Invitation to mudlist, a mailinglist for concepts in mud design

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag#ifi,uio.no>]

You are hereby invited to join "mudlist", a manually maintained
mailinglist inteded for too-the-point discussions on concepts, ideas
and issues relevant for the design of recreational graphical
collaborative virtual worlds or with a more familiar term "MUDs".  The
list's intention is to look at graphical MUDs with the eyes of a
designer, a maintainer and a user, not with the eyes of a programmer.
User satisfaction is the essential goal.

The list does not cover implementation, technology or game-features,
but focus on conceptual issues that are relevant for graphical worlds
in general.  New technology that may have major impact on design may
be discussed as a separate theme, but not in a way that disturb
conceptual discussions, which often happens in newsgroups.
Game-features that have a significant social or usability impact may
be discussed on the list.

Typical listmembers are:
- users with extensive experience with graphical muds
- virtual world researchers
- commercial game designers

Current listmembers have been promised a low noise list which it has
been up till now with an average of 2 posts per week.

The mailinglist was originally created for discussions relevant to my
major which I am working on continuously.  My goal with the thesis is
to present a needsassasment for virtual worlds.  A pool of information
on different aspects that a designer should consider. I am also in the
process of slowly implementing a prototype MUD where I hope to test
and resolve certain usability issues.  When I am all done I intend to
put up the essentials from my thesis on the web in english.

Over the past year the following have been discussed:

o Commercial MUDs
o Erotic worlds
o Influence of visual design on behaviour
o Intuitive interface ideas
o Pueblo Support
o Reflections on Meridian 59
o VRML and Java
o Unified screeninterface
o User building and copyright?
o Visual Design
o filters and identity
o user-building in 3D
o Lag
o User age distribution

and others..

To join the list, simply reply to this message and I will add you
manually as soon as possible.  

-- 
Ola Fosheim Grøstad (http://www.ifi.uio.no/~olag/research/master/)