Smell the Monkey

#1

Mud2 is a game that nobody wants to play.

It's fairly safe to say that online gaming is a pretty big thing ... Even given the damage that 'the scene' has suffered with the hard hit and death/near-death of the likes of Wireplay and Barrysworld it's still a massive, massive thing. People have been playing games online for years in some form or another. The Dreamcast was shipped with a modem and the PS2, the XBox and Nintendo's GameCube will all be capable of online play.

We aren't talking about a small industry here ... Online gaming is fucking huge.

Online gaming servers for PC games tend to fall into two main categories - Profit and Non-Profit. A big company like Wireplay or a nice guy with a fast connection running a game of Quake 3. I'm sure it gets rather more complicated than that, but you get the picture. Mud2 obviously falls into the former category. Therefore, Mud2 needs to make money. It needs money for servers, maintenance, etc, etc ...

With consoles, it isn't such a problem. People bought Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast at thirty-five quid a pop purely to play it online. It's in Sega's interests to provide a bunch of stable servers. The benefits far outweigh the costs of maintaining the servers because they're constantly raking it in.

But when you're running a money-making business online, it's hard to get people to hand over that cash by clicking those links or by using your shop. Gameplay dropped Wireplay like a parking ticket as soon as it stopped making 'em money. It's good business sense.

So how to make money from online gaming?

MudII.co.uk charges twelve pounds a month to play the game. Mud2.com charges twenty dollars a month to play the game. Which, considering that you don't have to buy a thirty-quid copy of the game in the outset, works out relatively cheap.

And yet. Nobody plays the bastard.

Now, you're all saying: "Fuck you, Monkey... We play the game, and we know lots of other people who play the game."

Okay, let's work this out:

There are two servers: www.mudii.co.uk and www.mud2.com

Now, let's be generous and say that Mud2.com has fifty paying users and MudII.co.uk has forty - All the Wizzes and a few extra players.

Barring people who play both servers, that's ninety players.

Now, the question is this ...

If online gaming is so huge, and Mud2 is so cheap, why is Mud2 so small?

I mean, the "fantasy" genre has never been more popular. Everquest, Ultima Online and Phantasy Star online are all massively popular. The new Lord Of The Rings movie ensures that the current popularity of fantasy-based entertainment isn't set to die off. Hell, Mud2 has a rich, deep and large land to interact with which really milks standard fantasy archetypes for all they're worth. It can't possibly be the style of the game.

It can't be that you have to pay to play it. Sure, the Wireplay Mud2 was far more popular before it became a pay-to-play game, but even today it retains many players form the old days. People who love the game are happy to pay the price each month.

Mud2 is a deeply unpopular game, though. With so many people playing games online you'd have thought Mud2 could do better than ninety players.

Everquest has an initial outlay of thirty pounds for the game with a ten-dollar-a-month charge to play the game. They can undercut Mud2 because they have many more players.

But Mud2 has had over TWENTY YEARS to build a fanbase. Everquest has been around for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES and already it shits upon Mud2. Mud/Mud2 has been around in one form or another since 1979. So what's going wrong?

People can try Mud2 for free, but have to buy Everquest before they even start paying a subscription. And yet STILL it shits upon Mud2.

Maybe it's because people are unaccepting of a text-based game in this day and age. Everquest is more like a movie or TV show to Mud2's novel. Lots of visual flash to Mud2's reliance on textual descriptions and the user's imagination.

Maybe it's because Mud2 HATES new players with a vengeance. It's notoriously newbie-unfriendly and has been for years.

Maybe it's because Mud2 is as grossly under-promoted a game as I've ever seen. I've seen a hundred fucking adverts for Everquest, but I haven't seen one for Mud2. I know it's unpractical to suggest that Mud2.com be taking out expensive adverts in gaming magazines. But without promotion the game will wither and die - the only new players on the game come from word-of-mouth promotion. Word-of-mouth that can only decrease with time.

I don't know.

The game has had over TWENTY YEARS to build its popularity. Over TWENTY YEARS to build a loyal, paying fanbase. And yet nobody has even heard of the bastard game.

Shades was popular beyond belief once. Now it's gone.

There will come a day when it'll cost more money to run Mud2 than the game is making, and it's gonna die.

It'll be a shame. I kinda liked Mud2.

Very few games have stood the test of time like Mud2 has ... So where's the respect? Where are the interviews in magazines with young, up-and-coming game creators saying things like, "I always wanted to create a game that has the richness and depth of Mud2"? Where's the fame? Where's the brand recognition? Where's the fanbase?

Where's the money that should be pissing in?

It's had in excess of twenty years to secure itself a future. The game is as playable as ever - With a little work over the years, Mud2 could have been regarded as a ground-breaking "classic" game like Space Invaders or Donkey Kong or Elite. A game that spawned (or at least popularised) a genre and changed the way people think about games. Instead, it's just seen as "old" by modern gamers, and gets not an ounce of the respect it deserves.

So, if online gaming is so big, then why is Mud2 so small?

The point is ... People will pay to play a "classic," but they won't touch "old" with a forty-foot pole.

More than twenty years has gotten the game NOWHERE.

J: PCM