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Old 05-09-2008, 08:01 PM   #41
the_logos
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
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Re: What Does "Fair" Mean?

There's absolutely nothing inherently more OOC about real-life cash than other real-life resources such as typing skills or language mastery. In both cases, they are literally "out-of-character" resources. If your justification for opposing OOC in blanket terms is simply that something is OOC, then there's really not a lot of room to distinguish between the two. A more nuanced view of things is probably in order.

It strikes me that you seem to feel that money is a special resource, different from all sorts of other resources that are equally OOC. Why? All MUDs/MMOs require different OOC resources from people that different people possess in varying amounts. You yourself may prefer that one or another OOC resource is highlighted as being important, but of course that's not 'fair' to anyone who doesn't possess that resource. I'm at a huge disadvantage if I go play a Chinese MMO, because I don't possess the OOC skill of speaking Mandarin or Cantonses well, but that doesn't mean the Chinese MMO is unfair (or perhaps it does, in which case I stop caring about that definition of 'fair' given that it's a silly one).

I'd suggest that in any game, what's fair is what's allowed by the rules. Complaining that something that's within the rules is unfair is like claiming that it's unfair for a pitcher to throw a 98 mph fastball just because you can't.

--matt
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