5 ms·
A friend of mine spent much time on MUD[1] servers playing and interacting with strangers. The game theme was fantasy-ish. As he moved through the large world
by eloeffler 5y ago
A friend of mine spent much time on MUD[1] servers playing and interacting with strangers. The game theme was fantasy-ish.
As he moved through the large world of the server he would repeatedly encounter people who asked him if he was a seer (Sehender, in German). For a while he thought that this is some trait or role that you can have in the game.
Turned out, though, that being a seer means that your eyes work as they do for most people in the world. And that was less common on this server to have than not. Many people with impared vision played there, using screen readers.
Hence, instead of talking of blind people, this place shifted to talking about seers, while visual impairment was normal :) And I do believe that this majority of players had a much better visual image of the world they're playing in than those staring at a wall of ASCII.
Unfortunately, I don't know what server that was. But I assume that MUDs gain some of their continued popularity from there.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD
A MUD (/mʌd/; originally multi-user dungeon, with later variants multi-user dimension and multi-user domain)[1][2] is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, non-player characters, and actions performed in the virtual world. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language.
- simonebrunozzi 5y agoWhat a great story to read. I would be really curious to know more about that particular MUD. I have normal vision, and have played on MUDs only for a few years, in my late teens / early twenties.
- Taniwha 5y agooh see-er
- Talanes 5y agoHuh, I went to check if the pun still worked in German, and apparently that's just the actual etymology of both the English and German words.
- Sitio 5y agoLove it
- servytor 5y agoThat is really cool. I remember reading about 'Real Sound: Kaze no Regret' and thought that was really nice. I wonder if it would be difficult to make a MUD that is easy to play for blind people. On another note, does anyone know if screenreaders read advertisements? I got so upset the other day when I realized that blind people might have to deal with screenreaders narrating advertisements.