23 MUD developers

Richard Allan Bartle FBCS FRSA is a British writer, professor and game researcher in the massively multiplayer online game industry. He co-created MUD1 in 1978, and is the author of the 2003 book Designing Virtual Worlds.

Amy Susan Bruckman is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the School of Interactive Computing and the GVU Center. She is best known for her pioneering research in the fields of online communities and the learning sciences. In 1999, she was selected as one of MIT Technology Review's TR100 award, honoring 100 remarkable innovators under the age of 35.

Alan Cox is a British computer programmer who has been a key figure in the development of Linux. He maintained the 2.2 branch of the Linux kernel and continues to be heavily involved in the development of the Linux kernel, an association that dates back to 1991. He lives in Swansea, Wales, where he lived with his wife Telsa Gwynne, who died in 2015 and now lives with author Tara Neale, who he married in 2020. He graduated with a BSc in Computer Science from Swansea University in 1991 and received an MBA from the same university in 2005.

Pavel Curtis is an American software architect at Microsoft who is best known for having founded and managed LambdaMOO, an online community.

Elonka Dunin is an American video game developer and cryptologist. Dunin worked at Simutronics Corp. in St. Louis, Missouri from 1990–2014, and in 2015 was Senior Producer at Black Gate Games in Nashville, Tennessee. She is Chairperson Emerita and one of the founders of the International Game Developers Association's Online Games group, has contributed or been editor in chief on multiple IGDA State of the Industry white papers, and was one of the Directors of the Global Game Jam from 2011–2014. As of 2020 she works as a management consultant at Accenture.

Jeremy Elson is a computer researcher specializing in wireless Sensor Networks. He is also the creator of the popular CircleMUD. Elson received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2003. He previously worked at Microsoft Research, in the Distributed Systems and Security group within Systems and Networking Research. Recent projects include MapCruncher and ASIRRA. In 2015, he started his career at Google. Jeremy is also known for his work on calculating whether a powerball ticket can ever be profitable.

Frank Randall "Randy" Farmer is an American game developer, co-creator with Chip Morningstar of one of the first graphical online games, 1985's Habitat. In 2001 he and Morningstar were the first recipients of the Pioneer Award by the International Game Developers Association. Farmer was involved with the creation of Yahoo! 360 and Communities.com, and has published several works on web and game development, social media, and online communities.

Kelton Flinn is an American computer game designer who is a major pioneer in online games. He is a co-founder of the seminal online game company Kesmai, which they began in 1982. His best known title is the first graphical multi-player online game offered by a major service, Air Warrior (1987).

Brian "Psychochild" Green was an American software engineer, game developer and game designer known for his work on one of the first 3D, MMORPG's in existence, Meridian 59. Operated now by Open Source volunteers, the Meridian 59 servers continue operation after more than nearly twenty-five years.

Joichi "Joi" Ito is a Japanese entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is a former director of the MIT Media Lab, former professor of the practice of media arts and sciences at MIT, and a former visiting professor of practice at the Harvard Law School. Following the exposure of his personal and professional financial ties to sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, Ito resigned from his roles at MIT, Harvard, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, PureTech Health, and The New York Times Company on September 7, 2019.

Raphael "Raph" Koster is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Koster is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies. From 2006 until 2013 he worked as the founder and president of Metaplace producing a Facebook game platform.

Ben Laurie is an English software engineer. He is a currently the Director of Security at The Bunker Secure Hosting.

Michael Lawrie is a British computer security and social networking expert known for many things ranging from running MUDs to accidentally being the world's first Cybersquatter. He lives in Cambridge, England where he created the Cambridge Freecycle group, one of the largest in Europe.

Judy Malloy is a poet whose works embrace the intersection of hypernarrative, magic realism, and information art. Beginning with Uncle Roger in 1986, Malloy has composed works in both new media literature and hypertext fiction. She was an early creator of online interactive and collaborative fiction on The WELL and ArtsWire .

Discworld MUD is a popular MUD, a text-based online role-playing game, set in the Discworld as depicted in the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett.

Cat Rambo is an American science fiction and fantasy writer and editor. She was co-editor of Fantasy Magazine from 2007 to 2011, which earned her a 2012 World Fantasy Special Award: Non-Professional nomination. She collaborated with Jeff VanderMeer on The Surgeon's Tale and Other Stories, published in 2007.

GodWars is a family of MUD engines derived from Merc, created in 1995 by Richard Woolcock, also known as "KaVir". GodWars' setting is influenced by White Wolf's World of Darkness.

Jason Scott Sadofsky, more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist, historian of technology, filmmaker, performer, and actor. Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms Sketch, SketchCow, The Slipped Disk, and textfiles. He has been called "figurehead of the digital archiving world".

Stephanie Diane Shaver is an American fantasy writer and video game developer.

Richard "Rich" Skrenta is a computer programmer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who created the web search engine blekko.

Greg Stein, living in Austin, Texas, United States, is a programmer, speaker, sometime standards architect, and open-source software advocate, appearing frequently at conferences and in interviews on the topic of open-source software development and use.

Timothy J. Stryker, better known as Tim Stryker or Stryker was a computer programmer, best known as the creator of MajorBBS, a computer bulletin board software package.

Bruce Sterling Woodcock is an American computer and video games industry analyst, best known for his work on subscription tracking of massively multiplayer online games via his website MMOGCHART.COM.