Same here , I got addicted to a mud called realms of despair , smaug codebase, a derivative of Dikumud, I then ended up helping run a pretty popular server on the same codebase with some friends I met on the server. Bought a "learn c++ for dummies book" (even though it was programmed in c) and started modifying the server and the rest was history ;) I guess I was 14 at the time and I haven't stopped programming since. Gaming is definitely the gateway drug to programming and text based games are in some ways the most interesting form for learning due to not having to worry about graphics and immediately seeing results like you mention.
I've often thought about implementing "Claude plays" some open source mud. Seems like a much more pure form of experiment since it's all text.
Just last Friday I was doing some cut&paste proof of concept of "Gemini plays Genesis MUD".
I gave Gemini a little prompt and just started pasting the game output into Gemini and the commands from Gemini back into the MUD. It managed to create a character, do the tutorial and started doing some initial skill training before I got tired of all the cut&paste.
Would be fun and interesting to let it completely loose in a similar environment.
I had ChatGPT play The Two Towers and have screenshots. It was surprisingly good at it, but after the first session (max message limit reached), it was unable to pick up where it left off. It started describing rooms TO me instead of responding to rooms I was describing to it...
I've often thought about implementing "Claude plays" some open source mud. Seems like a much more pure form of experiment since it's all text.