Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.misc
From: Richard Bartle <76703.3042@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Popularity of text-based MUDS
Date: 24 Jun 1997 18:35:52 GMT

> people are not making a career, much less getting rich, out 
> of making text muds.

        You are mistaken. There are people out there making BIG money from
text adventure games. Look at the games on AOL, for example, and you'll
see 200+ paying customers in them all day long. Simutronics was taking over
a million dollars a MONTH in royalties from AOL earlier this year, despite
the switch to flat-rate charging. Smaller companies who have games like
Federation 2 and Terris still make a substantial amount - enough to employ
several programmers and then some. My own MUD1 has been on CompuServe for 10
years, during which time it must have made close to $5,000,000 (unfortunately,
CompuServe pay ultra-lousy royalties).
        Text adventures are the big secret of the on-line gaming industry.
People who make boxed games are used to having products which are state of
the art that push the boundaries of hardware and software capabilities. They
reject text games out of hand, because they're "dated". Those of us who do
make a living from text adventures are quite happy for this to remain the
case, and people who put up ill-conceived "graphical" MUDs are privately
praised, because that means other companies with only short-term experience
in the area will be put off from joining in.
        What is holding the industry back is, if anything, the proliferation of
free MUDs out there. Many are free "and worth every penny", but there are
some which are very, very good indeed. Companies like AOL and CompuServe LOVE
these, because instead of taking only 80-90% of the income that an
exclusive game would generate, they get to take 100%. The result is that
they are increasingly reluctant to take on new games. No matter how good your
text adventure is, you would have a very hard time getting it on AOL at the
moment. It's not impossible, just nearly impossible.
        It's vaguely ironic that people are bemoaning the fact that MUDs don't
have the same clout as books or movies, and therefore don't pay as well. The
reason they don't pay well is because so many good ones are free. If you could
walk to the local store and take out any video you wanted and view it for
free, you would, right? If anyone could do the same thing, then that would
rather undermine the video industry, wouldn't it? If wandering to a library
and taking out a book wasn't such a chore, and you could keep books once you
took them out, that would reduce the book industry to a bunch of people who
published out of charitable feelings rather than for business and profit.
        If MUDs are to become a proper industry, generating real amounts of
money, then the best ones have to charge. However, they won't charge. MUDs
are free, by tradition (a tradition which I, personally, started; I put the
concept into the public domain in 1985 precisely so that other people could
exploit it without fear of legal sanctions). People who are faced with the
prospect of paying for the MUD they have spent the last 3 or 4 years playing
for free will be very unhappy. I do not expect large numbers of the big-hitting
MUDs to go commercial. I do not, in fact, expect any of them to unless they
are already, although it's in the long-term interests of the genre for this
to happen.
        People can and do make money from MUDs. They don't care a great deal
if other people who run MUDs criticise them, because that means there are
fewer people wanting a share of their pie. The "it's immoral to charge for
MUDs" argument passes them by: OK, so it's immoral, so what? You be moral and
poor, we'll be immoral and rich.
        This has been a public service broadcast.

                Richard