of the people I’ve bumped into.

Which pulls back to the spirit of my comment: dysfunction is everywhere. Pick your desired forum — at the bar, online through consoles, at your local LARP gathering, whatever — but you can only escape it to the extent that the community is willing to call out the behavior.

Which goes to Apos’ point about Arx’s hardline and swiftness or Derp’s philosophy of drawing clear immutable lines.

[faraday]

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

But I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t exist elsewhere. I don’t play MMORPGs or games like Fortnite because of the people I’ve bumped into.

Yeah, I mean... I've encountered just as much toxicity from the MMO, video game and TTRPG communities as I have MUs. And that's not even counting the internet at large.

We get what we tolerate, though. As long as people continue to stay on games run by insane staffers just because their friends are there, or they don't want to give up the char they've invested in or whatever, then such places will continue to thrive. And believe me - I understand all those reasons.

But it's kinda hard to muster a decent recruiting pitch when the environment is toxic. Imagine trying to draw somebody into a TTRPG that way. "You should join this D&D RPG I'm in. The GM pretty much sucks, half the players don't bother following the rules, and the one guy is a real creeper - but hey, it'll be fun!"

[saosmash]

@Apos There are people whose jobs don't force them to daily interact with humanity at its worst?????

[Apos]

@saosmash Yeah lemme give an example. So my job deals with internal customers and external customers (general public). In 13 years, I've never had a coworker or internal customer be so much as slightly rude to me. I've never even heard of a conflict at my old office. Not once. If it was entirely inward facing, I would probably forget the incredible assholes I deal with for the other part even exist. Internally facing jobs with good teams and good environments? Sure.

[Ghost]

Bear in mind there is no silver bullet statement in play here. No one is saying that there arent maladaptive behaviors outside of MU in the real world.

I liken it closer to little culty things like LARP, Church Organizations, Wine Culture, Crossfit, etc. Whenever anyone places themselves more in one particular social environment and less with general public social life, the "societal norms" of those very particular groups can and possibly will impact one's ability to function outside of those groups; they become so comfortable in that one environment that it affects some of their social skills outside of it.

It's not an uncommon concept.

[Prototart]

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

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

And that's ignoring just, the usual social maladaptive shit that's so common on games that it's just taken for granted, the people who have no idea how to interact with anyone who isn't broken the same way they are and the way that geek social fallacies are like burned into the fabric of everything and not to be questioned

I’m going to say this in a non-repulsive way in response.

If you think you can avoid MUSH maladaptive behaviors in real life, you are either tremendously naive or stupidly optimistic. You might as well admit that you live in a box if you can honestly and introspectively believe that real life is any less dysfunctional.

it's a wildly different kind of maladaptive, it's one there's no financial incentive to put up with, and it's one that's so engrained and so tolerated that you get sneered at for even questioning it

to people who come from traditional geek milieus maybe a lot of it's shit that mostly goes unnoticed or they're just like completely inured to, but for people who don't it's this white hot flame that drives you slowly insane or sends you to the door,

i did not invite people from my church group or my whatever, my gender studies class, i invited people i work with. so i invited strippers, waitresses, bartenders, bouncers/security guys, go back like a billion years to when I had a social life and you can add a couple of people from the goth/fetish scene

literally nobody ever lasted longer than I think six months at the absolute longest

[Bananerz]

It’s a niche hobby using old technology that most wouldn’t know how to use with input commands that aren't universal, in a new person non-friendly environment that requires significant amount of investment in order to get something out of it with a community that has many people there looking to one-up whatever you do. By participating in this hobby, it excludes you from others as generally it rewards those who stare at their black screen more than others want to.

I couldn’t say the majority of the veterans are friendly or approachable that I know of. I think most are jaded and exclude new people because they don’t want to have to deal with shitstorm #588125 so they stick to their go-to RP circles. It creates cliques that usually are looked at negatively by outsiders and generates so many threads and posts about how people feel they're excluded. I get why vets do that, they've dealt with enough crap as they've grown with the hobby and just want to spend some moments having a little fun.

It's not a very positive community, generally speaking. There's some terrific people, and some really interesting themes. I do think the hobby will die off as less new people my age or younger will want to devote time in learning code, systems, etc for a niche game style.

[gryphter]

I found MU* about 25 years ago, around the time I was 10, and fell in face first. I was better at interacting with people through that black void, and I could be people in wild situations the likes of which I would never dare actually put myself in. Social situations moreso than adventurous ones. I'll go on an adventure right now as long as I don't have to speak to a human on it.

I do believe that growing up from that point onward more interested in interacting with people through my favored translator had a serious impact on my social skills in the real world. I'm an extroverted introvert kind of monstrosity who struggles to communicate really anything at all verbally, to physically-present humans. I can recall when I was much younger having to visualize writing what I wanted to say in my brain like a pose, then just grit my teeth and read the damned thing out loud.

I didn't do as much of this as I might wish I had done, because why would I? Real, present humans are scary as fuck, and there are MU*s waiting.

I've made great strides, but it's still a gulf -- a gap -- that remains impactful. I avoid actual physically-present interactions with other people to the greatest possible extent and am generally accounted a much less pleasant, affable, and social person out in The Real. That's to this day.

So I submit, albeit anecdotally, that a preference for living in the black screen probably does have a maladaptive impact to some extent or other. Depending on how young you were when you moved in and how immersed you were, I would imagine, you would see this to a greater or lesser extent.

ETA: This felt super bleak for the tone of this thread, so I wanted to inject some optimism. I also gleaned from this hobby organisational and business writing skills that nobody in my professional climate can match, which pay my bills. All is not lost; abandon not hope, ye who enter here.

[Griatch]

This thread has focused heavily on players. Rightly so - getting new players is of course very important.

But as one member of the comparably small clique of server-developers in here, let me add a brighter (if of course anecdotal) note and say that there is actually an influx of new developer blood coming into the hobby too. In the Evennia support channel I get to greet new faces all the time.

Many of these new people of course have an existing background in different genres of MU-dom: They want to make their own twitchy MUD, the next Arx or the next great MUSH-style game. Some are new only because they played MUDs 30 years ago and had forgotten about them until now.

But in this constant trickle of newcomers are also fresh faces; people wanting to learn to program or to make a game and having found out about MU thinks that it's just the ticket. Some of them are in-parallel playing their first MU and are seeing the possibilities for their own creations. Admittedly, MUs are not always the goal - some want to use the medium for educational games, children games or even to connect over something with their kids. Others want to learn game development in general or to use this experience as a stepping-stone towards becoming a professional programmer or game dev. But regardless of their motivation, they are still all pouring their creativity into creating MU-related code.

Many - most - of these fresh-faced devs will not create something you can ever play. But that doesn't change the fact they keep trickling in, that they are creating and that they are trying.

I think that's worthy of some optimism, at least.