'MUD not dead', says Wired

A nice little article on Wired magazine's website today looks at how text-based MUDs are managing to survive despite the onslaught of EverQuest and its graphically rich contemporaries. It's surprising how this genre never mutated and took off on mobile phones, surely the perfect recipient given our love of text-messaging. A few companies did try to create choose-your-own-adventure style games back in the booms days of WAP, but the scene quickly fizzled out. I'm certain a gossipy, Sims Online-like title which works across all networks on all levels of handset hardware would attract quite an audience, even without visuals. Indeed, the whole pleasure of MUDs, and similarly of text messaging, is the collision of imagination and communication. Perhaps the demands of text-only interaction are too great for today's visually motivated mainstream gamer.