[MUD-Dev] The scalability of paying for in-game things

[Brian Green]

A clarification before I begin.  I happen to really like Achaea's
system.  I think it's elegant and quite smart from a business point of
view.  My experience on Meridian 59 showed me that people were willing
to pay a more money to play some games (Merdian used to cost up to
$30/month for the constant player).  My arguments here are more devil's
advocate than a vehement disagreement.

As a player, however, I'd probably be one of those bastards that played
the game and added to the community but not the bottom line.  I'm still
quite cheap in some ways.

Matthew Mihaly wrote:

> Therefore, given that it DOES work on some scale, it seems to me that the
> only way you can demonstrate it wouldn't work on a larger scale would be
> to identify factors which would accelerate costs faster than benefits to
> the game accrue as you grow. If this can't be done, then I really don't
> see how you can reasonably claim it won't work.

I see two main arguments against scalability of pay-per-item/service
games.  The first is that Achaea makes quite a bit of money from
labor-intensive auctions.  It's pretty much established fact that you
can organize a large activity easier in a smaller community than in a
larger one.  I would suggest that the tasks of organizing such auctions
on a larger game would be much more difficult to orchestrate.  I also
suspect that your intimacy with your playerbase allows you to better
gauge your customers; it has been said that such closeness is MUCH
harder on large-scale games.

The second argument is what you have said yourself; your game is niche. 
Niches rarely scale very well at all.  You may attract a certain type of
person, but can you say that you could attract 100 or even 10 times as
many such people and still be as profitable?

Some things to consider.

--
"And I now wait / to shake the hand of fate...."  -"Defender", Manowar
     Brian Green, brian at psychochild.org  aka  Psychochild
       |\      _,,,---,,_      *=* Morpheus, my kitten, says "Hi!" *=*
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      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'  "Ritalin Cures Next Picasso" 
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)               -The_Onion_, August 4th, 1999



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