[MUD-Dev] selling Godhoods

[Tess Lowe]

Matt Mihaly wrote a lot about selling godhoods, ending with:
> People love being involved, and
> being a God means, for instance, a lot of freedom to build areas you wish
> to build, as opposed to having to have every single detail approved by us
> ahead of time.

I must confess I'm fascinated by the idea of selling godhoods. If I didn't
have the ability to create my own online world and thus make myself a god, I
would probably be the sort of player to whom such an offer might appeal.

Achieving 'divinity' in a mud is always the goal that most appealed to me.
Immortal roles tend to give me everything I seek from a mud - eg social
influence, the power to control my environment and creatively control the
environment of others, the ability to go anywhere and examine how everything
works in complete safety.

Now, I have usually chosen whether or not to commit to a particular mud by
the time I have played for a dozen hours. The reasons I commit to a mud are
the quality of the world's mythos, the nature of the other players I meet,
in particular the senior ones, and above all else the vibes I get from the
Creators of the world. But if I *do* commit, then I find that the long slog
to divinity is for the most part just time consuming tedium. I am happy to
serve my time learning about the world, and developing social networks, but
being forced to do endless repetitive tasks to reach some arbitrary level
from where godhood can be obtained seems meaningless. It does not make me
more worthy, and it isn't fun. So the idea of being able to shortcut this
process by exchanging money for time does appeal. I'm not sure it appeals to
the tune of $3000 exactly, but on the other hand I *did* spend $2000 on this
computer I'm typing at simply so I could play Dark Ages properly, so the
difference is really only in how stupid other people think my purchase is
and how easily I can justify it to myself :). If I also obtained a small
share in the equity of your company for my $3000 then that would be
considerably more justifiable on my part. :)

The dangers I would see in paying for a godhood are that you would be
despised by those who you had 'overtaken' through this act, and you might
fail in general to get any respect at all or have any social influence
whatsoever. I personally would seek to avoid this situation by creating a
completely new persona for the godhood, and perhaps negotiating a period
during which I was not yet obliged to act as a 'customer support' so that i
could gently bring the new goddess into the world, giving myself time to
convince people that I am worthy of such a role. To be honest I'd probably
continue to play mortals 95% of the time until I felt I'd served my time.
But at least I wouldn't feel like I had to do the tedious repetitive thing
in order to 'make it'.

Hmm, that was longer than I intended. Hope my comments are of use to you
Matt. I am ever delighted to see you not only thinking the unthinkable but
actually putting it to the test. I always look forward to your postings
immensely. :)

~Tess




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