The Lobby - An idea by Dustin Lacewell
Introduction:
Today, the biggest (arguably) casual communication medium is through Internet Relay Chat. You know, that place where you can sit for hours talking about nothing in particular, or sit for hours talking about nothing at all? Well that is great and all but why not make your chat environment interesting? Well thats the whole concept here.
If you are hip with the times, you probably know about these little games called MUDs. If you are not hip with the times then Ill tell you about them. MUD stands for Multi-User Dungeon, or Multi-User Domain. These started out as text based role-playing games, where users could log on, and role play using their avatars in a robust virtual environment. The environment consists of rooms. When you enter a room, you are presented with a scripted description of where you are, which in essence provides the graphics (using your imagination). People walk around, kill things, buy things, wear things, etc Your modern day everquest, without graphics.
Well I say! That sounds interesting right? Well the whole idea here is to take that MUDding environment, take out those RPG elements, and apply it to chatting!
Well, whats different here? Dont people chat in MUDs?
Why yes they do, but on most MUDs, talking out of character is a big no no, and on others talking out of character is discouraged.
Havent people done this already?
Of course they have. MUDs used solely for chatting are called, Chatters. So whats different between Chatters and the Lobby idea? Well in Chatters, people walk around the environment talking to other users just like they would in a MUD. Its just a MUD, without roleplay. There have been no customization towards, a pure, rich chatting environment. So I guess you could say this idea is to take Chatters to a whole new level! The purpose is to not take elements from IRC and place them in the setting of a MUD, yet take elements of a MUD and place them in a relayed chat. How we can do this will be described precisely in this document.