Tinytalk Episode 005: MUSH Community

First and foremost, I really enjoy the tinytalk podcasts. I'd encourage you to cross-advertise the availability of new episodes to other sites, such as Electric Soup. It'd help to remind some of us who fail to visit sufficiently often to the community site at pennmush.org.

I am encouraged to see that others believe a community is the heart of this niche. That community was very well established during the early 1990's. The initial generation of discovery, development, and excitement moved into a well established system. Key charismatic individuals who once were promininent in the community moved onto other things. Others, obviously, moved into the gaps left by their departure but few possessed the communal focus.

I believe it was completely unintentional. Many individuals rose to the challenge of the tasks at hand but were very specialized in their contributions. Many imporant contributions were made in the arena of server stability and coding. The community as a whole deteriorated as resources once maintained by the initial generation quietly faded or disappeared entirely.

Concurrently with the disappearance of those resources, the internet came into its own. The ability of the masses to run new games was born and it was cheap, if not free. Anyone could easily host or find a 2nd party to host a game. This third generation filled the landscape of text based game with new games and new ideas. They leveraged heavily on the resources that were fading from the 1st and 2nd generations of the community.

Somewhere in the midst of the technology boom, a mindset developed dubbing anything older than a few months as moot. Many technologies were changing rapidly making that reasonable in most areas. MUSH certainly isn't one of those areas. The bulk of the resources available a decade ago are still usable directly or as a starting point for learning. Sadly, most of them are gone.

It is unlikely that the community will return to the days when complex systems were published for public use. Yet, I must ask how many people continue to utilize systems such as Myrrdin's bulletin board system or even more modern, Anomaly's +jobs (now maintained by Grey)? Many of us worked off Brandy's mailer prior to the incusion of mail systems in the servers.

Code was a minor portion of my community site. The commentary I was given was that it was dated and not useful. I agree on the former, but not the latter. Thankfully, CMS and wiki systems have replaced the by hand technologies available to maintain public information. Many of the sites mentioned over the last few podcasts could use contributions...on all levels of expertise.

I highly encourage the resurgence of the community. I encourage all your listeners to take a few minutes to give back to the community rather than be purely consumers. The exchange of even a minute detail provides the stepping stone for the next person behind you.

-Mark

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime” - Author Unknown

Why MUSH won't die

There's a perennial discussion among MUSH designers about the future of MUSH. Presentations at the more-or-less annual Innovations in Text-Based Gaming conference by Vexon and Shayd in 2000 and 2002, respectively, focused on the role of text games as graphical muds were just coming onto the scene in a big way.

Neal Stephenson, in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snowcrash posits a visually immersive metaverse, but points out that what makes The Black Sun nightclub there so popular are the algorithms for facial expressions. Shayd made a similar point in 2002:
"In a graphical game, emotes frankly look stupid, and you can never do a sequence of actions that are fluid, that touch the imagination and creativity."
Back then, graphical worlds were clearly hack-and-slash games, though. Now we have places like Second Life, where users can design their own animations and there's a lot of active work going on in the area of facial expressions. It's still not as easy – for me at least – as the written word, but the payoff is access to the parts of the brain that are specialized for recognition of faces and facial emotion.
In relative terms, graphical games have a lot more players than textual games. But in absolute terms, text-based gaming doesn't appear to be on a decline. Skotos Tech seems to be alive and well and even making money from people willing to pay for text-based gaming – maybe we can get someone from over there on the show one of these days. So what's special about text-based gaming – why do those who like it like it?

At core, I think there are two things that drive our niche: love of words and closeness of community.

As Vexon said, "MU*s to graphical games is like books to television." Nowadays, we might say "as blogs are to youtube." There's something to that for many of us. I'd rather read a book than watch tv, and unless the illustrations are integral to the story, as in graphic novels, I'd rather not be forced to have the characters or settings visually interpreted for me. I like language, and I like to read good writing. Sure, most mushers are not professional writers, but I think many mush RPers have experienced a moment where they read a line from the screen or a log and shiver with its emotional resonance.

Closeness of community is a natural outgrowth of living in a niche on the margins of popular entertainment. It's certainly not unique to MUSHing, but I think it contributes to what we like about it. People who keep playing MUSHes find each other, and their shared enjoyment with a relatively unpopular medium provides common culture and maybe even some geek cachet.

A recent presentation by Bill MacKenty, who was a guest on this podcast in Episode 003, was advertised in part by the statement "I do not think standard pose-based roleplay has a bright future." As a result of Bill Mackenty's presentation, a collection of suggestions for how to grow text-based gaming was put forward. Some of it focused on increasing visibility to new players, but with the recognition that we're growing a niche, not taking over the market – text-based gaming is not going to be for everyone. Many of these suggestions focus on orienting MUSH players to the community nature of our activities, and encouraging active engagement with that larger community.

That's why MUSH won't die.

Interview with Sally from ElectricSoup

(interview not transcribed)

Visit to 8bit MUSH, part 1

For this episode's visit to a MUSH, I visited 8bit MUSH at 8bit.memoryleak.org 4201. As usual in these visits, I'm going to focus on the unique and innovative, and there's a lot to say, so I'm going to make this a two-parter. For this part, I'll take a look at the 8bit economy.

It's not too unusual for a roleplaying MUSH to have an in-character economy. What you've got with 8bit, however, is a social mush that's successfully implemented a working economy based in standard mush coins. Let's look at what it takes to make this work.

First, you need a reason to want money. Many people come to 8bit because they want to build fun objects and areas, and that takes money, so that's one reason. Many of those cool toys they build are for sale in the game, so that's another reason to want money. Money is also prestige for some players, and 8bit's web site supports that by providing a list of the richest characters. Finally, there's a system of hunger and thirst that acts as an economic sink.

Next, you need some scarcity. If everyone gets infinite money or gives everything away, there's no real economy. This means limiting the money supply, and 8bit does that by being fairly strict about daily player paychecks. You get 'em, but they're not large. In addition, it imposes a periodic tax on inactive players.

So, of course, you need some ways to make money, and here 8bit really scores. Their economy really motivates a variety of activities and styles of play. Before I give examples, I want to allude to Richard Bartle's well-known classification of mud players as killers, achievers, explorers, and socializers. Actually, it's much more nuanced than that now, but the simple classification will serve to illustrate what I mean. There are several stables balances of these different types of players, and 8bit's economy provides rewards to each type. One way to earn money is simply by finding coins that are scattered throughout the landscape – encouraging explorers. Another way is to solve puzzles and quests that provide rewards – encouraging achievers. Another way is to build areas that players like, to teach classes, or to publish in the MUSH newspaper, which pays based on circulation – these encourage socializers. Finally, different versions of the killer class are encouraged through a working system of companies and a stock market, as well as options for players to become rogues or criminals.

In short, the 8bit economy is deep and well-balanced. Check it out.