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I've got no resistance to our games being labeled commercial. They are commercial. They're also free. I have resistance to mis-labeling our games AND to dictating to me what marketing points I choose to list on the front page of TMS. Singling out whether you have pay-for-perks or whatever makes no more or less sense than, say, labeling games as "Run by Professionals" or "Run by Amateurs."
IRE games, for instance, would be the former. Carrion Fields' would be the latter. I'm as sure players would like to know whether they're getting a professional or amateur experience as other people are apparently sure that players want to know, on the front page, whether there are pay for perks or whatever. In other words, neither of us are sure at all, and neither of us have a whit of evidence to support that.
Further, while it is strictly true that, for instance, IRE is run by professionals and Carrion Fields is run by amateurs, is this what you want to see on the front? It's undeniably true according to at least one meaning of the word, but it also serves to force games to market themselves in certain ways. Carrion Fields may very well choose not to advertise that it's run by amateurs, and I couldn't blame them. Without the opportunity to explain to the prospective player what exactly the consequences of that are, you're kind of hamstrung. Amateur vs. Professional carries, in some people's minds, other consequences. For instance, that Professional is better than Amateur. This is not true, as we know. It's merely different.
I have the same objection to forcing us to label ourselves as having a pay-for-perks option on the front page as Carrion Fields (or another hobbyist MUD) might have to forcing them to label themselves as "run by amateurs."
I'm going to cram another idea into this post too, as I'm out of town and in a hurry: I don't actually have an objection to labeling ourselves as "has the option of paying to shorten time investment", but I do have an objection to "pay-for-perks." I feel the latter comes with loaded assumptions about the nature of the game, in the same way that labeling a MUD as "run by amateurs" does, even if they are both strictly true.
I also have a problem with labeling just as "pay-for-perks" unless it includes more detail. For instance, to more completely (but still not completely) describe our revenue model, I believe the following information would need to be included:
1. Free to play.
2. Option of paying to gain in-game things.
3. All things that may be paid for may be instead obtained via either skill, luck, or greater time investment.
I have no problem to categorizing ourselves as the above. That's what we are. If that selection of options were available in the database, I'm totally fine with that. I'm not fine, regardless, with being asked to market any specific feature of our game on the front page, as I don't believe that the option of pay-for-perks is proveable, at all, as being more important to players than a host of other options (such as the level of customer service, whether it's a PK mud, whether it's an RP enforced mud, etc etc etc)
--matt
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