People skills are the area of development most cited by MUD staff members. Lipa said, "Being a [GM] on a serious MUD like Armageddon put me in an environment where I had to reconcile my own idea about how things should be done with the team's. At first, this was difficult ... because I had not been exposed to such a challenge before."
Tiernan, an IT Program Manager, felt his customer service skills were fine-tuned by his experience as a game admin. "Dealing with player requests, etc. is very much along the same lines as what I do in the IT realm with my corporate customers."
Neal Haggard (Morgenes), a Java programmer, said that the lure of MUDs cemented his choice of career. "My need to get back on the internet (in 1993) made me go back to college ... I love solving puzzles and figuring out how to do things, so mudding fit."
For some staff members, the networking possibilities offered by MUDs are useful. Naiona, a database specialist, said, "As a computer programmer, it is nice to be able to talk with the others on [the Armageddon] staff who have similar occupations when I'm thinking through an issue that I prefer not to discuss in front of a client. There are also times that other staff members have suggested resources or techniques that have worked well for me on the job. In addition, I've referred another staff member to a job and references from others have helped fill open positions at my job sites."
Xygax, a game programmer, noted that "I do ... experiment with new technologies on Armageddon, like the newer C/C++ compilers, profiling and performance improvement tools, etc. ... Another advantage I draw from working on Armageddon is more intimate knowledge of how [communities work]. At my company, community interaction and support issues are usually filtered through other individuals, and so I am sheltered from things that Armageddon exposes me to. "
Among the main proficiencies he gained from mudding, Lipa felt, were writing skills. "Before mudding, I was a sloppy writer and did not care much about my work. When I began building a zone, I realized just how difficult and important clear writing is."
For me, training as a documentation manager ended up shaping my approach to revamping my company's public and staff websites. I used skills I picked up when I arranged online help files in Armageddon.
Nessalin felt MUDs have most strongly developed his ability to debug code and given him "a better understanding of what a customer actually wants when they are explaining what they think they want, due to years of seeing what players ask for versus what they actually use."
Members of the Armageddon staff have worked for Microsoft, Security Dynamics, an investment firm, Ultima Online, Apple, IBM and the U.S. government, and just as the MUD has shaped approaches to these jobs, corporate experiences have, in turn, shaped administration and processes in the MUD.
As the result of one management lecture I attended, the game may well be the only nonprofit with an actual mission statement which discusses administrators' accountability to the game, the players and fellow staff, as well as the game's priorities: stability, game balance, consistency, and something labeled the "Gee-Whiz Factor." Other professional tools make up the staff webpage; items like a list of job descriptions and a tool for updating responsibilities and indicating one's current workload were implemented after seeing their usefulness in the real world first.
