[MUD-Dev] Are eBay sales more than just a fad?

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2000 gmiller at classic-games.com wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Sep 2000 20:55:36 -0700
> "Corey Crawford" <myrddin at seventh.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> > In the case of a game, it's almost even worse in a moral sense - you create
> something out
> > of nothing in a matter of seconds (absolutely no overhead to you) aka
> uberswordofdeath and
> > turn around and sell it to the player who wants it the most and has the
> largest credit
> > line.
> 
> UO, EQ, etc. were not created instantly out of nothing. The fact that Matt
> Mihaly is able to sell virtual equipment in his game is the result of a lot of
> work over a number of years to create the game in the first place. Isn't that
> sort of like saying it's immoral for EA to sell their single player games, since
> it costs very little to manufacture a CD?

THANK YOU for pointing it out before I had a field day with Corey 
Crawford's post. I just about had a fit when I read what he wrote.
Apparently he seems to think that selling items just takes putting up a
chat room and advertising the uberswordofdeath for sale at $1000 US
dollars.

 
> > Not to mention that the player didn't even earn it.. I honestly believe that
> these virtual
> > worlds should be contained and not influenced by outside forces (in this case,
> real life
> > money). You play in the world, with it's rules, and truly earn what you get in
> that world.
> > Just because your rich in the real world doesn't mean you should be rich in a
> completely
> > separate virtual world.
> 
> Sounds to me like they earned it the hard way, doing RL work. As people here are
> fond of saying, the online community is an extension of the offline community.
> You're dreaming if you think you can fully separate the two (e.g., how do you
> keep people who are intelligent in RL from having an advantage? how do you stop
> people from helping their RL friends? what constitutes an RL friend vs. an
> in-game friend when so many people interact in both places?)

Chuckle, I just made a totally redundant post it seems, pointing this out.
The idea of a virtual world being completely seperate is a joke. They
speak "real-life" languages there. They talk about real-life things. They
play it with prejudices drawn from their real-life culture. Their
real-life intelligence easily shines through. The amount of real-life
free-time they have seems to be a major factor for success in most muds.
They hang out with real-life friends there. They celebrate real-life
holidays. Etc etc. 

--matt




_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev