Paid Role-Playing
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I certainly wouldn’t pay for the privilege of playing. I would, however, not object to making a regular donation to support the game’s financial running costs. If I liked the game enough to care whether it stays up or not.
But most game runners I know are wary of accepting such kindness as it can often come with the perceived problems, as regaled above, about pay to win or other kinds of bias.
ETA: Which is, I think, basically exactly the same as what mietze said above.
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@Pavel said in Paid Role-Playing:
I certainly wouldn’t pay for the privilege of playing. I would, however, not object to making a regular donation to support the game’s financial running costs. If I liked the game enough to care whether it stays up or not.
But most game runners I know are wary of accepting such kindness as it can often come with the perceived problems, as regaled above, about pay to win or other kinds of bias.
ETA: Which is, I think, basically exactly the same as what mietze said above.
For awhile, a WOD game I was on had a tip jar that actually worked, but it was because the cost of running the game was relatively high, while the ask and the reward were clear and specific.
Kick in… I think it was $2? towards server costs a month and you got a very tantalizing XP. One whole XP! As a thank you. Anything above and beyond the cost of the server was explicitly stated to be beer money for the game admin and coder. Bear in mind, though, that this was a game that also involved having a fairly expensive DigiChat license. The cost of that license was a big part of why that type of game was rare and, even with the tip jar, they didn’t break even on the costs for most months of the year. From my understanding, people were (perhaps surprisingly) actually not dicks as a result, especially because the game owner was fairly explicit about what was coming in and what was going out.
With the cost of an Ares server being $12 a month, though? I honestly forget I have one open half the time.
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I eventually caved to pressure and opened a Patreon for Silent Heaven. The support currently pays for about 80% of the monthly server costs. Supporting confers no in-game bonuses, and is only done out of the goodness of one’s heart and budget.
If there’s ever an overage, I’ve promised to use the excess money for nice things for the game, such as art commissions.
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I’m probably unusual in that, in theory, I would be happy to pay for playing in a MU* on some sort of subscription model. I’ve kicked in for tabletop games before, so contributing to someone taking the time and energy to make entertainment for me isn’t a hard ask!
In practice, though, it would raise my standards for what I expected in return to the point where I’d want a professional product, as opposed to the hobbyist arrangements we have now. And I doubt that’s sustainable with a persistent online world on a price point where I’d feel comfortable signing up. (It works fine in tabletop, because you schedule your time, you outline what the parameters are going to be, etc. But with a persistent setting, you need to guarantee, for example, that a player in the UK or China is going to get the same quality of experience as one on the East Coast of the US, which means GMs guaranteed to run relevant plots at those times, etc. And MUDs probably have an advantage because many/most systems are automated.)
But…I dunno. I think it would depend a lot on the experience and value that was offered, how trustworthy I considered the person offering it, and what the cost was.
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@Pyrephox said in Paid Role-Playing:
In practice, though, it would raise my standards for what I expected in return to the point where I’d want a professional product, as opposed to the hobbyist arrangements we have now.
This is exactly why I would be uncomfortable making any kind of “pay to play” mechanism. It’s one thing to ask people to chip in for the collective costs of something they’re using. In RL, a club that needs to rent a venue might ask members to chip in to cover those costs. Likewise, I see nothing wrong with a MU having a tip jar or something for folks to help defray the server costs. But as soon as you start charging more than the costs, you’ve turned it from a community club into a profit-making venture, and that just feels different.
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I pay for D&D a couple of times a week. My brother is a professional DM and I am a sucker & I both want to support him and genuinely enjoy his GMing, so.
I agree with Pyre tho. I’m not generally averse to paying for products I enjoy but if the MU I am playing on is a product it’s going to change my expectations. Then again I’ve probably spent more money for less satisfaction by buying stupid shit on phone games over the years, so… who knows.
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Once I was supposed to get paid to TS people on a pay-to-TS-people MOO. I never did, because it never got completed, possibly because the place hosting realised that it would be difficult to be sure all users were of age. That was back when 14.4 baud dial-ups and does not seem viable today.
I used to ask players to donate to certain charities, but also made it clear that I wouldn’t know if they did.
I suppose you might monetise a MU by allowing connections only from a website with adverts.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Paid Role-Playing:
a pay-to-TS-people MOO
Like one of those sexy time chat lines that were so popular in the 90s, advertised on late-night TV?
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@Pavel I think so? I think the deal was supposed to be that a paying player couldn’t tell if another player was paid or paying to be there, but the paid ones would be paid to pounce on the payers and do stuff their finger-files asked for. The scheme really didn’t get far. I expect it was also meant to have, uh, some kind of naughty mobs so instead of running around typing ‘attack monster with sword’ like on an ordinary MUD, you’d go ‘tickle nymph with magetongue’ or somesuch and seek the treasured magical Long Strong Dong With the +8 Double Prong and stuff. Lewd Zork was also a thing then.
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Coincidentally, Lewd Zork was my runnin’ around name in my 20s!
