[MUD-Dev] Retention without Addiction?

[Sasha Hart]

[Eric Hu]

> What I want to say is, how many players did really use this
> function "Bouncer"? How many players said "Thanks Gods! It is so
> useful!! It save my job, my health, and my familiy!!" Have you
> heard that?

It's a factual question neither of us have the information to
answer.

I imagine that it will help in some cases, which is pretty good
considering that I have no evidence that harmful MUD 'addiction' is
particularly frequent itself.

> If a player know how to control himself, it is a nice
> function. Sadly, those who 'addicted', do not.

As I pointed out, it is possible to be addicted to alcohol and still
take measures to prevent yourself from getting back into it.

It is also possible to have good self-control in some circumstances,
but to specifically break down in others.

The decision to enable the feature is often going to be driven by
different factors than the decision to keep playing.

There are harder cases but that doesn't mean it's a useless feature.
It may be, but not just because there are harder cases.

> We ,the MUD administrators, could write 1000 columns code and
> another 100 commands to help players to control himself. If they
> don't want, all we did is fruitless.

Again, self-control is in reality more complicated than "either he
wants to or he doesn't." People might be able to control themselves
from eating if they have to go to the store, but not if the food is
right there. To the extent that code can do this kind of thing, MUD
administrators have the same kind of control.

Fundamentally I agree in that we are not really designing players'
behavior in any strong and literal sense. But we certainly can
provide tools that let people manage themselves - it happens all the
time in other contexts.

In the worst case, this feature isn't sufficient. I don't see it
hurting anything, unlike a policy of banning anyone who plays more
than 20 hours a week (for example) which would be pretty silly to
say the least.


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