
Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs (1996) - kens
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm
======
novum
It may surprise some HNers to learn that there are still thousands of MUDs
online today in many different settings: fantasy, sci-fi, absurdist, and more,
some of them with hundreds of players on concurrently. And not just MUDs, but
MUCKs, MOOs, and MUSHes, which can have wildly different playing styles.

I played WoW for years and I'm not sure it ever matched the depth of
experience I've somehow extracted from lines of scrolling text. MUDs will be
around long after the last gnome leaves Ironforge.

MUDs are also the subject of my first indie iOS app - MUDRammer, a Modern MUD
Client for iPhone and iPad. I'm hoping to build a client that's helpful for
new mudders but powerful enough for the mudding veteran on the go.

Behold, a free copy! <http://tokn.co/s4g2u64j>

EDIT: Someone here has super fast fingers :) Here's one more:
<http://tokn.co/gxrswk67>

~~~
martindale
We've been building a modern MUD platform over at
[RolePlayGateway](<http://www.roleplaygateway.com>) for the past eight years
and now have a sustained 5% _per month_ growth curve. The core market is
there, and there's continuing hunger for what MUDs provide, even among teens
and young adults today -- a majority of our users are teenagers and college
students.

~~~
krakensden
Easy community? I used to play MUDs as a teenager, but I don't really remember
why.

------
Lewisham
FWIW, this has been heartily debunked by more modern research by Nick Yee,
which is easily summed up as "Just because you like pizza, doesn't mean you
don't like ice cream." People move into different modes at different times,
and are not mutually exclusive as the Bartle model.

Here's a copy of the paper:
<http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/pdf/3-2.pdf>

~~~
e12e
Interesting counter-point. But I don't think the two papers really attempt to
describe/model the same reality - the world(s) of MUD is not quite the same as
the modern world(s) of MMORPGS.

I've always seen Bartle's paper more as a guide for (MUD) game/world designers
-- and I find the simplification of boxing player types is a useful model for
that. By his own admission it isn't meant to be an academic paper -- and
seeing more academic research is this area is welcome.

~~~
rjsw
Bartle's paper matches up with my memory of playing the original MUD, though
it was rather a long time ago.

~~~
saraid216
Bartle explicitly states that the types are derived from the observation of
MUD forum participants, rather than being a larger survey: even Yee's surveys
have a better sampling since the data comes from a website catering to
multiple games.

------
georgemcbay
I played a lot of MUDs back around the time this was written. I was also the
original programmer for a MUD called Exodus MUD, which I had almost nothing to
do with after the late 90s but was still up and running as recently as 2010 or
so. Seems to be gone now though :(

There's like this whole crazy history of this MUD that I'm only vaguely
familiar with beyond the first couple of years:

[http://web.archive.org/web/19980122051559/http://www.mischie...](http://web.archive.org/web/19980122051559/http://www.mischief.com/)

<https://sites.google.com/site/exoduspages/>

<http://exodusinfo.tripod.com/>

<http://www.topmudsites.com/forums/mudinfo-exodusmud.html>

I used to log in there with my old "IMM" account every few years to see if the
account still worked (it always did) and to see how confused the current
"IMMs" would be by some guy they probably never heard of (unless they were
touching the code) popping on with IMM status.

------
kens
I've thought about how well the categories from this article map onto Hacker
News. A lot of HN users could be "Socializers". "Achievers" would obviously be
those trying to maximize their karma score. "Explorers" would be people
reading HN to learn stuff and share knowledge. Out-and-out "Killers" are
fairly rare on HN since they usually end up marked [dead] (coincidence?), but
this category could also include heavy downvoters and people who sidetrack
everything into arguments.

It's interesting to consider how the design of HN influences these four
categories. The scoring of HN allows "Achievers" but rewards "Socializers"
(since to first approximation the more you post and the better known your are
the higher your karma), and heavily punish "Killers". HN discussions somewhat
penalizes "Explorers" since even the most knowledgeable responses disappear
into the void of old threads after a couple days. Removing visible karma
scores from comments was a blow to "Achievers" but made "Socializers" happier.

Thanks to derefr for mentioning this article yesterday.

------
adefa
Used to play Gemstone from Simutronics in the late 90s, great game and a very
large user base at its height: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GemStone_IV>

It's still around. :)

~~~
bdr
DragonRealms here. I spent more hours on that game than any since. Scripting
ZMud was a strong early motivation to learn programming.

~~~
StavrosK
I used MUSHclient, which you can script with Python, Lua, JScript, VBscript,
etc. It's how I started learning Python.

------
saraid216
Reposting my comment from the other thread:

Bartle actually expands on this paradigm in the book Designing Virtual Worlds,
where he introduces another axis for the four types (bringing it to eight) and
also specifies two progressions between the types as players grow.

[http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Virtual-Worlds-Richard-
Bartl...](http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Virtual-Worlds-Richard-
Bartle/dp/0131018167/)

------
thret
"Are MUDs sports? Like huntin', shootin', fishin'?"

What a peculiar list.

~~~
rjsw
It is the canonical list of sports.

------
uts_
I wasted way too much time over at Discworld MUD, also one I I used to play
called Realms of the Dragon just shut down today after 21 years (RIP).

~~~
ghotli
Wow I played realms of the dragon for many years as a kid. Looked it back up a
few years ago an enjoyed some romps around the territory. It's a sad pang of
nostalgia to see that it's gone.

------
shmerl
Interesting paper. It pretty much applies to MMORPGs as well, them being the
natural evolution of MUDs.

------
b0rsuk
In modern MMORPGs, PvP is often disabled and Exploers are replaced by a wiki.

~~~
yasth
Eh who writes that wiki? Generally there are still groups of explorers they
are just now called theorycrafters. They are the ones who figure out that if
you get an eye of Dalmatia and a sword of truth you have no attack delay or
whatever.

Because there are no real permanent consequences in most MMOs it has become
mostly a matter of optimizing for speed.

~~~
b0rsuk
Mostly explorers, but my point is that explorers are no longer valued by other
players.

------
Aardwolf
From the article:

    
    
      > To increase the number of explorers:
      >    increase the number of explorers.
    

Thank you, that's helpful...

------
jmboling
I really wish the links to his sources weren't dead.

~~~
jacobolus
Many of them are either still around (try using http instead of ftp, e.g.
<http://ftp.lambda.moo.mud.org/pub/MOO/papers/ethnography.txt>), or available
on the Wayback Machine (e.g.
[http://web.archive.org/web/19970509140131/http://www.actlab....](http://web.archive.org/web/19970509140131/http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~smack/papers/TechHier.txt))

~~~
jmboling
Thanks!

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L0j1k
Somehow, the MUD I grew up playing (MUME -- Multi Users in Middle Earth) is
still alive and has a good amount of players. The game itself has served as
inspiration for other worthy games (Ultima Online for example) and the PvP
aspect is second to none. It is also an enormous world, covering Middle Earth
from the dwarf fortresses of the Blue Mountains all the way east to the Misty
Mountains, Lorien, and Fangorn.

www (dot) mume (dot) org

~~~
moreoutput
I don't think its that surprising to find active communities on MUDs. AVATAR,
Discworld, Aardwolf, and BatMUD regularly sport 50-100+ players. I've been
playing MUDs for over a decade now and there is something to them I still
can't quite explain. The abstraction provided by text allows for some unique
gaming experiences -- I also believe there is something to be said for the
smaller communities that build up around the games.

I am currently writing a WebSockets (nodejs, socket.io) engine (a present to
my sixteen year old self), you can have a look here:
<https://github.com/MoreOutput/RockMUD>. It aims to increase the
'functionality' of a MUD by taking advantage of the browser.

MUME is a great MUD!

~~~
L0j1k
I'm glad to hear you enjoy MUME! If you didn't know, there is a huge OOC
community called ElvenRunes (elvenrunes.com) that is where a huge number of us
congregate outside the game. I've been playing MUME since '95, and I went to a
MUME-meet in Stockholm in 2009 where I met my wife at a traditional Swedish
dance class. You're absolutely right about that special "je ne sais quoi" that
MUDs have. And it's definitely something that extends beyond simple nostalgia.

I'll be a lifer when it comes to MUDs (though damn it all to hell if things
like Eve Online and Skyrim don't carve out a lot of my self-rationed game
time). Perhaps on that subject, I should mention that (for me) MUDs are great
for keeping open if I'm spending a lot of time compiling.

I will _definitely_ take a look at your MUD engine. Thanks for the link! :)

