FW: [MUD-Dev] selling Godhoods

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Thu, 27 Apr 2000, John Bertoglio wrote:

> > Matthew Mihaly
> > Mud players  with disposeable income are, on average,
> > far far more capable and mature than poor players. (expects lots of flames
> > for that, but doesn't care, as it's true. 99% of teenagers have no
> > disposeable income. 'Nuff said.)
> 
> Point two, it totally incorrect. Our family income is quite high. But I
> would suspect my 14 year old son spends more per month on "stuff" than I
> do. (He does not, of course, come anywhere near his mother.) Certainly, he
> is the one we go to when we need cash to pay the pizza guy. While the
> user agreements for the online RPG's like UO require you to be 18, it
> was his money which paid for it. And it was his money to spend when he
> stopped playing UO and AC.
> 
> Entire segments of industry: music, soft drinks, snack foods, etc. are
> dependent on teenage spending and have been since Elvis went into the
> US Army. An online world which manages to tap the wealth of teenagers
> while still being attractive to older, more affluent players would be
> quite successful.

Yes, a fine point, and a correct one. I'll alter what I said to simply
read that in our player base, a vanishingly small proportion of our
revenue is derived from teenagers. I suspect that is because we are
relatively expensive.
 
> However, point two does not have to be correct for point one to
> be right on the mark. I salute Mr. Mihaly for creating the kind of
> world where the elements can have such a high real world value.
> It is a significant achievement. I would think that free muds would
> be wise to study his model to emulate a world where the casual player
> can enjoy play for free while the serious player adds revenue. This
> is a much more reasonable model than asking for donations and allows
> the world to keep hardware and connections up to date. A few paid
> staffers would enhance virtually any MUD world.

Indeed. Thank you. 
--matt




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