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Old 08-29-2007, 05:44 PM   #1
the_logos
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Professional vs Hobbyist

EDIT BY XERIHAE: In the thread "What is free?" KaVir wrote the following in response to a post by Threshold:

Xerihae - Seemed like the easiest place to start off this debate (and give me somewhere to move posts too!) so I hope you will all continue here.

THE LOGOS POST BEGINS HERE:

The Olympics seem to manage pretty well with clearly distinguishing between the two in most sports. It's not that complicated.

--matt

Last edited by Xerihae : 08-30-2007 at 11:27 AM.
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Old 08-29-2007, 05:54 PM   #2
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Re: What does "Free" Mean?

I tend to agree, especially regarding the point that customer service, technical prowess, speed of response, hardware resources, and professionalism are what players ask about, not compensation. I'd have trouble classifying our game as either-- our staff derive zero income from the MUD, but they're nearly all full-time computer programmers, network administrators, etc., and the collective average workload of just our Implementors is equivalent to a few full-time employees.

Possibly worth discussing in another thread, though at this point it seems to be merely theatrics and distraction. At least in our own experience, we're very frequently asked by players whether they'll have to spend money to compete (and other things included in the current questions, such as codebase, PK, RP, etc.), but I'm not sure I've been asked about my personal compensation even once.
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Old 08-29-2007, 06:04 PM   #3
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Re: What does "Free" Mean?

Valg, you are grossly underestimating the value players put on knowing the admins have a vested, financial stake in making sure the game they play is stable and continues to operate into the distant future.

I imagine the reason you are not asked about it is because you run a hobby mud, your players already know it is a hobby, and thus there is no point in asking you about it.

But the extreme majority of gamers have voted with their feet and their wallets, and they prefer playing games where the operators' jobs depend on that game continuing to exist. It is simply safer to put one's faith in another person's self interest than their good intentions.
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Old 08-29-2007, 06:25 PM   #4
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Re: What does "Free" Mean?

Players care that the game is stable and will continue to operate. I don't think the players particularly care about whether or not any money becomes salary.

KaVir's examples above (e.g., one untrained guy operating out of his house for a middling income, vs. a team of people who run a game in their spare time) are illustrative of why. Games run for profit fold their tent all the time when profits aren't meeting expectations-- your argument is a double-edged sword. You might not toss away Threshold when it's your sole income, but then again you might axe it in a heartbeat if things go south and you can't afford to do it the way you're set up to do it.

The best evidence of stability is stability. Providing dates of operation and related information covers that well enough in my opinion. A '100% free' game which has been running for over a decade is very likely to continue running. A commercial game founded this month may or may not last through December.
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Old 08-29-2007, 07:15 PM   #5
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Re: What does "Free" Mean?

Actually, it's no longer cut-and-dry. To quote from Wikipedia:
And particularly these days, especially in software where we have companies (and most MUDs) running on an operating system where the developers are not directly paid for their contributions (though granted, they are mostly software professionals), I think the term is getting very blurred.
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Old 08-29-2007, 07:19 PM   #6
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Re: What does "Free" Mean?


Huh, guess I am not up to date on the Olympics. Thanks for the correction.

--matt
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Old 08-29-2007, 07:32 PM   #7
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Re: What does "Free" Mean?

Of course they do. That is precisely what gives them some actual faith and confidence that the game will be around. Relying on someone's self interest (if the game dies, they are unemployed) is a lot safer than just hoping some random guy will choose to keep paying for hosting, hardware, and devoting his free time to the game.

Well, I don't know about those examples, but they sound pretty ridiculous and absurd. I'm talking about the real world, and real examples of real games, not some absurdly hypothetical situations that aren't relevant to the discussion.
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Old 08-30-2007, 11:46 AM   #8
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

My own personal opinion on this is that, though I doubt it's intentional, this is another issue that could be used to "ghetto-ize" a section of MUDs. By describing all games in these terms I think it's possible a lot of players would be turned off MUDs without paid staff because of the often-negative connotations of the words "amatuer/hobbyist" when used to compare to "professional".

To be honest I fail to see why this is an issue. Surely it can be simply covered with the commercial/non-commercial distinction? If there are non-commercial games out there with paid staff then by all means put me right here!

Also, having a paid staff is still not an indicator of quality as far as I'm concerned. I know some damn good MUD admins who do it as a "hobby", and I've met one or two who are paid who I wouldn't even give the time of day to because their skills are questionable and their conduct more so. I'll concede that someone with a vested financial interest in the game has a greater motivation to do well, but best intentions etc!
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Old 08-30-2007, 12:00 PM   #9
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Thumbs up Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

That's possible. I think it's a useful and meaningful distinction, though, and it allows someone performing a search to say "if I'm going to play a MUD with money involved, I want to at least get full-time admins out of the deal", which seems to me just as valid as

I don't think it's entirely fair to require detailed disclosure of revenue structure from commercial MUDs without giving them a chance here and there to tout what you get for your money.
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Old 08-30-2007, 12:02 PM   #10
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

In that case, why not "Paid/Volunteer Staff" rather than the "Professional/Hobbyist" distinction?
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Old 08-30-2007, 12:18 PM   #11
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

*sigh* Because like every other check box we could ever attempt on here, people will just check what they've justified themselves into being.

For example, if you have players who are "Paid" by working for credits in the game, are they paid or volunteer? It could go either way depending on what the admins feel would be "best" for their mud in the listing.

We already see that people have issues with the money-changing hands vs. no-money changing hands distinction. I can't see how everyone wouldn't play around with this, too.

There's obviously perceived benefits in just about every check list there is. I, for one, do not believe that "Hobbyist" is a negative term at all, yet a lot of people on this site obviously feel that it ranks them beneath professional. I'm a hobbyist coder, but I'm a professional writer. I happen to do both on a mud. What does that make it?

Am I the only one confused?
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Old 08-30-2007, 12:34 PM   #12
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

I think there's a great deal of value in professionalism -- I don't know that I feel the same about professional. I've seen pay to play games that I've considered very badly run and/or which were short-lived. I do agree that a mud that is pay to play may be more accountable to the players. The players have consumer power and can leave, but so do people playing free muds - they can move elsewhere, and I don't think any game admin is happy to see that sort of migration.

I do, though, have a bias. Our game would be considered hobbyist, but the staff that have or are working on it over the past decade and a half include people with credentials from Microsoft, Apple, Sony, and more, as well as professional writers, editors, and game designers. We have formalized processes for creating new game content, incorporating player feedback, making code changes, etc. We track turnaround time for answering player requests, and work to be professional in our replies to player queries. (I've talked more about this in detail .) We're considerably more professional than some of the pay-to-plays I've seen come and go.

I do think that very few people want to play a mud run as a hobby by some goofy social outcast in their basement, rife with favoritism, which seems to be the image of the non-pay-to-play mud that gets waved around some. But I also think it's possible to have a mud that is run in a professional manner without money changing hands.
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Old 08-30-2007, 12:52 PM   #13
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

I think that's why it's so very hard to categorize anything here. When we say Professional vs. Hobbyist, are we talking about how the game is run? Are we talking about attitudes? Are we talking about systems? Are we talking about commercial vs. free? Are we talking about staff being paid/volunteer? Are we talking about running a mud being a full-time job, part-time job, or flat out hobby?

Honestly, I'm not sure I agree that the Hobbyist mud has the "social outcast basement-living dude", and honestly, isn't there an appeal to some dude living in his basement being a creative genius and us getting play in his head? Seriously, a lot of the hobbyist muds are huge, have been running for years, and have a large player-base. I'd play them before some of the professional muds simply because I like their style better, or I like their gameplay better.

Still, I was really sad when my hobbyist mud shut down and had a pwipe only to open up 6 months later with my favorite guild closed. I guess that could have happened on a professional mud as well, though I haven't encountered it yet. It all depends on who's in charge and on how they operate their business, doesn't it? Unfortunately, unlike the money vs. no-money issue, this one is really, really, really hard to gauge or determine.

[P.S. San, your link seems to be broken. I'd really like to read more on that topic, so could you check it? Thanks!]

Last edited by Milawe : 08-30-2007 at 12:54 PM. Reason: Added PS for San
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Old 08-30-2007, 01:16 PM   #14
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

There are two sets of 'http://' in that link. Delete one set and it works fine.

PS. good article.
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Old 08-30-2007, 01:30 PM   #15
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

I got a wiki link to HTTP. Is that the right article?
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Old 08-30-2007, 01:55 PM   #16
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

Fixed link:
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Old 08-30-2007, 03:48 PM   #17
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

Whoops, sorry about that, thank you for fixing it, Valg.
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Old 08-31-2007, 07:55 AM   #18
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

Thank you for starting a new thread on this, I've lost track of the other.

I would be disappointed to see a search option which included the word professional. In the same way I am not in favor of a game receiving a rating labeled "A" just because it is free, I would not like to see a game labeled "professional" just because it earns money. I've seen my fair share of inexpert management on pay games as well.

These are the connotations that are being introduced here and I think it would be an insult to the intelligence of those in favor of these distinctions to say it's completely unintentional. Given a choice between "professional" and anything else, anything else becomes UNprofessional. Amateur. Dabbler. Novice.

As was said, if the point is to help the prospective player to determine that a game is stable, they can look at the creation date, the online status, and if they think it factors, the commercial option when that comes in. If that's not the point... then I feel that a "professional" distinction in the mud search is only going to serve to make big games bigger. I can't fault anyone for that, but if this "community" is anything more than a cutthroat venue where we're all out to push our own interests and absolutely nothing more - I think we need to be more generally considerate of the tone and implication of the things we're suggesting. To sum up - keep the language neutral.

Regarding all the suggestions in this thread and the other, I'd like to share my mother's most sage advice with a KISS. Keep it simple. As (mostly) devs, you'll be aware of the concept of value for time spent on a project. I don't think adding another half-dozen options to the advanced search is going to be incredibly useful to new players. If you're simply looking for a way to ensure that your game comes up at the top of a page in a search, I've found a for you. My two cents and then some.

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Old 08-31-2007, 08:33 AM   #19
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

The problem here is that we are talking about all these things, since those terms are very ambiguous, and are intentionally used by some people to muddy the waters. The reason I can say this with some confidence, is the following quote, from an earlier thread on the subject 'Free' versus 'Commercial':

()

Which, as you can see, is a bit more transparent about the motives for bringing it up than this one, from the current 'What does "Free" Mean?' thread :

Now to the actual question:

However the dictionaries define words like 'professional', 'amateur' and 'hobbyist', there will always be the underlying implication that the 'Amateur/hobbyist developer' is less competent at what they are doing than the 'Professional developer'.

My own interpretation of the word 'professional' is 'competent at their job' rather than 'being paid for their job', but that doesn't mean that I am unaware of the underlying derogatory character of the secondary meaning.

When I describe a Builder as 'professional', I mean that they can be depended on to deliver within a reasonable time, and also to deliver high quality work - as opposed to the numerous twinks, who just call themselves Builders because they are hoping for instant power, and who never deliver more than a couple of poor room descs and overpowered objects, before they fade out. Whether they get paid for building or not is entirely irrelevant. (As it happens builders hardly ever get paid, even by commercial Muds, but that's another story).

I consider myself a 'professional Builder', based on the fact that I have produced over 50 zones, some of them very large and most of them very complex. There are some Builders in 4D that I regard as better than myself, based partly on their language skills. (Some of those are professional writers. I am not an English major myself, but I am certainly not an 'amateur Builder' either).

Many 'Cutting edge' Text Muds are developed by 'professional' programmers who have Text Muds as a hobby. (KaVir's GodWars II is only one example of this).

Most Staff members on long established, serious 'free' Muds - including my own - are fully competent 'professional' computer programmers, network administrators, website designers, personnel administrators, writers etc. - often with full time, well paid jobs in their particular specialty. Whether they get a salary for working on a Mud or donate their time freely has got nothing to do with the quality of the work they produce. Calling the ones that donate their time 'amateurs' or 'hobbyists' is not an adequate description of their competence.

Many senior Staff members on well established, serious 'free' Muds - including my own - spend far more than 20 hours a week on line, working on the Mud. They donate their time for free, out of love for the Mud. Does that make them any less 'professional' in their actions than the paid Staff on commercial Muds?

I have seen some very 'unprofessional' conduct by imms - and even imps - in commercial Muds as well as in free ones. It seems to be a question of personality rather than salary.
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Old 08-31-2007, 09:34 AM   #20
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Re: Professional vs Hobbyist

Molly makes several excellent points.
I agree that the word "professional" is insufficient to have the meaning that would be helpful to potential players. [Kavir also makes several good points on this matter.] The goal for this specific selection is to give new players, who are probably unfamiliar with many of our names, some information about the work experience of the mud's staff AND the business/non-business nature of the mud. So I would propose that the "professional" category be broken down into some experience, education and lifespan measures of the staff and mud.

I think the main problem is that the terms "professional" and "amateur" do not pinpoint the real issue(s) here. So lets give measures of the things that really characterize quality.

A mud can identify itself as one thing per section. A player should be able to select multiple boxes when doing searches.

Education:
[ ] No member of the staff has a BS or higher in computer science/programming.
[ ] At least one member of the staff has a BS or higher in computer science/programming.
[ ] More than half of the staff have a BS or higher in computer science/programming.
[ ] Every member of the staff has a BS or higher in computer science/programming.
Number of staff (admin plus builders):
[ ] 1
[ ] 2
[ ] 3
[ ] 4
[ ] 5
[ ] 6-10
[ ] 11-15
[ ] 16+
Administrating or Building Experience (This is for the one staff member with the most experience on a mud)
[ ] Less than one year
[ ] 1-2 years
[ ] 3-5 years
[ ] 6-10 years
[ ] 10+ years
Lifespan (Period of time mud has been online [post-alpha])
[ ] Less than one year
[ ] 1-2 years
[ ] 3-5 years
[ ] 6-10 years
[ ] 10+ years

Yes, there are some problems with this. There are official members of Alatia's staff who had not logged on in over 5 years. Do those guys 'count'? I certainly do not think so. But think of an unscrupulous admin who is filling out the checklist, and that absentee guy/girl has the most eduction and experience of all the staff; I bet he counts that person as staff AND uses that person's education and experience to fill out the checklist. But there will always be accountability issues. But I must say, if this forum is proof of anything, it is that people don't 'get away' with false claims too often. These three categories along with the Payment model category should give the player a good idea what kind of mud it is and at what stage in its development it is.

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