Music Maven

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Music Maven is a text-based MMORPG that centers around the music industry. Within the game, players can write songs, record albums, receive record contracts, and win awards. Music Maven is unique among video games in that there is no discernable goal. Each player may design his or her own strategy for success. (A regular joke in the Music Maven forums is that a player has "won Music Maven.")

Created in 2002 by Doug Timms, the game is currently in its third incarnation and has since seen the addition of features such as fully customizable line-ups, purchasable instruments, festivals, and record contracts. The game is relatively stable but occasionally runs into bugs, such as when the game takes two days to update instead of one. The game also features a robust and diverse roleplaying element on its forums, home to many fantasy bands and characters therein. Recently, the forums were hacked and the database was deleted. All the posts and accounts, spanning nearly four years were also deleted in the process.

[edit] Updating Issues

Music-Maven is a turn-based game; and in this game's case, it is supposed to update at around 12:00 EST everyday. Since Wednesday, August 9, 2006, it has failed to update daily. This is the longest pause in updating the game's ever faced, and many believe this may be the end of Music Maven.

Doug Timms, the creator of Music-Maven, reports through Marco, what exactly happened to the game:

"The truth is that the hacker deleted the forum database. The blue page was created by me. I never backed up the forum database. Therefore it is all gone. Sad news. Even though I didn't maintain the game, the forum lived on and was the real core. Losing the forum was worse than losing the game.

The game to me is over now. When I migrated it to a new server a month or so ago, I never finished with the migration, so certain key things like emailing and purchasing possessions never got reestablished. Now with the game not updating, I think that spells the end.

If I feel inspired, I may put out a MM4 in the future, but we'll see."

The game was fixed for the most part on August 28, when the game updated for the first time in weeks. There is also a new official forum.

[edit] External links

(Created on August 5, 2006 several days after the official forum was hacked in July)