Text vs. graphics

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6 April 2005

by Mike Rozak

For awhile now, I have been considering what advantages text MUDs have over graphical MMORPGs. (... Mainly because the authoring system that I'm creating is a hybrid text/verbal and graphical system, so it can take advantage of text's strengths.)

Books vs. movies

Before exploring the newer medium of virtual worlds, I thought I'd see how linear fiction handles the dichotomy between text (books) and graphics (movies).

Strengths of books over movies:

• Niche market - Because books are cheap to produce and publish, they are often targeted at niche markets that movies don't find profitable. The "niche" markets are often more intellectual than the mass-market movies.
  
  
• Read a characters mind - Books are great at looking into the minds of characters. Movies find ways to express the characters feelings, but can't go into the same depth that books do.
  
  
• Longer - Books are longer than movies, allowing them to be more immersive.
  
  
• Work of one author - Being entirely produced by one author, books have a much different "feel" than movies, which are produced by committees of skilled script writers, directors, marketing teams, etc.
  
  
• Quick to produce - A book can be written and on the shelves in 6 months, although it usually takes 2 years. A movie requires a minimum of 18 months, but usually 3-4 years.
  
  
• Cheaper per hour of entertainment - A book is about 1/10th the price of a DVD movie per hour of entertainment. Ad-supported TV is cheaper than books though.
  
  
• Portable - Books can be taken anywhere and don't require power.

Weaknesses in books (compared to movies):

• Action - Books aren't nearly as good at expression action as movies. Consequently, they shy away from it.
  
  
• Visual complexity - Text can only describe a setting, and imbue all sorts of emotions and memories into the setting. It cannot produce a very accurate depiction of the setting, especially if it doesn't conform to a setting that the reader has already seen. Movies can do wonders with imaginative settings.

Other people's opinions about the strengths of text MUDs

In his book, Designing Virtual Worlds, Richard Bartle lists the following ways that text MUDs are better than graphical MMORPGs:

• Responsive - Adding a new object doesn't mean adding a new texture map.
  
  
• Enfranchising - Many more people can write well than can draw well.
  
  
• Adaptable - Program changes can quickly be made anywhere in the system.
  
  
• Experimental - The test/edit cycle is much shorter, so changes can be made almost on impulse to be later refined, retained or rejected.
  
  
• Open - Players give new ideas more of a chance.
  
  
• Pragmatic - Players accept crashes and other failures more readily if they're not paying.
  
  
• Tunable - Minor changes don't mean major down-time.
  
  
• Promising - More is possible with text than with graphics.
  
  
• Robust - Balance is less of an issue with fewer players.

A few months ago I posted a user poll on www.MudMagic.com, asking "Why do you prefer MUDs to MMORGs?" (MudMagic is a text-MUD web site.) I only had 10 slots, so I limited the choices to the following:

Some respondents wrote additional comments about why they prefer text-MUDs, including:

The web-page for this non-scientific poll is http://www.mudmagic.com/polls/view/31.

From the MUD-Dev mailing list:

• Faster to develop - Mike Oxford wrote that MUDs were fast to develop than a MMORPG because graphics are so much work to create.

Some of my own thoughts

I came up with my own list: (I have eliminated those items duplicated above.)

• Feel - As with books, a single person can create a text world, changing the "feel" of the world.
  
  
• Quickly created - Because a text world can be produced by a single person or dedicated team, it can be quickly created and released. Virtual worlds, with hundreds of team members, take a long time (3 years) to get organized and to produce a world. Throwing more people at a large virtual world won't help, see "The mythical man month" for reasoning.
  
  
• Narration - It's easier to incorporate narrative elements into text than into graphics due to the effort involved in creating animations and audio recordings for the narrations.
  
  
• Other senses - Text can convey other senses than just sight and sound.
  
  
• PC knowledge - Text can convey the player-character's knowledge to the player, such as "Being an elf, you don't like the look of that dwarf."
  
  
• Complex actions - A command line (text) allows for more complex player-character actions than a point-and-click interface (graphics).
  
  
• Complex emotes - Text provides for better emotes than graphics, something that role players like.
  
  
• Cheats/hints - Since a text world is smaller, and a cheats/hints web page about the world is less likely, it's easier for authors to have "new and undiscovered" content.
  
  
• Smaller downloads - Text VWs have a much smaller download than graphical VWs, reducing their download costs and making them more accessible to players.