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#21 | |
Member
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 100
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KaVir:
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What would that figure lead you to believe it would cost a company to develop an engine themselves? What would the lead time be? How long would they have to wait before the engine and related tools were even ready to support content development? Stilton |
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#22 | |
Moderator
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,306
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If we end up doing a Feist text game, we'll invest closer to 100k than 10k in it and it'll be well worth it. You've no idea what you're talking about. --matt |
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#23 |
Member
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 39
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Out of curiosity, how does your donation system work? I understand about the credits, but it sounds like you'd have to make a lot of things in the game available for cash in order to get people to send in that much money.
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#24 | |
Moderator
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,306
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Now that that's out of the way, our system works like this. There's a generic currency called 'credits' (as you know) that you can purchase from our websites. Once you buy them, they get deposited on whatever character you choose. They are fully tradeable so you're free to do with them as you wish. You can convert them into lessons to raise your skills, you can buy artifacts (swords, magical items, etc) with them, you can buy houses, pets, custom modifications, economic skills like tailoring or masonry, and so on. The other ways to get credits include: Mentoring people who buy credits (you get 15% of their first 4 purchases), leading a city or guild (you get 5% of all guildmember or city member purchases), going up in levels (gets you NeoCredits, which can only be used to convert into lessons. Can't buy artifacts with NeoCredits), getting awards in our monthly art and writing contests, winning the occasional contest, or just getting them from other players. There's an active market in gold for credits (and vice versa) so even if you have no rl money you can acquire gold in-game and trade it for credits, as some people have more rl money than rl time, and some people have more rl time than rl money. So then what you can buy are generally: tools (better swords than the average forged one, for instance), customizations, skills, housing, and pets. There may be some other minor things but these are the major ones. The key to this business model is ensuring that you aren't trying to sell people the object of the game. For instance, in a DIKU-style game many players bash monsters to get 'phat lewt' to bash bigger monsters to get bigger lewt, etc. If you ran a game like that and sold people the items you'd probably not have a lot of players because you're selling them the purpose of the game. Our games aren't item-oriented though (few monsters give any sort of loot beyond gold). Instead, people buy combat artifacts, for instance, largely to help with PvP (and some PvE). As such, we can't be selling them a sword that is, say, twice as good as the average forged sword. Instead, we sell them swords that are between about 5 and 15% better. Think of selling items in a virtual world like golf. I'm not a golfer myself (deathly boring if you ask me) but obviously there are a lot of people who are really into golf. Some percentage of those people are into golf enough that they'll spend significant amounts of money on it. They might spend $3000 (or more. I assume you can spend almost unlimited amounts on golf clubs.) on a set of metal sticks. Now, without the context of the game of golf, would anybody pay $3000 for a set of thin metal sticks? No. Those otherwise useless metal sticks take on a huge amount of value within the right context (golf in this case). It's similar with a virtual world. Outside of the virtual world, the services you're buying (you're not buying an item since from the real-world perspective there are no magical swords. Just database entries) seem insane at first glance to many people. "You spent $200 on a sword in a game??" But at the same time, I might say to someone who just spent $2000 on a set of golf clubs, "You spent $2000 on some metal sticks in a game?" A skeptic might reply, "Yes, but the metal sticks are, at least, real, and the sword isn't." This is true. The sword isn't a sword, but it does give me extra functionality in a context (the game) that I find attractive and valuable. I might also point out to the skeptic that I bought Dreamweaver recently for a few hundred dollars and bought it via download from Adobe. No box, no physical product. Is that "real?" Who cares, I say. It lets me do what I want in a context (web design) that I find attractive and valuable. --matt |
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#25 |
Member
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 39
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Well, the question of whether it's a donation or whether it's an actual sale, depends less on hypocrisy and more on your point of view and a certain amount of legality. If it's a sale, what happens if the player gets deleted for causing problems? Can they then sue you to recover their property, even if it is virtual? Do you refund their money that has been spent through the credits system? How do you handle situations like that?
So instead of killing monsters and gaining loot, your players are killing each other in a PK environment? They get loot from that, I assume, but not from NPCs. It sounds like you've taken a practice point concept and converted it to be based on the dollar. Don't you get complaints about the game being "for sale" and what not, and jealousy from the poorer players towards the more affluent players? How do you deal with those types of complaints and keep your players happy? |
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#26 | |||
Moderator
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,306
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And no, you don't really get loot from killing players. They'll drop any gold they're holding but intelligent players put their gold in a bank or put it somewhere else safe. Loot isn't a big part of our games. Quote:
I don't really care if players are jealous of other players. They need to realize that the reason those without any money are allowed to play is because other people are basically covering their tab by buying more-than-average amounts from us. Subscription games don't let you play -at all- without giving them money, after all. --matt |
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#27 | |
Legend
Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
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And where will the players for these new Rapture muds come from? The existing games mostly, I would guess, which is going to dilute the income of the other muds. And that, I imagine, is why The_Logos wants each such mud to pay "significant royalties" in addition to the $10000 licensing fee - a good business model for The_Logos, certainly, but not for the person running the mud. The market for commercial text-based muds is not huge. |
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#28 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Sweden
Home MUD: 4 Dimensions
Posts: 574
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To sum up what the_logos is using a lot of words to say in one sentence:
In Achaea you can buy success for $, Some players apparently like that concept. Personally I don't. |
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#29 | |
Moderator
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,306
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I understand that you're a bitter person and fundamentally have something against commercial muds (god knows you've demonstrated it enough times in your posts) but grow up Molly. You're too caught up in your own frustrated rage to actually read what I wrote. --matt |
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#30 | |||||
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,306
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I don't mean this insultingly, but you're looking at this from the hobbyist point of view and while that's well and good it doesn't give you much insight into the business of text muds. We've grown 40%+ for 5 consecutive years now. ####, we're projecting 60% growth for 2003. --matt |
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#31 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 252
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Instead of flaming logos, why not congratulate him? He's been able to turn a mud which is predominantly a hobbyist platform into a successful business. I only know of a handful of muds that have been able to be successful from commercial muds.
Your arguing that no way in heck (use to posting on boards with strict anti-swearing policies ![]() Would I personally play on a commercial mud? Naaah. But it doesn't mean I go around flaming commercial muds claiming there is no way to turn a profit from them. I think it's safe to say Iron Realms has been successful. The fact one of it's muds is always at number one shows that they have a large player base, and the fact they're (possibly?) working on a Feist mud in the future shows they've made a name for themselves (now a Raymond E. Feist inspired mud may be something I check out ![]() Logos: Do all your muds have a strong political side to them? If so, how do you sustain a high political aspect without having RPIs? |
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#32 | ||||
Legend
Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
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#33 | |||
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 252
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I don't know if the royalty aspect will make THAT much of a difference, guess we'll just have to wait and see. Quote:
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#34 | |||
Legend
Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
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#35 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Sweden
Home MUD: 4 Dimensions
Posts: 574
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What I DO have a problem with is Muds that sell In-game benefits for RL money, because that DOES defeat the purpose of the game. And that's what you are doing, regardless of the smokescreens you try to put out. If the players didn't get actual benefits from it, they obviously would not pay good money for those credits. And judging from the way you brag about your successful business idea at every possible occasion, you are making quite a good profit from it too. I think you probably run a good Mud, but somewhere along the line your interest in profit took over all other aspects of it. (god knows you've demonstrated it enough times in your posts). |
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#36 |
Senior Member
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I wonder where the mudding community would be if the creators of DikuMUD didn't realease their code and decided to copyright it and sell it? Probably not where it is today.
-Delerak |
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#37 | |||||
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Santa Cruz, Ca
Posts: 68
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#38 | |||
Member
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 100
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KaVir:
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I imagine that, with royalties, you also get continuing support/development. This may be much, much cheaper in the short term than hiring a coder (in the fully paid sense). Quote:
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Stilton |
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#39 | |
Member
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 100
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KaVir, responding to malaclypse:
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logos has in fact done what malaclypse proposes to do, and you claim above that he hasn't: start a company with a licensed engine and make it a success. Stilton |
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#40 |
Senior Member
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Stilton that depends on your definition of success. Making lots of money? Sure. A success in my eyes? No, just a game that is making sales off poor saps who buy into it. I can deduce that at least 70% of the people who play Achaea (I am hypothesizing here) are not older and mature gamers, most likely they are younger, teenage kids who use their parents money or their allowance to buy their "credits". No it's not a fact, but it's just my guess, and that is why it is having 'success'.
-Delerak |
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Thread Tools | |
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Illegal license? | Dulan | Legal Issues | 33 | 05-27-2002 04:55 AM |
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