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For post-apocalyptic action, I recommend Cybersphere. It's been around since 1993/1994, and growing ever since.

It's not straight Fallout post-apocalyptic, it's a mix between that and cyberpunk. So on top of the wastelands and mutants, you've got megacorporations, implants, and the matrix. Fully coded matrix, great implant and drug system, vehicles, multiple towns, completely custom code base developed from the old Lambda core back in 93. Dedicated playerbase.

Only downsides? Rough learning curve, and a vicious group of players who try to accurately simulate the cut throat nature of a gritty dark future.

Having said that, I strongly recommend it.

Seriously, the other less-polite reply to your comment is right. It's one thing to just go around canning suspicious users on web games or M*s... it's quite a different story when the enduser is a paying customer.

Actually, I help run a cyberpunk game, where we've had people do that. We've had cab drivers, secretaries, lawyers, and various other mundane professions.

It amazed me how some guy living in Hawaii would really get into playing a janitor, walking around cleaning up people's apartment for piddly amounts of cash.

The MOO I am an administrator on, CyberSphere, had an economy re-vamp three or so years ago. A player had figured out an exploit to get endless money, so we shut the entire economy down and re-did it as a zero sum economy.

What you said about new players quitting at any point and changing the economy is a good point. We've set a limited number of 'credits' (the currency most of the people use), that slowly increases. People arriving draws money from the welfare fund, which is repleneshed by the various corporations, which gain and lose money on the stock market and through other actions. Players start on the streets with next to nothing, and most of the rich ones have created their wealth through finding a niche and exploiting it instead of through mere coded actions. Instead of performing coded automated tasks for a paltry sum, they create a role where they can milk dozens of people doing the automated tasks to gather even more resources. Muggings, implanting cyberwear, selling drugs.... a variety of characters have fulfilled a variety of self-built roles, creating interaction and conflict through economic means, and avoiding having to introduce too many artificial conflicts as you warn against.

The only problem I've found is increasing the size of the drain. It's easy to pump money into the player economy. Creating jobs, missions, quests... it's easy to come up with a dozen detailed coded systems to provide money. It's taking the money back out that's a problem. We have rent, and disadvantages for living in cardboard boxes or such. Large apartments which hold a variety of gear or garages that store vehicles cost money. Vehicle armor needs re-building, computers break or have one-shot programs, and medicine decays. But short of staging large administrator-run raids on player hoards, I've found it hard to think of realistic ways to increase the size of the drain when a bottleneck occurs in the player economy. Once a player has 'won', they have no motivation not to sit on their hoard. And in a zero-sum economy, this stagnates the game. Many of our players have a mature attitude about it. They play and scheme and plot until they've 'won', and then stage their own defeat, allowing their gear and money to be taken by a pack of young blood. But certain people just want to sit on their stagnant throne for literally years. And I have yet to figure out how to encourage them off without being too heavy-handed.

These kind of conflicts could not occur in a MMORPG. The game I refer to has only a few hundred players, usually twenty to forty people on at a given time. With a dozen or so active administrators, we can offer small plots, large game-wide campaigns, and custom-coded groups and events. The zero-sum economy forces a good amount of player on player action. But these things, like true democracy and communism, don't scale well to a massive populace.

The MOO I am an administrator on, CyberSphere, had an economy re-vamp three or so years ago. A player had figured out an exploit to get endless money, so we shut the entire economy down and re-did it as a zero sum economy.

What you said about new players quitting at any point and changing the economy is a good point. We've set a limited number of 'credits' (the currency most of the people use), that slowly increases. People arriving draws money from the welfare fund, which is repleneshed by the various corporations, which gain and lose money on the stock market and through other actions. Players start on the streets with next to nothing, and most of the rich ones have created their wealth through finding a niche and exploiting it instead of through mere coded actions. Instead of performing coded automated tasks for a paltry sum, they create a role where they can milk dozens of people doing the automated tasks to gather even more resources. Muggings, implanting cyberwear, selling drugs.... a variety of characters have fulfilled a variety of self-built roles, creating interaction and conflict through economic means, and avoiding having to introduce too many artificial conflicts as you warn against.

The only problem I've found is increasing the size of the drain. It's easy to pump money into the player economy. Creating jobs, missions, quests... it's easy to come up with a dozen detailed coded systems to provide money. It's taking the money back out that's a problem. We have rent, and disadvantages for living in cardboard boxes or such. Large apartments which hold a variety of gear or garages that store vehicles cost money. Vehicle armor needs re-building, computers break or have one-shot programs, and medicine decays. But short of staging large administrator-run raids on player hoards, I've found it hard to think of realistic ways to increase the size of the drain when a bottleneck occurs in the player economy. Once a player has 'won', they have no motivation not to sit on their hoard. And in a zero-sum economy, this stagnates the game. Many of our players have a mature attitude about it. They play and scheme and plot until they've 'won', and then stage their own defeat, allowing their gear and money to be taken by a pack of young blood. But certain people just want to sit on their stagnant throne for literally years. And I have yet to figure out how to encourage them off without being too heavy-handed.

These kind of conflicts could not occur in a MMORPG. The game I refer to has only a few hundred players, usually twenty to forty people on at a given time. With a dozen or so active administrators, we can offer small plots, large game-wide campaigns, and custom-coded groups and events. The zero-sum economy forces a good amount of player on player action. But these things, like true democracy and communism, don't scale well to a massive populace.

The MOO I am an administrator on, CyberSphere, had an economy re-vamp three or so years ago. A player had figured out an exploit to get endless money, so we shut the entire economy down and re-did it as a zero sum economy.

What you said about new players quitting at any point and changing the economy is a good point. We've set a limited number of 'credits' (the currency most of the people use), that slowly increases. People arriving draws money from the welfare fund, which is repleneshed by the various corporations, which gain and lose money on the stock market and through other actions. Players start on the streets with next to nothing, and most of the rich ones have created their wealth through finding a niche and exploiting it instead of through mere coded actions. Instead of performing coded automated tasks for a paltry sum, they create a role where they can milk dozens of people doing the automated tasks to gather even more resources. Muggings, implanting cyberwear, selling drugs.... a variety of characters have fulfilled a variety of self-built roles, creating interaction and conflict through economic means, and avoiding having to introduce too many artificial conflicts as you warn against.

The only problem I've found is increasing the size of the drain. It's easy to pump money into the player economy. Creating jobs, missions, quests... it's easy to come up with a dozen detailed coded systems to provide money. It's taking the money back out that's a problem. We have rent, and disadvantages for living in cardboard boxes or such. Large apartments which hold a variety of gear or garages that store vehicles cost money. Vehicle armor needs re-building, computers break or have one-shot programs, and medicine decays. But short of staging large administrator-run raids on player hoards, I've found it hard to think of realistic ways to increase the size of the drain when a bottleneck occurs in the player economy. Once a player has 'won', they have no motivation not to sit on their hoard. And in a zero-sum economy, this stagnates the game. Many of our players have a mature attitude about it. They play and scheme and plot until they've 'won', and then stage their own defeat, allowing their gear and money to be taken by a pack of young blood. But certain people just want to sit on their stagnant throne for literally years. And I have yet to figure out how to encourage them off without being too heavy-handed.

These kind of conflicts could not occur in a MMORPG. The game I refer to has only a few hundred players, usually twenty to forty people on at a given time. With a dozen or so active administrators, we can offer small plots, large game-wide campaigns, and custom-coded groups and events. The zero-sum economy forces a good amount of player on player action. But these things, like true democracy and communism, don't scale well to a massive populace.

I agree, and text is the best medium to roleplay in online.

Graphics.. Are nice, but don't work. Not everyone's an artist, and not everyone can afford to hire one. I've seen people on, say, Cybersphere describe their characters so vividly that a permanant image is etched into my mind.

The same can't be said for places like EverQuest.. Where everyone looks the same, and everyone's using the same equipment.

"You can't spray cheese whiz on the body of Christ!" -- Mr. Bungle of New Carthage.

I agree, bashing your head against such code improves your coding theory and skills.

I'd recommend a MOO for someone looking to code. Created by a coder as a coder's playground, everything is 'hackable' in a MOO. You can re-do the verb editor, how it parses input, even alter the server. You can run the same MOO core on a variety of *nix boxes, Windows, etc. It's an easy way to play around and code a bit. For more information about MOO coding, check out the Sourceforge project for it. Most MOOs are social MOOs, and wouldn't hold much of an appeal to the same crowd that would code MMORPGs. However, quite a few MOO's are set up as full-fledged RPG's.

If you're interested in making your own online RPG and want to learn how to code instead of facing the daunting task of a MMORPG, try starting with Ghostcore. It's an extremely well put together piece of code, and while I may not like the way the combat system's done, on your place you'll be able to pick it apart and play with it as you wish. For an example of it in use, check out GhostWheel. As far as other well done RPG MOO's, check out Sindome (a younger MOO, still in development) or Cybersphere, one of the older MOO's (where I code).

I know that text-based online gaming is a bit old fashioned and retro to the kind of people the article is talking about, but I think it's an excellent place to hone and refine your coding skills to become part of a real project later on in life. You're not responsible for artwork, animation, or other things. You're working on artificial intelligence, combat systems, translating your concepts into code, and even dealing with customer support and fixing players' problems. It's full of valuable lessons for a real career in such a thing. And no form of M* is better, from a coding point of view, than a MOO. During periods of my time where I couldn't have a programming job, due to also being a full time student or such, I've found that coding up new projects on the MOO kept my skills fresh and kept that mindset easily reachable.

Also, if you're looking to refine your object oriented theory skills, nothing will cram it down your throat without lube like a MOO. Just as that horrible language Scheme forces you to learn how recursion works, working on a MOO will force you to think in good OOP terms.

There's hardly much strategy involved in today's strategy games.. Build three thousand barracks type buildings, pump out three hundred thousand disposable troops, and choke the enemy with your dead.

And these so called 'rpgs'?

I'm sorry, but roleplaying isn't about killing things mindlessly, getting experience, and winning the game.

In a true roleplaying game, you *can't* win. There is no 'ending'. Above all, you are not important. When you die, the game shrugs and goes on.

Excuse me, I need to go make fun of some freeform not quite roleplayers who can't handle bad things happening to their characters without their explicit consent. ;)

(Go check out Cybersphere for a *real* roleplaying game. Remember, kids, you are nothing! You can die at any moment, people can and will kill you because they like your sneakers and wish to acquire them without financial loss!)

You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake. Or some shit.

Hell yeah, advertising works wonders. The incredibly popular NeoPets game uses a variety of advertisements to make money.

Often they have various real life products for sale within the game world, that people can use. They also offer people game money for opting in to get tons of spam. Visit Cartoon Network, here's a hundred units of currency. Sign up for this new auction site, here's some new attack for your little pet. Nominate someone to run the Olympic torch for Coke, and here's some new Coke machine for your NeoHome. They've managed to create quite an inventive and cool game, despite the kiddie slant given to everything, and it's still entirely free. Millions of people play it, and they've managed to employ quite a few artists and coders off the advertising revenue and sales of shirts and the like.

A few years ago, the online game I help administrate was looking to go to a pay-for-play system. They had to scour through the database, removing references to various copyrights. They had to work out payment systems, worry about players actually being paying customers that they had an obligation to help, and various other worries. In the end, the administration at the time decided that it wasn't worth the hassle, and the game continues to remain free yet small to this day. We advertise the people who founded the game, who also provide bandwidth and the server space, but no money's moving around the game whatsoever except for a few donations from the players to the providers. Every few years, talk of it going to a pay format or being sold is kicked around, but I don't think that'll ever happen.

There are a few coders I've seen who create elegant code that rivals fine art. Not quite Beethoven, but music has been around for a bit longer, and has had more time to create such fine artists. Maybe a few hundred years from now we'll see a code-god of Beethoven's level.

The M* I work on has been a great experience for me to see a wide variety of code. The game has exchanged hands many times since it started in 93/94, going through dozens of various coders. Some fix bugs through elegant user-friendly well-written code that looks gorgeous. Others toss on nasty patches that look like someone's stapled a band-aid to a leper's open sores. After dealing with spaghetti code for hours, a certain coder's works truly look like Beethoven to me.

But perhaps that can be attributed to the thirsty man in the desert thinking that the muddy water is Poland Spring. *grin*

Actually, it was that reason that kept me on M*'s instead of giving them up. My excuse was: I was going to waste my time playing games instead of studying. Whether it be Dungeon Keeper, Total A., Starcraft, etc. If I'm wasting my time on a M*, at least the effort isn't gone. When I beat the level on Dungeon Keeper, the cool nifty dungeon I dug is gone. When I vanquish my foes on the RTS game, the army is gone. With a M*, my creation stays.

Yeah, I know I could have played a MMORPG like UO, but that wouldn't have let me create things and code like the MOO I got involved with did. That way I could keep on telling myself that I was keeping my coding skills fresh by wasting my time on a MOO instead of playing another game.

Ultimately, it was the fact that others could enjoy my creative efforts on CyberSphere, while the dungeon in Dungeon Keeper was only seen by me and an opponent or two. I've built many things, and coded many cool objects, which hundreds of people have enjoyed playing with. That wouldn't have been possible with any other homework avoider that I know of.

Some of the popular MOOs are still around. But one sub-segment of MOOs (a sub-segment of a sub-segment, I know), the RPG MOOs, is still very much active.

GhostWheel and CyberSphere are both around and expanding. The former is a pseudo-fantasy post-apocalyptic game, with many MUDesque themes of hunting and rising in power. The latter is a cyberpunk post-apocalyptic game, which focuses pretty strongly on role-playing, while still leaving room for gritty futuristic urban violence. Both incredible games.

As a coder on a very old text-based role playing game, I've seen this happen firsthand. There is no way that we can compete with the blood splatter of Unreal Tournament, or the graphical experience of Everquest. So instead we've tried to focus on the strengths of our dying genre.

People cannot play Everquest from work, while sitting in a programming lab, or other such locations where they find themselves with free time and a firewall that lets them telnet out. Most of our players are people who play these newer games like UT or Icewind Dale, but they don't always have access to that computer. Or people who don't have the computing power and budget to support buying the latest big name game. These people are our target audience at this point, but it is an audience that is slowly shrinking. When we used to use mobs of people in our game's various hangouts and bars, we now consider it great to see a mere dozen.

Many of us are oldschool pencil and paper role players, and chose to play on the text based online game because it allows for a greater level of role playing then EverQuest or Ultima Online. I've tried most of the MMRPG's, and found them to be either giant deathmatches or painful affairs of watching a blue bar grow while staring at a spellbook. I can stare at a spellbook screenshot if I want to get the EverQuest experience. I, for one, would rather spend my time role playing where imagination and text are your only tools.

As much as the genre is dying, there is one benefit from the other games seducing the players away. The only people left on the text based role playing games are those that really want to role play. Otherwise, they'd be booting up Quake 3.

Shameless plug: If you are looking for a great text based online role playing game, check out CyberSphere.

I agree entirely. Somehow, the added magic seemed to detract from the 'man vs. machine' nature of most cyberpunk role playing games. Plus, the added governmental influences (the tribal nations, the elf nation), seemed to detract from the megacorporations.

While katz's point is quite valid, CP2020 is a far better example, IMHO. Look at the current trends of outsourcing governmental departments, and various corporations taking advantages of third-world governments. One of the major themes in most cyberpunk literature and role-playing, other then the 'man vs. machine' trend, is the megacorps acting as the ultimate 'big brother'. Larger then any remaining government, the remaining power blocks of the world. Corporate defections led to warfare in Gibson's 'Count Zero'. Megacorporations built their own orbital stations to avoid taxes in 'Neuromancer'. Arcologies were built in remote areas, where the employee sent their kids to a corporation-owned school, walked through a corporate park, worked, then returned to their corporate-owned housing. Look at some of the major modern corporations, the way they 'move into' a town, and the way the region's identity shifts around the corporation. When IBM stock prices dipped in the mid 90's, I was on vacation visiting a relative that worked for them in upstate NY. Sure enough, the sunday mass included prayers for the corporation. Look at Japan, with corporate songs and corporate housing. This is a fascinating trend, from a socioeconomical view, and has really been taken to the nth degree in cyberpunk literature.

Some of the underhanded moves made by modern companies, can you imagine what they'd do if they WERE more powerful then government? Exactly the 'horror stories' that occur in most cyberpunk literature. The covert killing off of rival researchers that refuse to defect, faking a terrorist attack to sneak out research data from a rival megacorp, etc.

Though to counter your last two lines, I do think that the future's going to look more like a 'Snow Crash' future then a 'Neuromancer' future. As dystopian as I feel the future's going to be, I do think Gibson was a little to far into the darkness.

If you're looking for a good MMRPG cyberpunk game, full of megacorps and fun, be sure to check out CyberSphere.

Plenty of us already have our own communities. They're here. There's no world-wide community on the web just as there isn't one in the real world. You can't manage that many people in one "place."

LambdaMOO, Cybersphere Kingfox has mentioned in every one of the parts of this discussion ;), the small (but personally beloved) Ghostwheel, the aforementioned FurryMUCK. All have been around for almost ten years!

We've got our communities. Where've you been?

--

Could you call /.'ers a community?

I'd go so far as to call /.'ers a group of communities. The clever trolls, the simple goatse.cxers and spammers, the Linux zealots, the corporate sysadmins sitting bored in their office /.'ing all day, etc. A series of communities, with their own forums for discussion, clashing or joining every so often in an article or secret SID that spans a few of their interests at once.

Regarding MOOs, I think one of the best examples is a MOO that has some of the MUD-drawing aspects as well as the building aspects of a MOO and the roleplaying aspects of a MUSH. CyberSphere, a MOO I've worked on and played for years, combines all of these quite well. All of the dangers that Katz has mentioned in his intro paragraph have come and gone. From flamers to thieves and beyond, and it's still going well after seven years.

The members are quite close, many people have moved across the country or made their college choice through CyberSphere. A few admins on the game got job offers from other admin and players, after seeing that they could code on the game. Recently a few losers (myself included) drove a thousand miles from all over the country to have a party IRL. While there everything from drug deals to job offers went down. Though after the long return trip home, the group of us are still a community in many ways, in almost every sense of the word.