[Xerihae]

I think the whole argument can be answered succinctly. What does "free" or "in-game rewards/benefits" mean? Whatever the site owner decides they mean.

For the same reason that the most successful MUDs have one individual admin who is the ultimate source of what goes and what doesn't, for the same reason many successful businesses are run on a similar model, for the reason our very nature demands: One person has to make the decision, because though you may get groups of people who agree with each other, you will never reach a mutual consensus on anything.

Some people use this same argument for why you should only ever stick to immutable fact, but I'm not one of them. Though such people may mean well, it leads to other less scrupulous people getting around the spirit of a rule just because there's no absolute definition that says "Do Not Do This". Tax loopholes, people getting away with crimes because of silly things, all of these are symptoms of the same cause.

Lasher will decide what he wants and what each of these concepts mean in regards to TMS. He can (and quite obviously does) seek input from the users of this site, just like any MUD admin worth their salt at least tries to get some form of player input when adding new things to the game, but at the end of the day he's the guy sitting at the (metaphorical?) desk with the sign that says "The Buck Stops Here".

[Newworlds]

Very well written. While it is true that the Fortune 500 companies are run on such models and all great leaders and presidents of successful companies follow this, it is also true that any ISO 9000 Quality Company will listen to associates and the best leaders listen to their most respected advisors. Remember, I said most respected advisors, not "all" advisors equally.

I agree that Lasher will decide, but any company making a decision based on the egos or self interests of subordinates will end up losing.

[the_logos]

In which case checkboxes won't do a thing since they completely fail to measure scale. Scale is also quite subjective insofar as nobody (including the game admin) is in a position to accurately measure the scale at which that kind of thing is happening.


I thought this was about players, not the admins? If the supposition is that some players want to play in a game where real money has no effect, it makes no difference whether the admin is selling items or other players are. In both cases, real money is having the same effect.

Ignoring reality in favor of whatever the admins proclaim policy to be would be the equivalent of checking a box saying that the US is murder-free just because it's against the law/admin policy. It'd be completely dishonest to do so.


I'm referring to players trading with each other for real money. Whether I can buy something from another player or from an admin makes no difference. In the end I have the thing I wanted to buy and I paid money for it. If the idea is to provide actual information to players then commenting on reality rather than policy is the way to go. After all, travel books don't just say, "In Rome, pickpocketing is illegal and thus there's no need to worry about it." It is against policy in Rome, of course, but it's also quite rampant. Admin policy only influences reality and it's reality that players experience, not admin wishful thinking.

--matt

[Molly]

What exactly is it that you are trying to say here?

That because some people break the laws there should be no laws?
That because pickpockets are abundant in Rome, they are also abundant in any Swedish small town?
Both these assumptions seem ridiculous to me.

To return to the actual subject I think this entire question about Real money in games might be a matter of different cultures. There is a saying, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans’...

Quite possibly the concept of players selling stuff to each other for Real money might be a common occurance in commercial Muds. It could be that if the culture in a Mud involves the exchange of RL money between players and Admin, players would also find it natural to use RL money to buy stuff from each other. I wouldn't know, because I don't play any commercial Muds.

But I do play Free Muds, and so far I've never come across this phenomenon in any of the ones I've tried. My guess is that if anyone would try to buy something for RL money in a free Mud, they would just be laughed at. In free Muds whatever transactions take place between players take place in Mud currency, because that is the culture there.

And of course it makes a difference if you buy something from the Admin of a commercial Mud or from the players. If you buy it from the Admin, you can at least be sure to get what you paid for. If you buy it from another player, there is a pretty big chance of you being ripped off.

I really don't understand what it is you are trying to prove here.

[the_logos]

No. I'm saying that we should comment on reality, not the wishful thinking that admin policy often represents.


It is in some, it isn't in others. In ours, for instance, it's not common due to in-game mechanics, but in any game where value is attached to things, it will eventually happen.

Your guess is incorrect. I've seen it happen multiple times.

It's simple really: If something has value, someone will eventually want to pay for it. If nothing in a MUD has value to anyone, it's a bad MUD.

All hobbyist (I assume that's what you mean by free) MUDs have the same culture? I think not. In any case, you're simply wrong in making a blanket statement that way and I don't think YOU believe it either.

You recently, for instance, accused Threshold of buying something from another player, with the implication that it was on a hobbyist MUD. You had no evidence of course, but nevertheless if it doesn't happen why would you accuse him of it?

I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm pointing out that if the concern is actually to provide players with information about the state of affairs it is inherently deceitful to equate admin policy with what actually goes on. The two are not the same thing.

--matt

[shasarak]

So, to take your own earlier analogy, you're saying that the fact that people smoke cannabis in America means that no one could ever possibly be interested in whether or not smoking cannbis is legal in America and people shouldn't be allowed to ask?

[KaVir]

Should muds be allowed to list themselves as "Roleplaying: Mandatory", even though there's no way for the admin to be sure that every player will actually roleplay?

Should muds be allowed to list themselves as "Rating/Age Requirement: Completely G rated", even though there's no way to prevent players from bringing up adult-oriented topics?

Should muds be allowed to list themselves as "Category: Medieval Fantasy", even though there's no way to stop players talking about guns and bombs?

[Molly]

Talking about blanket statements; here's the difference between yours and mine:

You are assuming that administrators are generally dishonest, and that honesty is the exception.

I am assuming that most administrators are honest, and that the dishonest ones are the exception.

[Newworlds]

This thread seems to have turned into a anti commercial game argument in a lame way.

[chaosprime]

I don't really agree. It seems to me more like Aristotle is defending himself vigorously from anti-commercial-game hordes that don't actually exist, using an endless supply of specious logic and rationalization.

The intensity of the defensiveness may create the illusion that the attackers are really there. Been known to happen, on the net.

[KaVir]

It's not a bad tactic if the goal is to distract people from the real discussion, but much like the story of "the boy who cried wolf", it loses its impact when used repeatedly on the same people.

So to get back to the matter at hand...I guess the main question at this point is whether to go for the basic four choices:

[ ] Payment and/or donations required to play.
[ ] Payment and/or donations accepted, has results in-game.
[ ] Payment and/or donations accepted, no results in-game.
[ ] Neither payment nor donations accepted.

TEXT BOX:

Or to include Lasher's distinction of "whether or not all content can be experienced without payment":

[ ] Payment and/or donations required to play.
[ ] Payment and/or donations required to access some content.
[ ] Payment and/or donations accepted, has results in-game.
[ ] Payment and/or donations accepted, no results in-game.
[ ] Neither payment nor donations accepted.

TEXT BOX:

I still have some reservations about the fifth choice, as unlike the other four it could be "gamed". However I think it would still be an improvement overall. I'd be happy to see either the four or the five choice option.

EDIT: I'm not entirely happy with the wording of the new option, but I'm sure someone else can come up with something a bit clearer.

[chaosprime]

I agree. I'd like the fifth choice, but either way would be solid.

Are we gonna do another show of hands?

[the_logos]

Not at all. It's a perfectly legitimate thing to ask. That kind of information is probably best presented as, "Although smoking cannabis in America is illegal, it certainly happens." If you had reliable stats on how often it happened, you'd probably want to include those as well.

--matt

[shasarak]

I'm not sure one can express that in a compact way, as there are too many variables. You'd have to add some extra words, I think. Something like:

[ ] Neither payment nor donations are accepted.

[ ] Optional payment and/or donations are accepted, but there are no consequences in-game.

[ ] Optional payment and/or donations are accepted and have consequences in-game; ALL of those consequences can also be achieved by in-game methods.

[ ] Optional payment and/or donations are accepted and have consequences in-game; at least some of those consequences can ONLY be achieved by payment and/or donations.

[ ] Payment and/or donations are required to play.

Btw, I am not a MUD admin, but, as a player, I strongly favour a four- or five-option system over the status quo. Ideally I would like to have the extra detail of the 5-option system, and the difference between "pay to advance faster" and "pay to advance at all" matters a great deal to me (certainly far more than the difference between "no donations accepted" and "donations accepted but no in-game results"); but I'm concerned that the distinction between results being obtainable in-game and results not being obtainable in-game is too ambiguous. The 4-option is absolutely objective and unambiguous. The 5-option system potentially is not.

[the_logos]

No, what I'm assuming has nothing to do with whether admins are honest or dishonest.

What I'm assuming is the truth: That administrators are fundamentally unable to prevent RMT from happening and are also unable to reliably identify when it does happen. Look at Blizzard. Far more resources than any every text MUD ever made put together and RMT is absolutely rampant. That's an example on the far end of course, but it illustrates that no amount of administrator resources can stop this practice.

--matt

[the_logos]

As I've pointed out previously, those things are all verifiable by simply playing the game. It may or may not be particularly time-efficient to verify them but they can certainly be verified.

What you can't verify is the non-existence of RMT. Beyond the fact that one can't prove a negative, the difficulty is that a trade in-game looks the same regardless of whether it's happening because player A is buddies out of game with player B, because there's legitimate in-game reason for the trade to happen, or because Player A paid player B out of game.

This has nothing to do with the checkboxes you proposed of course, but let's keep in mind that what the checkbox system purports to answer is not whether money affects a game or not, but what the admin policy is on admins accepting payment.

Of course, there's also no way to verify whether an admin is taking payment on the sly or not.

--matt

[KaVir]

The same is true of other things as well - I pointed out some examples in a previous post:

If Lasher feels it's a problem I guess he could put a disclaimer on the listings, but personally I think it's fine for the listings to reflect mud policies, and I think most players are smart enough to understand that admin aren't omniscient (even if they play the role of gods within the mud).

Certainly if I went to a country where alchohol was illegal for those under the age of 21, I wouldn't assume that it was impossible for anyone under that age to drink alchohol - nor would I expect the country to avoid mentioning its legal drinking age just because they couldn't be 100% certain that nobody under that age ever drank alchohol.

[the_logos]

Those are not the same. Those are verifiable by playing the game.

--matt

[chaosprime]

Actually, there are a lot of similarities. Take the G rating, for example. You may log on and wander around for hours having a perfectly G-rated experience, while off in some obscure corner someone's having mudsex in which all the sexual terms are replaced by the word "smurf". As far as I can tell, this is in every way similar to the case of players exchanging items for money on a no-money-accepted MUD.

The point I think KaVir is making is that the only destination reachable using the logic you're employing is that we can make no categorizations whatsoever. Since we have already decided that we will perform categorizations of some kind, your logic is something we cannot employ and preserve our purpose.

[KaVir]

The point I'm making is that all of those things can be proven false. I can log onto a "roleplaying mandatory" mud and start talking about how it's just a game, or log onto a "G rated" mud and start making sexual comments. All the admin can do is ban me after the fact, if they catch me. In that respect it's no different to players selling gear to each other.

The same is true of anything - but you can verify the existence of RMT. If someone says "This mud sold me a sword of uberslaying for $5", all they have to do to prove it is provide the receipt. That's much easier to verify than things like codebase, world size, originality, year created, etc.