MU* Population

[Apos]

@Tez said in MU* Population:

It made me wonder: how many people do you think there really ARE in this hobby? 10k felt low to me at first, but after thinking about and poking a little more, that’s actually probably high. ANY IDEAS? ANY OTHER DATA OUT THERE?

I have thought a good bit about this, as it came up. I think much more than people think on the general sense but still very small compared to other communities.

So it depends a lot on how you classify population. Like ‘How many people roleplayed in a MU* in the past week? If you classify a MU as a mud, mush, muck, moo, ares, evennia game, etc’ I think the answer is probably going to be a couple thousand people, and that’s largely from a couple of the really, really big sandboxes out there that don’t necessarily have a whole lot of overlap.

On the other hand, I think people drift in and out of the hobby constantly, get active for a month or two with a new game, take a year off, come back, etc. If you would say, ‘in the past year, how many unique individuals have played in a MU format’ I think you’d hit anywhere from 10k to 30k depending on how generously you were describing someone putting in an app or one line shit posting as playing.

Now, if you were to say, ‘how many people roleplay online including message boards, MMOs, google docs, discord, twitter and every typed medium possible’ in english alone you’re easily getting into the millions of people, no question. There’s like forums alone with hundreds of thousands of people, let alone things like the server locked ‘sry too many people’ things like FFXIV rp servers. And when you start including non-english, the numbers get crazy huge.

Random fact- evennia apparently super popular in china. We’ve gotten like 5-6 apps over the years on Arx of people that absolutely could not speak any english and had chinese emails.

[Faraday]

@KarmaBum said in MU* Population:

I wonder about this myself, 'cause I know of one player who’s used at least three (that I know of) in an effort to obfuscate her identity.

Yeah, for sure those people exist. Or some who really really want a handle for each game.

I just know enough people who come across as distinct humans across games, forums, discords, etc. to think that they represent a small minority of handle users.

I have no concrete data to back that up though. IPs can be VPNed, emails can be throwaways… it’s just a lot of hassle to go to for me to think it’s widespread.

[sao]

@Apos In the past WEEK? I don’t count because I didn’t rp this week

[farfalla]

@sao I was generously taking it to be like, logged in to a game. But even then it’s a question mark some weeks.

[Mourne]

@Faraday Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.

There are individuals on certain Ares games I would much rather avoid, so I do not always tie every character to my handle.

It’s worth the hassle of logging out of the account in order to have some peace, quiet, and not have to deal with certain individuals.

[sao]

@farfalla honestly I don’t even remember if I logged on this week. I can check journals and bbs without logging in and especially when work is being beastly I tend not to have a lot of bandwidth for it. If I log on I am at least making a passive commitment to being available to others and when my clients are drawing my empathy to its lowest ebb I often end up just not having the spoons.

(Then I wallow in guilt about getting behind and apologize to everyone and their dog the next time I do log on…)

[Pavel]

I’d be curious to know whether they’re counting players, or player-bits. As in do my five alts count as one person, or five.

[farfalla]

@Pavel Mudstats is just grabbing connection data, right? so definitely connections not players. they wouldn’t have any way to know, afaik.

[Pavel]

@farfalla said in MU* Population:

Mudstats is just grabbing connection data, right?

I dunno how or what they’re grabbing, which is part of my point.

[Jumpscare]

I read somewhere that you multiply the peak connections by 2.5 to get a good estimate of the total playerbase, but I have no idea where I read that, and it doesn’t apply to places that allow multiple alts, so take this info with a grain of salt.

But in the bigger picture, there’s so much roleplaying going on in the world that there’s no way it’s going away anytime soon. Even after the world collapses, you can guarantee there’ll be players in a cave rolling dice and telling stories in between their battles with radioactive spiderlocusts.