[MUD-Dev] Commercial web based MUDs

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 08:53:56 -0000 
Peter Tyson <ptyson at datamonitor.com> wrote:

> You could consider either a small fee to play or small fees to be
> able to run more than one character or to get access to some other
> kind of content but I think you'd be struggling to cover your
> costs by offering the game for free.

Minor observations:

  Hardware, maintenance and SysAdm costs are close to being a
  constant (I'm assuming a single system and fairly reasonable
  resource and transaction rate requirements).

  Development costs are variant, but depend mostly on details
  specific to you, the service and style chosen (eg methods of
  content generation, free user programming or not, use of
  third-party content, base server/model development etc).

  A web based service very nearly maximises your bandwidth costs by
  forcing frequent reloads of constant data, and allows bandwidth
  to be consumed by non-paying non-playing entities (idle browsers,
  search engine spiders (that don't obey robots.txt), etc.

  Telnet or custom protocol/client services allow bandwidth
  use/expenses to be optimised at variously the expense of
  impenetrability to neophyte 'net users and custom development and
  maintenance.

--
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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