Richard A. Bartle: 1988 interview

1988 interview

WABIT: How did it all begin? After all at the time of Essex MUD nobody had even heard of Multi-User Adventures. Where did the inspiration for such a project come from?
RICHARD: Well it all started about ten years ago; we had an adventure game, Colossal Cave, at Essex University. Roy Trubshaw played it a lot and liked it, from a programmer's point of view. I played it too, and enjoyed it, I've always been interested in games. After a while, Roy decided that he would like to try a multi-player game, and also that he wanted to design a language for writing adventures. Thus Muddl (Multi-User Dungeon Definition Language) was born, and Roy started on MUD to see how far he could go; he likes all that low-level programming, operating system stuff etc. When Roy reached his third year as an undergraduate, he decided that he had taken it as far as he wanted to and I took over; that was in 1980. I was more interested in the game-design possibilities. That was how Essex MUD was born; Essex was version three and this, MUD2, is version four.
WABIT: So once Roy passed control to you it was all yours? How much of the programming of Essex MUD was yours?
RICHARD: Roy still kept an interest, but I controlled it from there on; most of the database is mine and about 75% of the code, though Roy's 25% is the hardest. Essex MUD was written in Muddl, Roy's language, which was very easy to use: hence the other games that sprung up - Mist, Blud, Uni etc.
However, Muddl was pretty limited; the language that I now use, Muddle, is nothing like it.
WABIT: Is it true that the 'wizard' was created simply because you needed more people to debug the game?
RICHARD: No, that's not true. We always had a debug mode built in so that we could test things without having to get all the items needed to get to an out-of-the-way place. However, the commands we had were so useful that I thought I would use them as the reward for playing the game out, since at that time it was, literally, pointless. I thought that the best players needed more to do than just wandering around solving puzzles and killing things, so we opened up those commands to players who could score enough points. Originally, you only needed 51,200 points to get to wizard on MUD.
WABIT: Shades is at present suffering from a glut of wizards and there is talk of them finding a method to do away with wizards. Ideas such as a limit on the number of wizards with the oldest 'falling off' the bottom as a new one arrives at the top have been suggested. Is it likely that these kind of measures will need to be adopted here at some time?
RICHARD: No, we know how to manage a game, and only decent players get to wizard to start with, more or less. We told Micronet what would happen with Shades, but fortunately they were too snobbish to listen. They didn't think that 'game management' was a skill at all.
WABIT: At what stage did you decide that there was money in it all? When did work start on version four, MUD2? How did MUSE come into being and where did Simon pop up from?
RICHARD: I have yet to reach the stage where I think there is money to be made in it; there is money in it for someone, but you need a BIG network. Simon was introduced to mud by Jez, our first external wizard on Essex. Simon was working for Century Communications at the time and decided from the fact that the game aroused such great passions that there must be a market for it. So he talked me into setting up MUSE and I insisted we brought Roy along, which was rather handy since he knows far more about Vaxes than me! About three months after Simon left Century Communications, they closed it down. Thus MUSE was born. MUD2 was a complete rewrite, the same scenario but extended and modified a lot and written in a different language to Essex MUD, Muddle.
WABIT: How much of the new code was written by Roy then?
RICHARD: Roy wrote all of the Front End stuff and all the accounting stuff, I wrote the MUDDLE interpreter. The interpreter has messages passed to it from the Front End telling it what people are doing and it sorts it all out from there.
WABIT: Has MUD done as well as Simon's original expectations?
RICHARD: No, it hasn t, well not in the UK anyway. This is mainly due to BT reorganisation, and also Shades managed to come in at a lower price and undercut us. However, they now find that they have conditioned the market to a low price and we're all stuck with it, and this hurts them far more than it hurts us.
WABIT: Surely the product is far more marketable than it was initially though? If you could sort out the marketing side things should get better and now you are in a position where MUG's are popular, after all it was a little elitist at the start wasn't it.
RICHARD: 'MUG, yeuch, I hate that term! Multi User Adventure is more accurate. Yes the market is larger now than it was at the start and our product is more complete. Things are coming to a head with BT now, we've told BT either to show an interest and publicise us or to leave us alone!
WABIT: Could you make it on your own though, if BT pulled out?
RICHARD: We could try, but what is probably best is a restructuring of our arrangement with them; anything to get us off these slowed Vaxes.
WABIT: Why did you leave the university and are you now working on MUD2 and its variations full time?
RICHARD: I left the university because the pay was appalling; I had three years seniority over people who were earning as much as five thousand pounds more than me, simply because they were older! Yes I now work on MUD full time, with the occasional sorties into the Al world to keep my hand in, in case anything dreadful happens to MUD, and to finish my PhD.
WABIT: Why is the American version of MUD the 'old' one. Was this just to give them a taste so that you could negotiate for MUD2 at a later date?
RICHARD: The original MUD was written for a DEC-10 and CompuServe have DEC-10's, so few alterations were needed for them to use it. If they were to take on MUD2 they would need to change their criteria to do it: MUD1 is very efficient but to fit in with CompuServe's CPU usage requirements it needs to have a 7-second delay. MUD2 would need minutes of delay. The problem they are having in America is getting players to register at a regular rate rather than having two hundred register at once! I wish we had a similar problem.
WABIT: Compunet also ran a version of MUD1 didn't it? Why did that come to an end?
RICHARD: Yes, Compunet ran MUD1; it was stopped because they couldn't afford to lease DEC-10 time anymore. I'm now converting MUD2 to run on their current architecture, but we haven't yet signed anything to say we definitely will run it; BT need to give their approval and they take forever to do anything!
WABIT: With all the current changes and updates to the database it seems that there is no limit to the complexity and realism that is possible in MUD. Is there a 'finished' product out there somewhere or will it just go on and on?
RICHARD: Due to the design of MUDDLE, the complexity and realism is easily accomplished. MUD will continue to evolve, though it will decelerate; I don't want to pack it all in too tightly. There's no danger of my running out of ideas for new things but I don't want it too large that no-one can know the answer to all the puzzles before making wizard.
WABIT: Should a prospective Wiz need to know the solution to all the puzzles? Surely it the land was that large then the slant would move from general knowledge of the land to a more specialised knowledge?
RICHARD: No, they shouldn't have to know everything but if there were too many puzzles then they couldn't know the answers to them all even if they wanted to! There is a place for a big game like that, but MUD as it stands is designed for the way it is played at the moment. Eventually I would like to design a garne where players start off in different regions, which could be regarded as "countries", and getting from country to country would be difficult. There would be a lot of work involved in such a concept; I have some ideas but it is maybe 10 years away. It all depends how MUD goes; if it gets successful I may work a bit more on the concept.
WABIT: Is there a chance that you will eventually market MUDDLE itself?
RICHARD: MUDDLE is MUSE's central product. If we were to market it we'd want some kind of say in what it was used for, because once everyone else had access to it they could design MUD-style games as well as us! We do have other advantages, but they don't really count against people with big networks.
WABIT: On the subject of networks and the competition, what do you think of the other Multi User Adventure games that have emulated MUD?
RICHARD: I can't do anything about them so I don't really care. It niggles me that they can describe their history in depth and not make a single reference to MUD, though, as some do.
WABIT: Have you played any and do you regard them as real competition?
RICHARD: I haven't played any seriously, though I have popped into a few. I don't regard them as competition; in terms of standards MUD2's design is way ahead of anything else. Shades, for example, is pre-MUD1 in implementation. However the point of MUA's is that it doesn't matter too much; to someone who hasn't seen an MUA like MUD, even Shades looks really good.
WABIT: Shades went from a limited game in a suburb to a very successful game purely because of the way it was suddenly given access to a large network with local access. Is there any chance of MUD getting on such a national network?
RICHARD: Prestel approached BT Network Information Services about MUD, NIS being the guys who were initially interested in MUD, but they turned them down, which is a shame - MUSE was very keen. Now Prestel is in control of the BT end. Micronet is now realising that Shades is very limited and they're taking on other MUA's - Wanderland seems next. It is somewhat annoying that our suggestions to Prestel on how to interface MUD to their system were taken up and used for Shades.
WABIT: Do you believe that you will solve the promotional problems and get us runnina on a larger scale?
RICHARD: I believe so, yes; the promotional problems are because BT has the contract which says they do the marketing. We can't do it with out breaking the contract, well maybe we could but it could get acrimonious.
WABIT: Prestel could, at this moment, easily link to the PAD network though surely? They can link Prestel to BT Gold via this network so why not to us?
RICHARD: Yes, there is a link between Prestel and Gold, so they could route through to these machines. In fact, for some applications, they already do! BT are just being lethargic, they prefer to hum and haw about it, rather than getting on and doing it. We have had a MUD1 compatible with BT GOLD for two years now.
WABIT: Recently there have been a lot of advances in the 'intelligence' of mobiles. They will now do all sorts of clever tricks to stay alive. It seems that the advertising is finally becoming truth as the mobiles develop ever greater degrees of AI in the near future.
RICHARD: Oh I am longing to increase the intelligence of the mobiles even more. Artificial Intelligence is my main kick out of programming and the subject of my PhD. This won't be for some time yet though as I get side-stepped into doing other things, like the Compunet conversion. I also get countless 'things to do' from wizzes...
WABIT: Is the conversion going well?
RICHARD: I'll be working on it for some time; it is easy but mindlessly boring! The good thing is that once we get MUD off of the vaxes we can then move it elsewhere, maybe linked to Prestel etc., so it is all worth while in the end.
WABIT: Does Roy still work for MUSE?
RICHARD: He's not salaried but he does still program for us. If Simon drops him a royalty check he may do some more! He's very busy at the moment but still enthusiastic.
WABIT: One last question. Is the area above the wells still in the pipeline or on hold? Will we ever be able to go up from above the cavern?
RICHARD: It's written, I have the room descriptions, but I'm holding it back because the game would be too empty if I included it. No-one would meet each other! We need more players first. The theme is an oriental temple, but there's a mountain-side covered in snow too, lots of stuff.
WABIT: Is there anything you would like to add? Any passing thoughts?
RICHARD: Well, just to say that I like receiving suggestions for the game from people, as long as they don't involve dogs or underwater cities! And nothing that requires players having to have read the same books as they have, etc..
WABIT: Is the 'no dogs' thing related to a bad experience you have had with a dog at some time? Hehe.
RICHARD: No, it's just the first thing anyone suggests I put in. It's always that damned dog that follows you around. I don't LIKE dogs, but then I don't like parrots either!