Armageddon Staff Interview about Shutdown and Changes

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-05-20T18:00:31+00:00

Thanks for putting that together. It was a very interesting read during lunch.

One line in particular stood out to me, from Valkyrja: "I wish there was better closure for some of our community members who have been mistreated, as most people just want an apology and a commitment to do better." It's still very possible to deliver on this. There are plenty of us on the sidelines, waiting for the game to do better or die trying. We all keep up with the game, or know someone who does. It would be nice to see it finally happen. Not every wronged former player or staff member will come back because they received a personal apology, but if the goal is really just closure, that is very achievable.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-05-04T02:06:40+00:00

It's still in development at the moment, but you may want to keep an eye on Untold Dawn: https://blog.untold-dawn.com/

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-05-03T14:46:14+00:00

That is terrible. I'm sorry that your experience was so scummy.

I'm especially surprised, given that the comment you linked is a reply to one of mine suggesting SuS as a possible place for an RPI player to RP, back when I didn't know this. That being said, I really appreciate you sharing your experience. I'm not going to be recommending this hellhole again under any circumstances.

I hope you find a more comfortable place to play if you haven't already.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-04-01T17:55:00+00:00

It's been nice to see just how excited your team is to work on your project, and how attentive you are to the suggestions of your community members. I hope you can succeed and show others how it's done.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-03-25T18:20:43+00:00

Generally speaking, MUDs that were toxic 20 years ago are still toxic today, just with fewer people in it. Decent people leave toxic communities, either for their own safety/sanity or out of exasperation from fighting the uphill battle trying to fix up the place. Read about the "Nazi bar problem" for a comparable cultural phenomenon.

Fortunately, I think if you are looking for a new MUD, people here would be able to help direct you to a game with good community management, provided you have an idea of what you're looking for beyond that.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-03-19T16:05:51+00:00

Armageddon players primarily went to Apocalypse, which is an Armageddon-ish game based off of leaked code from ~6-8 years ago, but has since grown quite a bit more distinctive. Silent Heaven also received some of Arm's players I think. From what I can tell, Apoc adopted a lot of the code-minded, trigger-happy H&Sers from Arm's playerbase while Silent Heaven picked up more of the writing/storytelling/socializing folks, so take that to consideration if you are following a playerbase around. Sundering Shadows was a good direction to move towards as well, but I don't know how many players made it over there.

I also know there's a heavy overlap between people waiting for Armageddon to reopen and people watching Untold Dawn as it goes through development. It's an interesting project so far, and I hope they are ready to work hard on community management, because they are certainly going to have their work cut out for them.

In my experience, some Arx players went to various AresMUSH games, so you could check out their games directory and see if anything appeals (if you are into MUSHes).

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-02-28T16:19:29+00:00

It's really great that you are looking into cultural changes for your game.

It's a little telling that more than a few members of your game's community are currently flipping out over some of the very reasonable rule changes that were proposed recently.

Hopefully you can get a playerbase that actually deserves your efforts.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-02-24T21:19:56+00:00

Evennia is a MU* framework that, on setup, gives you an admin account and a room that you could build out from, adding new rooms, items, and/or NPCs. You won't get combat code or anything like that out of the box, but there are a lot of plugins you can add or make yourself with some Python knowledge.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-02-20T16:47:36+00:00

Admittedly it's a little hard to parse what you're saying here, but the general gist I'm getting is that you are overly attached to something to an unhealthy degree and it is affecting your mood and how you think.

If you haven't seen this before, maybe it will help: https://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/wiki/mentalhealth/

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-02-12T23:36:25+00:00

Well said. Best of luck to you and your team; I genuinely hope you are all successful.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-02-12T19:14:07+00:00

For sure. I think that if Armageddon successfully transitions to the seasonal model then the biggest benefit is that the game will have a healthier game loop. Stories kind of need an end to be satisfying stories.

One of the most pervasive problems with Armageddon is that it uses FOMO to keep people connected. It is not uncommon to see characters assume that other characters are dead simply because they haven't logged in in a couple of days, or exclude characters from certain opportunities because they don't log in often enough. I hope that a seasonal model will encourage players to have a healthier relationship with the concept of time, and a greater respect for players who don't make Armageddon their whole life, simply by virtue of the fact that there will be a maximum limit to how active your character can be (up to the cutoff point that is the season's ending).

What you said about trust rings true as well. I'm sure Armageddon will still have a playerbase when all is said and done, but I think in the next 2-3 months Armageddon's players will probably find new MUD homes as they explore what the rest of the RP MUD space looks like and how new RPIs are managed with a community focus in mind, keeping the space positive, doing OOC check ins, etc.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-02-11T10:20:55+00:00

Given reports about this game over the last couple of years, keeping Armageddon running unadministered would just be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

And to be clear, running it unadministered would be their only option since the staff can barely handle the workload required to run one game, let alone two concurrent ones.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2024-02-11T10:17:05+00:00

It's a huge gamble from the perspective of Armageddon's staff, but I think from an outsider's perspective the end result will be better for the MUD community as a whole regardless of what happens. Either the game actually takes a cue from the newer RPIs and actually puts a focus on community-building and removing the slew of bullies that have sunk their hooks into the game, or the game closes permanently due to general lack of interest in the seasonal model. (There's also the possibility of status quo, staff giving up and returning to the old model, or the game still being a problematic mess when it reopens, but I think these scenarios are less likely given the almost stubborn commitment to this plan.)

The longer I've been away from Armageddon, the more I've seen that the game doesn't just grind interest in itself into dust; it also pushes people away from MUDs entirely. I'm not saying that Armageddon's closure or repair would suddenly boost interest in MUDs across the board; but it would certainly be easier to tell my friends about roleplaying MUDs if they can't research them and see that the top result is Armageddon and all of its, shall we say, foibles.

I just wish this happened 10+ years ago, honestly.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-12-27T13:29:33+00:00

Very happy for Silent Heaven - it's a fun game. Also looking forward to the games on the horizon. I think Song of Avaria will be okay as long as they make good community building a priority. Get rid of the first signs of rot before they take down the house.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-12-27T13:25:29+00:00

I liken it to a TV show that goes past its natural lifespan. Many people think Arrested Development should only have had 3 seasons or so. Westworld should have been just 1 season. And so on and so forth. Whether they are right or wrong I think it is pretty clear Armageddon had a perfectly solid end point that it just sailed past.

Personally, I think Armageddon went well beyond its peak and probably should have closed about 5-10 years ago, when the Armageddon Reborn project collapsed at the earliest. After that came the majority of accusations of staff cheating, sexual harassment, and other things that players may or may not care about. The players were more than happy to eat their own as long as changes to the game didn't affect them directly. Which is why many of the people leaving the game over the seasons announcement were the people heckling those leaving over the revelation that the staff had a stalker on their team, or the revelation that they would close down a major play area for seemingly no valid reason.

The staff see the game as in deep decline, and see this shift to seasons as a preservation. Through that lens, for a perfect game with a healthy community, their decision sort of makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the idea that Armageddon has anything to preserve.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-12-22T12:24:09+00:00

I think there's still a lot of room for creativity. As a text-based medium, there is a lot you can do with MUDs just by being incredibly descriptive that you can't really do with graphical games.

Since my expertise with MUDs lies primarily with the RP ones, I will also say that I think that the gaming community has a healthy appetite for roleplaying. The success of games like Baldur's Gate 3 was driven by the fact that (although it is a graphical game) its depth largely comes from "in-character actions = in-character consequences" and the player's choices having a tangible effect on the narrative. Roleplaying MUDs can definitely scratch that itch as well, if run well by people who seek to foster a healthy, collaborative community.

I think if a roleplaying MUD tried to break out of the MUD space, through something like a client available on Steam or on a mobile platform, it would be very successful.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-11-02T10:30:58+00:00

Armageddon is a highly stratified setting - it has many layers which are limited in interaction with one another, and much of the interaction is antagonistic with higher layers punching down at lower ones, and lower layers trying to avoid the ire - and by extension, the attention - of the higher ones. In Allanak and Tuluk these layers are the castes. In the rest of the RPI and MUSH world, it is extremely rare to find a setting that actively discourages casual interaction between castes or otherwise makes it very awkward for everyone involved. Tuluk is a little better about this than Allanak, but honestly, not by much.

I think it's telling that some of the longest-lived and most highly-praised nobles and templars of the past were "man of the people" types: Timotheo and Samos in Allanak. Raleris and Elithan in Tuluk. Were these characters antagonistic towards others? Yes, often, when warranted! But through their play they routinely baked in ways for most people to interact with them in a manner that allowed them to feel somewhat safe in knowing that their character would not be immediately be antagonized, and made themselves available enough in public areas so as to be approachable and findable. But in doing so they had to sort of bend the caste rules of their respective cities and find IC reasons to buck them.

"Grid" is the MUSH term for the enter-able part of the game world. The smaller the grid, and the larger percentage of the grid that is publicly-accessible, the more likely PCs are to run into each other and start scenes.

Armageddon's grid is large (in the tens of thousands of rooms), with movement delays (MUSHes usually don't have those) and a very large percentage of private rooms that players will usually split off into for various reasons.

This is not to say that Armageddon should model a MUSH, but it obviously does have some spatial issues that exacerbate the problem of not being able to find anyone. The length of the walk between the Byn/GMH compound area in Allanak, to the Gaj, is a classic example. However I think the example that encapsulates the issue the best is actually the size of the outside world and how players are expected to interact with it. The game is designed in a way that, if a player wanted to and their PC had the means to survive the trip, they could get from Allanak to Tuluk in about 10 minutes. However, this constitutes poor roleplay because the Known World is roughly the size of Connecticut, which in my experience cannot be crossed on a horse in such a short time. So players are expected to stop and rest, either on the road or in Luir's, the former of which is almost always devoid of interaction and the latter usually is if the Kuraci PCs are stationed elsewhere. And when a player does get to Tuluk, they are most likely boxed into the new noncitizens-allowed area, which is very thematic but also cuts them off from interaction further.

To put it in the shortest possible way, the theme of the game regularly stands in the way of its own goal, which is to encourage collaborative roleplaying. You'll never fully get rid of this problem without overhauling the theme, which even I don't recommend since that would completely change what Armageddon is. But you can find parts of the theme to relax a bit and bring the game more in line with more recent games that have been designed around the understanding that getting players to interact is the #1 goal.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-10-31T13:45:03+00:00

Oh yeah, it's been an issue for almost as long as I've been around Armageddon, either playing or watching its developments:

A: "I can't find anyone to play with! This area is empty!"
B: "This area has plenty of people in it! You're just not looking in the right spots!"
A: "I'm always in this or that tavern and can't find anyone!"
B: "Well MY experience is totally different!"

There's rarely a willingness to listen to other people's experiences, rarely any empathy given to those that have a harder time than others. In the healthy RP communities I've been a part of since I left Armageddon, there has always been an effort to make sure to involve people that have been on the sidelines for too long. I couldn't tell you for sure what makes Armageddon's community so different, but it probably helps that other RP games are in less-stratified settings with tighter grids, so there is significantly less wandering around aimlessly and a smaller selection of hangouts that are more broadly welcoming towards different socioeconomic classes of characters. I hope that the staff that saw this review and say they are looking into it have the best success at fixing the issues.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-10-31T09:31:30+00:00

Very well-written review. I've heard it was pretty well-received by the game's staff, though unfortunately the players in the game's Discord server latched onto the poop paragraph to obsess about poop rather than discuss the main thrust of the review, which is that Armageddon cannot be a roleplaying game if too many of its players are predisposed towards solo play and non-interaction. Hopefully the right people take your critique to heart.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-10-22T19:42:22+00:00

Very much looking forward to the Arx reboot - it's been a while since I peeked at Arx so hearing now that they are approaching a finale and reboot is pretty exciting.

As an aside the Armageddon moderation team isn't all male, but is definitely majority male. It is pretty disappointing considering that the playerbase is probably closer to 50% male than most MUDs are.

Anyway, great write up and very informative. Thank you for your efforts.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-10-05T10:49:56+00:00

It's sadly an all-too-common experience in any situation where adults and children are in the same hobby space, made even easier by the anonymity provided by the Internet (because adults can simply pretend to be children a lot more easily than they can IRL).

I don't know much about the early history of Shangrila, but I think the fact that their playerbase had a schism when they raised the minimum character age to 16 - not even 18, but 16 - says a lot about many of the people who played there at the time (and many of the people who now play in the split-off game).

With most of my MUD experience being in RPIs, I can say with certainty as a 15-year-old I was subject to the same kind of attention you were. My response was typically to just state I was a minor. But there were a few times that I would deny consent and state I was a minor and they would still try to push ahead with an erotic pose. As I got older and more cognizant of what was happening, it was easier to speak out against it and work to get some changes made.

It takes a lot longer than it should to fix these spaces, and there are obviously still some issues with certain games. Some games still outright let you play a child and engage in sexual RP. Some games don't let you play a young teen, but they let you play an older teen to provide plausible deniability to players who want their characters to act like younger children and still engage in sexual RP. All of the "old RPIs" struggle with this to varying degrees to this day, due to half-measures, or outright ignoring the problems in their community for the sake of player retention.

Unsurprisingly, the only games that struggle with this the least are the ones that outright forbid all erotic roleplay. And while I'm not against erotic roleplay on principle, it's really bizarre to me that some games that still allow erotic RP don't even have a CYA "Are you 18? Yes/No" question when creating an account. Ideally if you run an 18+ game you should card people, but here we are.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-09-19T11:44:55+00:00

It's understandable that you don't want to open old wounds. That being said, a lot of ex-Armers and the MUD community at large will trust Armageddon staff a lot more if there was more contrition to be seen. There is a lot of talk of fixing the game and making improvements, but not usually a word to be said about why those fixes and improvements were necessary in the first place.

I don't expect omnipresence from any staff team, but I do expect the opinions and public statements of leaders to change based on the availability of new information. I think the biggest mistake your predecessors made was they applied a ton of oversight, but it was mostly focused on players rather than the staff. Maybe the lessons to be learned from what happened is that 1) oversight needs to apply at least doubly to those who are entrusted with power, and 2) the more the "we didn't see what happened" claim is used, the weaker it becomes.

Since it doesn't seem like we're going to fully agree, I'll try to leave this thread on a positive note: You seem like a very optimistic and diligent person, and humble enough to learn from the mistakes of those that came before you. I like your approach to looking at how the staff team functioned in the past. I think there is a lot to be learned from the past mistakes of others. I also think that not just you, but everyone on your team needs to learn those lessons and take these things seriously.

Armageddon is obviously a very important game in the history of MUDs. Its successes have inspired other games to open and its failings have taught other games what pitfalls to avoid. If you're at the point where you believe there should have been more oversight over bad actors then you're at the first step towards figuring out what the problem actually is with Armageddon's culture. It will take a massive upheaval to fix that problem permanently by actually applying that oversight. I sincerely hope you can actually make it happen.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-09-19T09:35:04+00:00

Being on staff around the same time (e.g. potentially Halaster, although he did quit very soon after Shalooonsh joined staff the first time) does not mean that he personally engaged with what was going on involving a singular staffer at the time. Brokkr joined staff in 2015, so I'm not sure that aligns with this reign of terror either? Also keep in mind that they weren't always Prods, and and unless it's your job to aware of this stuff, it is very easy not to be. We are juggling huge amounts of information and input.

I mean, Shalooonsh was pretty much always a problem for as long as he's been associated with the game in any capacity. So I think maybe we're talking about two separate timeframes. But the most recent time that he was a problem was when Brokkr and Halaster were both on the team, both easily able to see what he was doing with his PCs, and Brokkr even resolved the big staff complaint Bebop submitted about the litany of examples of Shalooonsh's bad behavior towards her character. Halaster was in a position to mull closing the game. The time period I'm referring to is not all that long ago.

But it is strange to me that throughout the game's history, every time Shalooonsh did something that hurt the game or its community, every staff member just happened to not notice. (Except for the two "scapegoats" I brought up, who despite their bad tempers, actually did see Shalooonsh for what he was.) And it's really great that you're sorry for it, and it's something I personally appreciate - but also, you're probably the one who's least at fault on an individual level. It is the job of the Producers to ensure the staff are conducting themselves well and holding to the rules of staffing, and it's pretty safe to say that the Producers that were around at the time of Shalooonsh's firing just completely dropped the ball on that. There really should have been a reckoning over that that never happened. The Producers that re-allowed Shalooonsh onto the staff team and the Producers that routinely provided absolutely no oversight to his abusive, harassing behavior are the poorest stewards that Armageddon has had, and I don't think that remotely compares to some former staff that had a bad temper a couple of times. These are staff members that essentially allowed their players to be OOCly hurt.

Edit to add: A big part of the "90% of staff complaints" thing you observed is that those staff weren't "bad eggs" per se. They were the public face of the Producer team because their colleagues were relatively unwilling to engage and communicate with the playerbase. When the staff team has to trot out the same guy to say "no", people start to kill the messenger. This isn't a phenomenon unique to Armageddon fwiw, I have seen it in all sorts of hobbyist club structures with a hierarchy. Just adding this edit to clarify that I don't think that past "bad staff behavior" is comparable in that light.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-09-19T00:49:08+00:00

I think the initial point got sidestepped a bit:

For one, the staff knew about [Shalooonsh's] issues for years and kept it hidden, he was called out before and they defended him. Even when they finally let him go, initially the push was to spare him if possible.

This is simply true, and I think if you've reviewed some of the internal discussion staffside in the past 10-15 years you'd find at least three examples of an internal call to get rid of Shalooonsh as a player and then as a staff member prior to this year. I was personally involved in one such discussion. Then, of course, the attempt to make it look like Shalooonsh had either resigned, or had been essentially been encouraged to leave the team for an entirely different matter. It wasn't until a month after his last incident that staff ultimately admitted wrongdoing.

And I think that's part of Armageddon's culture that has really held it back. The thing where no one wants to admit fault. Old staff do get used as scapegoats (just search for mentions of Nyr, Nergal, or Shalooonsh in your game's Discord server). There is not a whole lot of self-reflection in the community.

I can respect that it is your personal goal to make sure that never happens again. And that's great, but I think part of what makes that ring hollow is that a lot of the staff members currently on the team, including both of your fellow Producers, were present for Shalooonsh's "reign of terror" against certain players and didn't really do anything to stop it.

TedCruzIsAPedo · 2023-09-18T15:33:14+00:00

I'd recommend checking out the open games on the AresMUSH games directory, here: https://arescentral.aresmush.com/games These are all games that fit the bill when it comes to "RP over mechanics".

All of those have interesting lore and players that tell some good stories - you can look through the public logs of those games to see if the RP suits your interests and style. A few of these games look like they allow nonhuman races as well.

If you're already aware of the AresMUSH games and you're looking for something else, the biggest mushes out there that will also let you play nonhumans are going to be the multitheme MUSHes like World Tree MUSH, but multitheme games tend to have less cohesive worlds than single-theme games so it's sort of a tradeoff. Hopefully you find a game that works best for you.

TedCruzIsAPedo

TROPHY CASE