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You might ask the same thing about "professional" vs. "hobbyist." Is there a desire to hide that information on the part of hobbyists? Yes, and no. It's a desire not to pose a false dichotomy because of previous expectations by the player. Valg is, for instance, clearly a skilled administrator. Text MUDs are too difficult to recruit players for for someone incompetent to build a decent sized playerbase. But when you put the words 'professional' and 'hobbyist' side by side, one looks bad and one looks better, just like when you selectively present other types of information.
I've stated, for instance, over and over and over, that I have no problem with full disclosure of revenue models relating to the MUDs, though I believe that includes things like a MUD paying for its server bills by charging players for things whether in game or out of game.
And I mean, we have entire web pages devoted to paying real money, linked from the front page of all of our games' websites. New characters are automatically told about credits after they're out of the newbie intro or almost right away if they choose not to do the newbie intro. If we were interested in hiding information, why the heck would we do any of that?
Why would I post in the forums on TMS saying, "We are commercial. You can buy credits from us" if we were interested in hiding information? Look, I said it again!
Anyway, Kavir is probably right insofar as the easiest and fairest way to do this is just to remove the option to select "pay for play" and make no comment about business model. I'm ok with that or truly full disclosure about revenue models.
--matt
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