Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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!

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.>

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

*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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

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.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Welp, I made another post that was not only amusing but
illustrated what I thought of the silliness of this position of
yours, but it got deleted. Alas, all I can do is indicate that
I think your position is silly but without the humor.

Oh well.

In any case, I continue to think this is a good idea:

And I think I've amply illustrated that "free" is simply
not sufficiently descriptive. I keep seeing a bunch of verbiage
about things that are not muds and how "free" is defined by
this group or that group, but I think that muds are a very
specific context in which licenses often spell out things
that inform the use of the word "free" with muds.

It is reasonable to expect people of good intention will differ on what
"free mud" means, as we have seen in this very thread, and that alone
is pretty good reason to want things to be more specific.

-Crat

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Oh boy. I was really trying to stay away from this argument, but it has finally gotten to it.

When is free not free?

I will try to keep this simple. In the IRE games, the only way you can level your skills is by using lessons. You get 5 lessons per character level. The rest must come from credits. If you level to 70, you will end up getting 100 free credits. This is only enough to only take 1 skill from level 1 to the next to last level (Mythical). The rest (7 other skills plus 7 mini-skills) must come from credits you must obtain through:
The ingenious part of the payment model is that once you start using credits over those you get by leveling, for the most part, either you or someone else has bought them! So in the large sense, even if you grind out the gold (and consider that your own time has no monetary value), they are still credits bought by someone.

The only aspect of "free" in the aggregate is whatever credits that IRE injects over and above their normal sales price. For example, at the moment there is a 30% sale on for the anniversary (a very generous sale, actually). And there are monthly contests called artisanals, and occasional bardics. And a lottery going on at the moment (but that costs gold per ticket).

So, can you play for free?

Maybe if you win your way to credits.

But by buying credits from another with in-game gold, it's like saying I'll buy you a ticket to the movies if you'll mow my lawn. Sure, you didn't pay the theater anything, and you paid me only an hour or two of your time, but the theater got its money anyways.

Is this free?

Not in my book. The difference between this model and all the other ones about "premium" services is that when you go to ESPN, or the Smithsonian, or even a pure pay-for-perks system, you are not paying any consideration to anyone else for using them. In the IRE system, unless you can outright win your "free" credits, you must pay another user something for the privilege, even if it is in the form of play time that you have worked at to build up in-game gold.

And that makes it not free.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

There are sort of two points embedded in that statement.

The first is that you apparently think that free doesn't have to do with whether something is free to someone but with whether a company gains revenue. That's got nothing to do with free. Broadcast television is free regardless of the fact that the networks generate billions in revenue.

The second is that you seem to feel that if you have to expend effort and time, it's somehow impinges on the state of 'free.' In that case, there's no such thing as a free MUD since I'm not aware of any MUD that doesn't require your effort and time to get ahead.

Having to work to build up an in-game resource makes you not free? Again, in that case, there are no free MUDs.

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Zhiroc,

You are being completely unfair to IRE games. They offer their mud to be playable for free. I've been there and seen it. If you want to have extras or support the game you can pay as well which assists their creators and staff to keep the games up to par for what the players expect.

This is very close to the same for all the commercial "style" games.

Why are so many so angry about this? You don't HAVE to play the games. The players that play them LIKE them. Why are we jealous or angry about this? Why is everyone wanting to tear down the commercial games for their definition of FREE. Do you honestly think they are swindling people or trying to "trick" people into playing their game? Do you honestly think people who go there are stupid enough to stay if they think they've been cheated.

I don't.

And so you don't think I'm backing the Commercial games because NW is one. I'm not and NW is not. NW would click the box Completely FREE no donations or registrations or whatever accepted. But I can't stand this constant beating up of well run, fun muds, being hounded because of the word FREE.

Every one of the Muds that posted here that are commercial and have the word free to play in them ARE free to play. Stop this nonsense.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I'm not sure what was difficult to understand about Zhiroc's post. I
undertood it the first time around without incorrectly assuming he
meant that effort == not free.

Zhiroc's post describes a situation that involves some player
paying the mud real world money for in game benefit.

The payment system is clever and sophisticated enough that
it lets you describe what happens in many ways. But it
seems disingenuous to suggest that Zhiroc meant that effort
in the game is the same as the game not being free.

If he didn't describe your payment system to your satisfaction,
then perhaps you can simply clarify it, rather than mock Zhiroc.

-Crat

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Like I said the IRE system is rather ingenious.

What makes it not free is not that I have to buy something from another player. As you say, every game has an economy. (Edit: I take that back. Most MUDs have an economy. I play MUSHes these days, and most of those have no economy.)

It's that this specific purchase (of credits) is an indirect chain from me to the other player, and then to your company. You make the same amount of money (well, disregarding volume discounts perhaps) if 2 players buy the credits from you, or 1 buys them, and I play for "free" by buying the credits from them with time and effort. It's like a sublease.

Broadcast television is free because I don't have to give a consideration to those entities (the advertisers who fund the stations) in order to watch. But in the IRE games, I must either pay IRE, or give a consideration of in-game gold to another player to advance.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I state my reasons for why I think it is not free. You are free to disagree.

Why? I guess because I do have a principle about calling something free. Others here are just as principled about say, licenses, and go on about that even if many of the worst offenders have players that really like the game.

Or about those that may abuse voting rules.

I guess we all pick our windmills.

Now, about all other "commercial" games, I have come to appreciate the straightforward approach of most of the MMOGs. You buy the box, you pay a set subscription. Predictability and transparency. Those are the watchwords in most economic analyses.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

If I had wanted to be dismissive I'd have written "IRE's little scam". In Dutch little is often used to indicate the core element of something, which in this case would indeed be the virtual asset sales model rather than your company being little, I reckon this isn't the case in English which has a greater emphasis on politeness?

Asians don't use the European big mother model, so big European companies are likely wary to adopt it to avoid damaging their reputation. Back in the days even charging interest was frowned down upon, which is why Jews went into banking because their religious doctrine didn't forbid the practice.

It's rather obvious that most, if not all, of the objection to the business model is cultural in origin. This however doesn't prove the attitude to be good or false. The only objective issue I can see is that IRE advertises itself as free, which could be considered dishonest, and happens to be what this thread is about.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Correct. Just like you don't have to give consideration to Iron Realms to play our games. Just like almost nobody in Korea has to give consideration to Nexon and the other games companies to play their games.

Broadcast television, incidentally, is free only as long as consumers give money to the makers of the products and services advertised on tv. It doesn't make it less free that it is 100% dependent on consumers spending money.

Or win the regular monthly and more contests that we hold. And, of course, if you're suggesting that having to expend in-game gold to achieve something makes a MUD free then any MUD that requires someone to spend an in-game currency on anything at all is not free. I find that to be an insupportable notion.

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Well it seems the arguments are still hung up on the definition of "free". Fortunately Lasher's proposal avoids the word completely:

This could be combined with Lasher's second proposal - including a text area.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has objected to both of the above proposals, therefore combining the two seems to be the best compromise.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

[Snipped by moderator. Please refrain from accusing other forum members of something without evidence.]

Fair play is something that some of us care deeply for, however hard this might be for others to understand.

But, since I suspect that this side tangent, just as the one about 'hobbyists' has as its main purpose to muddy the waters and lead the attention away from the main topic of this thread - (which, in case anyone forgot, is to find a way to separate Muds that accept/not accept payment in the search engine) - I think maybe it's time to start a new thread titled 'What does "fair" men?'.

I'll hold my other thoughts about fairness and fair play for that one.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Maybe I haven't actually said it, so yes, I would like this, and a text box to explain is a good addition as well.

If not that, the single choice as to whether the game accepts payment / donations or not, plus the text box.

And as for the rest, I've laid out my opinion, and my reasoning for it, and will try really hard to leave it at that.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Uh.... no. I didn't skim it. I wasn't addressing the fairness of it. Strictly the definition of free. You're the one trying to add stuff to my argument I'm not putting in there.

Exactly right. The sale of souvenirs is unrelated to the museum being free. Why you aren't understanding this is somewhat of a mystery to me. Don't feel sorry for me. I don't need your pity. Just try to understand. The dinosaur figurine has nothing to do with the museum being free. Selling a t-shirt with my MUD's logo on it has nothing to do with my MUD being free. Got it?

You've just effectively argued then that the museum is pay-to-unlock-levels and thus is no longer 100% free since people with money now get additional access which those without money cannot. It's not an issue of fairness one way or the other. I could care less. But it's no longer 100% free by any stretch.

Actually I think if you ask any rational average person what the word "free" means, they'll tell you simply that it doesn't cost anything. And many of these rational beings don't fall for the "buy 1 get 1 free" scam either. You simply bought two at a 50% discount for each one.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

The only "fair" system for gauging the MULTITUDE of payment systems for the muds out there is to have one box to be clicked if they accept NO money of any kind. Once there's money involved, people can do their own research as to whether or not they like the payment system. Again, players aren't stupid. They only need to know whether there is outside money involved in this MUD or not. Again, it's very easy to police and very easy to report. I'm really only for the

[ ] This game accepts no monetary donations whatsoever

option. Anything else is semantics. You can play most of the play-for-perks MUDs without ever paying. It may be harder. It may involve more time investment, but there are people who have way more time than money. On the other hand, unless you are selling t-shirts via a total third party and never know the name of the people involved in purchasing your products, you cannot guarantee that it does not affect your adminning knowing that player X has bought 10 t-shirts to support the game while player Y has bought nothing. You can believe you're fair, but there's absolutely no guarantee of it as soon as you know who has bought what. Plus, this is simply impossible to police.

The only thing that can be easily policed is a designation that a game accepts no money whatsoever, and it's the most useful designation. Once a game starts taking money in any way, it's up to the player to find out how it's done and what the results are for paying.

TMS should NOT be expected to be some "babysitter" for MUDs. It's there to be a useful resource and facilitate players finding MUDs suitable for them. Does this MUD take money or no? It's an easy question to answer. It's an easy thing for players to search for. The end.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I don't agree with this.

There is a long tradition in many muds of accepting donations
of ram, server space, bandwidth, and/or money for running
the mud, with no reward whatsoever for the individual donor
other than sharing in the improved mud.

There is a vast gulf between that and getting access to a
map system, or a sword, or gold in the game in exchange
for the donation.

The two are simple to distinguish in a checkbox, and I think
that it is fair to do so. Lumping both types of muds into the
same payment category is what I would consider unfair.

However, I don't think fairness is the point. I think that
clarity is the point. And, as keeps getting reiterated, the
tangents of "professional" or "fair" or "free" are just
the things that obscure what people want:

a clear, straightforward description of the mud's
relationship with your money:

-Crat

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Crat, how severely damaged do you feel your model is by this extension?

( ) Payment required to play
( ) Payment / donations accepted, not rewarded in-game
( ) Payment / donations accepted, rewarded in-game; all rewards also available without payment / donation
( ) Payment / donations accepted, rewarded in-game; a few rewards only available by payment / donation
( ) Payment / donations accepted, rewarded in-game; most or all rewards only available by payment / donation
( ) No Payment / donations accepted

I think this is important, because I don't feel it's fair to IRE or other games where you can seriously play without paying to lump them in with "oh, you want to advance to level 2? have to subscribe now" games, and by doing said lumping, we're saying to them that they might as well just callously use their free play as a bait-and-switch marketing vehicle, because the community doesn't see a distinction.

Looking forward, I'd like for myself to be able to pick a position in the pay-for-perks space and have some ethics involved and recognized, rather than being categorized and -- you know it's true -- dismissed along with some of the lamest vile-marketing-exercise games extant.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I prefer this too as it's simply more relevant information. However, I'm not sure whether we can productively distinguish between "a few" and "most or all". Distinguishing between "you can get everything for free" or "you have to pay for at least some things" is fairly easy but how would you quantify "a few" vs "most or all" in a meaningful way? (There's a big difference between having to pay for Nodeka's map option and having to pay to, say, level up.)

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

You guys are still muddying the waters with GREY area boxes that are subjective. You will eventually boil it down to what I've been saying all along and now I will also modify my suggestion to a variation on Mina's as well which is the same type of single box just marking whether you do not accept money vs. you are a commercially viable game.

To it:

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

OR Mina's suggestion (slightly modified):

[ ] This mud does not accept money (donations/registrations/credits) in any form.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Some of the difficulty there is that we're addressing another axis of variation -- whether it's possible to have as complete a game experience without paying. For instance, if there's only one perk you have to pay for, and that's leveling, that technically falls under "a few", but, y'know, what the ****?

The litmus test in this area would probably be whether the character of a non-paying player can theoretically equal, given enough playing time or RP contribution or whatever, the character of a paying player. My understanding from people's explanations is that that would be a tough one for IRE. Justifying saying "yes" in terms of someone else paying and credits winding up transferred to the non-paying player... that's kinda weak.

Not real easy to check on, that one. If you have to pay to level, that's easy to see, but more subtle issues would pretty much be on the usual combination of the honor system and the public pillory system.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Tradition doesn't really matter here does it? It doesn't really matter has been traditionally accepted as far as money exchange goes. You're just arguing semantics here, especially when you get into "money for running the mud".

Either your mud accepts money, or it doesn't. Otherwise, we'll sit here arguing about HOW that money is accepted until the internet dies.

Yeah, the big difference is that you see exactly what you get for your money rather than a nebulous "Well, player X donated $200 and player Y donated $1, yet they both want their problems dealt with immediately.... Which one is the admin going to pick to deal with first?" I'm not saying that this is what YOU do specifically, but you can't seriously convince me that this wouldn't be a factor SOMEWHERE if there's an exchange of money.

Unless we want to keep arguing about what's REALLY free, the only way to be sure is to have [ ] Yes, we accept money or [ ] No, we accept no money.

Again, I will state that once players know that money can be exchanged, it's up to them to find out how. It's all semantics otherwise.

It's pretty obvious that "free" is not as clearly defined as people want to make it out to be, or we wouldn't be arguing it. As it is, we've already dumped the word "free". Thus, the best solution is simply to figure out whether or not the mud accepts money in any form because this is what players need to know.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

You are right! The sale of souvenirs is indeed unrelated to the fact that the museum is free. Just like optional sales of extra features, perks, etc. is unrelated the fact that a MUD is free.

Thank you for finally seeing the light!

Except the whole world still considers the Smithsonian free... except you and your ilk when you need to twist reality to support your crazy argument.

And that is why people consider the Smithsonian, ESPN.com, IRE Muds, etc. to be free. They don't cost anything. The fact that there are optional things you can pay for doesn't change their "free-ness." At least not in the minds of rational people.

As for your slam on "Buy 1 Get 1 Free".... um, if that didn't work and if people didn't think they got the 2nd one free, it wouldn't be such an incredibly common, powerful, and successful marketing tool.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

<Snip: Removed reference to deleted part of post - Xerihae>

Regardless of whether or not you or your players are willing to do something, you cannot vouch for all gamers or all imms. The fact that you can cook up this story proves that at least one person can feasibly imagine this scenario, and it is not out of the realm of possibility for it to occur.

"Fair" play is a nebulous concept at best, and as long as all the options on a game are available to every player in the SAME WAY, the game is about as fair as it is ever going to get, whether it's pay-to-play, pay-for-perks, play-with-donations, or free-to-play.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Fine, your mud accepts money or it doesn't.
I don't think that this makes it irrelevant whether the donor
receives a reward in return for the donation.


I think that this is not what we're talking about. The
ethics of the admins of a given mud and how they treat
people is not in question. I think this point is a
good one and worth discussing, but is not relevant to this
discussion of a payment policy description in a mud listing,
which is focused on clarity and informativeness, rather
than admin ethics. If you were to drag us into an admin ethics
debate, then yes, we'd probably be here forever and
forget the point of the thread.


That's just it. We're *not* arguing what's free
any more. AFAICT, we're in agreement that
we're going to disagree on that.


Unless I'm mistaken, this site is intended to err on the side
of newcomer-friendly. I can attest to the post deletions
that support this policy. I believe your "it's their problem"
position is in conflict with the site's stated goals.


Fine. That is part of what I'm supporting, so you should be
ok with that part of it. In addition, I support a clear
statement of whether the mud rewards the donation. I don't
think that's ambiguous, misleading, or inappropriate to include.


-Crat

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

It's also completely and explicitly legal and ethical.

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Thank you for twisting my words yet again. Much appreciated. That's NOT what I said though. The Smithsonian's selling of souvenirs does not mean I can't come in, walk around, see the exhibits, ask questions, marvel at the coolness of it all, and go home with some awesome memories. The same way my buying a t-shirt from MUD X doesn't affect my ability to explore the world, fight demons, gain levels, form guilds, raid other guilds, and generally have a great time.

You're either deliberately misrepresenting what I'm saying, or you genuinely don't understand my argument. I can't tell which.

So once more. The Museum as described falls under being 100% free. The dinosaur figurines and animal crackers have no bearing on me being able to come back again later.

Changing the parameters the way you did to include memberships ( clans in the MUD ), access to guided tours ( paid immortal assistance/newbie help ? ), access to "behind the scenes" tours ( paid for secrets to how the MUD works ), and a whole host of "additional access" ( private areas on the MUD ) turns the model into pay-to-unlock-features. No sane individual could honestly claim this is still 100% free.

Which ilk is this exactly? I'd like to know. The general public who recognizes a scam when we see one?

It's a scame. Pure and simple. That people fall for it doesn't make it any less of a scam. People fall for Nigerian 419 emails too. Offering free money. Are they legitimate marketing tools too?

If I buy one bottle of laundry soap and it costs $3.00 and the store hands me another, I've effectively paid $1.50 for each bottle. The math doesn't lie. I've still paid for it.

Just because it's legal doesn't make it ethical. Giving 419 scammers my bank account information when they ask for it is also perfectly legal. Does that make it ethical too?

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Lasher also proposed an "ALL game content available without donating Y/N?" option back on the first page, which is similar (and which I would also be in favour of). I don't think you could really break it down into multiple catagories though, as that becomes far less clear-cut.

The combined click-box/text-area suggestion would also cover this payment model though, as you could click "Payment / Donations accepted, rewarded in-game" and then in the text-area write "All rewards are also available without payment". This approach also seems to be the most popular so far, with (I believe) only the Thresholds and some newbie guy/girl (don't remember the name offhand, sorry) actively arguing against it.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

That level of on/off, black/white distinction is, in effect, a disingenuous editorial statement, saying that all that matters about a game's financial structure is whether or not money is involved in any way. Given social prejudices, this amounts to a suggestion to the user that any game with money involved be dismissed out of hand. The fill-in text box is irrelevant to search functionality; even if Lasher felt like wasting his time to provide the capacity for some sort of keyword matching on that field, no one would use it when there's a radio button for a yes/no choice right there.

Finer gradations of choice, on the other hand, say to the user that there are important distinctions to be made within the realm of MUDs with a revenue model, while in no way removing anyone's ability to say "I WANTS ONLY NO MONEY MUDZ RAAAAAR".

I am arguing in favor of those finer gradations in part because I don't think that sort of hijacking of the TMS interface by anti-commercial sentiment is appropriate or helpful.

Oh, and if you try to tell me that interface design is value-judgment-free, I will laugh at you uproariously, possibly even pointing as I do so. Just sayin'.

P.S. to everyone: y'all really ought to stop representing checkboxes when you mean radio buttons. I thought everyone in the world would have written enough HTML by now to know the difference.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Are you guys really going to continue with this stuff?

I thought we decided pages ago that "free" was inadequate and
we were settling on the nuts and bolts of consensus for a
specific set of descriptive criteria that avoided fudgable language
as much as possible while remaining helpful and informative
to newcomers.

Criteria, for example, like this:

-Crat

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

For the record, many of us were in favour of finer gradations (my original proposal included 12 different categories), but these proposals were primarily picked apart by commercial mud owners who wanted to continue listing their games as free.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

It is ethical by all standards of conducting business in the Western world. That's good enough for me. If it's not for you, that's your choice, of course, but to most people there's not even a question involved.

--matt

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

The hilarious irony is that the single checkbox would actually
be against the interests of commercial muds, imo, as well
as poorly serving the interested querent. It's pretty much
the worst of both worlds.


It *is* true I often confuse the two, but in this case, these options:

can involve the selection of more than one box.

-Crat

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Just to clarify, that's why I think the single checkbox is not
in the interest of commercial muds. I think there are more
people who would structure their search this way than
they realize. Just an opinion, tho.

-Crat

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

What a charlie foxtrot.

It's the essence of politics, really. A horrifying mess of Lovecraftian proportions that any sane human wants only to flee from as far as possible, yet if you imagine you can opt out, you come back to find that everyone's voted for you to be cabin boy.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Play baseball much Chaosprime? That statement came from left field like much of your post comes from opinion-is-fact prose. As example:
It amounts to nothing of the sort. The full arguments in this thread are based on whether a game is free or whether it has perks, hidden or otherwise. The multiple selection option allows for interpretation by the admin of the game, letting them bend the way their mud works to fit into a category that is not fact based. If you need a full example of this, ask, I'll give it in a follow post.

Who said anyone would be searching the text box. The text box is only so that when you bring up the mud that sounds interesting and it is a paid mud, you can quickly see what you are donating or paying for. Have you searched or looked for a mud recently? I could scan every mud in the top 100 here in less than an hour under this system.

This does not remove that ability, but it does, as stated before, stop someone from placing their mud in other categories based on opinion and offers the most direct answer to the question free or not.

Again a left field comment. Hijacking the interface by offering one or two choices for two distinct muds (pay or not pay)? And if you've read any of my posts, you would know that they have been mostly positive to commercial muds.

I believe you would laugh regardless of what anyone "writes" you.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

I don't feel the need to explain my art to you, Warren.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Just as a minor FYI - Kingdom of Loathing -is- 100% free - that Mr. A can be purchased by anyone in-game, without any actual real-world money. Current price in the mall I believe is 4.5 million meat, give or take. That's how I got mine, anyway.

And Mina, I disagree with you about whatever it was you said about donating for servers things making the game still be not free. A voluntary donation with no in-game reward of any kind, does not negate the "free" part of a "free" game. Free means you do not have to pay anything, for any part of the game itself. Mousepads, unless they are needed in order to play the game, are not needed in order to play the game. So buying one still doesn't make the game "not free." The GAME is still free. Now, if you donated, and were rewarded in game with a free character description, and only people who donated were allowed to get free character descriptions, then no - the game is not 100% free. Because there is some part of the game itself, that requires you to shell out money in order to receive that part. If that donation gave you an in-game token...and you sold that token for in-game money - then the token - is still not free, and that makes the game not 100% free, because the only way that token can be acquired is if *someone* paid for it in actual money. The token, in otherwords, would not exist in the game, if someone didn't pay for it with a donation or some other manner of real-world fee.

The game play might be free..remorts might be free. Armor might be free. But level 51 might require a payment. Or the Really Ugly Puce-And-Pink-Polka-Dotted Bowtie Worn On The Elbow That Provides No Benefit Other Than Being Textually Repulsive, might be a gift in exchange for a donation. But if that bowtie isn't sent to your home address and only game characters can wear it, then it is a game benefit in exchange for money, and the game is not 100% free.

Oh and Craytus, that thing you keep quoting of the checkboxes (or radio buttons for those who want to get technical, though in the quote itself they aren't radio buttons, they're just open-ended brackets so pffft)...

The last line:
[ ] No Payment / Donations accepted, period.

Grammatically, states no payment, AND (or) BUT Donations are accepted, period.

If you want to make it read how you intended, it should read:

[ ] Neither Payment nor Donations accepted, period.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Alot of what you said was enjoyable, if long to read and you make good points especially on the last option, however if we are going to fully correct, let's do this:

[ ] Neither Payment nor Donations accepted.

It's cleaner and direct without the emphasized period. I still vote for a singular option though.

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Here's the part where I mutter about whippersnappers complaining about reading. ;)

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Good point. Then:

Thoughts?

-Crat

Re: What does "Free" Mean?
 

Here's the part where I mutter that my offtopic post poking fun at
another post on this page got deleted.

-Crat