[Threshold]

You are right! The sale of souvenirs is indeed unrelated to the fact that the museum is free. Just like optional sales of extra features, perks, etc. is unrelated the fact that a MUD is free.

Thank you for finally seeing the light!

Except the whole world still considers the Smithsonian free... except you and your ilk when you need to twist reality to support your crazy argument.

And that is why people consider the Smithsonian, ESPN.com, IRE Muds, etc. to be free. They don't cost anything. The fact that there are optional things you can pay for doesn't change their "free-ness." At least not in the minds of rational people.

As for your slam on "Buy 1 Get 1 Free".... um, if that didn't work and if people didn't think they got the 2nd one free, it wouldn't be such an incredibly common, powerful, and successful marketing tool.

[Milawe]

<Snip: Removed reference to deleted part of post - Xerihae>

Regardless of whether or not you or your players are willing to do something, you cannot vouch for all gamers or all imms. The fact that you can cook up this story proves that at least one person can feasibly imagine this scenario, and it is not out of the realm of possibility for it to occur.

"Fair" play is a nebulous concept at best, and as long as all the options on a game are available to every player in the SAME WAY, the game is about as fair as it is ever going to get, whether it's pay-to-play, pay-for-perks, play-with-donations, or free-to-play.

[cratylus]

Fine, your mud accepts money or it doesn't.
I don't think that this makes it irrelevant whether the donor
receives a reward in return for the donation.


I think that this is not what we're talking about. The
ethics of the admins of a given mud and how they treat
people is not in question. I think this point is a
good one and worth discussing, but is not relevant to this
discussion of a payment policy description in a mud listing,
which is focused on clarity and informativeness, rather
than admin ethics. If you were to drag us into an admin ethics
debate, then yes, we'd probably be here forever and
forget the point of the thread.


That's just it. We're *not* arguing what's free
any more. AFAICT, we're in agreement that
we're going to disagree on that.


Unless I'm mistaken, this site is intended to err on the side
of newcomer-friendly. I can attest to the post deletions
that support this policy. I believe your "it's their problem"
position is in conflict with the site's stated goals.


Fine. That is part of what I'm supporting, so you should be
ok with that part of it. In addition, I support a clear
statement of whether the mud rewards the donation. I don't
think that's ambiguous, misleading, or inappropriate to include.


-Crat

[the_logos]

It's also completely and explicitly legal and ethical.

--matt

[Samson]

Thank you for twisting my words yet again. Much appreciated. That's NOT what I said though. The Smithsonian's selling of souvenirs does not mean I can't come in, walk around, see the exhibits, ask questions, marvel at the coolness of it all, and go home with some awesome memories. The same way my buying a t-shirt from MUD X doesn't affect my ability to explore the world, fight demons, gain levels, form guilds, raid other guilds, and generally have a great time.

You're either deliberately misrepresenting what I'm saying, or you genuinely don't understand my argument. I can't tell which.

So once more. The Museum as described falls under being 100% free. The dinosaur figurines and animal crackers have no bearing on me being able to come back again later.

Changing the parameters the way you did to include memberships ( clans in the MUD ), access to guided tours ( paid immortal assistance/newbie help ? ), access to "behind the scenes" tours ( paid for secrets to how the MUD works ), and a whole host of "additional access" ( private areas on the MUD ) turns the model into pay-to-unlock-features. No sane individual could honestly claim this is still 100% free.

Which ilk is this exactly? I'd like to know. The general public who recognizes a scam when we see one?

It's a scame. Pure and simple. That people fall for it doesn't make it any less of a scam. People fall for Nigerian 419 emails too. Offering free money. Are they legitimate marketing tools too?

If I buy one bottle of laundry soap and it costs $3.00 and the store hands me another, I've effectively paid $1.50 for each bottle. The math doesn't lie. I've still paid for it.

Just because it's legal doesn't make it ethical. Giving 419 scammers my bank account information when they ask for it is also perfectly legal. Does that make it ethical too?

[KaVir]

Lasher also proposed an "ALL game content available without donating Y/N?" option back on the first page, which is similar (and which I would also be in favour of). I don't think you could really break it down into multiple catagories though, as that becomes far less clear-cut.

The combined click-box/text-area suggestion would also cover this payment model though, as you could click "Payment / Donations accepted, rewarded in-game" and then in the text-area write "All rewards are also available without payment". This approach also seems to be the most popular so far, with (I believe) only the Thresholds and some newbie guy/girl (don't remember the name offhand, sorry) actively arguing against it.

[chaosprime]

That level of on/off, black/white distinction is, in effect, a disingenuous editorial statement, saying that all that matters about a game's financial structure is whether or not money is involved in any way. Given social prejudices, this amounts to a suggestion to the user that any game with money involved be dismissed out of hand. The fill-in text box is irrelevant to search functionality; even if Lasher felt like wasting his time to provide the capacity for some sort of keyword matching on that field, no one would use it when there's a radio button for a yes/no choice right there.

Finer gradations of choice, on the other hand, say to the user that there are important distinctions to be made within the realm of MUDs with a revenue model, while in no way removing anyone's ability to say "I WANTS ONLY NO MONEY MUDZ RAAAAAR".

I am arguing in favor of those finer gradations in part because I don't think that sort of hijacking of the TMS interface by anti-commercial sentiment is appropriate or helpful.

Oh, and if you try to tell me that interface design is value-judgment-free, I will laugh at you uproariously, possibly even pointing as I do so. Just sayin'.

P.S. to everyone: y'all really ought to stop representing checkboxes when you mean radio buttons. I thought everyone in the world would have written enough HTML by now to know the difference.

[cratylus]

Are you guys really going to continue with this stuff?

I thought we decided pages ago that "free" was inadequate and
we were settling on the nuts and bolts of consensus for a
specific set of descriptive criteria that avoided fudgable language
as much as possible while remaining helpful and informative
to newcomers.

Criteria, for example, like this:

-Crat

[KaVir]

For the record, many of us were in favour of finer gradations (my original proposal included 12 different categories), but these proposals were primarily picked apart by commercial mud owners who wanted to continue listing their games as free.

[the_logos]

It is ethical by all standards of conducting business in the Western world. That's good enough for me. If it's not for you, that's your choice, of course, but to most people there's not even a question involved.

--matt

[cratylus]

The hilarious irony is that the single checkbox would actually
be against the interests of commercial muds, imo, as well
as poorly serving the interested querent. It's pretty much
the worst of both worlds.


It *is* true I often confuse the two, but in this case, these options:

can involve the selection of more than one box.

-Crat

[cratylus]

Just to clarify, that's why I think the single checkbox is not
in the interest of commercial muds. I think there are more
people who would structure their search this way than
they realize. Just an opinion, tho.

-Crat

[chaosprime]

What a charlie foxtrot.

It's the essence of politics, really. A horrifying mess of Lovecraftian proportions that any sane human wants only to flee from as far as possible, yet if you imagine you can opt out, you come back to find that everyone's voted for you to be cabin boy.

[Newworlds]

Play baseball much Chaosprime? That statement came from left field like much of your post comes from opinion-is-fact prose. As example:
It amounts to nothing of the sort. The full arguments in this thread are based on whether a game is free or whether it has perks, hidden or otherwise. The multiple selection option allows for interpretation by the admin of the game, letting them bend the way their mud works to fit into a category that is not fact based. If you need a full example of this, ask, I'll give it in a follow post.

Who said anyone would be searching the text box. The text box is only so that when you bring up the mud that sounds interesting and it is a paid mud, you can quickly see what you are donating or paying for. Have you searched or looked for a mud recently? I could scan every mud in the top 100 here in less than an hour under this system.

This does not remove that ability, but it does, as stated before, stop someone from placing their mud in other categories based on opinion and offers the most direct answer to the question free or not.

Again a left field comment. Hijacking the interface by offering one or two choices for two distinct muds (pay or not pay)? And if you've read any of my posts, you would know that they have been mostly positive to commercial muds.

I believe you would laugh regardless of what anyone "writes" you.

[chaosprime]

I don't feel the need to explain my art to you, Warren.

[Jazuela]

Just as a minor FYI - Kingdom of Loathing -is- 100% free - that Mr. A can be purchased by anyone in-game, without any actual real-world money. Current price in the mall I believe is 4.5 million meat, give or take. That's how I got mine, anyway.

And Mina, I disagree with you about whatever it was you said about donating for servers things making the game still be not free. A voluntary donation with no in-game reward of any kind, does not negate the "free" part of a "free" game. Free means you do not have to pay anything, for any part of the game itself. Mousepads, unless they are needed in order to play the game, are not needed in order to play the game. So buying one still doesn't make the game "not free." The GAME is still free. Now, if you donated, and were rewarded in game with a free character description, and only people who donated were allowed to get free character descriptions, then no - the game is not 100% free. Because there is some part of the game itself, that requires you to shell out money in order to receive that part. If that donation gave you an in-game token...and you sold that token for in-game money - then the token - is still not free, and that makes the game not 100% free, because the only way that token can be acquired is if *someone* paid for it in actual money. The token, in otherwords, would not exist in the game, if someone didn't pay for it with a donation or some other manner of real-world fee.

The game play might be free..remorts might be free. Armor might be free. But level 51 might require a payment. Or the Really Ugly Puce-And-Pink-Polka-Dotted Bowtie Worn On The Elbow That Provides No Benefit Other Than Being Textually Repulsive, might be a gift in exchange for a donation. But if that bowtie isn't sent to your home address and only game characters can wear it, then it is a game benefit in exchange for money, and the game is not 100% free.

Oh and Craytus, that thing you keep quoting of the checkboxes (or radio buttons for those who want to get technical, though in the quote itself they aren't radio buttons, they're just open-ended brackets so pffft)...

The last line:
[ ] No Payment / Donations accepted, period.

Grammatically, states no payment, AND (or) BUT Donations are accepted, period.

If you want to make it read how you intended, it should read:

[ ] Neither Payment nor Donations accepted, period.

[Newworlds]

Alot of what you said was enjoyable, if long to read and you make good points especially on the last option, however if we are going to fully correct, let's do this:

[ ] Neither Payment nor Donations accepted.

It's cleaner and direct without the emphasized period. I still vote for a singular option though.

[Brody]

Here's the part where I mutter about whippersnappers complaining about reading.

[cratylus]

Good point. Then:

Thoughts?

-Crat

[cratylus]

Here's the part where I mutter that my offtopic post poking fun at
another post on this page got deleted.

-Crat