[MUD-Dev] banning the sale of items

[Zak Jarvis]

> From: Matthew Mihaly [the_logos at achaea.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 17, 2000 12:54 PM

> On Mon, 17 Apr 2000, Zak Jarvis wrote:

>> the game and world rather than detract) is that excessive purchasing
>> of what your content developers have designed to be attained through
>> in-game mechanics demoralizes staff. Content development staff is more

> with compelling reasons as to why it isn't scalable. Just tossing out
> these conjectures doesn't really prove or show anything. There is positive
> evidence it works, but I don't really see anyone bringing examples where
> it didn't work.

Hmm. I think the real issue here is that you and I have different goals and
interests in design. Commercial success is a secondary issue for me. My primary
interest is creating quality environments. There is nothing wrong with being
commercially motivated, and there's no reason you can't do both things at the
same time. I, however, emphasize the quality at the (reasonable) expensive of
commercial acceptance. Essentially I work on the Samuel Delany principle. That
being, that if you create something that captivates you as the creator, it will
be interesting to other people. I've mitigated that position over time, because
one must have the resources and clout to come to a position of being able to
have a loud enough voice to be heard when your vision is radically different.

What I'm saying here is that what I consider success and what you consider
success seem to be different animals, which makes discussing this problematic.

I don't disagree with you.

Paying real money for game benefits (in the form of items, skills, characters,
property or whatever else) is not a bad thing in and of itself. I simply believe
that like any other mechanic, it must be carefully balanced. I wasn't trying to
say the system you have doesn't work, Matt. I was saying that (as per the
original discussion) that in systems that aren't designed for this sort of
thing, it can be terribly detrimental if it's unchecked, and designing systems
that don't incorporate it isn't a bad or wrong way of designing them.

>> The problem with this statement is that it's application cannot be
>> universal.

> Of course not. Background gives an advantage though. Listen, I was being
> slightly facetious, but my point was that you can _never_ remove
> advantages gained through real life. It can't be done, because a game is
> PART of real life.

Er, Handicapping? One needn't totally ameliorate RL advantage to manage it more
efficiently.

>> Can you say that your background predisposes you to be more
>> effective? Perhaps, though it likely depends on your field of study

> Yes, it does. Compare someone with a college education to someone who
> didn't finish high school, and tell me that the person with the college
> education isn't highly likely to be more effective.

I strongly suspect we're both bringing unrealistic biases to this particular
argument. I pay more attention to the buffoons with degrees than the hicks who
dropped out of school.

I did actually have a point which I still think is valid: going down the college
educated = better (and substituting high school dropout changes it not one iota)
road is extremely dangerous. The most pernicious player I've ever known was
extremely well educated, eloquent and quite wealthy. The best player I've ever
known dropped out of college and is currently scraping to get by.

>> I don't think the players in Achaea would really give me any social
>> advantages if I carried on at length on the relative merits of the
>> Copenhagen Interpretation, Niobium doping in Josephson Junctions,
>> or the potential of superfluids as an industrial byproduct in future
>> applications of orbital assembly. They'd probably think me a terrible
>> bore, in fact. Unless they were studying the history of quantum
>> mechanics, theoretical applications of electronics or lunatic
>> theories of matter in zero G environments.
>
> You'd be surprised. If you could find an in-role application to this sort
> of thing, a lot of players would be willing to sit through long posts

And therein lies my point. Finding an in-role application has nothing to do with
education, it has to do with personal charisma. Charisma can certainly be
augmented by a good education, but a good education cannot make interesting
someone who is inherently dull.

And as for n-dimensional constructs around hypothetical exotic matter, wouldn't
it be more interesting for your world to be based around a flagpole manifold?
Then you could point to the communicative dances of the bees as proof. (The
'dances' of bees conform to 2 dimensional slices from a much larger construct.)
After all, what tangible proof is there for the average person of superstring?
An expansionist universe doesn't quite cut it. ;)

-Zak Jarvis
 http://www.voidmonster.com





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