[Newworlds]

Bah, your check boxes are still arbitrary and no different than describing the payment method in the Text Box as suggested. Either your game has payment features or it doesn't. How those features operate are so varied that it requires a text box so the Admin can describe how it works for their mud.

This makes the Admin responsible to put proper identifiers in this text box. Having more than one check box for pay or no pay and trying to agree on what those checkboxes should say is meaningless.

[the_logos]

We're not talking about advertising here, we're talking about what search options to offer. Most of them are verifiable by logging into the MUD and checking them out. For instance, genre, size of world, and so on. They may take some work to verify but they are verifiable. The receipt or non-receipt of donations isn't verifiable however.

[chaosprime]

So frame it in terms of official policy. It's easy to verify that a MUD's stated official policy is that donations are not accepted.

[cratylus]

No it is not.

Look at it again:

There really isn't much to quarrel with. Either you
require money or you don't. Either you accept donations
or you don't. Either you reward donations, or you don't.

I suppose you could play games with the meaning of
"reward" and "is", but *that* is what I would be more inclined
to regard is meaningless.

Since I agree that more info is more, however, I'm willing to
agree that 4 checkboxes plus a textbox seems a good idea,
assuming it isn't a vector for deceit.

-Crat

[Zhiroc]

Hehe, not being a businessman of any sort, I guess when I say "advertising" I take a wider view. To me, the entire search engine and data is an advertisement. So pardon the semantics.

And to me, it should be pretty evident if payment or donations are possible. How do you collect it, if you don't advertise for it? So, it'll be a link on the webpage, or talk about credits or god money or something in the news/help And given that many people are very serious about the "100% free" thing, I can imagine how quickly they would be savaged here if they lied about this. The wording leaves little to weasel around (at least for the "accept no payments or donations of any kind" choice)

Verifying the size of the world is to me a lot harder. And so is originality perhaps (and that is open to interpretation). And RP... all of which are currently search criteria.

[shadowfyr]

Wasn't aware than Bill Clinton ran a mud. lol And I agree. You get the same BS with software, and the result is that ***everything*** except "free as in beer" software shows up in any sort of search engine when looking for it. That ****es me off enough that I don't need to go through the same thing trying to find a game to play, where my main interest is entertainment, not trying to find program X which does Y, because I need it for something. I don't "need" a game, so also don't "need" my time wasted wading through variations on, "Well, this program is free to download, try, use, but not if you are trying to do something commercial (most), not if you need support of the older language features (MS products), and doesn't have features X, Y and Z enabled (a lot of them), unless you give me money. The ones that are upfront about it I might consider *when* I have the money. The ones that are not...

[Newworlds]

I promise you if we can't decide what FEE or FREE means then the same games will be played with Reward, Donation, blah blah.

I still maintain that a single box checked whether you accept donations/payment or not is better. Yes or no, cut and dry. And the allowable text box to define what is meant by your donations, payment, and rewards.

[scandum]

It's only a matter of time till some high budget company hears about IREs little business and decides it's time for the real professionals to get involved. After that it shan't be long till big mother decides that people need to be protected from their own stupidity and takes action.

[the_logos]

I assume by your dismissive "IRE's little business" you mean the virtual asset sales model.

Surely you're aware of products in the West like Habbo (65 million/year in virtual good sales) or the fact that virtually every MMO in Korea uses the model? Nexon alone does more than 400 million/year in virtual good sales in their online games.

Kind of makes you wonder how much of the objection to it is just good old-fashioned cultural conditioning when entire national populations have embraced the model (it was estimated for awhile that 25% of the people in S. Korea had played Kart Rider at least once, for instance, and it had about 15 million regular users at its peak. It uses the virtual asset sales model, like almost everything else there.)

--matt

[Jazuela]

How confusing - and not surprising...

IRE advertises its games as free to play.

But IRE uses a sales model?

Here's a hint: You can't sell something, if you're not receiving payment. If you are receiving payment, then whatever you are selling - isn't free.

If it was free - it would be - well - free. Y'know - as in, you don't have to give me anything in return, please take this product I am offering you, and have a nice day.

Free with purchase, free unless you want these perks, which make the product much more worthwhile and time saving... is not free. Free for the first month and then we'll charge you double - free, unless you want it to actually work, then you have to pay for it - free trial software without any help files and you can't save anything you make with it until you pay for the actual program - It's - as logos says himself, a SALES model, designed to SELL product. Not to give it away - to SELL it. To earn revenue.

[Samson]

Since I don't remember if I stated this or not.

Free means: No monetary exchange in order to access every feature of the game.
Monetary exchange being defined as between the user and the company.
If I have to pay to unlock a special map, that's pay-for-perks, which isn't free.

Those who would bring up 3rd party sales as being monetary exchange, you already know that's a specious argument. What two private individuals do outside of the customer/retailer relationship is entirely irrelevent.

[the_logos]

That's correct. We receive no payment from people who choose to play our games without paying us, and they are able to access every single feature of the game.

You know, free.

--matt

[Threshold]

The issue of third party virtual sales is brought up in response to people who try to argue that competitive "purity" is possible on any game - regardless of its business model or hobbyist nature. The idea of absolute fairness is a farce, because fairness just doesn't exist in online gaming. There are people with no life who can dump 20 hours a day into grinding up their characters. To people who cannot play 20 hours a day, that is not a fair gaming environment. On almost every MUD/MMO I have ever played (yes, even hobbyist ones!), I have known of at least a handful of people who bought accounts, characters, items, or gold either directly or through a third party. I have even heard of people who traded sexual favors for benefits in games. Crazy as heck, but I bet some of you have heard the same rumors on your own games! So people are kidding themselves if they think there is any donation/payment setup that creates a more fair playing field.

It still boggles me to read the way people are twisting the meaning of the word "free" in this thread. I want to go back to some examples I already gave:
But here in this thread, we have a small handful of people who seem to define free as "absolutely no way for money to exchange hands for any purpose, any reason, direct or indirect, no matter what the circumstances, motivations, or reasons." That is just a ridiculous definition of free.

What these people are effectively arguing is that the Smithsonian museums are not actually free to visit. Why? Because somewhere inside there is a dirty capitalist selling a box of animal crackers. DAMN HIM AND THE LYING LIARS THAT PUT HIM THERE!

[Milawe]

Not to throw fuel on the fire, but do people really need that much hand holding that we have to list every possible concept of payment possible? Most of the pay for perks muds and pay games make it extremely easy to get to their "PAY HERE" page. It makes sense. If they're a commerical venture, they obviously want to make it extremely easy on their customers to pay. Yet, no one is actually forced to pay. In most of these games, you can play without ever having to pay and advanced quite far. In fact, some players find this to be the challenge.

I know as a player, I'm not stupid. As soon as I find the type of game that I want (usually really old games or pay games because I'm tired of the muds I've played shutting down), I go to their webpage and find out what their system of donations is or whether or not they take money. Then I play the mud to see if I like it.

When I see "Kids Eat for Free on Tuesday" at our local Italian place, I honestly don't believe that they'll just let me walk in, feed my kids, and leave. They expect me to buy an adult entree, and then my kids get to eat. Technically, my kids do "eat for free", but I guess they could just discount our adult entrees on Tuesday and get the same effect.

Anyway, my point is that it's pretty well understood, I think, that "FREE" means that you can play for free, without paying a dime. It simply might not be the easiest course if you do so. It would almost be easiest to simply have a check box for [ ] No money accepted in any form than to try to encompass all the different subscription/pricing situations out there. That way people who want that very specific type of game can find it. It's very easy to police and very few muds out there actually fall into this category. Others can simply advertise as they like. If they manage to find someone gullible enough to ignore all the pricing information on their webpage, then that person can be suitably outraged.

[Samson]

However, the food, drinks, souvenirs, magazine, and memberships are unrelated material. Unless any of these things are required to access parts of the museum. Not the same thing if the perks are directly related to game play. It would be more like "You can visit the first 2 floors free. The others you have to pay for." Or.... "You can play here for 50 levels free. But in order to be level 51, a donation of $50 is required."

So the Smithsonian is a MUD selling t-shirts on the website basically. 100% free. Unless you want the silly t-shirt that has no affect on your character or the game. Since that box of animal crackers also has little or no relationship with the museum itself.

espn.com is a "payment-required to unlock all levels" MUD. Not 100% free.

Kingdom of Loathing is a pay-for-perks MUD. The Mr. Accessory is not free, so the game isn't 100% free.

The top 100 "free games" list in PC Gamer et al are a mix of pay-for-perks, pay-to-unlock, and truly free games. They're not all 100% free. PC Gamer et al like to throw the word around like crazy though. I'm sure those "free" games paid plenty for that.

My definition of free wasn't "no possible chance of monetary exchange between anyone or anything" as you seem to be suggesting, so I'll take that to mean I'm not one small handfull of people you're talking about. You quoted me even, and still didn't get it right. What 3rd parties do on the side isn't relevant.

[Newworlds]

Bravo Mina! I couldn't agree more. I can see that next the argument will be: is a MUD free if you have to weed through VOTE for US on TMS spam banners every 10 minutes. Is that truly free?

I still believe that the text box allowing some basic payment features or a link to them would be appropriate as stated earlier:
[ ] This mud has some donation, registration, and/or payment features.
<Text box with Description and Payment features.>

[Threshold]

*sigh*

Please actually read my post. Third party sales are relevant to a different sub-point: the one about achieving a "more fair" gaming environment. I actually said that explicitly. Did you just skim or something?

Souvenirs are not related? A miniature version of that big dinosaur you just looked at, that allows you to remember the experience for years to come, is not related? Wow. I actually feel kinda bad for someone when their argument has come crumbling down so badly that they are reduced to making statements like that. It has to be very uncomfortable to actually try to argue that souvenirs from a museum are unrelated to that museum. That is just... wow.

They also sell guided tours, behind the scenes tours, and all sorts of additional access. But people still consider the Smithsonian to be free, and arguing otherwise is just foolishness.

Honestly, folks in your camp are going to keep coming up empty because the convoluted way you are twisting the word free simply doesn't jibe with common sense or common usage of the word.

[cratylus]

Listen, ya'll make good points about the specific enterprises you describe. The
problem is that those enterprises are not what we're talking about. This is what
we're talking about:

-Crat

[cratylus]

Theater of the Absurd, Part II


Meanwhile, on Darker Realms LP MUD...

Noobulator: Excuse me, I'd like to level now, how do I pay?

Admin: ?

Noobulator: I think I have enough XP and I'd like to get to level 2. Do you take paypal?

Admin: dude....this is a free mud.

Noobulator: exactly. So how do I pay to level?

Admin: ....

Noobulator: well?

Admin: you don't

Noobulator: OMG you mean there are no levels on this mud?

-Crat

[Threshold]

Yes I understand. You are talking about creating a totally new definition of the word free that has absolutely no bearing or relevance to the way it is used in the rest of society, commerce, and human language.

Don't worry. That has been made perfectly clear. But thank you for outright admitting it.