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Doesn’t something stick in your craw at the thought of others deciding how to label your MUD? Can you imagine MUD police visiting your game and deciding your world is “Mostly Stock” instead of “Mostly Original”? Or that roleplay is not “Mandatory” but only “Encouraged”? Or deciding that your category should be “Dungeons and Dragons” and not “Forgotten Realms”? How about if someone decides to describe your MUD for you? Wouldn’t you be outraged? I sure would.
And that’s what bothers me whenever this discussion about how to label MUDs comes up. People decide to make up all sorts of labels: pay to pay, pay for perks, optional pay for perks, donations accepted, donations sometimes accepted, optional donation with optional perks that may or may not have an impact on gameplay, mostly free, free but really greedy capitalist pigs in disguise, absolutely free, really really (and I mean REALLY) free, 100% super duper A++ freer-than-you-can-possibly-imagine-in-a-zillion-years FREEEE.
And after making up these labels, some of which are confusing and not obvious, there is an attitude that, “Well, you MUST accept the labels that I in my wisdom have ruled will cover all MUDs. No, I don’t care how you want to describe your MUD. You must use MY labels. And if you don’t use them, then you are a big poopie faced liar who won’t play by my rules which obviously makes you a BIG evil meanie who should be shunned!”
For those who are pushing for these labels, you have to eventually ask yourself, are you or aren’t you asking for the MUD police to enforce your label system? If so, will the MUD police also enforce other labels regarding RP, PK, genre, etc.? If not, then the labels you make up must be embraced by those whom you want to label or else they will decide not to use those labels. And if you know the games your labels are targeting dislike the labels, isn’t it a losing battle?
Just some rambling thoughts.
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