Someone wasn't listening at the presentation.
Fixer Studios are a dynamic and switched-on bunch of mainly ex-PopCap developers who started up last year with a view to making gamer-friendly games for casual platforms. One of their pioneering products is Sinister Dexter, which is a tweaked (that is to say, improved) version of a game called Spellbinder (among other things) that I designed in about 1977 and published in the postal games magazine I ran in those days, before I went to university.
A year later, when I went to university, I met Roy Trubshaw and started dabbling in MUD.
Spellbinder predates MUD and isn't a MUD, it's nothing like a MUD. You could use its spell-casting system in a MUD if you wanted, I guess, but then you could use Top Trumps if you wanted, too. Spellbinder — and hence Sinister Dexter — is a system enabling magical duels; MUDs are places. The graphics for Sinister Dexter are spot on, they really capture the mood of the game; the graphics for MUDs are non-existent except in the players' imaginations.
I wonder how much more of this we're going to see as the word about Sinister Dexter gets out? Maybe it'll be "Fixer Studios Tries Player Types with Sinister Dexter" next...