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Old 01-02-2003, 03:52 PM   #12
Sanvean
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Pacific Northwest
Posts: 99
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Speaking as a mud that does allow players to donate -- ain't no one going to be buying a new car off donations. We use donations to pay for the DSL and machine expenses. We have an Amazon.com associate partnership, and make a little off that, which is used to pay for advertising. We also have a Cafe Press shop, which sells at cost, in order to let players buy shirts and such if they want.

Right now, a year's expenses, including advertising, connectivity, machine upgrades, domain registration, fees for the server that hosts our message board, runs us at least 800-1000 a year. We don't make back anything close to that. But we have a good time with the game, we've formed close friendships, we have both an annual player/staff gathering as well as a week-long staff vacation (which we all pay for out of our own pockets, heh). So it seems worth it to me.

That's not to say you can't make money off a mud - I've seen someone make potloads (literally, since he would get on the imm channel and brag on the doob he bought with the latest donations) -- but it involved in game rewards, which (at least to my mind), all licensing issues aside, compromises the integrity of a mud in an irrevocable way.
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