[MUD-Dev] Criminalize Community Volunteers?

[Willowreed at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/7/2000 7:43:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
daklozar at home.com writes:

> > Now for the real rant portion of this post.  I find it disgusting that
>  > so many people seem willing to defend this practice by saying "The money
>  > isn't there" or that "Online RPGs just wouldn't be made" if companies
>  > couldn't exploit free employees.  What kind of defense is that?  That's
>  > like saying, "McDonalds can't stay in business if we have to pay our
>  > employees actual wages.  Can we just give them a few burgers at the end
>  > of the shift?"  How far would that fly?  It's worse in our case, because
>  > commercial MUDs are primarily a service, not a product; and we have come
>  > to expect "volunteers" to help us provide that service.
>  [snip]


Something I am curious about is the age group of the folks that are not 
condoning volunteerism.  I am wondering if its a trend that we will have to 
watch out for with members of various games  or is this just an arbitrary 
splitting up of sides.

If anyone has comments on this I would appreciate hearing them. Myself, am 
nearly 37, and have been part of the online community since 1992, and a 
volunteer since 1995.  I am wondering what the average age of volunteer is, 
how many years they volunteer for, how much time was spent on a MUD before 
they volunteered.
Maybe even what their educational level is. 

If games are to be made, and run and run *well*, wouldn't it be a good thing 
to know our customer base?  Wouldn't it be a good thing to know if the 
younger folks coming up really are not into volunteering or if they are.  
Then as business managers we could manage our businesses 
(muds/games/services) better?

A lot of time is spent creating these worlds.  If there are no folks there to 
help the newbies (or veterans) with problems as unpaid help, then there would 
be a need to hire someone to do the job.

Are there any studies on this?

Wils



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