watching it rise

Keith Stuart interviews Richard Bartle, one of the creators of the first MUD:

MUD has little that today’s virtual worlds don’t, but it lacks something they do have which makes it worth looking at: baggage. In today’s virtual worlds, there are many components that are only there because they were in the worlds that the designers played. These things work, but the designers don’t know - or even consider - why they work. A designer will ask “what character classes are we going to have?” when they should first ask “are we going to have character classes?”. Only when they have decided that yes, they are going to have them, will they know why they want them, and therefore why they are important.
– Richard Bartle