[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Matt Mihaly]

On Fri, 17 Jan 2003, Vincent Archer wrote:

> There's a large difference between having a game that happens to
> be attractive to some and unattractive to others, and making a
> game that is specifically not attractive to a certain category of
> people.

I dunno. I've put features into Achaea specifically designed to
drive away a certain category of people. Troublemakers, for
instance. There are also certain features in place to discourage
people (albeit fairly weakly) from playing forever if they have no
money to play.

> When you add a feature, you add it for the specific purpose of
> getting people. Most features will attract and repel people to
> various degrees, and you don't pick a feature because it
> discourages people. You choose it because you think it will please
> more people than it displeases.

It's not that simple. All people are not equal in the eyes of the
game provider, for numerous potential reasons. A couple that come to
mind are an ability and willingness to spend money (have multiple
accounts, buy merchandise, buy in-game virtual objects, etc) or
probable amount of playing time (best players for a subscription
game are those who don't play much and thus use up less
bandwidth). I'm sure if I sat here long enough I could think of at
least 10 ways that it may be advantageous to intentionally please
less people than you displease, due to the minority being more
valuable as customers.

--matt



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