[MUD-Dev] Pay for Item MMOG : Entropia article on Slashdot

[Matt Mihaly]

On Wed, 11 Dec 2002, bradley newton haug wrote:

> Ech, Personally I find this model offensive and pokemonish.

While Project Entropia is a joke, and has been doomed to fail
(assuming it keeps its current model in which people can turn
in-game currency back into physical world money) since it was
announced years ago, you do it a disservice by comparing it to
Pokemon, which is a wonderfully brilliant game and product both. It
may be aimed at kids, but from what I know of it (which isn't all
that much, granted, but a girlfriend's little sister is very very
into it, and I picked things up that way) it's extremely creative,
well-designed, and simply a fun concept for kids and many adults.

As for the model itself, what's wrong with buying things in a world? 
Sounds like the physical world to me. If it's the integrity of the
game you're worried about, consider that golf is a game in which you
can spend thousands of dollars on clubs and still have no hope of
ever beating a stick-wielding Tiger Woods. Consider that
professional sports are a game in which the primary assets (the
players you are using to win) are for sale, at enormous prices. Not
only do people play hundreds of millions of dollars to play that
game (by buying a team), but hundreds of millions of people spend
lots of money watching it, talking about it, consuming products
based on it, playing in virtual leagues, and generally obsessing
over it.

In the world of MUDs, our company operates two MUDs that pioneered
this business model almost 6 years ago and has been going strong
since. I know a lot of our players appreciate the fact that they can
try out Achaea, or simply play it, for as long as they want without
ever paying a cent. They're not going to get deleted if they have no
money that month or year, etc, and they're not going to be denied
access to their beloved world. We've got players who have played
thousands of hours and never paid a cent. Since the most important
content in any type of MUD (text or graphical) are the other
players, even players playing for free contribute to the welfare of
the game, simply by being there and interacting. We also make every
single thing you can purchase from us available for free by playing
the game. It just takes longer to do it for free.

When it's all added up, we make more money per player (by a
significant margin) than the big games, and have an easier time
attracting new players than subscription text MUDs do, because of
the low barrier to entry.

--matt
  


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