Thread: Rapture license
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Old 10-02-2003, 03:42 PM   #84
visko
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Um...

Questions come to mind at this point.

Have any of the major players in the current arguments published philosophical or business-oriented papers regarding these matters? I'd be interested in collecting a bunch of links to pages all over the web where people can read full, unadulterated points without having pieces of them picked apart in an ongoing debate (one of the problems with the debate model, imho).

Also...there DOES seem to be a bit of a gap in the entire debate so far...

People who build commercial games want money. This is why they're "commercial" games. Because they want money, the implement parts of the game that use RL money as a means of advancement.

On the other hand, a game that is inherently unbalanced or creates major problems with the structures that use RL money will not be played. Games in general that are unbalanced and allow for social, material, or any other category of trend that players don't like will not be played. So it's in the creator's best interest to create a game that is balanced overall. The argument that "paying for MUDs is a bad thing"....most of you probably don't run out and wait at the door for HL2, nor do you pay for any of the other (in my opinion) limited FPS games on the market right now. But ask yourself: why does anyone?

Also: players who play commercial MUDs have more invested in a game than time. Time is an interesting commodity; those who have a lot of it rarely value it at all, and those with none of it eventually end up wanting it more than money. Money is an entirely different beast. For some ridiculous reason, everyone wants it, and all they can get, regardless of how much they have currently. But SPENDING money is where it really gets interesting; when you spend money, you expect results. Whether its the thrill you payed for at Six Flags, the screw you paid for doing its job, or the credits you buy in Achaea holding their worth and still be useful in 6 years (because Achaea is still around in 6 years, a rare thing for a MUD nowadays), you EXPECT results. So you do more to make sure you get the results you want.

Logos and his administrators keep the obviously destructive influences away from their normal pbase, and in turn the normal pbase keeps itself pretty happy by being a (relatively) mature group and finding excitement in their gameplay. How is this different from CS, UT2003, Warcraft, or any other game you pay for? Is it because it's not a one-time payment and then thousands of hours of fun? (Because it would seem that this could be the model you choose for Achaea....) Is it paying for the games at all? Is it the notion that time is worth more than money, or money is worth more than time? (Because both seem to be useful and allow for the acquisition of power on Achaea, maybe not equally, but that was never a debate as of yet)...

Instead of bickering, I would strongly encourage those of you out there who have a serious and vehement opinion out there to go publish your feelings and make points (even without valid references -- Kavir, we're not all engineers. You're allowed to have a gut feeling every once in a while...I think you actually did earlier in the discussion with regards to the feasibility of making a MUD profitable in 6 years) that we can all view. I'll volunteer to create the website and order the points of view in as objective and comprehensive a way as I can manage, and we'll be done with the #### thing.

Meanwhile, congrats to Iron Realms for being a business that didn't tank in the current economic setting. Hope we eventually see some OSS from you sometime soon so we can start increasing the overall quality of MUDs again.

-Visko
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