Now: July 2026
What I’m working on
Hey there,
Now that the State of the Niche Report is out of the way, I’ve been focused on improving the site, such as speeding it up and removing some clutter. I’m also working on a couple of game interviews that are currently in the pipeline.
The new Resources section also gets pretty much daily attention from me now as I work to fill it out with relevant archives, repos, and other sources.
After all that, if I still have time left over, I try to make progress on my own MU* game, which is currently in development. I have almost all systems spec’d out and at least minimally functional, but the core gameplay loop still needs a lot of testing and tweaking to get it where it needs to be.
As of the time of this writing, I just finished re-reading Chapter 8: Motivation and Fulfillment of Tynan Sylvester’s Designing Games. Hoping to discuss it with my book club soon!
— Andruid
What’s been done
Some things I managed to get out the door this past quarter:
- Made all Supporter Extras public content and removed the content gating mechanisms that were in place.
- Ran the 2026 State of the Niche survey and published the report, which was a lot more work than expected!
- Published a fun interview with Mo and Hiro of NukeFire MUD.
- Completely revamped the Resources section of the website.
- Published an insightful interview with Brandon Cross on accessibility in MU*s.
Additional entries are listed on the Updates page.
What’s next
Roughly in order of priority… and subject to change:
- Interview with Aelyn of Erion MUD.
- Interview with the Starmourn team.
- Ongoing improvements to help the site get cited more often, so that more people can discover the niche and some of the cool projects happening in it.
- Probably an experiment involving MUD swag.