September 2002
- A "dev chat" with Brad McQuaid Vincent Archer
- Article on Griefers Rayzam
- Article on Griefers Stephen Miller
- Article on Griefers Michael R. Estepp
- Serialization, dealing with changing classes. Neil Edwards
- Serialization, dealing with changing classes. Sean Kelly
- Serialization, dealing with changing classes. Ammon Lauritzen
- Serialization, dealing with changing classes. Brian Lindahl
- TECH: Serialization, dealing with changing classes. Mark Kochanowski
- Ballerium: Interesting Game John Arras
- Ballerium: Interesting Game Valerio Santinelli
- Ballerium: Interesting Game John Robert Arras
- Ballerium: Interesting Game Crosbie Fitch
- Ballerium: Interesting Game shren
- Ballerium: Interesting Game Peter Tyson
- Ballerium: Interesting Game Valerio Santinelli
- Ballerium: Interesting Game Vincent Archer
- Ballerium: Interesting Game Mark Cheverton
- Ballerium: Interesting Game huserl@yahoo.com
- Ballerium: Interesting Game Adam
- Ballerium: Interesting Game Valerio Santinelli
- Ballerium: Interesting Game Jon A. Lambert
- Much Respect to JessicaM apollyon
- Much Respect to JessicaM Michael Tresca
- Much Respect to JessicaM Sean Kelly
- Much Respect to JessicaM Dave Rickey
- Much Respect to JessicaM Matt Mihaly
- Much Respect to JessicaM Michael Tresca
- Much Respect to JessicaM apollyon
- Much Respect to JessicaM Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Much Respect to JessicaM Sean Kelly
- Much Respect to JessicaM Michael Tresca
- Much Respect to JessicaM Paul Schwanz
- Much Respect to JessicaM Richard A. Bartle
- PK/PD (was Much Respect to JessicaM) justice@softhome.net
- MudDev - FAQ 1 Marian Griffith
- MudDev - FAQ 2 Marian Griffith
- [decentralization] Reputation device (fwd) J C Lawrence
- [decentralization] Reputation device (fwd) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- [decentralization] Reputation device (fwd) Crosbie Fitch
- ANNOUNCE: Open Betas Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- ANNOUNCE: Open Betas Vincent Archer
- ANNOUNCE: Open Betas Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric
- ANNOUNCE: Open Betas Mordengaard
- ANNOUNCE: Open Betas Mordengaard
- Charlie Munger on the Psychology of Human Misjudgment J C Lawrence
- Charlie Munger on the Psychology of Human Misjudgment [summary of points] Sasha Hart
- Point of View Ted L. Chen
- Point of View Shane P. Lee
- Point of View Damion Schubert
- Point of View justice@softhome.net
- Point of View Shane P. Lee
- Point of View listsub@wickedgrey.com
- Point of View justice@softhome.net
- Point of View John Robert Arras
- Point of View Ted L. Chen
- Point of View Ted L. Chen
- Commercialization of virtual spaces Koster, Raph
- Commercialization of virtual spaces Jessica Mulligan
- Commercialization of virtual spaces Derek Licciardi
- Commercialization of virtual spaces Mike Shaver
- Commercialization of virtual spaces Justin Stocks
- Commercialization of virtual spaces Russ Whiteman
- Commercialization of virtual spaces Justin Stocks
- Flexible Perl MUD-like Server Project Luke Parrish
- Flexible Perl MUD-like Server Project stanza
- Flexible Perl MUD-like Server Project Joshua Judson Rosen
- Flexible Perl MUD-like Server Project Lars Duening
- MMOG growth Matt Mihaly
- MMOG growth Koster, Raph
- MMOG growth Daniel James
- UO Advanced Character Service Christopher Allen
- UO Advanced Character Service Jessica Mulligan
- UO Advanced Character Service eric
- UO Advanced Character Service Jessica Mulligan
- UO Advanced Character Service Matt Mihaly
- UO Advanced Character Service Matt Mihaly
- UO Advanced Character Service Amanda Walker
- UO Advanced Character Service Matt Mihaly
- UO Advanced Character Service amanda@alfar.com
- UO Advanced Character Service Marc Bowden
- UO Advanced Character Service Ted L. Chen
- UO Advanced Character Service Freeman, Jeff
- UO Advanced Character Service Damion Schubert
- Storytelling in MMOGs article Koster, Raph
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Jessica Mulligan
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Valerio Santinelli
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Paul Boyle
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Koster, Raph
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Ted L. Chen
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Poe, Lawrence
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Dave Rickey
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article SpY
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Freeman, Jeff
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article SpY
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Derek Licciardi
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Freeman, Jeff
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Marc DM
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Matt Mihaly
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Marc DM
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Matt Mihaly
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article holding99@mindspring.com
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Sean Kelly
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Marc DM
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Sean Kelly
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Mathieu Castelli
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Matt Mihaly
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Matt Owen
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Damion Schubert
- Game developers gear up for cyber wars Michael Tresca
- Online Games Resource Guide Valerio Santinelli
- Critique this combat system Britt Green
- Critique this combat system Paul Schwanz
- Critique this combat system Edward Glowacki
- Critique this combat system hart.s@attbi.com
- [TECH] new linux thread library coming for libc Bruce Mitchener
- Zhe4 shi4 shen2me zhan4? Richard A. Bartle
- Grouping in MMP Games Dave Rickey
- Grouping in MMP Games Clay
- Grouping in MMP Games Amanda Walker
- Grouping in MMP Games Alex Kay
- Player Created Content - The Holy Grail? Matthew Dobervich
- Player Created Content - The Holy Grail? Matt Mihaly
- Player Created Content - The Holy Grail? Sulka Haro
- Player Created Content - The Holy Grail? Matt Mihaly
- Player Created Content - The Holy Grail? Michael Tresca
- Emoticons: When was the "big bang?" Randolf Richardson
- Emoticons: When was the "big bang?" Darren Henderson
- Emoticons: When was the "big bang?" Elia Morling
- Massive Online Gaming magazine Dr. Cat
- Massive Online Gaming magazine Matt Mihaly
- Massive Online Gaming magazine Dave Rickey
- Massive Online Gaming magazine Matthew Dobervich
- Massive Online Gaming magazine Dr. Cat
- Massive Online Gaming magazine Mark Cheverton
- Massive Online Gaming magazine Zach Collins {Siege}
- Massive Online Gaming magazine Dr. Cat
- Massive Online Gaming magazine shren
- Massive Online Gaming magazine Peter Tyson
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Ted L. Chen
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) John Robert Arras
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Ted L. Chen
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) John Robert Arras
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Derek Licciardi
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Matthew Dobervich
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Travis Nixon
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Ted L. Chen
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Sasha Hart
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Ted L. Chen
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) hart.s@attbi.com
- Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View) Kwon J. Ekstrom
- MUD-Dev Storytelling in MMOGs article Clay
- Diamond Age (ex story telling in MMORPG) Mathieu Castelli
- visualization toosl for text mud builders... (aka automapper) fred@clift.org
- Understanding Simulation hart.s@attbi.com
- Understanding Simulation Damion Schubert
- Understanding Simulation Michael R. Estepp
- Understanding Simulation Ron Gabbard
- Understanding Simulation shren
- Understanding Simulation Sasha Hart
- Understanding Simulation shren
- Understanding Simulation Peter Harkins
- Understanding Simulation shren
- Future of MMOGs Valerio Santinelli
- Future of MMOGs Shane P. Lee
- Future of MMOGs Eric Lee {GAMES}
- Future of MMOGs Crosbie Fitch
- Future of MMOGs Koster, Raph
- Future of MMOGs Mike Shaver
On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 09:40:19AM -0700, Koster, Raph wrote:
> The first difficulty would be making such a beast. It's not
> exactly simple (though it is *simpler* in that if it's truly
> non-commercial and so on, you don't need to invest the
> [significant] effort in making sure that it's hackproof and secure
> enough for commercial transactions).
I don't believe that to necessarily be true. Whether they're paying
cash or not, players will invest their time, and I suspect that they
will want to avoid playing on compromised servers and the like.
(I also don't think that "non-commercial" is the interesting aspect
of this, but rather that the idea of "distributed control and
development" has a lot of interesting promise. If only as a
discussion topic. =) )
> Then there's the issue of content and intellectual property. If
> you had a network like this, and people uploaded content freely,
> it's naive to suppose that it would be user-generated
> content. It'll be user-pirated content too. Basically--whatever
> the Web is, this would be. Expect to see alternate (and better!)
> versions of Star Wars and Star Trek and Pern and Disney and
> whatever. Worse, expect to see areas for trading college papers or
> copyirhgted music or whatever. (Just like we have now). Oh, and
> porn, of course.
What's the issue here? "[W]hatever the web is" turns out to be
extremely attractive to a very large number of users, who are
willing to pay an almost-always flat rate for access to some set of
"base" content -- that which is "free" on the Web -- and then in
some cases cough up additional fees for premium content, on a
case-by-case basis.
People host content for free (even, gasp, pornographic content),
through services such as Geocities and Tripod and Blogspot and a
thousand other places. Organizations contribute untold _millions_
in developer and infrastructure support for various open-source
projects, from Mozilla to Linux to Twister and back through Perl,
because the existence of that infrastructure has value to them, and
they don't derive as much additional value from exclusive access to
the result as they derive from network effects of deployment, and
contributions from other like-minded organizations. And these are
not charity cases: these are companies like AOL-TW and IBM and SAP
and Intel.
I should probably leave my open-source/open-development horse tied
to the post for now, though.
>> Given there is probably a market for quality content, there's
>> nothing to stop people selling quality content to the players of
>> such a public MMOG.
> How about, market forces? How many people succeed right now at
> selling quality content on the Web? Those who do succeed do so via
> the subscription model--eg, the commercial MMOG. Micropayments
> just aren't here yet, and the primary barrier to adopting them is
> how the credit card system works, with its near-fixed transaction
> cost.
The MMOG subscription model isn't just "access to content", though
-- it's access to the service, and in the rare cases where there is
PGC worth describing as such, it's access to the tools of creation
and publication. Drop the base price for a UO sub to $2/month, or a
fixed fee for account creation and startup, make it as easy to link
servers as it is to create a webring or refer to someone else's
blog, and let the Origins and Sonys (I mean, the Salons and the
Economists and OEDs) charge a premium to access their
expensive-to-generate content. There's perhaps some business-model
risk here for those pay-for-play members of the Brave New Network,
in that it's possible that one of the ten thousand people who think
they can make a better UO might be _right_.
>> However, as we see with the Web, it's difficult to sell quality
>> content (cf Salon et al) when there's so much quality content
>> provided for free already.
Will America's Army kill UT2K3? Does broadcast TV kill HBO? Did
the free MUDs and MOOs kill Achaea and The Eternal City? Did the
GIMP kill Photoshop, or Blender kill Maya? Fileplanet Free >
Fileplanet Personal Server?
Of course, again, I don't really care about whether people charge
for what they create. I sort of like being paid for my time --
though usually not the specific product of it -- and I don't think
others should be denied the opportunity.
But if, in the eyes of the user, the free content -- with its flaky
servers and mis-spelled descriptions and suspiciously-like-quake1
models and all the other warts that may accompany it -- is
compelling enough that they don't feel the need to spend the extra
$10/month on a different service, that doesn't bother me. If you're
not making a sale, you're not selling it "right". Lots of people
are really happy with Counter-Strike, and who am I to say that
they're wrong?
> People are very able to do without content. Content I haven't
> already experienced is way off on the luxury end of the
> subsistence-luxury scale.
That part of the spectrum is really what we're here to discuss on
this list, though, unless there I missed some breakthrough on the
nutritional effects of levelling.
> I never miss reading IGN articles that I am not subscribed to. The
> classic means of getting people to subscribe to content is to give
> them a free taste first so as to make it feel valued.
If players are able to, without financial investment -- which always
seems to pale in comparison to the time investment, but that's
another discussion -- experiment with what's out there in terms of
UOFree, does that make it harder or easier to sell them the
additional services of guaranteed in-game support presence,
higher-speed and -availability servers, a manual and cloth map,
etc.?
> The classic model you're proposing is that each participant pony
> up their own money to be on the Park. But then you get the
> "popularity kills" effect--anyone who makes good free content is
> forced out of the Park because of their bandwidth costs spiking.
Well, this doesn't seem to happen on the web. Sure, sometimes a
site gets slashdotted, or they go over their monthly/hourly
bandwidth allocation, and it's unavailable for some period of time.
But it's rare that those sites get shut down. Think of all the
people on dollarhost or running fan-sites. People spend money to
publish their content for free. Maybe this is just a phase of
irrationality that will pass when people realize that they
_shouldn't_ be giving away the products of their labour gratis, but
I sort of hope not.
> Making a powerful distributed system whereby people can contribute
> their own content, maybe even make money off of it, link together,
> and form a big ol' Sprawl or Matrix or Park or Net or whatever is
> going to have to be commercially attractive or it won't
> happen. And once it's commercially attractive, it will also have
> to be IP-friendly, at least relatively so.
And yet, The Internet, home of child pornographers and terrorists
and -- worse yet -- music and movie swappers, has been able to
attract tons of large companies and tons of individuals into its
"PGC" world.
> Don't get me wrong. This is the game I want to make next, as it
> happens. But despite the hacker ethic and the dreams of freedom of
> information, it's gonna HAVE to be monetizable and *profitable* or
> it won't get made. Food isn't free. The real question is whether
> you think the content consumer should get a piece of the pie, or
> whether it should ONLY go to the host.
There's more question than that, I think.
- Should there be a wide spectrum of prices and "qualities" of
content, provided by a wide spectrum of people, or is it better for
a game universe to be controlled by one organization?
- Should the content producer pick the price of the content, or
should they be limited to publishing it in an area where they have
a) no IP rights, b) no control over what it's linked to, or who
can experience it, c) no control over the availability of it
(price, etc.)
?
- Can it be monetizable -- profitable depends more on the
organization than on the game or infrastructure, IMO -- without
placing a financial barrier to entry in front of _all_ types of
participation (both publication and consumptionr)?
It's quite possible that Sony or AOL can't make money on this model,
because their corporate-friction costs are high enough that clearing
a profit of $5K/month on a single server isn't enough to keep the
lights on. But that doesn't mean that Skotos or a pair of
"hobbyists" can't make a decent living running a few nodes in this
Park.
Mike - Future of MMOGs Crosbie Fitch
- Future of MMOGs Joe Andrieu
- Future of MMOGs Crosbie Fitch
- Future of MMOGs Jeremy Noetzelman
- Future of MMOGs Sean Kelly
- Future of MMOGs Dave Trump
- Future of MMOGs Matt Mihaly
- future of MMOGs Adam
- Future of MMOGs Mike Shaver
- Future of MMOGs Brack, J. Allen
- Future of MMOGs Matt Mihaly
- Future of MMOGs Matt Chatterley
- Future of MMOGs Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Future of MMOGs Damion Schubert
- Future of MMOGs Derek Licciardi
- Future of MMOGs Jon A. Lambert
- Future of MMOGs Valerio Santinelli
- Future of MMOGs Travis Cannell
- Future of MMOGs Dr. Cat
- Future of MMOGs Crosbie Fitch
- Future of MMOGs Koster, Raph
- Future of MMOGs Crosbie Fitch
- Future of MMOGs Adam
- Future of MMOGs Amanda Walker