Never mind...

[stoicreader]

The spirit of this post was to find a workaround for raising money by players taking responsibility instead of demanding more of staff.

And it was perverted and became an attack against me. So I've edited it to nothing. Good day.

[Medena]

Members of the players union (which requires payment) can get special perks from staff.

On my first quick scan I saw this and didn't read any further.  Totally opposed.

Edited to add:
That was really unfair of me to not read the whole thing so I, in fact, read it all.  I'm still opposed for the same reason -- paying money to receive benefits essentially turns the game into a pay mud and would breach the licensing agreement for DIKU, to say nothing of setting up an elite group amongst the players.

[deskoft]

I think payments like this when it pertains these benefits is bad. I think there are more interesting ways to consider getting money for advertisement. For example, staff and players could compile short-story books, with drawings and what ever else, about old events. Using staff-side logs, we could then sell this to willing players. This imitates the business method of Unreal World, which - for a payment that gives you no perks but a storytelling item - you support the game. The game is still entirely free and your payment will have no direct intrusion in your skills in the game.

[cnemus]

I support more advertising and would be willing to discuss ways to bring it about, but I do not support a union of this type. A privately funded group to raise money and advertise... maybe. As soon as the idea veered off into perks and rewards for participating... hard no.

[Veselka]

No. This goes against the spirit of the game, which is not Pay to Play, or Pay to Win, or Pay for Benefits.

The game has survived this long without any form of paid advertisement, and I don't see a reason (beyond your joining the community recently and having these thoughts it is 'one of the biggest obstacles) to pursue anything like this in any fashion.

The game doesn't need to grow exponentially. Not every type of person enjoys playing ArmageddonMUD, and those that do play for life. The best form of advertisement is word of mouth and vouching for the game, bar none. Having banner space in various places may drive people who are curious to discover ArmageddonMUD towards it, but that is no guarantee that they will like the game, or even make an account.

Reviewing the game in public spaces (Reddit, TMC, etc) is not only free, but far more effective, proven by numbers posted by Staff, than any form of paid advertising will likely accomplish.

Beyond this, having a clique of paid membership into a "Player Union" is beyond exclusionary, and using money as a form of entry is not what this game or game community are about.

[Brytta Léofa]

Very opposed, for two reasons.

#1: Paying for advertising (AFAIK; am I totally wrong? have we discussed this?) is actually acceptable. Paying money and receiving perks, no matter how Byzantine the structure, is always going to raise Diku licensing eyebrows. I don't THINK there's really any problem with taking anonymous donations and spending all the money on advertising.

#2: There are some pretty unbalanced people who play Armageddon. (This is not surprising; it's an obsessive, high-commitment hobby you can do from your basement). Miraculously, though their faults are nonzero, the game staff is not dominated by people with personality disorders. A "player's union" would be another power structure that would have to be defended from takeover by crazies. We don't need that; we are actually better off with most of our eggs in one basket.

I mean, stoicreader, less than a month ago you were so mad you were threatening to quit the game. This actually says something positive about your level of enthusiasm, but (if you'd even contemplated it) I don't want you running a player's union. You wanna play Arm for years, you gotta git mellow.

[Dar]

I'd be willing to spend a thousand, or two to help promote, or somehow improve the mud. No advantages, or perks required. Just a clear distinct outline of how that money would be spent

[stoicreader]

I mean, stoicreader, less than a month ago you were so mad you were threatening to quit the game. This actually says something positive about your level of enthusiasm, but (if you'd even contemplated it) I don't want you running a player's union. You wanna play Arm for years, you gotta git mellow.

I am trying to come up with ideas to improve the game, and you gotta go ahead and be a dick about it. I don't intend to lead anything like this. Just tossing out an idea to raise money you jerk.

Perks like:
Discord channel access to staff is not part of the mud, it's part of discord.
Request priority is not part of the mud, it's part of the website request tool.

[Delirium]

You're either trolling, or misunderstanding some helpful advice given to you. Either way, there is no call for flaming.

Please abide by the rules of the GDB (#2 in particular) or I will moderate your posts.

[Marauder Moe]

I don't like this for several reasons.

1) In recent years (though much improved lately it seems), we've had problems with the perception, if not reality, of an adversarial relationship between staff and players.  A "union" would all but cement that in stone.

2) Though you called it a union, you clearly outlined a system that includes pay-to-play perks.  No.  Just no.  Again, the game has suffered from a perception of unequal treatment of players.  This would also codify that into reality.

3) I don't believe lack of advertising is a major problem.  We already have exposure on some of the biggest sites that funnel people to MUDs.  MUDs as a genre doesn't have mass appeal.  Armageddon doesn't have mass appeal even within the MUD community. 


I get where you're coming from.  I've been new and excited for this great game.  I've been bursting with ideas and I've been frustrated at times how sparse the game can feel.  It's not wrong to feel that way. 

I'd suggest your time and passion could be well spent doing your own promoting of the game on social media.  Tell your FB gamer friends.  Cruise the MUD forums, MUSH forums, RP forums, reddit, etc.  Write ArmageddonMUD reviews.  That's how you can do advertising independent from staff.

[deskoft]

That said, despite my disagreement with the idea, I also disagree with the fact that lack of advertisement is not a problem. Two questions we have to ask: (1) are more or less people playing MUDs in recent time and (2) does Armageddon have room to expand and gain more players?

https://www.similarweb.com/website/armageddon.org#overview

Aha! We are getting more views recently, even double than your regular MUD advertising site:

https://www.similarweb.com/website/mudconnect.com#overview

Obviously these statistics don't take into consideration that we all enter the site many times a day to post requests and what ever, and you go to mudconnect.com when you are looking for a MUD / developer talking to others / etc.

In our category of text-based games, there also is interactive fiction (a market which admittedly I am surprised we haven't advertised to yet). We are having roughly as much views as TADS.ORG which has IFDB which is the library for allll your free Interactive Fiction games, including parser games - which are pretty much Armageddon but singleplayer.

https://www.similarweb.com/website/tads.org#overview

We also have more views than some prominent competition, like ArxMUSH or Sindome:

https://www.similarweb.com/website/arxmush.org#overview

We are however roughly matched by sindome -- though into consideration must be put that they have a grid system, which pretty much encourages you to go visit their website much more than we might with requests (they don't have info on similarweb.com):

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sindome.org

So while we are one of the leaders of the text-based category, I think we have to consider that we are MATCHED by other big groups (IF, MUSHes, one or two other MUDs) -- we have slightly more views than them, and our numbers fluctuate. So it's not a serious problem, but we're there, man! The thing is keeping getting exposure and I do think that voting (as proved above, with the really ridiculously low amount of views these MUD voting pages get), is one of many other methods we could use but we might need to start looking into other methods, amongst which I believe should be using (more) the reddit, invading topics of brother-type of games (Interactive Fiction is pretty much Armageddon offline, Cantr II is Armageddon but slower and with less risks) to show people that haven't heard of us what we are. Unfortunately, we are all volunteers.

Also, obviously the statistic of page views is a very informal and unprofessional method of measuring how much people you still have to conquer -- but it's an informal method nevertheless.

[Nao]

In our category of text-based games, there also is interactive fiction (a market which admittedly I am surprised we haven't advertised to yet). We are having roughly as much views as TADS.ORG which has IFDB which is the library for allll your free Interactive Fiction games, including parser games - which are pretty much Armageddon but singleplayer.

The interactive fiction players are a niche market, but I think this could work very well. I started out playing textadventures and games from the IFDB and came to MUDs that way. The thought process was something like "I can have this and actually have other characters react because it's multiplayer!? Great, how do I start?".

[BrainySmurf]

Didn't well ask the staff if they wanted our money and they said NO?

"Will you accept free donations?"
"No, it's too likely that players will covertly want perks."
"Well, we can solve that by OVERTLY giving players perks!"

Also this isn't what a union is. This is a premium game pass.

[deskoft]

In our category of text-based games, there also is interactive fiction (a market which admittedly I am surprised we haven't advertised to yet). We are having roughly as much views as TADS.ORG which has IFDB which is the library for allll your free Interactive Fiction games, including parser games - which are pretty much Armageddon but singleplayer.

The interactive fiction players are a niche market, but I think this could work very well. I started out playing textadventures and games from the IFDB and came to MUDs that way. The thought process was something like "I can have this and actually have other characters react because it's multiplayer!? Great, how do I start?".

Right? It could be worth a try. I mean there are choice-based IFs nowadays which I think attack another audience, but I think parser IFs players are worth a try. And I think Cantr II is the baby steps to a potential MUD addict.

[Refugee]

I just wanted to add my "Hell no" to the pay-for-perks idea.  That is all.

[Scrumpkin]

My 2 cents:  Goto https://armageddon.org, login, send staff kudos, and send player kudos!

[Draugr]

Closing this topic as it seems to have wandered off course.  But yes!  DOOOOO send kudos!