[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #246 - 6 msgs

[Dr. Cat]

> From: Timothy Dang <tdang at U.Arizona.EDU>
>
> What I was talking about was people paying to create content, though
> possibly with a twist. Of course, somebody buying an item customized
> for themself is creating content, but not exactly what I had in
> mind. You could treat all creating content to be the same in terms of
> your administration, or treat the _buying_for_me_ type of content
> differently.
> 
> First, (many) admins think player-added content would be a boon to
> their MUDs. However the costs in admin time of making sure that the
> content isn't crap is too high.
> 
> Second, players want to add content, and are willing to pay for the
> privilege.
> 
> So, those two make me think the problems can be resolved by charging
> the players for the administrative cost of filtering out the crap. Of
> course, this does create the new problem of trying to tell people
> their ideas don't work without pissing off your customers.

Our admins joke sometime about how we could charge for things like the
"privilege" of getting to do a staff job.  And people would pay for it.
But while there's a lot of things you COULD charge for, there's some
that are clearly better choices than others, and a few that would have
really bad consequences.  Letting people pay to be the cops with law
enforcement powers could get very ugly, and probably would.

Charging for the ability to add content has been something people have
suggested to me at various times over the past few years, and I always
say "no".  Why?  People who make content are adding value to our world
and to our business.  That's what we want MOST to happen.  Last thing
I want to do is reduce how much it happens, by charging for it!  You
shouldn't tax people for the act of putting money in your pocket.

Regarding filtering, our plan is to have a small filtered content area,
and a huge "anybody can upload stuff promiscuously here" area.  It works
for Geocities and other big free homepage providers.  There's a lot of
crappy content, but people find stuff they want to see and there's an
ongoing and interesting business there.

Of course the filtered area will be the most interesting (and valuable).
Having the unfiltered area reduces the sting of rejecting a player, since
you're not telling them "You can't put it in the game", just "You can't
put it HERE".  Anyway as a commercial project, we can dedicate some
portion of our income (when it gets high enough) to costs involved with
doing whatever amount of reviewing and filtering seems worthwhile.  I hope
to supplement that largely with volunteer reviewers, or even just looking
at usage levels of content that was upload to a trial area, or content the
creator didn't intend to submit but we invite them to because it's the
most popular tavern in the whole game.

> The twist was that, although typically, one would expet the new
> content to be open to everybody, it needn't be. Perhaps for additional
> fees, you could give the creator(s) additional in-game intellectual
> property rights. These could be time-limited, limited by some secret,
> or unlimited.

Our premise is that people who build an area are able to decide who is or
isn't allowed in, and why, and what rules they want to enforce there.  If
somebody makes a bunch of annoying rules, nobody much will go there.
That's the dream-owner's problem, not mine.  :X)

*-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------* 
   Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye Productions       ||       Free alpha test:
*-------------------------------------------**   http://www.furcadia.com
    Furcadia - a graphic mud for PCs!       ||  Let your imagination soar!
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