June 2002
- In defense of "soloability" ceo@grexengine.com
- In defense of "soloability" Coyote
- Article: Furniture Whores and Debit Card Toilets J C Lawrence
- Multithreaded sockets Draymoor a Vin il'Rogina
- Multithreaded sockets Sean Kelly
- Multithreaded sockets szii@sziisoft.com
- Multithreaded sockets Bruce Mitchener
- Multithreaded sockets Dave Richards
- Multithreaded sockets shren
- Fwd: programming books Thomas Leavitt
- ADMIN: MIME and this list J C Lawrence
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality Sasha Hart
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality szii@sziisoft.com
- Striving for originality shren
- Striving for originality John Buehler
- Striving for originality John Bertoglio
- Striving for originality Edward Glowacki
- Striving for originality John Bertoglio
- Striving for originality Kwon Ekstrom
- Striving for originality Damion Schubert
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality John A. Bertoglio
- Striving for originality Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Striving for originality Damion Schubert
- Striving for originality Rudy Fink
- Striving for originality shren
- Striving for originality John Buehler
- Striving for originality Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Striving for originality John Buehler
- Striving for originality shren
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality John Buehler
- Striving for originality Travis Casey
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Striving for originality Rudy Fink
- Striving for originality Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Striving for originality Damion Schubert
- Striving for originality Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Striving for originality Edward Glowacki
- Striving for originality shren
- Striving for originality Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality John Buehler
- Striving for originality shren
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Ron Gabbard
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality caduvall@glue.umd.edu
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Rayzam
- Striving for originality Travis Casey
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality Kwon Ekstrom
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Edward Glowacki
- Striving for originality Kwon Ekstrom
- Striving for originality Edward Glowacki
- Striving for originality Kwon Ekstrom
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Edward Glowacki
- Striving for originality Michael Tresca
- Striving for originality Rayzam
- Striving for originality Kwon Ekstrom
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Travis Casey
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality Travis Casey
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality szii@sziisoft.com
- Striving for originality Kwon Ekstrom
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Kwon Ekstrom
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Kwon Ekstrom
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality szii@sziisoft.com
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality Fred Clift
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Damion Schubert
- Striving for originality Marian Griffith
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality szii@sziisoft.com
- Striving for originality Matt Mihaly
- Striving for originality Sanvean
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality Travis Casey
- Striving for originality Robin Cloutman
- Striving for originality Matt Chatterley
- Striving for originality Freeman, Jeff
- Striving for originality shren
- Memory Footprints szii@sziisoft.com
- Memory Footprints Matt Mihaly
- cloth simulation (was: What keeps people interested in social muds?) Bruce Mitchener
- ADMIN: Early thread death predicted J C Lawrence
- Offlist Matt Mihaly
- Cost/Benefit factor and The Player-driven World [ was In defense of "soloability"] Ron Gabbard
- Building community in social M**s Martin C. Martin
- Building community in social M**s Damion Schubert
- Brief point about Java memory management ceo@grexengine.com
- Creating Constructive/Social Behaviour in Online Worlds ! Marc Demesel
- ecologies and random encounters John Robert Arras
- ecologies and random encounters Paul Schwanz
- LEDO revisited (part 4) Frank Crowell
- LEDO revisited (part 4) Damion Schubert
- LEDO revisited (part 4) Frank Crowell
- LEDO revisited (part 4) Crosbie Fitch
- LEDO revisited (part 4) Frank Crowell
- software engineer: testing (was: [DGN] Creating a MUD) Bruce Mitchener
- software engineer: testing (was: [DGN] Creating a MUD) John Buehler
- software engineer: testing (was: [DGN] Creating a MUD) Miroslav Silovic
- software engineer: testing (was: [DGN] Creating a MUD) Damion Schubert
- software engineer: testing (was: [DGN] Creating a MUD) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- software engineer: testing (was: [DGN] Creating a MUD) Damion Schubert
- software engineer: testing (was: [DGN] Creating a MUD) Tess Snider
- software engineer: testing (was: [DGN] Creating a MUD) Bruce Mitchener
- Bug tracking Sanvean
- Bug tracking Matt Chatterley
- Bug tracking Ammon Lauritzen
- Bug tracking Jon Lambert
- Bug tracking ceo@grexengine.com
- The Business Side of Software Development [was R& D] Ron Gabbard
- LEDO update Damion Schubert
- LEDO update Frank Crowell
- Differentiation and The Marketing of MUDs [was R& D] Ron Gabbard
- Differentiation and The Marketing of MUDs [was R& D] Sean Kelly
- Differentiation and The Marketing of MUDs [was R& D] Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Differentiation and The Marketing of MUDs [was R& D] Koster, Raph
- Differentiation and The Marketing of MUDs [was R& D] Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- GC (was: New Beginings) Bruce Mitchener
- GC (was: New Beginings) Lars Duening
- Design iterations (Was: R & D) Brian Bilek
- Design iterations (Was: R & D) Sean Kelly
- Design iterations (Was: R & D) John Buehler
- Design iterations (Was: R & D) Jeff Freeman
- Design iterations (Was: R & D) Frank Crowell
- Design iterations (Was: R & D) Amanda Walker
- Design iterations (Was: R & D) Ron Gabbard
- Ticks? Anderson, David
- Welcome to the Jungle Jeff Cole
- LithTech Matt Mihaly
- Ownership Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) J C Lawrence
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Koster, Raph
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) shren
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Talanithus HTML
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) John Robert Arras
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) John Robert Arras
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Talanithus HTML
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) John Robert Arras
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) shren
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Vincent Archer
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) shren
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Travis Casey
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Michael Tresca
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) John Robert Arras
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) David B. Held
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Talanithus HTML
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Ron Gabbard
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Crosbie Fitch
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Talanithus HTML
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Zach Collins {Siege}
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Koster, Raph
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Brian Lindahl
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Sasha Hart
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Talanithus HTML
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Matt Chatterley
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Brian Lindahl
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Sasha Hart
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Brian Lindahl
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd) Michael Tresca
- Object Architecture Ben Chambers
- Object Architecture Kwon Ekstrom
- Object Architecture Sasha Hart
- Object Architecture Brian Lindahl
- New Beginings II [Not GC] Drylar Levre
- New Beginings II [Not GC] ceo@grexengine.com
- New Beginings II [Not GC] Sean Kelly
- New Beginings II [Not GC] Bruce Mitchener
- New Beginings II [Not GC] David B. Held
- Breaking down the walls Matt Chatterley
- Breaking down the walls Brian Lindahl
- Breaking down the walls Acius
- Breaking down the walls Brian Lindahl
- Breaking down the walls Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Breaking down the walls Bruce Mitchener
- Breaking down the walls Brian Lindahl
- Breaking down the walls Crosbie Fitch
- Breaking down the walls Brian Lindahl
- Breaking down the walls Nathan F. Yospe
- Breaking down the walls shren
- Breaking down the walls Jeff Lindsey
- Breaking down the walls Bruce Mitchener
- Breaking down the walls Zach Collins {Siege}
- Breaking down the walls Matt Mihaly
- Breaking down the walls Nicolai Hansen
- Breaking down the walls Matt Chatterley
- Breaking down the walls Brian Lindahl
- Breaking down the walls Matt Chatterley
- Breaking down the walls Brian Lindahl
- Breaking down the walls David B. Held
- Breaking down the walls Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Breaking down the walls Nathan F. Yospe
- Breaking down the walls Brian Lindahl
- Breaking down the walls David Clifton
- Breaking down the walls Matt Chatterley
- Breaking down the walls David Clifton
- Breaking down the walls Zach Collins {Siege}
- Breaking down the walls Christopher Allen
- Breaking down the walls Colin Coghill
- Breaking down the walls Rayzam
- Breaking down the walls David Clifton
- Breaking down the walls Marian Griffith
- Breaking down the walls Marian Griffith
- The Future of MMOGs... Brian Lindahl
- The Future of MMOGs... Talanithus HTML
- Object Architecture [Longish] Draymoor a Vin il'Rogina
- Object Architecture [Longish] David B. Held
- Object Architecture [Longish] Crosbie Fitch
- Character Attributes in Role-Playing Games J C Lawrence
- Evolutionary Design J C Lawrence
- Evolutionary Design Sasha Hart
- Evolutionary Design John Buehler
- Evolutionary Design Dave Rickey
- Evolutionary Design Derek Licciardi
- Evolutionary Design Koster, Raph
- Evolutionary Design Matt Mihaly
- Evolutionary Design Sasha Hart
- Evolutionary Design Madrona Tree
- Evolutionary Design Koster, Raph
- Evolutionary Design danc@anark.com
- Evolutionary Design Sasha Hart
- Evolutionary Design Paul Schwanz
- Evolutionary Design Sasha Hart
- Evolutionary Design Lars Duening
- Evolutionary Design Damion Schubert
- Evolutionary Design Koster, Raph
- Evolutionary Design Dave Rickey
- Evolutionary Design Brian Hook
- Evolutionary Design Jeff Cole
- Evolutionary Design Jessica Mulligan
- Evolutionary Design Jeff Cole
- Evolutionary Design Dave Trump
- Evolutionary Design Ron Gabbard
- Evolutionary Design Derek Licciardi
- Evolutionary Design rgabbard@swbell.net
- Evolutionary Design Jeff Cole
- Evolutionary Design Derek Licciardi
- Evolutionary Design Matt Mihaly
- Evolutionary Design Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric
- Evolutionary Design Rudy Fink
- Evolutionary Design Matt Mihaly
- Evolutionary Design rgabbard@swbell.net
- Evolutionary Design John Buehler
- Evolutionary Design Derek Licciardi
- Evolutionary Design Richard A. Bartle
- Evolutionary Design shren
- Blacksnow vs. Mythic News Steve {Bloo} Daniels
- Blacksnow vs. Mythic News Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Blacksnow vs. Mythic News Steve {Bloo} Daniels
- Blacksnow vs. Mythic News Jon Lambert
- Blacksnow vs. Mythic News Rudy Fink
- Blacksnow vs. Mythic News Matt Mihaly
- Blacksnow vs. Mythic News Mark Eaton
- Blacksnow vs. Mythic News Matt Mihaly
- Is difficult communication the barrier to community in MMORPGs? (fwd) J C Lawrence
- Is difficult communication the barrier to community in MMORPGs? (fwd) Jeff Lindsey
- Is difficult communication the barrier to community in MMORPGs? (fwd) John Buehler
- Is difficult communication the barrier to community in MMORPGs? (fwd) Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Is difficult communication the barrier to community in MMORPGs? (fwd) Koster, Raph
- Is difficult communication the barrier to community in MMORPGs? (fwd) Brian Hook
- Is difficult communication the barrier to community in MMORPGs? (fwd) Talanithus HTML
- Is difficult communication the barrier to community in MMORPGs? (fwd) Mark Eaton
- Is difficult communication the barrier to community in MMORPGs? (fwd) Patricia Pizer
- Enforcement [was Striving for originality] Matt Chatterley
- Enforcement [was Striving for originality] Tess Snider
- Enforcement [was Striving for originality] Matt Mihaly
- Enforcement apollyon .
- Enforcement Matt Chatterley
- Enforcement Anderson, David
- Enforcement shren
- Enforcement Anderson, David
- IF/MUD Gameplay Ideas Opacic Patrik
- IF/MUD Gameplay Ideas shren
- IF/MUD Gameplay Ideas David Clifton
- IF/MUD Gameplay Ideas Opacic Patrik
- IF/MUD Gameplay Ideas Rayzam
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Amanda Walker
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? John Robert Arras
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Talanithus HTML
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Talanithus HTML
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Philip Mak
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Acius
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Fred Clift
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Michael Tresca
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Anderson, David
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Damion Schubert
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Draymoor a Vin il'Rogina
- Mudding and impact on academic grades David Clifton
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Eli Stevens
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Anderson, David
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Rayzam
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Koster, Raph
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Rayzam
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Kwon Ekstrom
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Matt Mihaly
- Mudding and impact on academic grades shren
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Anderson, David
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Colin Coghill
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Lars Duening
- Mudding and impact on academic grades Tess Snider
- Reality check ...(long) [was Black Snow Revisited] David Yazel
- BrendanLand Koster, Raph
- Skotos & WAP Release "Grendel's Revenge" for Public Beta Christopher Allen
- Skotos & WAP Release "Grendel's Revenge" for Public Beta Bruce Mitchener
- Skotos & WAP Release "Grendel's Revenge" for Public Beta Valerio Santinelli
- Skotos & WAP Release "Grendel's Revenge" for Public Beta Travis Casey
- Skotos & WAP Release "Grendel's Revenge" for Public Beta Christopher Allen
- Amazing list.... Talanithus HTML
- Reinventing the Wheel (was: Object Architecture [Longish]) Philip Loguinov {Draymoor}
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Amanda Walker
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Koster, Raph
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Amanda Walker
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Frank Crowell
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Amanda Walker
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? John Robert Arras
- Underlight (fwd) Matt Mihaly
- Underlight (fwd) Bruce Mitchener
- Underlight (fwd) Brian Lindahl
- Underlight (fwd) Koster, Raph
- Underlight (fwd) Brian Hook
- Underlight (fwd) Damion Schubert
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG [was The Future of MMOGs... what's next?] Ron Gabbard
- Cg - Lowering the cost of 3D games? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Cg - Lowering the cost of 3D games? Brian Hook
- Cg - Lowering the cost of 3D games? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Cg - Lowering the cost of 3D games? Frank Crowell
- Cg - Lowering the cost of 3D games? Rayzam
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Brian Lindahl
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG rgabbard@swbell.net
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Brian Lindahl
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG rgabbard@swbell.net
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Brian Lindahl
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Ron Gabbard
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Brian Lindahl
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Ron Gabbard
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Marian Griffith
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Travis Casey
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG lynx@lynx.purrsia.com
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Ron Gabbard
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Marian Griffith
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Paul Schwanz
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Amanda Walker
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG Damion Schubert
- Building a 'Deeper' MMOG [was The Future of MMOGs... what's next?] David B. Held
- Relaunching a MUD? Kent Peterson
- Relaunching a MUD? Matt Mihaly
- Relaunching a MUD? Malcolm Tester
- Relaunching a MUD? Damion Schubert
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Philip Loguinov {Draymoor}
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds David Clifton
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds John A. Bertoglio
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Jeff Lindsey
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Kwon Ekstrom
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Jeff Lindsey
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Kwon Ekstrom
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Anderson, David
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Kwon Ekstrom
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds David Bennett
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Michael Tresca
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Matt Mihaly
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Michael Tresca
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Sanvean
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Matt Mihaly
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds shren
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Dave Rickey
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Matt Mihaly
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Dave Rickey
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Damion Schubert
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Matt Mihaly
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Edward Glowacki
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Matt Mihaly
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Richard A. Bartle
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Matt Mihaly
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Blane Bramble
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Edward Glowacki
- Text Muds vs Graphical Muds Elia Mörling
- GDC 2002: Beyond Psychological Theory: Getting Data that Improves Games J C Lawrence
- Online gaming growth Matt Mihaly
- Online gaming growth Koster, Raph
- Some P.S. to the java/cross platform discussion... ceo@grexengine.com
- Some P.S. to the java/cross platform discussion... David B. Held
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) John A. Bertoglio
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Koster, Raph
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) John Bertoglio
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Richard A. Bartle
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Stephen McDonald
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Dave Rickey
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Tess Snider
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Kwon Ekstrom
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) eric
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Valerio Santinelli
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Vincent Archer
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) shren
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Valerio Santinelli
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Valerio Santinelli
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Rudy Fink
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Valerio Santinelli
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Madrona Tree
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Travis Casey
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) ghovs
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) shren
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) shren
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Valerio Santinelli
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) ghovs
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) eric
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Joel Palmtag
- It's About Time Department (Mule Characters) Sasha Hart
- Continuity of experience in movies Matt Mihaly
- Continuity of experience in movies eric
- Continuity of experience in movies shren
- Continuity of experience in movies Valerio Santinelli
- Continuity of experience in movies eric
- Continuity of experience in movies Valerio Santinelli
- Continuity of experience in movies eric
- Continuity of experience in movies Valerio Santinelli
- Continuity of experience in movies Travis Casey
- Continuity of experience in movies Matt Mihaly
- Continuity of experience in movies eric
- Continuity of experience in movies Matt Mihaly
- Continuity of experience in movies eric
- Continuity of experience in movies Matt Mihaly
- Continuity of experience in movies Sean Kelly
- Pictures from an exhibition^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HDinner J C Lawrence
- Online gaming growth -- an introduction Brad King
- The Case For Game Design Patterns J C Lawrence
- The Case For Game Design Patterns Koster, Raph
- New Skotos Columns Shannon Appelcline
- Animals, Animal Handling, and Unexpected Side Effects shren
- Animals, Animal Handling, and Unexpected Side Effects Richard A. Bartle
- Animals, Animal Handling, and Unexpected Side Effects Michelle Elbert
- Tech: Job: Shamesss Pug: P2P Graphical Mud, thinking out loud Yoshito Rei
- Threading idea Zach Collins {Siege}
- Threading idea Smith, David {Lynchburg}
- Threading idea Bruce Mitchener
- ADMIN: VC thread -- Consider Meta J C Lawrence
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Vincent Archer
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Freeman, Jeff
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? burra@alum.rpi.edu
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Jeff Freeman
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Matt Mihaly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Koster, Raph
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Talanithus HTML
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Koster, Raph
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Valerio Santinelli
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Frank Crowell
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Valerio Santinelli
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Sean Kelly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Xuri
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? David H. Loeser Jr.
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Valerio Santinelli
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Damion Schubert
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? shren
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Vincent Archer
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Valerio Santinelli
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Freeman, Jeff
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Sean Kelly
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Valerio Santinelli
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Jeff Lindsey
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? shren
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? shren
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Travis Casey
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Amanda Walker
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Michael Tresca
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? shren
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? lynx@lynx.purrsia.com
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Damion Schubert
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? lynx@lynx.purrsia.com
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? shren
- The Future of MMOGs... what's next? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Réf. : Building a 'Deeper' M MOG Yannick.Jean@csst.qc.ca
- GNS and Other Matters of Role-Playing Theory J C Lawrence
- Free email providers John Szeder
- Free email providers Sanvean
- Databases and scripting languages John Szeder
- Building a 'Deeper' M MOG Brian Lindahl
- Building a 'Deeper' M MOG Paul Schwanz
- Building a 'Deeper' M MOG Damion Schubert
- Réf. : Building a 'Deeper' M MOG Marian Griffith
- Réf. : Building a 'Deeper' M MOG Sasha Hart
- It's About Time Dep... Food eric
- It's About Time Dep... Food Brian Hook
- It's About Time Dep... Food Edward Glowacki
- It's About Time Dep... Food John Buehler
- It's About Time Dep... Food Paul Schwanz
- [BIZ] Console wars David Kennerly
- Free for all ceo@grexengine.com
- It's About Time Dep... Food Sean Page
- Achaea's history Matt Mihaly
On Fri, 21 Jun 2002 Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com wrote:
> Have you ever done a write up of how you started, what kind of
> feature set you had to originally bring players in, when you
> introduced your revenue model & etc? I know you've made passing
> comments about these things, but a little history of Achaea would
> be fascinating. Of course I realise you might see it as giving
> away competitive advantage, so I won't be offended if you don't
> want to comment in any depth.
Sure. It's going to be a bit rambling though. And no worries about
competitive advantage. As you are about to see, Achaea's competitive
advantage is most definitely not in how we started. =)
When I started, it was with (in hindsight) only the vaguest idea of
what I was doing. No business plan, no game design, nothing. Didn't
even know how to code. I had started playing text MUDs around 1991,
in my second year of university and then after graduation in 1994, I
got my licenses (series 7 and 63) to be a
stockbroker. Unfortunately, not only did I hate my job, but it was
seriously cutting into the time I could play a small commercial text
MUD we'll call FooMUD (not its real name obviously). Clearly, the
job had to go and, happily, that was the last time (early '95) I
worked for anyone else. I had some money saved up, so wasn't going
to starve, and spent some months mainly just MUDing, clubbing, and
otherwise distracting myself.
At some point in that year, the owner of FooMUD moved to Chicago
from Europe and we got a really nice penthouse-type place on the
water together, for which he was paying 75% of the rent. I thought
to myself, "Hmm, this guy seems to have a lot of spending money,
sets his own schedule completely, and really doesn't do much work at
all. Sounds good to me."
So, I let myself get ripped off and paid way WAY too much for what I
can only describe as the single worst MUD engine in existence:
Hourglass. It had no local variables, no way to break up code into
more than one file, no way to pass variables aside from using
globals, totally inconsistent database syntaxes, not even an 'or'
statement. It was truly awful.
Anyway, none of those things bothered me, because, afterall, FooMUD
had been written in it, so it must be possible. I didn't know how to
code, but the person who sold me Hourglass gave me a core shell game
where I could login and walk around a couple rooms. Learning enough
to write a few emotes was simply, so I started off just writing
emotes.
Very, very little got done for the next year, aside from playing
FooMUD, where I eventually became the God of Pain. It was a good
week if I got 4 hours of work done. In June of '96 I left Chicago to
move to San Francisco.
I "hired" a coder, once in the Bay Area, who was a player on FooMUD,
promising him 10% of the game, but he quickly turned out to be
flakey (surprise) and I got rid of him. I found another guy who was
willing to code for $3000 + 10% of the game who wanted to move from
England to the Bay Area so he could sleep with a woman from
FooMUD. So, on this pitiful amount of pay, he moved
over. Unfortunately, he didn't know how to code, and I was the one
teaching him. You can imagine how well that worked out. He lasted
about a year, year and a half. We've since re-written nearly every
line of code he wrote, since it was so bad.
But, bad or not, between his awful code and my not-quite-as-awful
code (I didn't believe in using helpfully-named variables at that
time, preferring to use temp1, temp2, temp3, etc on the logic that
it made it really hard for anyone else to steal my code, because it
was so freaking hard to read. I also didn't indent the code at
all. I don't mean to imply it was good logic, btw.), and my designs
we got Achaea online in September of 1997.
Soon after opening, we spent 4 months converting all of our code to
a different engine, called Vortex, that had been originally written
to be Hourglass running in Linux (instead of Acorn RISC computers,
which Hourglass originally ran in). The terms of Vortex were much
more reasonable, and more importantly, we wouldn't have to put up
with the asshole admin of FooMUD listening to all input into Achaea
via his illegal backdoor into Hourglass. FooMUD was -extremely-
paranoid about their players leaving to play Achaea. Apparently to
this day, their admins harrass and ban anyone who talks about Achaea
there. It's no wonder they're smaller now than they were when we
opened.
Somewhere in there I had also brought in a young English guy
studying English at Oxford to help do some ability-writing, as well
as a guy to help write some locations. Neither of them ever finished
their jobs, but any help was better than no help, and the former is
still a partner in Achaea as well as in another business with me.
When Achaea went online, we were pitifully broken, bugged, and
incomplete in every sense of the word. I was just sick and tired of
working on Achaea without any players. Most of the FooMUD players
knew I was starting my own MUD, and a number of them left FooMUD to
establish themselves in Achaea.
We weren't yet accepting money, and around February of 1998 I was
nearly out of money. (I was able to extend the money I had after
college by starting a project, in 1996, with a few others, to do an
Elite-style graphical internet game, and after it became clear the
coding team was not going to do the job with any competence, managed
to sell out to some optimistic fellow at a fat profit.)
So, my options at this point were either get a proper job, or
continue on with Achaea, which could very well end up being a total
waste of time. I still didn't really have any firm plan to make
money with it, and my plan was to start charging hourly at some
point. I decided that getting a proper job just didn't jive with my
vision for life, so made a post on Achaea's newsboards asking for
help from players. Actually, I think I may have done this once
before too, around the time we opened. I can't recall for sure.
In any case, I had one player buy 1% of Achaea for $2000, one player
buy 1% for $2500, another buy 1% for $3000, and then one player from
Hong Kong bought 10% for $30,000. I'm a little amazed the latter one
gave me money actually, insofar as to this day I've never met him or
spoken to him on the phone. All communication has been via e-mail,
Achaea, and FooMUD. Further, we never really had any decent
contracts. I just typed out a paragraph stating that so-and-so gets
X% of Achaea in return for X amount of money. It was all extremely
informal, based mainly on the trust that had grown through playing
FooMUD and Achaea together for a number of years. That money went to
pay off some debts I had accumulated, and to pay my rent and food
until Achaea could support me. (Incidentally, I've since b
In June of 1998, we got our first generation of players who weren't
from FooMUD when we decided we were ready to list on
Mudconnector. It was exciting for us, and we immediately grew quite
a bit in terms of maxplayers (unfortunately, we didn't do very good
stat-taking back then, so I don't really have any numbers on how
many players we had at that point. It wasn't a lot. Maxxing at 30
online maybe?). Right around that time, the coder guy I had working
for me (who was back in England by this time, things having not
worked out between he and the woman he was living with here) quit,
which was fine with me, given that his coding 'skills' seemed to
have gotten even worse.
We plodded along happily, and started selling credits via money
order, check, or cash only. I formed Achaea as a company sometime
around here too. Our CTO, Christopher Kohnert started playing around
this time, and quickly volunteered to code for us, which was one of
the best things that's ever happened to Achaea. (He's now the
largest owner, after me, and a full-time employee.) Chris is an
excellent coder, and brought a level of professionalism to the
implementation process that we had so far been lacking. Being around
him let me have someone to learn from who actually knew something
about coding, which was a plus (I was a political science major in
college, and hadn't ever taken classes of any sort in coding.)
Around December of 1998, we announced that within a month we were
going to start charging people by the hour to play
Achaea. Naturally, this braindead decision (the times of hourly
charging were over with) caused most of our players to tell us that,
regretfully, they'd have to leave if we did that. We couldn't face
starting over again with no playerbase, so we relented, and came up
with our current business model instead, which has worked out just
peachily.
At some point it became clear that Vortex wasn't going to be able to
accomodate our growing playerbase. It was written too
inefficiently. So, Chris and I struck a deal whereby he'd get a
large chunk of ownership in return for writing a new engine for
us. He figured it'd take 9 months, and using that estimate I forced
the owner of Vortex to sell us Vortex cheaply, on the logic that he
was going to lose the only royalties he was getting anyway once we
switched to Rapture. It was a great decision, because Rapture took
about 2 years to finish in the end, so we saved ourselves a lot of
royalty payments. (Rapture wouldn't take 2 years to finish
full-time, but Chris was working without pay, while going to school,
and while also coding in-game systems for Achaea).
To cut an already way-too-long story short, Rapture finally went
live in July 2001 and to our great relief, is probably a magnitude
faster than Vortex was, giving us plenty of growth space.
In May of last year, as Geoffrey MacDougall, Josh Olson (both list
members) and I were shutting down The Sapience Group, Josh asked me
if I'd ever thought of franchising Achaea. From there, Aetolia was
born, which I hired Josh to run. It opened in October 2001 and is
coming along nicely.
So, that's the short summary. There's a lot more involved of course,
including 'wars' with a couple other MUDs, a project for a
UN-affiliated conference, drama among the administration, building a
volunteer force, etc. There was also another factor that I consider
rather important in Achaea's early days, but my posts on that
subject have been previously rejected, so I won't include it.
A couple things I didn't talk much about were what our feature set
was when we went up, and how we promoted Achaea. I honestly don't
remember what was and wasn't in when we went up, and though I could
arrive at it by looking at all our announcements since then and
deducting, that's too much work. I'll just say that what we had when
we went up were original abilities and skills that you won't see in
D&D or in stock MUDs, and that's about it. Many of those abilities
were bugged, or not working, and most of the skills (skills in
Achaea are one branch of a skill tree) had many missing
abilities. My favorite example of how awful we were when we went up
was that my first message was from our first mortal asking if
perhaps I could remove his paralysis, because there existed no way
for mortals to cure it, and so he was stuck standing there until a
God could help him.
In terms of advertising, we spend relatively little on it in terms
of our total revenue. Banner, button, and text ads at Mudconnector
(exclusive rights to the front page now), sometimes ads on
Overture's services, or Google, and we advertised on PvPOnline for a
month recently. These all do well for us, and as our growth has
generally been limited by content, we've not tried to grow more
quickly than the content has.
Some general lessons that I draw from my experience with
boostrapping a commercial MUD:
1. Do something different. If you're trying to make another D&D
clone, you're screwed. Most of the stock MUDs go in that
direction.
2. Get it online asap. There's nothing more depressing than
working on an empty MUD. You need to get it online for your own
sanity, and because getting player feedback (as long as some of it
is good) makes you feel as if you haven't been laboring for
nothing. Don't worry about "giving your MUD a bad rep." Just get
it online and start building a loyal playerbase.
3. Do everything as cheaply as possible. Get people to work on
equity if you can. You aren't likely to have enough money to do it
any differently for awhile. Paying people IS preferrable, but if
you have the money to pay salaries starting out, you're already in
a different class than I was at the beginning.
4. Be persistent. Most MUDs I've seen are plagued by developers
who aren't willing to just put in the month after month of work,
slowly building your world into something to be proud of. It's not
going to happen overnight, and it's not going to happen in a year.
5. It's all about design. Technical implemetation is less
important in a text MUD than it is in something of a larger
scale. You have lots of room to be sloppy in terms of memory
usage, CPU cycles, and so on. Further, given how easy it is to
develop iteratively in text, you can afford to take the attitude
that many problems can just be fixed as and when they occur.
6. Volunteers. You need them. Get them, now. Empower them and
imbue them with a sense of professionalism. The post that one of
the admins from Armaggedon made the other day about having their
admins sign off on their mission statement was excellent, I
thought.
7. Enjoy it. If you don't, give it up as you'll never stick with
it long enough. I still love running Achaea on a day to day basis,
which is one reason it is successful. I suspect that attitude ends
up permeating your entire world.
--matt - Achaea's history eric
- Achaea's history Matt Mihaly