Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

How nice of you.

However, I don't share your opinion about those terms.
To me - and I suspect to several others - the constellation 'Professional - Hobbyist' has clear implications about lower quality in the latter.

We have already agreed to disagree about the definition of 'Free', and we are even less likely to reach a consensus about the definition of 'Professional', so let's drop that discussion too and get down to business.

'Commercial' - 'non Commercial' would have been acceptable to me, but I think Lasher's suggestion is better, it covers most bases and is probably less inflammable:

Sounds good to me. I cast my vote for that one.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

This works for me too (it wouldn't be my first choice, but it's certainly an improvement).

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I'll give my vote for the above.

On a side note, there was some argument about professional/hobbyist. The only difference between a professional and non professional is whether you get paid or not. It has nothing to do with quality of performance in the strictest sense of the word. World class Gymnasts who win Gold Medals are still amateurs if they do not get paid.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I have deleted certain posts that were just arguments between members and not relevant to the discussion. If you have any issues regarding this moderation please start another thread or feel free to PM me.

Play nice people! ;)

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Many, many problems. As soon as you go beyond Payment Required/Payment not Required, you enter the world of semantics. How do you define rewarded? I honestly do not believe that any mud which accepts payments/donations does not reward the "donators" in some way. It may be extremely obvious (items, xp, etc.) or it may be less obvious (a list of donators that gives donors notoriety in game, or the simple fact that donors will inherently have, or at least expect, greater access to the admins of the game). Even something as simple as a donators list is pressure on those who do not donate, and a reward to those who do.

But the biggest problem is these categories lack the far more useful and important differentiation between Professional and Hobbyist muds.

If we are going to start making changes, lets make the changes that truly matter to players. It is obvious that this distinction is even more important than payment model, since far more people play Professionally Run muds than Hobbyist Muds. In other words, the clear importance of this distinction is proven by the choice the overwhelming majority of players make.

This is even reflected in the traffic on the TMS site. I don't recall the exact numbers from memory, but the last time it was calculated, I believe somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-80% of TMS traffic came from professionally run muds.

This makes the following still the best, simplest, and most accurate set of categories:

[ ] Professionally Run Game. Subscription Required.
[ ] Professionally Run Game. No Subscription Required.
[ ] Hobbyist Game. Accepts monetary contributions or purchases
(includes sale of merchandise).
[ ] Hobbyist Game. No monetary contributions or purchases accepted.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I'd be interested to know what sort of information you used to come to this conclusion. I'd be willing to accept that more traffic may come to TMS from commercial MUD websites/voting links, but the claim that more people play commercial MUDs than non-commercial ones I find a little difficult to swallow. I would think the ratio of existing MUDs stacks highly in favour of the non-commercial games, and even if they only have 10 players each I would think that there are many more people playing them than the commercial games even if said games have a bigger player base on average.

If you can support your conclusion then by all means do so, I'm curious as it's not something I've ever thought of before but in my mind the number of players playing non-commercial MUDs is far higher!

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

<Snippety snip: Please refrain from attacks against other forum members - Xerihae>

note: some of non-commercial game's average player online:

zombiemud:100-200
wheel of time mud: over 100
carrion fields:30-100
shadows of isildur:40-70
armageddon:30-60
torilmud: over 100
ancient anguish:30-80

and there are many many many non-commercial muds scattered around having 20 average players online.

yes, the number of players playing non-commercial muds is by far higher..

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Well that was one thing I was referring to, because it is so easily quantifiable.

I admit that I have no exact statistics on hand, but I don't think it is difficult to understand the truth of my words if you analyze it a bit. The professionally run muds out there have userbases that are many orders of magnitude larger than your average hobbyist mud. Many of them do not even bother to maintain an active presence on TMS (or any other MUD site). I mean besides my own company, you have all the IRE muds, all the Simultronics muds, Dragons Gate (the MUD formerly run by Mythic), Avlaon, and a host of other large, commercial muds. Between all of those companies, you are probably talking hundreds of thousands of users, and it takes a lot of 10 player muds to even start to compare. Runescape lists itself here on TMS as well, and they have 9 million users. In fact, Runescape basically renders the whole discussion moot right there by itself.

So yeah, it is plainly evident that the number of players who choose professionally run MUDs dwarfs the number who choose hobbyist muds. Does that mean the hobbyist muds stink? Of course not. I occasionally play hobbyist muds and enjoy them. But the overwhelming preference of players cannot be ignored.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Professional vs. Hobbyist.
Pay vs. Free.
Commercial vs. Non-Commercial.
Payment vs. No Payment.

Semantics.

The reasons may vary, but it seems the arguments all revolve around personal like or dislike of those words. Why not let the commercial/professional/paid staff Muds decide on the name they wish to use and the non-commercial/free/hobby Muds decide on theirs, like this:

1. [ ] Professional, Paid Staff, Commercial Game. Required Fees.
2. [ ] Professional, Paid Staff, Commercial Game. Donations and/or registration fees. No rewards.
3. [ ] Professional, Paid Staff, Commercial Game. Donations and/or registration fees. Rewards.
4. [ ] Non-Professional, Non-Commercial, or Hobby Game. No Donations or Registrations accepted.

If your game is not 1, 2, or 3, then you are a non professional game, by definition. If you are a hobby game but accept donations in any form, you are a commercial game.

The big argument I see is that the pro games want to be called something other than payment game for the connection to sounding pay to play or "costly" to play, which I can understand and agree with, while at the same time the non-commercial, non-professional games do not want to be called "hobby" or "non-pro" for the reason that it sounds "poorly built". Again, I can understand and agree with it whether true or not.

By adding the categories as listed, I think you cover the basis, or if you don't want all categories, let the Admins who reside in those categories decide what they should be called.

Fair enough?

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

it's not difficult to estimate that non-commercial muds' playerbases in top60 list is equal to all commercial muds..besides this, there are dozens of non-commercial muds around have 20 average people online.hundreds of muds have around 10 players online, satisfied with their life.in addition, several muds that based on non-english language (popularized in a particular country) and not anywhere in TMS list also have larger playerbases than a random mud in top40 list, most of the time.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

And by what math does this catch up to Runscape's 9 million users?

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I wonder if we're over complicating this whole thing. Many valid points on both sides:

1. "Professional/Non Professional" has implications other than their dictionary meaning. Not a good choice when you have to check the box that isn't labeled 'professional'.

2. "Payment rewarded in game" is too vague and has implications of a game stacked in favor of donators where that may or may not be true. MUD owners don't get a chance to explain.

3. Any label can be sidestepped. Back to the "Sword of uberness is now available without donations, for just 89 billion gold pieces" example.

Maybe a better and simpler option is a text area, something like "describe your payment model". MUD owners write in there whatever they want. Things people might write in there:

"Our MUD has a fully paid staff and requires a monthly subscription"
"Our MUD accepts no donations of any kind, free means free"
"Our MUD is financed by player donations, rewards available include X,Y,Z (note: these are also available without donating)"

Will it be completed honestly? I don't know. Will it be completed at all? I don't know that either, but if the information is important to a searcher and it isn't completed they'll move on to the next in the list. If it isn't important to them then it doesn't matter.

If there's one thing this thread makes very clear it is that whatever we call this field in the search it has different meaning to everyone, so maybe a descriptive field is better. Then again maybe not, just an idea I haven't seen on here yet.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Those are all legitimate issues, I agree. There are tons of grey areas that are implicitly glossed over in all the search options by their nature.

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I have to agree with you Lasher.

As I wrote that last post I was thinking the same thing while defining all the possible taglines an Admin would want. I agree the best method is the text box with a declarative statement on what your donations or fees will entail, as you suggested.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

it does certainly catch up to runescape's users who have heard of word 'mud' before or describes runescape as a mud..whatever it is we are talking about text muds..feel free to add second life, to your heart's content.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Rendeker, what's up with your posts. They are not informative or helpful in the context of what we're trying to accomplish. I don't understand the attitude. We are trying to find a viable solution to a definitive issue and you are arguing about how many people play a game? Can we please stay on topic? And perhaps add something to the collective ideas?

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I think you're right. It shouldn't be looked at as bad (whoever pointed out that Olympic athletes are fine with being termed amateurs was a good one) but clearly some people take issue with the hobbyist or amateur label and if that's the case, there's no arguing with it.

Thanks for recognizing that. It's exactly the same as the potential misunderstanding over professional/hobbyist.



Sounds like a good idea. Nobody's checking what people claim in the current descriptive fields for MUDs either. I know I'd fill this kind of field out but does it really matter much if some MUD owners don't? I don't think so myself.

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I sorta have to chuckle.

A hundred posts ago, the thread centered around complaints that a MUD could say that it was free to play. So, an effor was made to come up with some system to quantify it, and in the end... we're back to a system where the same MUD would still simply say it was free to play, but maybe in a dedicated field rather than the description.

Doesn't seem like we've added a lot of value here. In fact, if this is the answer, I'd save the effort and not make any changes, because there's nothing useful added.

OK, granted the payment models among all the various MUDs are really hard to classify.... but that's the problem, really. In the MMORPG world, it is quite simple for the most part. And there's something about this simplicity that just seems more honest and fair to me.

OK one last chance. There is one classification that you can't get around or complicate: a game that accepts no payment or donations, period. There seems to be a user base that finds that extremely important. So, let's just have a checkbox that lets a MUD state that they accept no money. The whole point is to have a searchable criteria, isn't it? And if these free games aren't any good, well, you get what you pay for. But you know, a lot of them are good. As good as any other.

A while back, there was a thread bemoaning the lack of activity on the site, if I recall. And there were all these calls to find ways to make the site more relevant to John Q Gamer. But yet, when discussions about the database come up, whether it be payment model or reviews or whatnot, it seems there is a lot of focus not on what serves the gaming public, but what serves the game producers.

I look at a site like MMORPG.com that has a huge amount of traffic and activity, and I see very much an opposite view, at least, in my opinion. It's filled with the fanbois, and the flamers, and all those in between. But not so much the game producers themselves. And /that's/ what I think makes it a much more vibrant site.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I liked your earlier solution better, because it is less easy to sidestep by those who have an interest in obscuring their payment model, and also because a text area won't show up in any searches.

I also think there is a distinct risk that it will not be completed honestly in many cases. When that happens it almost certainly will be noted and commented on by someone in the discussion boards, which will lead to more inflammatory threads.

If you go for this text area, at least make it obligatory to fill in, in the same way that the 'rate' box is obligatory now.

And here is a suggestion: Why not use both?
Keep the check boxes, but also give the Mudowners a chance to explain the details of their system in an attached text area.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Nobody liked my idea to just give hard figures? It'd solve all the bickering over semantics.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

You were pitching some version of maximum cost, no?

There's no way to calculate maximum cost for any game that accepts donations or that deals in any sort of scalable service/good. A player can donate an infinitely scalable amount of money to any MUD, for instance, and a player can spend an infinite amount on credits in our MUDs, for instance.

Classifying MUDs by theoretical maximum purchase would be like saying that Toys R Us costs 20 billion to shop at because you could theoretically spend that much at all their stores when the actual cost of shopping at Toys R Us is zero. It's free unless you buy something.

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Playing devil's advocate, the trouble is that there's no way at all, even in theory, to verify this. With every other option on the search field there's a way to verify what the MUD owner claims, but here there is none, at all, since the act of someone sending in donations is completely opaque to other users.

--mattt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Hmm. That sounds like a pretty good suggestion!

I think that is one thing upon which we can all agree. For a variety of reasons and motives, people choose to interpret (or misinterpret) words in many ways. Thus, letting the mud admin describe their payment model in his or her own words is probably best.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

As Zhiroc pointed out, this whole thread started when I misunderstood an advert, complimenting Nodeka for providing a more competitive environment by changing to "100% free to play". If they were to have a box to enter their payment scheme, then it's obvious they'd have filled it with "100% free to play" as well - for a game that lets you buy several hundred dollars worth of bonuses per month, at least one of which is only available by spending real cash.

The commercial mud owners in this thread have made it clear that they consider their games 'free' as well, so it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to guess what they'd write in their own little text boxes. Such information would be worse than useless - it would be outright misleading. If you're seriously about making this site more appealing to players, then in my opinion this would be a step backwards.

Your earlier suggestion (with the four options) would be an improvement over the current approach, but failing that, Zhiroc's proposal of having a box for muds that "accept no payment or donations" would also be a step in the right direction.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

That sounds a lot like, "Commercial mud owners are going to lie about their games given the opportunity." Is that what you mean?

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I was talking about realistic amounts. The cost to max out the stats and skills of one player character can be calculated. The same goes for a set of equipment. This would result in a fixed amount of money.

You're not taking logistics and common sense into account. But in a mutual fashion the cost to raise 1 child has been calculated which is pretty much the norm nowadays. I believe it's somewhere around 120.000$ in the US.

Now assume some pseudo-scientists would disagree with that and claim children are 'free to raise' because you can homeschool, breastfeed till age 6, and have a child work to reduce expenses to zero. That'd be entertaining, but for the average person desiring to be a parent the 120K sum is an actually useful statistic, and only Toys R Us would claim different in the hopes to sucker people into producing some additional customers.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

That doesn't address donations. How do you determine what the "reasonable" (your idea) maximum donation is?

How can you determine what the "reasonable" amount of credits to buy for someone is when there's no such thing as maxing out a character? For instance, in something like Second Life one can, by any reasonable definition of the word, use the service for free, but there's also absolutely no limit on how many servers/how much land you want to pay for. They'd be happy to take 10 trillion dollars from you if you had it.

And yet most of the users use it without ever paying Linden Labs a dime.

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I don't think Lasher is proposing allowing people to outright lie in the text boxes, no, but given the opportunity to freely describe the payment model I strongly suspect that people would use the same sort of wording they do in their advertising - such as Nodeka's "100% free to play", or to use the wording you're currently using on your TMC banner "Free to play. No installation required." and "Play Now For Free".

And while I wouldn't consider "free to play" a lie, I would find it misleading (although not as much as Nodeka's "100% free to play"), particularly when listed under a listing section entitled "payment model" or something similar, on a site aimed at helping players find a mud that meets their needs.

What would you write in your "payment model" box?

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Whether you call it 'donations', 'pay-for-perks' or 'credits', the relevant part is not the semantics, but whether or not you get any in-game benefits for the money you (or your opponent player) shell out. Only then does it affect the gameplay.

Is Second Life competitive? Does it include pvp? The issue about in-game-benefits is only valid when there is a competitive element in the game, so it's hard to understand why you bring that up here. Should we include Sims in the discussion too?

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

You know logos, it's -really- irritating when you strip intent in someone else's post for the express purpose of arguing your point. What's even worse, is when you quote the relevent part of the post in its entirety, and then pretend that some of the words don't exist - and respond to your version of what you want their post to read, just so you can argue your point.

KaVir wrote - "The commercial mud owners in this thread"

Not all commercial mud owners, not all who participate in TopMudSites, not all commercial mud owners who wear glasses, not all commercial owners who are constipated because they ate too many bananas yesterday. It's a simple math problem, logos; surely you can comprehend the whole "sets" thing we all learned back before we turned 12? "Some of this" is part of "all of this." "All of that" is part of "all of this," however "None of that" is any part of "Some of this."

"The commercial mud owners of this thread" is a subset of "all commercial mud owners" and KaVir didn't "mean" anything other than exactly what he said, which I happen to agree with.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Donation's that do not involve benefits would be excluded.

There's always the possibility of people purchasing credits to buy sexual services from other players. I'm sure however that muds would cut their MLC down to a bare minimum if they fear it would reflect badly on their public image.

I'd be happy to take 10 trillion dollars from you as well, if you had it. I'm sure a reasonable MLC could be calculated for second life though this is tricky for games without clearly defined goals.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

No sir, not back to anything other than a chance to discuss a potentially different solution I hadn't seen discussed before.

As mentioned, another option is the 4 previously discussed checkboxes with an optional text area, somewhat like we have for codebase.

In fact, I've compared this whole thing to PK several times - there is nopk, there is full pk, everything in between is a huge grey area. "Restricted PK" can mean we allow just people to fight every 3rd year and give the winner a trophy or it can mean "Full PK after level 20" - no amount of categorization will give you a true idea of how ingrained in that game PK really is without trying it. Same with roleplay. So perhaps those dropdowns could have an optional "extra info" box too.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I'd like to put in my two cents in support of distinctions in the "pay-for-perks" range that look like:

Pay perks available; all perks can also be obtained without paying
Pay perks available; a few perks can only be obtained by paying
Pay perks available; most or all perks can only be obtained by paying

I believe a game that does pay-for-perks while maintaining a serious commitment to having the game fully playable for free should have ways of differentiating itself from games where the "free mode" is basically just marketing/bait, and the above would help with that.

Re: Nodeka
 

Everybody has an opinion. Here's mine:

It's a bit misleading to advertise a game as "free" if the game being advertised includes features of any type that require real world payment of any kind. Saying a game is "free to play" while offering enhancements to those who will pay for them seems like a tactic for hiding the fact that if you want to play on even footing with folks who choose to maximize what a game has to offer, the game isn't free at all. I have always hated the way character development becomes a competion in these games, but that's the nature of the beast.

Having said all that, I must also say that think it's too bad the MUDding environment compels developers who want to profit from their work (or just break even) to cover the fact that there is money involved in playing their games. I get the sense that "pay for play" is a dirty phrase to many in the MUDding community, and that's too bad too. The unwwillingness of folks to pay for text games has seriously stifled innovation in the genre over the years and contributed greatly to its demise. That's not to say that all MUDs are worth paying for, but I bet if MMORPGs were developed by hobbyists with zero budget, you wouldn't pay to play many of them, either. MUD developers are incredibly talented and creative, but they can't compete with the big game studios, their massive budgets and armies of coders.

I always get a kick out of the way people prioritize their entertainment dollars. They'll pay $13 for a Coke, a box of popcorn and a movie, but balk at a $9.95 monthly subscription that lets them play a MUD 24/7 with hundreds of friends.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I agree, but it seemed like there was a building consensus away from the "defined payment model" proposal you had earlier put forth towards the describe-only free text. Maybe it's now begun to swing back.

But by the same token, there's no way to prove anything a bit of advertising says. So accordingly, why bother having any facts stated about a MUD other than their telnet and web addresses?

The thing about saying that a MUD accepts no money at all is pretty easy to tell. Obviously, you can't hide it all that much if you expect to take in any money. And anyone who does and lies about it would get savaged about as much as someone who violates DIKU.

Well, that would be nice... but I agree it would be next to impossible with most any donation or optional payment model. I once wrote an article about how much it takes in credits to do that for a character in a certain MUD. That part was hard enough. But then to calculate cost, it depended on volume purchases for one, and then you have "sales", and then finally, the ways one can "win" free credits, and/or buy them on the in-game market using in-game gold. The latter even turns into an argument that these credits are therefore not even a "required payment". I'm done arguing the point, except as an example of why I say that pay-(or notpay-)for-perks is such an opaque and complicated payment model that it borders on (admittedly the legal side of) deceptive, and is therefore one that I will never avail myself of again, and will advocate this position to try to convince others not to as well.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

That might be a better compromise. Writing "100% free to play" isn't so misleading when it's in a text area beside the "Payment accepted and rewarded in-game" option.

I'd personally like a text area for PK, and for the sake of consistency I agree that one for RP would be equally valuable.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I would suggest a combination of ONE check box and availability to describe it like so:

[ ] This mud has some donation, registration, and/or payment features.
<Text box with Description and Payment features.>

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Not sure I see how that is helpful, since even accepting unsolicited
donations for no reward puts you in the same text box as a full pay to play
mud, and you're back to the issue of a text box being inadequate.

I continue to assert that Lasher's checkboxes are a good solution:

-Crat

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

We'll find out if Lasher institutes the option!

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Whether something is competitive or whether it has PvP has absolutely nothing to do with whether something is free or not.

You are speaking to your personal perception of fairness, not to whether something is free or not.
--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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...

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.