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But Why
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
Heck, I would build it myself if I had the money but I have to work for a living.
I know I’m probably opening a can of worms by asking this, but why do you believe there’s a financial barrier to building a MU*? Silent Heaven costs less than $30 per month to keep running, and I could probably downgrade to an even cheaper server once a certain bug in Evennia is fixed. There were also no costs beforehand. None with learning how to code, nor doing the actual coding and building.
Game-runner of Silent Heaven, a small-town horror MU.
https://silentheaven.org -
@Jumpscare In my experience it’s the time crunch. When I had a paid-to-MU* job (call center work, in my case, but later as a web admin at a university), it was definitely easier to keep up staffing and running things. That said, the Reach cost all of $12/month for hosting back in 2011-2012. We hosted with Mechanipus so that included someone managing the webserver and stack. I’ve got a few Digital Ocean droplets for testing servers and it’s like $24/month.
I mean, that amount is also potentially a no-go for some. People live on shoestring budgets due to many factors, but it’s more likely that the expectation of staff/running a game is that it becomes effectively a full time job especially after a certain size of player base. That’s a largely unsustainable approach, but an enduring one in the hobby.
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@Jumpscare said in But Why:
why do you believe there’s a financial barrier to building a MU*?
Most Ares games run on the $12/month droplet. A few giant ones needed the next bigger size, but that’s rare. Tiny/Rhost games can be run on even less, depending on the MU host.
But like @somasatori said, even that much may be a burden to some.
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@Jumpscare I think it’s more the ‘I do not have to go to work to pay rent and buy food, so that X hours a week can be spent STAFFin’,’ instead.
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
@Evilgrayson
If Elon Musk had all his billions stolen by Jeff Bezos then raised a mercenary army of criminals to kill Bezos and steal everything he had, would you consider that a heroic story?Well that’s the story of Robinhood with the names changed. He was the son of a nobleman who had all his wealth taken by the corrupt Sheriff while the king was away fighting a war. He only became an outlaw because he was suddenly poor. He didn’t give a wet squirt about the poor people until he was one of them.
In some versions of the story the Sheriff killed his father, in some versions he was a knight who returned from the crusades to find his home had been plundered, but the one thing that holds true is that the start of the story is rich-guy-on-rich-guy violence and the rest of the story is all about taking back what was stolen from him.
Disney may have romanticized it with adorable foxes but make no mistake, this was a story about a wealthy lord standing along side a band of thieves to take what they felt they were owed.
Even in the Disney version he didn’t start giving away money until the Sheriff started squeezing the peasants and offering high rewards for Robin’s head. His generosity was a move made out of tactical necessity, not out of kindness.
The whole reason the Disney Robin Hood exists is because a bunch of animators were making a Reynard the Fox cartoon and the brass got wind of it and more importantly, what the traditional story contained. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Needless to say, this got the axe.
What was left was a bunch of assets which got repurposed for…Robin Hood.
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@Jumpscare
My mother is disabled and has extensive medical bills.
We are eating 58 cent burritos and 68 cent boxes of mac’n cheese to survive. It’s very much:
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I feel like it’s super weird how hard you’re going against the concept of people playing fantasy while ignoring a lot of the exact same issues in sci fi. But at the same time, I also absolutely get when one thing is just your thing and something else isn’t.
But either way, I’m really sorry to hear about your mom, and the circumstances y’all are facing. And you’re not the only person I know for whom $12/month to spare on games is an unattainable luxury. I hope at some point soon that will change, because it’s terrible going check to check that way and knowing the only place to cut back is from your own plates.
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@Jumpscare said in But Why:
@De-Villefort said in But Why:
Heck, I would build it myself if I had the money but I have to work for a living.
I know I’m probably opening a can of worms by asking this, but why do you believe there’s a financial barrier to building a MU*? Silent Heaven costs less than $30 per month to keep running, and I could probably downgrade to an even cheaper server once a certain bug in Evennia is fixed. There were also no costs beforehand. None with learning how to code, nor doing the actual coding and building.
Until a few years ago, there was a considerable financial barrier if you lived outside of the US. Today, though, I’ll agree – with online payments having become a matter of click n transfer, and web hotels such as Digital Ocean being internationally accessible, it really isn’t a big deal anymore.
That is, the practical side. I too have been in a situation where the 54 bucks a month Keys costs would have been money I could not afford to spend on entertainment.
Any pronouns. Come to Chincoteague. We have ponies. http://keys.aresmush.com
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@L-B-Heuschkel said in But Why:
@Jumpscare said in But Why:
@De-Villefort said in But Why:
Heck, I would build it myself if I had the money but I have to work for a living.
I know I’m probably opening a can of worms by asking this, but why do you believe there’s a financial barrier to building a MU*? Silent Heaven costs less than $30 per month to keep running, and I could probably downgrade to an even cheaper server once a certain bug in Evennia is fixed. There were also no costs beforehand. None with learning how to code, nor doing the actual coding and building.
Until a few years ago, there was a considerable financial barrier if you lived outside of the US. Today, though, I’ll agree – with online payments having become a matter of click n transfer, and web hotels such as Digital Ocean being internationally accessible, it really isn’t a big deal anymore.
That is, the practical side. I too have been in a situation where the 54 bucks a month Keys costs would have been money I could not afford to spend on entertainment.
Presuming you live in a place whose currency is comparable to, or at least near, the dollar.
Lots of countries have staggeringly weak currencies that are constantly in flux. I live in Buenos Aires, and we don’t have hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, fires, or even really bad floods… our natural disaster is inflation. Not to mention the taxes levied on us should we purchase goods or services in dollars (or euros) from outside the country, adding up to a minimum 65% increase. So for me, $12 for Digital Ocean becomes $19.50 (at best), and cuts into my ability to purchase dollars as the only (effective, if not efficient) way to actually have any (semi) stable savings, because as a private citizen I’m limited to the purchase of $200 per month (a law I am not against, as it stops people with a lot more money from completely ruining it for anyone else). Keep in mind, Netflix, Spotify, all those services --while they are regionalized and thus don’t have the 65% tax-- all still charge in dollars and thus cut into that purchasing maximum.
If my friend who lives in the U.S. wasn’t footing the bill for our game, I couldn’t run it.
In Occam I trust.
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@Coin Yes, sorry. I was having a Eurocentric moment there. I really should know better, considering what the Ukraine war has done to inflation over here and that’s peanuts in comparison.
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My apologies. I have a job that’s thankfully above minimum wage, with my life costs minimized as best I can in order to be able to save up a small amount of cash each month, and it didn’t even cross my mind that even that is privileged.
That’s a failing on my part. I’m sorry. Thanks for calling me out on it.
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My only comment on here is that Concordia is about seven cities from seven worlds that got dropkicked into an alien planet 60ish years ago, at which point giant holes in the sky opened up and started barfing out Serious Issues.
This does not conform to the Standard Model, is all I’m saying
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@Jenn
I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.It’s like making a game where everyone is a billionaire out to maximize their portfolio. Much more horrific than WoD ever could be.
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Should go try one of those first person shooters.
They don’t glorify anything at all.
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It goes back to, my horror and your horror are very different?
It is pretendy‐fun times? Part of that is you can make that whatever you want it to be. Few of us can play the “bad guy” well, so on these games the nobles tend to be good guys on the general. Or at least rogues with a heart of gold. (GENERAL PEOPLE, GENERAL)
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.
Hey, hey. Not all the L&L games are about the British.
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
@Jenn
I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.It’s like making a game where everyone is a billionaire out to maximize their portfolio. Much more horrific than WoD ever could be.
I can absolutely see that being a critique of the over-all genre. But I’m not sure it’s a fair critique of the specific games, or their players… I think a lot of folks play fancy nobility specifically because they know that it’s about the only fine silks and jewelry they’ll ever have. When we know we’re living crushed by a capitalist society we’re not likely to escape… We find those escapes in other ways.
I can absolutely get how some people are not able to escape that in any format, even fictional ones. But I’m not someone who questions the coping skills that work for other people. It’s ok when something doesn’t work for me, as long as it’s working for them and others aren’t getting intentionally harmed in the process.
I face a lot of medical and disability stuff. Sometimes, my characters do, too. I fought with a LOT of internalized ableism when I had to start relying extensively on a wheelchair to be upright for more than about 5-10 minutes max. So one of my favorite characters of mine I’m currently playing is ALSO in a wheelchair. And she’s SUCH a badass, and it doesn’t stop her or slow her down. Because unlike in the real world? Horrors in modern-day Winnipeg don’t include on the screen a world without ramps and rails and the ability to navigate a full life. And that is freeing af.
But I also fight a lot with food and nutrition, and getting a feeding tube last summer almost killed me, even if having the tube is simultaneously keeping me alive. So almost all of my characters are eaters, of foods I miss and crave but cannot enjoy. Because sometimes what we need isn’t to make what we’re going through more tolerable, sometimes what we need is to escape it entirely for a while instead.
I don’t think that either option is a bad choice, or that people picking either are doing it for bad reasons. We just have to find what works for us and stick with it. But we /do/ have to let others do the same. Folks who play L&L probably DON’T always do it for good reasons. There are probably plenty who do it with some really ugly assumptions and bad intentions. Sadly, that’s rampant on the internet. But they don’t usually survive all that long in gaming communities, either. At least, they don’t in the communities I choose to be a part of. I don’t really know what happens in the communities I choose NOT to participate in, because obviously I’m not there participating.
I genuinely hope that no one tries to make you feel bad for your preferences. You have every right to have them. I hope you find sci fi themes and stories of taking down the wealthy and building collective communities with strong social contracts and mutual aid. Honestly, those sound like AWESOME stories. Just… Try not to write off everyone else who enjoys other things. There is more than enough room for both, and for so much other stuff, too. One doesn’t have to detract from the other. And sometimes, it’s in those differences that we find the most space to grow and to improve, as each of those different perspectives meet and join up and collaborate.
This is a social construct that gets a LOT of valuable and reasonable push-back against it. Because it is easily manipulated by violent and oppressive sides. If you KNOW someone is always going to choose it, it’s VERY easy to use against them. But one of the things I learned working with co-ops over the years is that some communities add a ‘rule’ to their community agreements of “Assume best intentions”. And I absolutely get how there are power dynamics where doing so is NEVER going to be possible. But. Sometimes, there’s a lot of power to be found in doing it anyway. At least, there has been for me.
I don’t always read social cues well. I don’t often know if something said my direction was meant as a compliment or an insult, because the words are the same even if there are a lot of ways to have meant it. But I do know that if I assume it was meant well and react as if it was a kindness… If I was right? I haven’t damaged a relationship needlessly. And if I was wrong? I’ve reacted kindly to a mean-ness. And in the end, that’s still usually a better outcome than having met cruelty in return with more of it. You can always still cut ties and walk away after that kindness is clarified to have not been there at all. But it’s a lot harder to walk back the mistaken intent of someone looking to have hurt you where they weren’t meaning to do that at all.
Changing the world is hard but necessary work. But it’s work that starts with changing ourselves. We have to give each other space to learn and to grow, and to trust that even when that growth comes in different directions and preferences from one another, it’s still growth that is leading each of us to where we need and want to be. That’s probably FAR deeper than MU theme preferences ever needs to or even should be. But I wouldn’t write off all fantasy settings and L&L games just from what is considered a faulty premise. Give them a chance to see what happens. Play a few, if you’re interested. Play in none if you’re not. But give folks who DO play them chances when their spaces overlap with your own preferences. They may well manage to surprise you anyway.
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I’m just mad because the Lords and Ladies type games are glorifying some of the worst kinds of people to have ever existed on the face of the earth.
There have been Star Wars MUs where people play members/supporters of the literal fascist Empire; Wild West games where people play racists, outlaws, and robber barons; supernatural games where people play vampires and werewolves; and modern-day games where, indeed, people play super-rich elites.
This fixation that fantasy settings are bad and other genres are good seems weirdly out of step with what people actually do in those other settings.
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I can definitely understand the critique, especially from a Marxist perspective. I mentioned in the Concordia thread that this is the first L&L game I’ve played because of many reasons that were illustrated as being common in those genres. (To some extent, I wonder how this might inform why I picked a roster character who is an economist and historian, so fantasy dialectical materialism?)
As Faraday mentions, there is no shortage of problematic options in games. We may have gotten out of the really egregious options with most places not allowing you to play characters like the Black Spiral Dancers (for WoD) or what sounds like a major focus being on rebels/independents in some Star Wars games. I’m not too familiar with the other themes that are common these days. But anyway, what I think Jenn is saying is that a lot of times we use these ideas or games to explore concepts or constructs and that our individual ludonarrative might have a kind of instructional capacity. It’s probably seriously not that deep now that I realize I’ve used the word “ludonarrative,” but it could be possible.
