Brainstorming ideas thread: What do replace the Developers Incentive with?

Here is my basic premise which I posted in another thread:

There are people who create compelling, entaining places in Second Life. They are the kind of places that make people want to join SL and continue to explore SL. These places make SL more sticky, as they say. They help convert basic accounts into premium accounts and make people more likely to pay tier (either directly or through rentals).

It's in Linden Labs best interest to encourage these places, and perhaps even subsidise these places. That was the purpose of the Developers Incentive as I understand it, to encourage the creation of the kind of sticky places that got people excited about SL.

Now, if you had a chance to propose a replacement system to Linden Labs, what would it be? It doesn't even have to be money based, but how would have LL encourage and reward those in the community who create compelling spaces to explore?

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Before you post, please do the following:

1. read other peoples ideas
2. consider ways to improve their ideas
3. post your own idea or an improvement on someone elses
4. refrain from simply shooting down someone else's idea

Shooting down someone elses idea is much easier than proposing your own and much less helpful than making suggestions on how to improve someone else's idea. (I'm just as guilty as others at doing this, so I'm not trying to point fingers right off the bat.)

If you disagree with the premise of this thread, that DI should be replaced with something, please start another thread. This thread is for brainstorming ideas.

Here is one idea:

One benefit that Linden Labs get from developer content is the conversion of basic accounts to premium accounts. When someone decides to stay and pay, they should get away of recommending or recognizing the place or places that got them to stay. Perhaps they get 5 votes. They give all five to one place or distribute them across a number of places. For each vote a place gets a small amount in lindens. The votes should counted in an anonymous way so that an owner can't know for sure if someone voted for them or not.

Please note: I do not think this a good replacement for the entire DI program, but it might be one small way to directly benefit cool places in game.

Grab a Coke, this is gonna be long.

Almost all of the possible systems I have heard of for handing out Developer Incentives can be broken into two categories, Objective system and Subjective systems. Both have serious flaws.

Objective systems are based on some form of hard, measurable statistic. The existing incentive program is an objective system. It directly measures how many times an avatar is at a site for a given amount of time. The presumption is that if a lot of people spend a lot time at a given site, it must be good. The problem with objective systems is statistics can be manipulated. Camping chairs are a good example of this.

Subjective systems use opinion as their driving force. Olympic figure skating is a good example of a subjective system. While there are some technical requirements that the contestants must meet, their score mostly boils down to how impressive the judges think they were. The problem with subjective systems is the fact that they can be manipulated through “social” means. Lobbying, personal loyalties, friendships, or plain old ugly bribes can cause a judge to favor one contestant or another. Look at how Kakorofe (sp?) kept giving Harry rotten scores in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In SL the accusations that an “inner circle” of friends close to Linden Lab is the clearest example of how this flaw could play out.

Any new system needs to try and avoid these issues. To me, that means we need a two part hybrid system. Here is the hybrid idea that comes to my mind.

First, continue to track dwell as we do today. However, do *not* issue the awards based on it. Instead, use it to generate a list of top sites. This list is then made public, and residents are allowed identify which three sites on the list they think are best. After a week the votes could to totaled and the top scoring sites would be granted the cash payments.

In this system, each half of the process covers the flaws of the other. Being nominated is objective; therefore having a friend in the Lab does not get your name on the list. However the final award is subjective, so it is unlikely a boring field full of camping chairs would score well enough in the voting to get a payment.

Now, this system is not without flaws. The biggest flaw that I see is the weaknesses that exist in any system that ends in a vote. They can be manipulated by individuals that can mass influence. Our local Bill Gates, Ted Turners, and Rockefellers could all try and manipulate the final state of the process. However no system is perfect.

I would add one final rule to this system. I think it would be wise to say that only paying accounts can vote. Eliminating the influence of camping chairs on the system seems to be one of LL’s goals in making this change. Preventing free accounts from voting prevents them from voting up the sites with the best paying chairs.

There are my thoughts. My Kevlar armor is on, you my now shoot holes in my idea.

Norinn Richard

Don't have any money given out by the Linden company to anyone based on any arbitrary formula, instead create an acceptable method of charging admission to builds where the draw is the build itself. The money is thus allocated by the customers according to their preferences.

How about returning sponsored events? There were more "regular" or "useful" events back when we had LL sponsored events than we have now.

For Keiki's idea, I would add a required time period that an account remains premium prior to pay out or ramping up the payout to a max depending on how long the account remains premium.

I kind of like Norrin's idea, but would like to add a categorized voting so that similar types of locations would be competing against each other. Additionally, perhaps the category with the most mass appeal gets the bulk of the incentives. There has to be a way to include non-premium accounts in this voting system, though.

I like the concept of admissions fees that SCB has brought up, but would rather see LL give credits that can be allocated on site to some sort of admissions boxes and not used for playing Tringo, buying clothes, etc. Otherwise, we need some kind of inflationary hit to stipends so that nonpremiums can afford to pay the fees. If we eliminate the ability of n00bs to access the best of SL because of budgetary concerns, then I think we are in direct opposition of why we are striving for quality content in the first place.

That's right! I have no ideas of my own.

before going down the road of what new subsidies to create...

what is the purpose of ll subsidies?

Are you asking why the DI's were created in the first place? If so, the answer lies in the fact that SL is a player created environment and if we, as residents, want a more expansive SL there has to be incentive to create it. The Tringo/Gambling/Etc pays for itself. The rest is up to us. If you must pay premium tier fee to create an immersive experience for other players without getting anything back, most residents probably won't bother. So the question remains, how do we counteract this. Is it up to the residents to be creative in how they charge people to view an art exhibit, are art exhibits useful at all, is there a method that will not be "gamed" in the manner of camping chairs, etc.?

is this true?

also, people can get money by selling things. maybe ll thinks some critical mass has been reached and that a free market will be enough to drive innovation.

For the cost that some of us pay in tier, yes. By no means for all.

So now the question - is the essence of an event lost when you have to run a store to fund your event? Maybe, maybe not.

A free market will drive innovation, but perhaps not enough. Is there enough of a true market underlying a system built primarily on imaginary products? Perhaps if there are enough new accounts, the clothing market will maintain robust sales. What draws in those new accounts? Why, the immersive content! It's a perplexing dilemma to get out from under the thumb of "government handouts". It will most likely be a difficult transition no matter how LL goes about it. A healthy dialogue can only help.

Is a healthy virtual world comprised only of shops and casinos? If the nonsales oriented events have to resort to the same ways to fund themselves, will it reduce everyone's take across the board?

You mean land passes?

nothing

Hear this man! Uh, plant!

You mean things that put up displays like the restricted access bars?

If so then doesn't doesn't pass the acceptable test.

I haven't seen a land pass in so long I don't remember what they are like.

Nothing the interface does that degrades the neighbor's enjoyment of every bit of their land in any way for even an instant is acceptable.

Yeah, the use of land passes was always akward. I tried them once, and it just kept people away because they thought they were banned.

Only run into this once and can't recall how it worked or what it looked like.

In case anyone missed it:



Call me guilty, but I was trying to help move the discussion toward this end and at least accept the premise of the thread as Keiki stated it.

Dwell is not an objective system as much as an attempt to use an objective measurement of a subjective system. People vote with their feet, and dwell measures the votes. Adding another layer of voting won't keep it from being gamed.

You seem to be aware of this:
How about simply reducing the value of the dwell produced by free-riders? Here's an explanation of why I think that would have been a better solution, and here's one possible set of changes. And rather than having some kind of explicit payment, the DI, simply adjust the value of the dwell payments to accomodate the missing DI.

If I had to pay to visit a build, I don't think I'd bother, most of the time. Not because I think I'm entitled to visit it, but because there's just so much other stuff in SL that it's easier to keep on flying by...

The DI/Dwell system is an attempt to reward creative skill and popularity. Therefor any system will, at it's raw core, be subjective. You are absolutely right that the old system messured people "voteing with their feet". I think it would be better to say that the method is objective or subjective.

I think it should also be said that there is no perfect system. I sited what I think the most likely way my idea could be gamed in my post. Anouther part of this debate is "should it be replaced at all". Personaly, I think it should. Apprently LL thinks it should as well, since the anounment mentioned replaceing it in thier post. Any system that we creat *will* have weeknesses. We just need to do our best to cover as many of them as we can.

Someone commented that the voteing could be catigorized. On face value, I like that idea. However, mixed use sites cause a problem. One building I once saw had three levels. One was a club, anouther had shops, the last hosted slots. What catagory did it fall into?

Lastly, there is one think I wanted to add to my origianl post but forgot. "Developers Incentives" is a pretty poor name for this. As has often been stated, builders and scripters are developers that can never earn a DI. As long as we're reworking things, lets also give it a more accurate name. "Site Reward" perhaps.

Norinn

builders and scripters benefitted plenty when my team developed the spa. I paid scripters to script objects on a per project basis, paid for custom animations, paid for builds (when the builders didn't refuse to be paid, darn them.)

I think maybe something along the lines of a charitable foundation like the FFRC but with broader scale might work. The problem is that the FFRC is comprised of people who are interested in the issue because they make events (for the most part). Those very folks are going to be (or some will) more hard-pressed to make their efforts self-sustaining and therefore not as free to volunteer to help others finance and publicize rich content. I'd like to see the Lindens head a private/public partnership foundation that provided incentives for community builders and rich content makers. This might come in the form of tier relief, or even just the simple acknowledgement now and then that what we do is worthwhile.

I speak often from a personal perspective only because that is the best way for me to know that I am speaking the truth and not speculation. For me on a personal level, it isn't just the issue that I'll now need to pay $240 to subsidize other people's entertainment (I always paid $200, but because that was just using my earned Lindens to pay tier, I didn't mind). The additional issue is simply one of feeling that events, or the kinds of events I am interested in, clearly aren't part of LL's plans for SL's future. Because that is the best aspect of SL for me, something I have taken great pride in being able to bring to the community, I am re-evaluating and thinking, hmm. maybe I was wrong-headed and ignoring the obvious: that I am not making anything of value with these community-building events (or nothing that the community itself values, at least).

If there were even something like an academy awards for community building content or something that patted people on the back and recognized their efforts to make sl more "sticky" as it were, then at least it would be a way to say keep up the good work. In lieu of that, and in fact in an environment where people who make events are told their work is "crappy" (this crappy events phrase was from a player who at the time of attending one of our events had praised it as interesting and fun and something she would do again, but now is saying in the forums that she wouldn't pay to attend crappy events) well, how can one help but be discouraged?

I'd like to see something that rewarded folks for creating experiential content along the lines of what Anshe has proposed for her own lands, but open to people creating stuff anywhere.

Here is my suggestion: 1. Lower taxes 2. Raise stipends.

I am 100% and vehemently against handing out money to whoever somebody at Linden Lab might just notice as "cool creator". In any reward bureacrazy the best contributors will never get anything. Why? Because the biggest contributors are busy working and have no time to waste on whatever formal (or informal) application bureacrazy process they would have to go through!

My share of the old program was 12%. I am more than happy to give that up if the money is used to equaly benefit all of Second Life community. But I am going be seriously piss off if it is just going be channeled into the pockets of some new select few.

That money should be put into the pockets of the users/consumers. They know best how to judge good content and will happily reward the best developers/creators with their item or ticket purchase!

I'd just like to see it go to people who own/create/build things that a large proportion of the SL community enjoy..

First Nomination: Moopfs Skates

the huzpah boggles the mind.

Would you like some bread to go with your circus?

I'm sorry, but that was such a wonderful straight line. "Lower taxes and higher subsidies" is a guaranteed popularity winner, but it doesn't work out in the long run, in any economy.

The real problem is that the Linden economy is too simple a model. It only models a couple of the factors that go into the real economy and make the real economy work.

Dwell is a good start at trying to provide an equivalent to one of the missing pieces in the SL economy, but it needs to be modified to more closely on people's spending on the necessities that we don't need to buy in SL.

But I'm 100% behind you here.

pitchforks!

and if we can't use pitchforks, then nothing.

I prefer simple, practical and effective. This is what my business and happiness of many customer is based on

Of course lowering taxes and raising stipends work. Everything else is just vocal people with mediocre products/services whine for the special treatment.

When I entered Second Life the Lindens still handed out the high event subsidies to about everybody doing events. They would give you 750 L$ just to stand 30 minutes at Stage 4 and raffle out the prizes. Among all the event host at that time I was the first and only one who did NOT take the L$ subsidies but managed to create the event that users actually willing to buy tickets for. There was several reasons for this, but one reason certainly was that I don't feel sense of pride or achievement when living from the subsidies and hand out other people's money.

If I can make it, why can't you? I have been #1 developer incentive award winner since more than one year, but I don't whine because I have confidence in my ability. People like my products, like my service and will reward me with their money. You don't have the trust in your skill that people going pay for your entertainment? You need some system you can game/lobby again? Mmmm, wait, somebody on this thread just say that he lack the skill and therefore needs Lindens to pay him. Then why pay you instead of pay every user of SL with the higher stipend? Why some special program for you instead of Linden Lab take the money to hire one programmer who can fix the bugs and add the features for all of us?

Sorry, I am not interested to pay with my monthly fees for your crappy content. You need grow up and learn to compete. Content that is worth it sells.