[MUD-Dev] Business models for commercial text games

[nbossett at pierb.com]

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Original message: http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q1/msg01608.php

Emil Eifram <emil.eifrem at windh.com> wrote:

> The main problem I see is that of practicality. I think I can create
> a good enough mud that people are willing to pay X amount of dollars
> per month to play it. But *only if it's easy for them to pay
> me*. I'm sure I could make them pay 10 or 20 bucks per month if I
> could charge them in the super market before they bring their
> groceries back home. But I doubt I'll be able to hire staff in every
> super market in the world.


Credit cards have a significant advantage you haven't mentioned- the
ability to set up invisibly recurring payments.  Take a look at

  http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/12/19/micropayments.html

('The Case Against Micropayments')

for a discussion of the mental overhead of pressing a 'Charge me $'
button every so often.  I suspect a lot of the current graphical
MMORPG subscribers are still customers mainly through inertia- if they
actually had to set up a payment every month, they might walk.

As far as the physical manner in which payment is collected, consider
the huge infrastructure in place for shareware authors.  The most
popular scheme, precomputed registration numbers, is horrendous for
software distribution, but would be excellent for 'gift certificates'
redeemable in-game. (Double-spending of registrations, unlike in
software sales, is trivial to prevent because you control the sole
point of redemption).  The transaction charges, as a percent of a
transaction, can be very high for small value transactions, but this
might be a good way to get jump-started until you have enough
customers to justify a more custom solution.  Also, many of these
services are capable of accepting any form of payment from credit
cards to checks drawn on foreign banks.


-Nathan

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