Where the hell is everyone?

[Bobotron]

@Cirno
I have to wonder, knowing some people in that fandom RL, how much of that is RP, and how much of it is either:

• Just random talking about Ponies and Brony'ing out
  or
• Shangri-La with Ponies

I don't think MUing will ever truly die, but there's a paradigm shift that you're seeing that we must adapt to. There's this instant gratification, feed me the plot and story, only story that comes from STs matters, mindset that has permeated new MUers. And that's the problem, ad I don't know where or why that's become the norm.

Even in LJ RPs that I was part of, we'd just do stuff as play and (with ST permission) work major stuff into it (like the Harry Potter GreatestJournal RP I played Neville in, which let us decide how we dealt with the aftermath of the Battle of the Ministry and worked that in for other PCs who wouldn't be ICly aware of that). Maybe people just aren't as inspired to do non-staff-plot scens anymore.

[surreality]

@Cirno said:

I'd just like to also testify that I have also observed this paradigm shift in these games. I've been playing for about 10 years or so, with a recent very long break, which I am now trying to bring to an end, but I am also not really enjoying the new scene. I remember people walking around on the grids of games, doing stuff circa 2006 or thereabouts.

I enjoyed this, because it was more organic and felt more realistic - the spontaneity resembled life. You really became absorbed into your character. You were forced to improvise on very short notice. It was tremendously immersive.

I've seen this as well, and it's something I consider a sad change.

I can grok the reasoning for planning pivotal scenes and events, and real life makes that necessary enough. At the same time, those things were never what gave a character real depth to me, or created a sense of immersion. That was always the little shit, and the little shit was fun, and the little shit mattered. It rounded out the corners, it filled in the gaps, it created unexpected but later immensely impactful alliances and enmities, and dammit, I miss the fuck out of that.

[Luna]

Add me into the camp that misses the old randomness days. After I quit my log term Reach characters I tried to make new ones, there and elsewhere, even got them approved, but there are at least 2 that I never even did one scene with. Finding RP became a chore in and of itself. When I get on I largely am on to rp, but people treat the games like big chat rooms. I wandered off and haven't felt the drive to wander back.

With the holidays coming up I'm busy making treats that I won't and can't even eat and then forcing them on others.

EAT THESE COOKIES AND TELL ME HOW GOOD THEY ARE! It's the little things.

[Apos]

The lack of organic development of RP on grid by happenstance is the primary reason I decided to start creating a MU myself and it was shaped by my experiences on the Reach. After immediately coming from a game that had an awful lot of random RP that significantly shaped plot and started those fun RP chain reactions constantly of one small thing leading to dozens of other things that ultimately would be pivotal in character development.

The Reach was the first game I played that I saw people mention how much they hated social RP, and that really surprised me when I started. Then I came to the disappointing conclusion that what they REALLY meant was, 'I hate RP that won't go anywhere', and that social RP was code for that. It was the first time I played where social RP was largely without consequence, and I just wasn't used to sandboxes doing that.

I firmly believe that insular sandboxes are largely a result of RP social interaction being mostly consequence free, which is incredibly stifling to meaningful spontaneity. Not everyone would think of that as a flaw, but I don't enjoy it, and I think it's actually not that hard to design in a way that counteracts it (after all, I came from a game that months before was exactly that style where the Reach was night and day different).

[Arkandel]

I believe most of the phenomena and paradigms above can be broken down to the fact we're losing more players than we're getting. Roleplay in MU* unlike what we find on table-top is largely dependent on - usually a small minority of - players who are able to create, as opposed to carrying on and expanding, plot threads which can then be picked up by others.

For each such person who burns out, has been caught up by real life or simply moved on it's increasingly difficult to replace them simply because one of the main factors in being able to do what such flagship players do is experience; so as the number of folks who've been playing for years and have the ability to do so diminishes newer ones with the potential and talent to replace them never find the same circumstances and opportunities which existed, say, in the late nineties or early 2000's.

There's a chance we're on a slow downward spiral. Another way to see it though is that we're going through a slum until the paradigm changes to allow for our hobby's resurgence.

[Apos]

@Arkandel I believe you're correct, and because of that I think new games absolutely must be accessible to players that have never MU'd before. For me, and what I've been working on, that partially means that I don't think I can require players to have access to any materials outside of the game at all. I just don't think I can expect players to know a game system, no matter how popular, and attract anyone that's not already MU'ing unless they have hardcore MU friends that try to sell them on it. WoD is popular and great, but there's tens of thousands of younger roleplayers out there that have literally never heard of it, and for the majority of them there's no way on earth they will go through the trouble of buying a book or ripping off PDFs to play a retro text game that already feels like a throwback without graphics.

When one MU I was on closed and I went to the Reach, I had a surprisingly difficult time convincing other mush players not familiar with WoD to try it... and these were players that had been MUSHing for years, much longer than me. It's not a dislike of genre, it's the -work- involved that is a perceived barrier for entry.

So for the game I'm creating I'm going with fully automated coded systems for basically anything that would require someone to do the equivalent of consulting a rulebook. I frankly feel like I have no other choice.

[Coin]

@Apos said:

@Arkandel I believe you're correct, and because of that I think new games absolutely must be accessible to players that have never MU'd before. For me, and what I've been working on, that partially means that I don't think I can require players to have access to any materials outside of the game at all. I just don't think I can expect players to know a game system, no matter how popular, and attract anyone that's not already MU'ing unless they have hardcore MU friends that try to sell them on it. WoD is popular and great, but there's tens of thousands of younger roleplayers out there that have literally never heard of it, and for the majority of them there's no way on earth they will go through the trouble of buying a book or ripping off PDFs to play a retro text game that already feels like a throwback without graphics.

When one MU I was on closed and I went to the Reach, I had a surprisingly difficult time convincing other mush players not familiar with WoD to try it... and these were players that had been MUSHing for years, much longer than me. It's not a dislike of genre, it's the -work- involved that is a perceived barrier for entry.

So for the game I'm creating I'm going with fully automated coded systems for basically anything that would require someone to do the equivalent of consulting a rulebook. I frankly feel like I have no other choice.

What kind of game are you working on?

[Apos]

@Coin Original theme and setting medieval low-fantasy game kind of in the spirit of game of thrones style political intrigue. Probably be a month or two on launch, was hoping to have it out by new year's but don't think the economic systems and war game type systems for moving armies around will be done by then.

[surreality]

@Apos said:

Probably be a month or two on launch, was hoping to have it out by new year's but don't think the economic systems and war game type systems for moving armies around will be done by then.

I feel you on this. I was aiming for the same and then the reality hit that if I kept up the pace I was at, with the amount of stuff I wanted in place... burnout would occur before the place even had a chance to exist. This was good to realize, and you get a thumbs-up for favoring 'done right' over 'done right now'.

[Ganymede]

@surreality said:

I feel you on this. I was aiming for the same and then the reality hit that if I kept up the pace I was at, with the amount of stuff I wanted in place... burnout would occur before the place even had a chance to exist. This was good to realize, and you get a thumbs-up for favoring 'done right' over 'done right now'.

I interject only to say that I think we, as a group, do not encourage interesting or novel game possibilities as much as we grouse about them.

Case in point: me. I was about to post something about how ambitious and potentially difficult @Apos's undertaking would be, but I stopped myself. Because maybe he/she will do it well, and I'm just a bitchy nay-sayer.

I'm really trying to not be a bitchy nay-sayer these days, but then @Thenomain opens his mouth, and I'm all, like, fuck that guy.

[Apos]

@surreality Yeah, and I also kind of figure that when the game comes up I'll be too busy GMing or dealing with players to go back and revise systems easily- particularly if anything I change while it's live impacts players, then they'd get all pissed off and potentially feel cheated if something they got accustomed to changed.

@Ganymede And that's very kind of you, and I honestly would not have held it against you if you did nay-say it. Most big ambitious MU projects never launch, or settle for much less or have catastrophic problems due to their ambitions. You don't know me at all to say why mine would be any different, and I'm expecting to deal with a lot of doubt and negativity- I'd read it all and make sure there's nothing I'm missing in terms of a reality check.

That said, a major project I ran for fun lasted twelve years or so and I was overseeing hundreds of gamers, and my shortest project I controlled went about three years, so I'm a long-haul kind of person and I think I can handle it. For this MU I'm working on I spent NaNoWriMo just writing lore/story for it in game, and I ran a python script at the end for a word count, was around a hundred thousand from November. Seemed kind of in the spirit of the project, anyways.

[surreality]

I think these really are good points -- it's easy to think missing an intended deadline is the end of the world. I'm still struggling with that mentality. (I admit it, I struggle with a perfectionism fixation and workaholic craziness as well, and this is really the battle between all the various brain-wonks, it's just that the beneficial ones won out this round. )

The reasoning @Apos mentions is pretty critical: assuming there will be time to catch up later is begging for problems. Invariably, the stuff you left for later that didn't seem mission critical is going to be someone's intensive focus the first week out of the gate -- maybe it's Murphy's Law, maybe it's people looking for less common niches to fill at the start -- but so help me, I think it's inevitable. It's one of the lessons I learned hard on Reno, actually; it proved out pretty consistently.

It's relatively easy to make a game.

It's not easy to make a good game, and that's already taking into account the fact that one man's passion is another's poison.

If it's going to take time -- and really, it tends to -- it needs to be allowed that time to develop into all it can be.

There's this weird tendency for people to naysay about this particularly -- the whole "ha ha it's taking longer than planned to finish everything it's a turkey!" crap -- that, to me, misses the point by a mile. The only failure there is predicting how long a notoriously unpredictable process is going to take, but people interpret it to mean a dozen other things it often doesn't. ("There must be drama causing this!" ...not really, could just be the holidays making people busy, man. "They don't know what they're doing!" ...or they do, and know it's going to take more work than originally predicted. "Nobody is interested in doing anything!" ...or maybe their job just dialed up their hours to eleven and all the give-a-shit in the world isn't going to add more hours to the day, etc.)

So thumbs up to @Ganymede on not going down that road; she's right, it's got way too many potholes.

[Apos]

@surreality I think you captured the amount of negativity and pessimism that sets up people for failure, where they are afraid of how delays look and lets it bait them into trading short term solutions that really box them in later. I think you really nailed how much very subtle pressure can get to creators.

I definitely could have launched 6 months ago if I did a standard MU install, plugged in a ton of available soft code and then was willing to just abstract GM a ton of things. But I really worry that saying, 'Well I can just GM that or do that by hand' is a huge trap if you know something could be automated and not have to become a +job every time. Sure, a bunch of things can't and shouldn't be, like stories, but I do think a lot of staff burn out from work that might have been preventable by earlier structure that never really got put in place.

[Thenomain]

@Ganymede said:

I'm really trying to not be a bitchy nay-sayer these days, but then @Thenomain opens his mouth, and I'm all, like, fuck that guy.

Because I've become the reasonable voice.

... I miss Brus so much.

[mietze]

I think a lot of places have had pressure to open early/prior to being truly ready because they are afraid of losing people being super excited, and there's the stir of having a bunch of logins of people waiting and constantly asking when things are going to open. Though I also think that people open things up to "hang out time" prior to a MUSH opening these days way way waaaaaaaaay too early. It is on players logging in to bother to pay attention when a developer says "We won't be open for 4 months, ect." but also I think you can't fight human nature towards antsiness when they've got a concept.

Though I dunno. Maybe this comes with the territory of the entitlement/immediate gratification stuff that's been discussed across multiple threads now? Not sure.

At any rate, I really respect and applaud teams that do not open "early" due to login pressure. I'd rather a game open late with all parts of the team ready than to open early or on time with one or more staff teams/other stuff not ready.

[Sunny]

Yeah, I know with my place we set a first of the year opening, but I was way, way too ambitious. I have to both adjust opening date, and dial down what all I wanted to get done before opening if I ever want to get the project off the ground.

[Tanyuu]

Yeah, I'm helping get an old(ish) MU* ready for another go, and while the theme's not WoD and something we could get new people into, it's just hard finding communities to chat and advertise on newer RP forums or sites like Tumblr. The communities and blogs I've run across don't allow for any ads MUSH/MUX/etc based, but perhaps when I get more time I'll just directly ask them.

Granted, that's how I found this place: by screaming at google at wildly pointing at the word I typed in and asking it to not give me results for mushrooms.

[Cirno]

@Bobotron said:

@Cirno
I have to wonder, knowing some people in that fandom RL, how much of that is RP, and how much of it is either:

• Just random talking about Ponies and Brony'ing out
  or
• Shangri-La with Ponies

Shangrila already has sexy pony girls and boys doing Teh Clop, as bronies call TSing.

I love how each successive generation of mushers has stupid names for TS.

The people from World of Warcraft (mid-2000s) called it ERP.

The bronies (current era, 2010s) call it Clopping.

But I suppose there can never be enough Clop.

There are vampires and werewolves in MLP. I've been saying that Theno and the Band need to get back together and do a MLP-WOD MU*.

It would easily break 100+ players and be a throwback to the glory days of Dark Metal and the other really big WoD games of yore.

[Arkandel]

When I was playing on a MUD it was simply called mudsex.

Which makes way more sex than the hilariously named "tinysex", I mean... come on!

[Coin]

@Arkandel said:

When I was playing on a MUD it was simply called mudsex.

Which makes way more sex than the hilariously named "tinysex", I mean... come on!

Yes. It makes tons of sex.