[MUD-Dev] (no subject)

[Ian Hess]

The esteemed Matthew Mihaly wrote:
>Alright, now here is an interesting question. Achaea
> has a currency that is both in-game and out of game.
> You can buy it from other players, in-game, with
> gold, or with whatever currency the other player will
> accept. You can buy it out-of-game with real money.
> We pay our Guides in credits. Since paying the
> Guides in credits doesn't cost us money (though it
> does cost us potential money from those players),
> it seems that we could pay the Guides minimum
> wage in credits, (which is still 6x what they get now,
> as what they get now is a token thank you) and not
> run afoul of the law if these OSI and AOL wankers
> win their suit. It's not actually an expense, as they
> cost nothing to produce. Any comments on this?
> Seems a potentially good strategy for other
> companies. --matt 

I might agree, except that it didn't cost OSI any more
man-hours or system cycles to create the 'ubersword of
everything-slaying' than it takes you or your system to
create credits.  Unless I misunderstand, the fact that the
goods take very little to create is not important to the
arguement.  The volunteers perceive that these goods
have value that is derived from the demand for those
goods, not the difficulty in creating them.  

In short, I think that if a 'credit' has value, and its value
partially derives from its use in increasing the power (or 
value) of a character, then Achaea's position might not
be so different from the UO's.  

Then again, I'm not a lawyer, and (my brand of) logic
does not seem to apply to those sorts of proceedings.

Ian Hess
part-time plotwriter for Adventures Unlimited





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