I don't keep a personal weblog at the moment, but I am involved in a few.

http://mudreading.com is a site I started for MUD articles on a variety of topics.

http://zalanthas.org/blogs/brideofson is a blog for the development of the next iteration of ArmageddonMUD 

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreading/~3/174652096/shneidermans

Part 3 of a discussion on MUD UI design. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

Permit easy reversal of actions.

The goal here is to make the player feel safe when they try something when they’re not sure what will happen. Consequences may be to them as a player, or to their character.

For actions taken by a character, such as attacking, moving, and emoting, reverting to the state that the character was at before the action is not always possible. However, every action should have an action that undoes it. Its easy to see that “drop” isn’t complete unless there is also a “get.”

Sometimes there will be a complication that prevents the player from undoing these kinds of commands. Usually the “north” command is undo-able by “south.” However, if “north” takes you over the edge of a cliff and plunging to your death, its already too late. The solution? Make players aware of situations that cannot be undone. You might want to prompt them for confirmation when trying to walk over a cliff, since if they don’t really mean it, they’re stuck. If you do this, players will feel more safe when issuing movement commands, something that there should not be much anxiety surrounding.

Some things are easier to reverse because they have more to do with configuration on the player’s side than anything else. Changing your description or your prompt might fall into this category. Here an actual “undo” command might actually be useful. It would have to be clear when “undo” will and will not work, but it may be better than having to find out what your description was before you accidentally changed it. Having a way to reset things like prompts to their default state might also be useful for players who want to fiddle with it but feel confident that they won’t permanently break it.

Support internal locus of control.

This one sounds a bit weird at first. What this basically means is that the player should feel in charge. It should seem like their experience is them making commands and the game responding to them. MUDs are designed this way by their very nature. Player types a command, then they get a response.

There are a few things that can make a player feel like they are not in control, though. One of them is spam. If the player is getting so many messages that they can’t keep up, it feels like they can’t make good decisions due to lack of complete information. This may not even be true: the player may still be able to make the right decision all the time, but if there are unknowns they won’t necessarily feel that way.

Cutting down on spam is simple enough. If combat sends too many messages, cut out some of the unnecessary ones. Keep messages that are sent a lot short and sweet, or at least easily digestible with scanning rather than a full reading. If the player sees the message “Your head starts to feel lighter as your lungs ache with need for oxygen, you are starting to drown!” that does wonderfully make a point, but that is not the kind of message to repeat over and over. If this happens every 5 seconds, make a shorter version for that.

Inability to determine important information can also make a player feel out of control. Sometimes this is a great technique to build suspense deliberately. For example, a player should probably not know if they can successfully steal from someone. They should know if they can wield some weapon before they try to buy it, though.

Reduce short-term memory load.

And here is the last one! Make sure players don’t have to remember a lot of stuff at once. There has been some good research in this area. A general consensus is that people can generally remember 5 to 9 items (words, numbers, etc.) at a time.

What does this mean for a MUD? Most MUDs don’t overload you on numbers, or at least not ones that you need to have in your head at any given moment. What they can overload you on, though, is activity. A room with 15 conversations going on at once can be a little overwhelming. If this is happening in your taverns, give them some extra rooms for people to spread out. There may be areas where players are feeling information overload, so keep an eye out for them.

Alright, thats it for now! I hope you enjoyed this series. Feedback welcome in comments, especially as I decide what to work write about next.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreadingcomments/~3/177132044/why-

Why MUD? There's No Grafixz!!

Great. I love the passion involved in this piece, as I myself am a frequent fan of the RPI MUD community and can really relate to what you are saying. Excellence!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreading/~3/177365143/the-money-qu

Most MUD administrators and staff members, much like most MUD players, delve into the world of text-based gaming as a hobby. In between the long hours of work, marriage, school, and other pursuits, time is made to commit text to screens and lines of code to windows to bring the visions of a coder or builder to life. Numerous publicly available sources of code and libraries are ripe for the browsing, allowing nearly any individual with a modicum of computer programming skill, and sufficient space and bandwidth on a server, to open a “stock” MUD in the time it takes most people to cook dinner. Those that choose to create a wholly original MUD normally do so as a labor of love, hoping to create an enjoyable experience that surpasses the slew of games most MUD players have seen before.

Many long-time MUD players approach each MUD with a certain discriminating taste. After all, some MUDs are just plain better than others. And some MUDs are just plain different, offering differing combinations of immersive role-playing, competitive and/or cooperative player killing, vast expanses for exploration and challenges, a detailed and intricate system of customized character building and advancement, a multi-tiered system of item-creation or room-building, and other imaginative features. If a MUD fails to present what a player desires, the player can easily choose from any of the hundreds of other available MUDs to find a selection suited to one’s personal taste.

Players are important. Without an active player-base, a MUD is just a D. Many players know this well, and understand that their presence on a MUD, and their dedicated time and effort, furthers and gratifies the efforts of those who have given their time to create the MUD. When a MUD administrator creates a MUD, as a hobby and a labor of love, using whatever spare time life presents, there is no greater reward than a dedicated player-base that truly enjoys the creation.

Quality is driven by incentive, though, and it is no secret that players have options, and a limited number of hours to devote to games. In response to the slew of existing hobbyist MUDs, or perhaps in spite of them, some MUDs, boasting quality staff members, quality players, and a quality product, have embraced capitalism and begun to seek money from their player-base.

Some MUDs have adopted the style of popular on-line MMORPGs, and charge a monthly or periodic access fee, a.k.a. “pay-to-play MUDs.” (For example, see Gemstone IV.) These fees are used to defer the costs of operating the MUD, such as server expenses, and are sometimes used to employ professional staff members, who can then devote an honest day’s work to creating code and content, running events for the player-base, and performing other similar services. Pay-to-play MUDs also foster player-bases that are active and serious about the quality of the MUD. It is human nature for a player to dedicate time and effort to something once hard-earned money has been invested.

Conversely, however, the player-base of a pay-to-play MUD can also come with its own breed of problems and expectations. A paying player is not just a player, but a customer, who rightfully expects to receive a quality product in exchange for financial remuneration. Otherwise, that financial remuneration can be taken elsewhere. Of course, once a paying player has spent time, effort, and non-refundable money to become established within a MUD, that player is invested, causing the choice of walking away to be a very difficult one, as the loss of that time, effort, and money must then be justified when there is nothing tangible to be gained or retained, only memories and past entertainment.

A more popular, and arguably more successful business model, involves optional contributions in exchange for benefits or rewards dispensed to one or more characters of the donor, commonly known as a “pay-for-perks MUD.” In a pay-for-perks MUD, the players who choose to contribute effectively pay the way for the players who do not, but in turn receive benefits over a non-contributing player. The most renowned of such MUDs are owned and operated by Iron Realms Entertainment, however other variations on the pay-for-perks theme also dot the MUD community.

For example, some MUDs accept payments in exchange for special benefits, privileges, items, accessible areas, or other tokens of gratitude that cannot be acquired in any other fashion. (See Threshold RPG, which provides access to special areas, unique items, special commands, and other unique features in exchange for donations.)

Other MUDs accept payments in exchange for benefits that could be acquired through normal game play, but where such benefits would require time and effort bordering on insanity to realistically obtain, with the expectation that any serious player who wishes to excel or become competitive with other serious players will eventually contribute some amount of money. (See the Iron Realms Entertainment MUDs, referenced above, which provide a special currency in exchange for donations that can be spent on rare or unique items, or to hasten the otherwise impossibly time-consuming advancement of a character’s abilities.)

Others accept donations to defer expenses in exchange for benefits that are readily obtained through game play, but can enhance convenience for the donor when rewarded. (See Dark and Shattered Lands, where donations can be exchanged for basic types of character advancement that can normally be acquired simply through spending time logged in.)

Some MUDs reject all forms of financial compensation, believing that the true essence of the MUD community is that of computer hobbyists coming together to share experiences, as a community, and play an immersive game unaffected by the real world. (See New Worlds RPG, where donations are not solicited or accepted.)

A decade ago, there was an unspoken rule among most players that MUDs should be free from the encumbrances of money, and that only an idiot would pay to play a MUD when there were so many free alternatives. Today, after the noted success of numerous money-oriented MUDs, many players have reevaluated this preconception. Do MUDs with disposable income to burn provide a higher quality product than dedicated hobbyist MUDs? Do players take a business-oriented MUD more seriously than the sweat and labors of an administrator’s spare time? Or is the money question an irrelevant question, while players, as always, simply seek out MUDs that provide the combinations of features that meet their discriminating tastes?

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreadingcomments/~3/177375619/the-

The Money Question

I had never given much thought to the different kinds of pay-for-perks before, but its interesting. To me, paying to avoid time-consuming processes would be just as valuable, or even more valuable, than, say, a special item. From the admin’s perspective this may be easier to manage and balance.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreadingcomments/~3/177522947/the-

The Money Question

“Some MUDs have adopted the style of popular on-line MMORPGs, and charge a monthly or periodic access fee, a.k.a. “pay-to-play MUDs”

Actually this is the other way around as Gemstone was around before any of the MMORPGs.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreadingcomments/~3/177852621/the-

The Money Question

Yeah, Gemstone has been around for a long time. I probably got caught up in my own flowerly language and thought it sounded better with the carriage in front of the horse, without recognizing where I stuck that pesky carriage.