Optional Realities & Project Redshift
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There's likely a venn diagram waiting to happen here.
You have text games, you have interact-with-the-game-code games, and you have interact-with-players games. How that diagram gets labeled may vary -- some folks may just slap 'games' over the whole of it and call it a day, for instance -- but if I had to place 'the kind of games people discuss here (MUSHes, MUXes, MUCKs and MOOs in some cases), they'd be in the central overlap. -
@Crayon said:
Jeshin writes on where text-based games fit into the bigger picture of gaming, and the powers of text as a gaming medium!
http://optionalrealities.com/the-text-based-rpg-unlimited-potential/Suggestion: Proofread. The mismatched tenses, ambiguous sentences, bad direct objects and mismatched pluralities make me cringe.
As to the individual points.
@Jeshin said:
First, we must understand that text-based games are very retro, and gaming has progressed past us on most technical levels.
All evidence to the contrary, given the popularity of things like minecraft and the various choose your own adventure novels on steam. People don't care that they're retro, people care that they're fun. Visual Novels are a thing. They're a huge thing;They make a shit ton of money. Text is not the issue.
@Jeshin said:
Then, we have to consider that the majority of our community of developers are made up of volunteer hobbyists, because of the restrictive nature of the licenses that our game engines use...[more stuff]...Something something can't make money.
Okay, I'll bite. Even if this were true (it's not), since when has a restrictive license stopped anyone from coding anything? I'll give you a hint, it hasn't. Sourceforge and Github are two sites that amount for the biggest share of that work, work that is done on code that is released for free to others. Some of the projects on github and sourceforge people make money on. Just because you have released the source or licensed it under one of the common open source licenses does not mean you can't make money on what you made. Consequently, it holds true that others can also make money on it depending on the license.
However, I expect you'll have some counter argument that doesn't actually address this and point to code bases. Okay, I'll tackle that too.
Pennmush is licensed under the artistic license. All the code that they came from is also licensed under that license. That license explicitly states you can make money on the thing that is being licensed. So if someone wanted to - which they don't - they could make money off pennmush.
Tinymux doesn't have a license included in their source.
As to muds, the rapture engine is what iron realms uses, it's open source (now anyways) but they make money off of it.
Technically every derivative of dikumud is breaking the copyright. Reason? The original copyright, the one with the program, requires you to notify the creators anytime you use or modify the code or hell, even run your own diku mud. It also requires you to list their names on the login screen and make sure that there is always a credits command that lists their names. Is anyone getting sued? No. They have no intention of enforcing their copyright. I'm not even entirely sure these people are still alive.
That being said.
Statement: All our coders are hobbyists.
Rebuttal: Patently false. See Iron Realms. Also, just because someone contributes to the free software community doesn't mean they aren't also working in a field that requires programming. See Linus Torvalds or Bjarne Stroustrup.Statement: You can't make money on mu's!
Rebuttal: Patently false. Artistic license explicitly states you can.
Second Rebuttal: Also patently false because Diku isn't the only mud codebase. See List of Code Bases. See all those marked GPL for instance? You can make money off those.Why are you so focused on diku? Lord.
@jeshin said:
We're bad at advertising.
Did you know a mud once advertised in PC Gamer magazine? Do you know why they stopped? Not because of money, but because it didn't actually work. The ad wasn't bad. We're bad at advertising because we stick to our known communities. We stick to our known communities because the belief is that we won't be accepted. Perhaps we don't advertise because we're happy with the status quo. Perhaps then we're not bad at advertising, it's just that we don't want to advertise.
Rather then, the issue is that people are happy where they are. Mudconnect and Mudstats are things. That's enough. It's not as if we don't have a reddit, which we do for the record. How many people advertise their games there? Basically 0.
TLDR: Bad? No. We just don't do it.
@jeshin said:
We need to be writing press releases.
Bonus Comment: I will patiently await for you or anyone to get one written and published.
I'll be fair, the following is a paraphrase.
@jeshin said:The best way to keep people interested in your game is to have them play something that isn't your game as a community..
Yes, this makes total sense. The best way to make people want to continue to play my Mu is to act as the staging point for a massive league of legends gaming group. Sweet. This isn't to say that the community shouldn't do things as a group, but if the only reason people log in is to coordinate outside activities, you need to re-evaluate your game.
Point: You wrote an entire article telling us what we do wrong and then contradicted yourself entirely at the end by going 'oh but, actually, there are games that already do all this, did I mention those?'
Edit: After thinking a bit, I want to say that mud that advertised in PC Gamer was medievia.
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Hey,
Glad you read the article...
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We do actually have an editor so I passed along those concerns to him.
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I addressed your retro concerns right here in the first 2 paragraphs and point out retro is a style of presentation which is very popular right now and that is a good thing for us.
@Jeshin / Optional Realities said:
What Text-Based RPGs Do Better Than Everyone Else
- I only mentioned diku once and specified like diku. I actually had quite a bit more on this subject but as the original article was 3000+ words we tried to parse it down. I'm sorry it seems I'm obsessed with diku while only referencing it once?
As to restrictive licenses, the majority of MUSHes willingly use established tabletop RPG systems which preclude them profiting off of their games and any text-based games set in an existing IP also passes up the ability to monetize. Now you can argue (and you'd be right) that people are willingly choosing not to pursue a profitable path. You could also argue that due to the nature of our community we don't really encourage people to monetize their games. So there's no real demand or motivation for someone to risk doing something different (despite some of the successes we've had).
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Past efforts does not affect current situations. Why is it that games with 20 players or less that want to grow and have players and staff that love them don't take any time to consistently advertise and instead do brief one-shot bumps and just hope players will someday find them by word of mouth? This portion isn't even about making money but many games would do well to have at least some kind of ad presence especially if they're looking to grow.
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There is plenty of proof that by keeping people engaged in your community (not your game) you increase the odds of them playing your game again. For example let us say I do not play League of Legends but I enjoy watching it. Maybe while watching it I'm talking about it with a friend and whammo I'm back online playing with him because he asked. By having activities which build community and give pathways back to playing you increase your overall player retention and your chances to draw someone back to the game. Obviously I'd prefer just playing the game!
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The article is less about saying oh you're doing it wrong but more to bring up different aspects of improving our genre. I don't think anyone can argue that the majority of players think text-based gaming is "healthy" and they have "high hopes" for it going forward. Anecdotally a lot of people think we're dying off or at least stagnating. The article is meant to encourage people to have more faith and to try. I never said there are no successful text-based games simply that they are not widely successful. None of the games I listed are on Steam for example.
I do encourage anyone interested in debating this topic (and not just my article which is far from being an authority on this) to check out http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=221.0
I could have pretty easily split this article up into a series where I preached at people for 5 weeks about this topic but wanted to start a discussion. That also means I'm not married to all the exact positions I took in the article either, it was just where I arrived after my research.EDIT - The discussion thread has already surpassed my article in terms of value to readers and I'm not ashamed or disappointed in that at all. The article served its purpose and I think it's passable (not great).
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@Jeshin said:
I don't want to clutter up the community with to many questions
What? This is a community of text-based multiplayer gamers, by text-based multiplayer gamers, for text-based multiplayer gamers. If you have questions regarding text-based multiplayer games, then ask.
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Sometimes even I feel self conscious I might be overstaying my welcome!But alright, you're a mod and you said ask so I shall go forth and ask.
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This board is made up of people who've been on it, in one incarnation or another, for fifteen years or more. If anyone has overstayed their welcome...
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The other incarnations were also meaner, to varying degrees, so I'm sure most people here have hated another person here at one time or another.
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@Three-Eyed-Crow said:
The other incarnations were also meaner, to varying degrees, so I'm sure most people here have hated another person here at one time or another.
Only "good" people can change.
Everyone else is just hiding how terrible they've always been. -
I don't go to MUDs now because I'm afraid they're all just like MUSHes, that any one of us is just like any other, and I would have to go straight for someone's jugular.
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Read Icarus's recent article on lowering the barriers to entry for new players!
http://optionalrealities.com/lowering-barriers-to-entry/Take part in discussion on the merits of player-driven and staff-driven approaches to storytelling!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=231.0Submit an entry for our July 2015 Character Concept contest!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=198.0Or get involved with community gaming!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=210.0 -
<Crow T. Robot>
Or, you know, don't.
</Crow>For these I had to click on the links and more or less read whatever was on the other end of the pipe. My Sarcastro offerings:
Quotes the infamous Richard Bartle from a book written back in the Iron Age of MMOs. Also quotes EVE Online as getting you up and running within 2 hours. Up and dead. I can't tell you how many times I died within the first two hours. I don't know what happened after that because I stopped playing. I know this game has a pretty strong following, and I understand why, but "engagement within the first two hours" is hardly what I'd credit to why.
They do point out that modern computer games have tutorials, and this is something we in the Mush world have dropped entirely. Coding a tutorial is not unlike coding a puzzle, and that's not our focus anymore so we, perhaps lamentably, have forgotten that people need taught. Wikis are starting to pick up the slack, but I think it's just starting.
Take part in discussion on the merits of player-driven and staff-driven approaches to storytelling!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=231.0Man, who here is tired of the "PrP vs. SrP" threads? Fortunately for forums everywhere, there's no answer here.
Submit an entry for our July 2015 Character Concept contest!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=198.0Bob, a midget barista.
Or get involved with community gaming!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=210.0Unlike ... what ... Mushing/Mudding? If this isn't community gaming, we have seriously lost touch with the concept of "fun".
That is, I agree that we have seriously lost touch with the concept of "fun".
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Read the second part of Icarus's article on lowering the barriers to entry!
http://optionalrealities.com/lowering-barriers-to-entry-part-two-of-two/Contribute to discussion on the merits of permanent player death, and ways to approach it!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=213.0We're still looking for participants for our community mafia game!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=214.0And would be happy to have more people involved in playing League of Legends, Cards Against Humanity, and other games with the community!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=210.0They do point out that modern computer games have tutorials, and this is something we in the Mush world have dropped entirely. Coding a tutorial is not unlike coding a puzzle, and that's not our focus anymore so we, perhaps lamentably, have forgotten that people need taught. Wikis are starting to pick up the slack, but I think it's just starting.
How do you feel about the potential of, say, contextualized story-based tutorials that are usually worked into the beginnings of games like those in the Elder Scrolls series, if you're familiar? I've never been a big fan of decontextualized tutorials or tutorials that are comprised of pauses, pop-ups, or walls of text. I guess it disrupts that immersive experience in the first few hours of play which is what really gets me hooked into a game. It would be neat to see something along the lines of tutorial background scenarios (kind of like Dragon Age Origins did) as a way to familiarize new players with MUD mechanics while still preserving a sense of story and continuity and immersion, or even having RP staff dedicated to playing out scenarios for new characters when they first get involved.
Unlike ... what ... Mushing/Mudding? If this isn't community gaming, we have seriously lost touch with the concept of "fun".
As in non-roleplay gaming. We have a fairly sizable group of people that play Cards Against Humanity, Boardgame Online, League of Legends, and possibly a few other things together.
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I'm asked to submit an article, I submit it, and I hear nothing back. Nothing.
To be honest, with what I submitted, I'm kind of disappointed in it, but @EmmahSue won't give me writer's tips. Maybe she has too much porn on her brain.
I don't have time to comment about the artciles now. Maybe soon.
@crayon said:
They do point out that modern computer games have tutorials, and this is something we in the Mush world have dropped entirely. Coding a tutorial is not unlike coding a puzzle, and that's not our focus anymore so we, perhaps lamentably, have forgotten that people need taught. Wikis are starting to pick up the slack, but I think it's just starting.
How do you feel about the potential of, say, contextualized story-based tutorials that are usually worked into the beginnings of games like those in the Elder Scrolls series, if you're familiar?
This doesn't help the Mush-style lack of puzzles, but yes, I was thinking something along those lines.
For Mushes, the quiz. We've been back and forth about The Quiz in the past eight years, because it can be stupidly done or intelligently done. The same can be said about more traditional video game tutorials, especially in the video game world. (Have you heard of Extra Credits? Have you watched it? If not, do so. Repeatedly.)
The Quiz, in my mind, is "do you get it?" Do you get the theme, the setting? Do you get that we think it's kind of serious? Do you get that this is based on a rules book that you should probably own, or at least have regular access to? Do You Get It?
I've never been a big fan of decontextualized tutorials or tutorials that are comprised of pauses, pop-ups, or walls of text. I guess it disrupts that immersive experience [...]
This describes my 30 Minutes of Mud Experience. So much was jarring, in my way, and while some people tried to be helpful others were harmful to easing me into it.
Unlike ... what ... Mushing/Mudding? If this isn't community gaming, we have seriously lost touch with the concept of "fun".
As in non-roleplay gaming.
I actually knew that. A lot of what I find wrong with Mu* gaming is that we have our cliquish language, and sometimes we forget that if we want to be inclusive, we have to sometimes realize that context is not universal.
It was obvious the second you read the article, too. So it was a slightly tongue-in-cheek reference to the above.
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Hey,
Yeah I dropped the ball on some of my correspondence last week, very painful headaches. I will get back to you in the next 24 hours. Sorry about that. I didn't read anything else you posted after that because as stated, terrible headaches.
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Read a new article on giving players the power to control regional expansion!
http://optionalrealities.com/building-an-elastic-game-world/Help us generate ideas for future contests and judging criteria!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=265.0
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=266.0View the results from July's Character Concept contest!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=262.0Offer opinions on the prospects of crowd-sourcing game design!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=200.0@Thenomain said:
The Quiz
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Quiz. I've been a big fan, ever since experiencing Twenty Questions in Shadowrun 2. It's great for fleshing out characters and really integrating them into a setting, but it can be done horribly, too.
@Thenomain said:
This describes my 30 Minutes of Mud Experience. So much was jarring, in my way, and while some people tried to be helpful others were harmful to easing me into it.
The newbie experience, and the decontextualized newbie schools, etc. have been something that's bothered me for years, so I'm relived (but I can't rightly say glad given the overuse of them) that I'm not the only one who's had issues. Do you have any examples, regardless of MUSH, MUD, or whatever, even in mainstream gaming, of a tutorial or character generation process or both that you found to be exceptionally immersive and contextual?
Did Jeshin ever get back to you?
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Backwards Day! The constructive stuff first.
@crayon said:
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Quiz. I've been a big fan, ever since experiencing Twenty Questions in Shadowrun 2. It's great for fleshing out characters and really integrating them into a setting, but it can be done horribly, too.
The Quiz I'm talking about is "do you understand this game?" On AetherMux, The Quiz was a simple 10 questions pulled from the first page of various racial, history, and society pages on the Wiki. (This is not entirely true; the game ran before Mediawiki existed, but it's essentially what it was.)
The person could ask for help on the newbie/help channels, skim the obvious page for the answer, or phone a friend. The concern wasn't whether or not they half-assed The Quiz, but that they were forced to visually see some key items of the game world, and were forced to be introduced to the rather simple information.
The newbie experience, and the decontextualized newbie schools, etc. have been something that's bothered me for years, so I'm relived (but I can't rightly say glad given the overuse of them) that I'm not the only one who's had issues. Do you have any examples, regardless of MUSH, MUD, or whatever, even in mainstream gaming, of a tutorial or character generation process or both that you found to be exceptionally immersive and contextual?
Oh this wasn't a Newbie School, this was what in the Mush world we would have called the info-rooms (used far more before we got The Wikis). Maybe that is a Newbie School. Jarring was: Unexplained information hitting my screen after every command. Jarring was: Clown barf ansi explosion. Jarring was: Being told I was stupid for asking why a newbie-unfriendly exit wasn't fixed when the fix was so simple that it wasn't worth the argument that took place.
Jarring was the same kinds of things that would be jarring on you if you, without any help or friends, went to a WoD Mux and logged in and were assailed by the differences and no language to help you along.
Okay, that was fun. Now for:
MYSTERY SCIENCE THENO 2015
@crayon said:
Read a new article on giving players the power to control regional expansion!
http://optionalrealities.com/building-an-elastic-game-world/In Normal People terms: Player-influenced economies of rarity across multiple in-game (physical) regions.
I found this to be full of high ideals, but basically saying, "Macro Economics: Code it!" Um ... what? Code ... just code a system of rarity across an entire game? One that can be tweaked if a region falls into disuse? I don't have my Masters in Business yet. And yet the biggest hurdle stated to this is: "fitting these sorts of systems into a game’s setting".
Let me tell you, fitting those sorts of systems into a game's setting is the easiest part of it. Even Serenity Mush managed to get that much right, even if they got every single other part of it wrong.
Resource rarity is so easy to code that board games have been getting it right since 19xx -- you know, I can't find when Power Grid was first developed, but it was developed by business majors.
Checking how Witcher 3 managed it, too, is a pretty good starting step.
I'm sorry, I really am, that I feel that "do this, but I can't explain how" is not worth the readers' time, unless Mudders really don't understand the concept of scarcity of goods, and if you think "scarcity of goods" is the driving factor for opening and closing RP Areas.
Maybe it would have served better as a discussion thread, and not a "what-to" article.
Help us generate ideas for future contests and judging criteria!
View the results from July's Character Concept contest!
Offer opinions on the prospects of crowd-sourcing game design!Excitement! More excitement! Look at the excitement of bureaucracy!
Re: Crowd-Sourcing Game Design:
You have read the other threads here, correct? More like a crowd-sourced anarchy, but sure, why not. -
Read Jeshin's article on creating an RPG economy!
http://optionalrealities.com/creating-an-rpg-economy/Contribute ideas for future contests and events!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=266.0Read the progress report on Project Redshift!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=272.0@thenomain said:
The Quiz I'm talking about is "do you understand this game?"
Oh, that's an interesting approach, but I don't see it working out so well, practically speaking.
@thenomain said:
I'm sorry, I really am, that I feel that "do this, but I can't explain how" is not worth the readers' time, unless Mudders really don't understand the concept of scarcity of goods, and if you think "scarcity of goods" is the driving factor for opening and closing RP Areas.
Elastic game design's a little bit bigger of a concept than simply implementing and balancing a system of rarity, though that's definitely a critical piece of making it a mechanical reality. In the specific context of MUSHes, though, it probably is about that simple in the overwhelming majority of cases, it definitely gets more complicated on MUDs where you're also working with automated combat, danger, and other mechanics that can make the overall 'economy' where it comes to game world expansion and contraction pretty complex.
@thenomain said:
Re: Crowd-Sourcing Game Design:
You have read the other threads here, correct? More like a crowd-sourced anarchy, but sure, why not.My thoughts run in a similar vein, but I'm all for seeing how the experiment pans out.
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One, two, buckle my shoe:
@thenomain said:
The Quiz I'm talking about is "do you understand this game?"
Oh, that's an interesting approach, but I don't see it working out so well, practically speaking.
Except that it has worked out very well, literally speaking, real-world experience speaking, in real, non-theoretical actuality.
Elastic game design's a little bit bigger of a concept
I still don't see the value in telling people what to do, without guidance as to how it can be accomplished. In a sense of practicality, what you're calling "elastic game design" appears very narrow and suggests to add depth and complexity to a system that people already don't understand. You don't help people understand. As an introduction for a long series or articles, I'm interested. As a standalone, I have similarly complex things to do already; why add yours to the mix?
Three, four, shut the door.
@crayon said:
Read Jeshin's article on creating an RPG economy!
http://optionalrealities.com/creating-an-rpg-economy/From the article:
So, let’s examine why traditonal RPGs do not have complicated economies.
Oh boy. You know, @Jeshin, that Baldur's Gate is not a "Traditional RPG", right? Let us argue this one small semantic briefly, and only briefly. It's a CRPG, and nowadays with Bioware's story-driven games (starting with the seminal KotOR) being wildly different than the isometric cRPG, the elder statesman. Until you talk about Wizardry and the original Elder Scrolls games and Bard's Tale and Wasteland, the truly traditional cRPG.
Okay, rant over. This article is worth reading. Information!
Contribute ideas for future contests and events!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=266.0Do our work for us! (Kidding. I know it's a community board.)
Read the progress report on Project Redshift!
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=272.0I do dislike the board creators exclusively pushing their vanity project over a "community" line. It ties into the "our Mud-centric views only if we agree to advertise you" that I'm bitching about in most of the beginning of this thread.
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Hey,
Been in kind of a funk. I concede to your traditional RPG comment. I probably should have phrased it as single-player RPGs. If you're really saying the article is worth reading (considering some of your other feedback on articles) than yeay I appreciate it.
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Belatedly, what I was saying was mostly that RPGs are also things you read in books and sit around a table with friends and play-act within a loose rule framework.
The Wizardy/Bard's Tale/Wasteland/Ultima set of games are fun and all, but are a different kind of RPGs, one I've commonly seen called 'cRPGs'. Computer RPGs. Are MMOs cRPGs? Well, that's an interesting question. Is Diablo 2 a cRPG? Is Ultima Online the only MMO to get "traditional RPG" right?
Is Yawhg a cRPG? An RPG? A multiplayer choose-your-own-adventure?
So many questions. I have no answers.
