Paying for a MU*?
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I don't see any inherent problem with a for-pay MU*. The biggest thing is that if you were going to make it a business, you would need to run it like a business. And I don't think most people who make games really want to take that on, even for money.
I suspect the right MU* could make decent bank. And by 'right MU*', I honestly mean a sex MU*. And probably furry.
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@pyrephox What would that game's advantage be over, say, Shang? What problem does it solve (other than $20/month for hosting fees) or what features would be expected that current games don't have, regardless of theme?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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Doesn't Shang have a donation button somewhere? I'm pretty sure they do, for hosting costs.
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@arkandel said in Paying for a MU*?:
@pyrephox What would that game's advantage be over, say, Shang? What problem does it solve (other than $20/month for hosting fees) or what features would be expected that current games don't have, regardless of theme?
I suspect it would be more highly coded. I seem to recall that Flexible Survival was/is paid, and seems to be both still going strong (after yeaaaars) and fairly successful. Doing a quick search, it looks like it's coded enough that there's actually a single-player option, so the code is fairly standalone so that players don't have to rely on having a GM or other players who match their exact schedule.
I suspect a paid-for MU* that WASN'T a sex-MU* would want to try and emulate that to some extent; players would need to be able to get value whenever they log in, so you'd want coded systems that they can interact with, even if those are more narrative - maybe something like coded investigation systems, or exploration systems, things that would provide on-demand hooks/resources that the player could then use in live scenes with others.
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@pyrephox I dunno. I'm just iterating what I posted before, but paying a MU* coder is the equivalent of a professional, skilled chef volunteering at a soup kitchen who is given a tip jar.
Financially it just makes little sense for the time investment. Either they are doing it because it's fun and they enjoy it or the compensation from it is... not a lot for someone with that skillset.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in Paying for a MU*?:
but paying a MU* coder is the equivalent of a professional, skilled chef volunteering at a soup kitchen who is given a tip jar.
Depends on what you're paying them to do.
Paying them to essentially build you a game is different to paying them to hang out and fix shit that's broken and do whatever little tasks you can think of.
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@arkandel I mean...these things exist? They're not hypothetical constructs that we have to imagine how they'd look and act. There are pay-to-play MUDs out there. There have been pay-to-play MUSHes that have made money. They haven't made anyone rich, to my knowledge, but they have been going concerns that have survived for years. Just because they're not popular with/known by the MSB community doesn't mean they don't exist.
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There have been a lot of pay-to-play MUDs, and ones that offer premium benefits like the Iron Realms family.
My friend worked for one of the big paid MUD houses back in the heyday. It was quite a venture - IT staff, paid GMs/admins, and so forth.
It's hard to imagine successfully translating that to a MUSH environment. You'd have to have an absurd GM-to-player ratio to provide enough entertainment to satisfy players, and that would be tough to scale up to a level where you could pay them all.
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@faraday said in Paying for a MU*?:
There have been a lot of pay-to-play MUDs, and ones that offer premium benefits like the Iron Realms family.
My friend worked for one of the big paid MUD houses back in the heyday. It was quite a venture - IT staff, paid GMs/admins, and so forth.
It's hard to imagine successfully translating that to a MUSH environment. You'd have to have an absurd GM-to-player ratio to provide enough entertainment to satisfy players, and that would be tough to scale up to a level where you could pay them all.
I suspect you'd rather pivot to a MUD/MUSH sort of hybrid, with more coded systems for players to interact with in 'off times', and then events/scenes for GMs to run. The biggest thing is that you'd have to make sure that GMed scenes covered all the major timezones unless you wanted to focus on players from one timezone (which, honestly, might be your best bet starting out, then expand to different timezone coverage if/when you had the ability to hire people on).
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I’m sort of baffled by the through-line I’m seeing here - that money would make it worse because what if it gets weird or they turn out to be terrible and entitled? Like, you know that even with money on the table you can back out, right? You can still ban a creep. Toss a refund, part or whole. You can still be selective. That’s what consensual means. You don’t consent once and give up your right to change your mind. Unless I’ve accidentally time traveled back a few decades, in which case I’m gonna need more flannels, I missed my moment with the grunge thing.
I don’t actually know who specifically I’m addressing here. This might just be a thing I don’t get and continue not to get. Thanks for answering my questions anyway, all.
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@thhppbbbt said in Paying for a MU*?:
I’m sort of baffled by the through-line I’m seeing here - that money would make it worse because what if it gets weird or they turn out to be terrible and entitled?
How is it baffling? Some people that pay money for a thing become more irritating and entitled.
Yes, you can ban them, refund them, whatever... But chances are that the person running the game isn't going to be the first person that encounters them. And when money flows in... how long until a head-staffer (who aren't always known for their sense anyway) becomes more like the manager that acquiesces because the person is paying them money?
He/Him
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Honestly...
As much as I ordinarily agree that the entitlement problem is the main reason I wouldn't want to let monetary exchange happen ...
With the shoe on the other foot, I cannot tell you how much more entitled, obnoxious and rude my appointed clients who pay nothing are than the clients with whom I have entered into a contract to pay me money. The people who get my time for free treat me like garbage and almost without fail, the people who pay $175 a billable hour for what I do treat my time with respect.
I don't know that I'd want to apply this paradigm shift to my MU life - for one thing I definitely don't want a MUSH to cost like a lawyer costs, lol - but I don't know that it would actually be as horrendous as we imagine.
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@saosmash True. There's definitely a point where the cost becomes enough that people are more... sensible.
But MUs are definitely smelly retail/fast-food places, not a lawyers office.
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@tinuviel Because I’ve literally been paid for things I enjoyed doing and… nothing bad happened? Or rather, nothing bad happened that seemed fundamentally different from the bad where I additionally wasn’t getting paid. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ It wasn’t a function of the money.
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@saosmash This! I feel like maybe it’s the fact that it’s free that drives the entitlement.
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@thhppbbbt It's a different kind of entitlement, perhaps, when someone pays.
And I'm specifically saying pay, not donate, not gift, but pay. As in "exchange money for a service." They feel well within their rights to complain and quibble on every detail if their experience with the service isn't adequate.
And if X-group of people is paying enough to sustain the game and pay staffers... who is staff going to listen to when complaints about behaviour come up?
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This isn't just about the players, though. You'd also be asking for totally different game-runners.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But this:
@thesuntsar said in Paying for a MU*?:
But ultimately, I think I'd just bail because it would inevitably feel like a job where I'm now contractually obligated to fulfill the entertainment bucket of people I might not even enjoy because $$$.
The more obligated I feel to play, the less I want to. Even scheduling events adds that tiny bit of anxiety: Shitfuck, now I'm on the hook for this thing! PEOPLE WILL BE EXPECTING ME!
I'd never be able to admin-for-pay.
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@krmbm Agreed. Which is why I think I can better understand some code-stuff being for pay. "I need an events system with X, Y, and Z features," for instance. It's just like paying a tradesperson.
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@tinuviel said in Paying for a MU*?:
Yes, you can ban them, refund them, whatever...
I really think the issue here is that you can ban them. There's no half-sane staff who will look at a toxic player and worry about the $5 they threw into the tip jar two months earlier.
The risk is when you, as a staff member, decide that someone is not toxic but then someone else throws the money accusation in your face.
Did you sell out for $5, you terrible person?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel said in Paying for a MU*?:
There's no half-sane staff
I think that sentence can just end there.
There's going to be people that fuck it up royally, there's going to be people for whom it works fine, and then there's going to be people that try to get the law involved because real financial exchange has happened and that always leads to lawyers eventually.
He/Him
