The Network did essentially recreate ‘the Bubble’ every new season. This was part of why it wasn’t my thing, but it maintained a decent playerbase and closed on its own terms.

OK, but specifically on the New Game Bubble thing.

There is a pattern.

New game opens. The theme at this point almost doesn’t matter. The appeal of it at this point almost doesn’t matter.

It is mobbed by the same 40+ people, most of whom evaporate in 3 months.

The cycle repeats at the next new game, the XYZ of which almost doesn’t matter.

There are a LOT of reasons players don’t stick with games. I think 3 months is a pretty reasonable, and probably more-than-reasonable, time to see if something is for you or not. But the Bubble is its own thing and it’s exhausting and it keeps happening and I want it not to happen again on the next project I undertake.

ETA: I guess I’m interested in the ‘I only like new things’ mentality because it’s so foreign to me and so counter-productive to the kinds of environments I enjoy over the long term.

@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:

Ares also makes it easier to discover games. This arguably could lead to bigger initial bubbles, magnifying the effects of the collapse.

If this is any more of a thing in Ares than it always was with PennMUSH games, I think this is a lot of it. Tons of players scan the Ares listing pretty frequently in search of new games (to play for 3 months than not play anymore lol) and even back when MUDConnector and stuff was functional, it felt a lot more fragmented. It feels like the only comparable thing available right now is Evennia’s listing, which doesn’t have new games pop up as frequently.

@Ashkuri
One thing I’ve thought a lot about this year, and do not have an answer to, is if there’s something unique to Ares that drives this phenomena more than other MUSH-like formats, or if the transparency just makes this all more visible.

I don’t know!

I’d love to see what others think, though.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Why MUSH?:

Three months: The average time a player will spend on a game, any game. Once the new shine and sparkle has worn off, many move on to the next new thing.

A tangent but this is why I find the ‘new’ stage of a game exhausting. I know I’m basically RPing into the void with people who won’t stick around or develop anything, but who’re also 200% extra about everything OOC. I tend to be very wary of anything that hasn’t hit the six-month mark.

For me it’s:

A) The real-time nature of it, both the IC improv aspect and the OOC social aspect, you lose both as an environment drifts further away from it

B) The ability to build an entire world and a shared narrative, and develop a character and larger narrative over time

C) The OOC convenience of having everything centralized and the commands relatively streamlined

I think it’s kind of remarkable that, given how popular ‘RP online’ actually is, nothing else quite replicates this. I read attempts to RP on Twitter! I hope those poor souls are all right, somewhere.

The version of WoT I want isn’t an L&L game but idk what other people would want.

@Pyrephox said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

2. If your game relies on themes (like, say, conflict between factions or internal societal tensions) then you should not rely on PCs to enforce those as leaders. Most players won’t enforce theme, and the ones who do often end up burning out and miserable because they’re thrust in a position of “fun police” that isn’t actually very fun (ask me how I know).

On top of it not being fun, it’s also how a lot of theme drift happens, or how an environment can grow OOCly toxic. When you off-load theme enforcement to players, the people who are Loud and Around end up doing it. Sometimes those are people who are actually helpful, a lot of times they’re not.

I’m not sure I have an opinion on whether staff should disclose their alts on any kind of ‘this is good/bad for the game’ basis. I mostly think there’s no point in this kind of secrecy. People will find out, you better believe they will talk about it, so why not be upfront about it? Feels like it just saves time/drama.

@chorus said in Staff and playable pcs:

A: What staffer in their right mind is going to want to ONLY “work” on a game, rather than play it?

They exist, but in my experience a lot of them treat their NPCs like PCs, which becomes it’s own special problem and I’d rather just have a clear staff-alt at that point.

IT LOOKS DIFFERENT!!!

I’m having a Rough Time with the amount of obvious, unedited ChatGPT garbage out there in our corner of the roleplaying world.

@Roz
Same, this is ultimately why Discord blocking drives me nuts. It doesn’t help to see a thousand notifications about a person I’m putting myself in a little mental time-out to not want to punch in the goddamn face. Just erasing them from channel history would be pretty sweet, though.

Whether I want to play a roster varies - as one would expect - from game to game and how they’re being used. I used to only want to play my super special creations, but I’ve picked up some I’ve quite enjoyed and increasingly think they’re an important option for various reasons (quick entry into a game, one avenue of theme enforcement, and so on).

I’d never play whatever the ‘you don’t have access to staff events’ character is, whatever it was, which seems like a separate question to which the answer is mostly ‘no.’

Mainly bumping this because I got a ‘this topic is quite old’ when I went to reply, but LOL this is one of the games Polk unplugged.

Memories, they are made to this.

It’s like in a social hobby somebody needs to expend the social energy to make stuff happen, or it…doesn’t.

I also liked Wynne! If you don’t play a mage she’s an extremely efficient healer/support.

Someday I’ll play Veilguard. Probably in like 2 years, given my schedule of games.

We only really know how Jill behaves on MUSH game channels/pages. It’s entirely possible they do their schtick in RPI environments that never register here.

That said, the Legend of Jill has been around long enough and widely circulated enough that I assume there are a lot of Jill copycats. Legacy, etc.

@GF said in Inuki Ban Thread:

@Third-Eye I mostly disagree about creating a rule regarding mentions of suicide and bans. Suicide is a health problem, and health problems can’t be treated as having a “one size fits all” solution. A rule that anyone who mentions suicide in this or that context may help people who need to take a step back, but it may also harm people who are genuinely reaching out to a group of friends or a community they feel safe mentioning their problems to.

FWIW I don’t think any kind of ‘rule’ is really the issue here and I don’t think Meg did, either. I’d rather mods just handle this stuff on a case-by-case basis, that toss-off remark at the end was more ‘Well if a lack of specific language is the problem, okey-dokey’. But I don’t actually think that’s what this is about. I read what Inuki wrote and, apart from a visceral and I will admit unkind reaction that is neither here nor there, I didn’t think there was ever going to be a way to engage with that person in this space about their game stuff again. That’s not the reaction other people had, if the decision had been a temp ban or clear talking-to by the mods I might’ve disagreed like some people in this thread disagree with what did happen, but I would’ve understood it.

Here’s my take and why was relieved to see this ban come down.

I don’t care what Inuki has done on games. But she sure keeps doing things on games that get talked about in forums like this and that will likely continue to be.

I think dropping something like ‘I see why people want to commit suicide when people say mean things about them online’ (…sourced things and screenshots that were specifically about stuff she did on a game, they didn’t read like personal attacks to me) is a nuclear bomb on a conversation. There is no response to it a decent person can make. You either take it at face value and stop saying…sourced things regarding what a person has done that are relevant and ongoing and what the forum is pretty much designed to air…or don’t, suggest it might be a manipulation tactic designed to nuke a conversation. Except you can’t do that, really, I don’t think, because the 1% chance something like that might be genuine is too disturbing to to give my oxygen to. I don’t feel like there’s a place to go from here.

FWIW a rule about ‘you’ll be given a ban for your own good and the good of other posters if you say a post has made you have suicidal thoughts’ is umm fine.