I give up on Linden welfare

Well, i just got done reading the latest "money chair" thread, I've decided that I really need to cancel my premium subscription and go back to a basic (no monthly fee) account.

When I first started playing SL a little over a year ago I had a great time. I would pop open the events calender and look for strange or unusual events. I usually met all kinds of fun and interesting people. I settled in with a group of friends and we would build things together (I loved scripting) and bounce around to various events.

Then, at some point the whole climate of SL changed, the elimination of event sponsership made all the "fun" events go away. Suddenly all the strange events went away and people only seemed to host or attend events oriented toward money in some way. Once in a while I would see an interesting event theme and show up, only to discover that there were only 3 people (including myself) there... and half the time the 'host' was afk or otherwise unresponsive.

Many of my friends who were there for social interaction stopped playing altogether.

I fully understand the reasons for cutting out event (and later ratings) support, but an unintended side effect seems to have changed the world into a money-oriented rat race. I haven't logged into SL in a couple weeks now.

I suppose my problem is that I'm not the kind of person that is "wanted" in the SL community. I've never sold anything I made for $L. I've never bought or sold $L for $US. If I see something for sale in game that I like, I buy it, if it is reasonably priced. If I can't afford something I make it myself or go without.

In any case, LL will soon stop recieving their welfare payments from me. If there were no basic membership, I would be hitting the *cancel subscription* button.

You know, I was all set to agree, when I remember why it was I really stopped hosting events. It was the day I got more complaints and griefers than I got happy participants.

I'm sorry, but who says you're not the kind of person that's "wanted" exactly?

Ah, yes, the state of activity in SL is sad indeed.

I can think of no solution that is not open to being gamed and abused and would thus cause more problems than it managed to solved.

I am sure that this issue is one that will continue to vex Linden Lab long after 2.0.

To be honest here, you are exactly the type of person who I would prefer to hang out with and have fun. Just because you think you aren't wanted because you are not 'money hungry' doesn't mean it is true. There needs to be more people like you who just want to have fun and not get into the whole 'How much $ can I make here?' mentality.

There is so much more to SL than making tons of money. I do landscaping jobs for my neighbor who owns a lot of land that he puts apartments on for newer people or people who just want a little place to call home. I do it mainly for the fun of it and making a nice area for people to live in and for me to have some spending $. Mostly I hang out with my Partner and friends and just have fun. I am not into the club scene at all so sometimes we pull out our guns and shoot robots on my Partners sim or drive cars around (I don't drive much because I run into things and my virtual car insurance got cancelled) or I just try to learn more about building.

There's lots to do and people like you are way in demand

The same people who create pointless divisiveness to prove whatever strange points they care to make.

The problem is the users want to go to events that pay money, so if you want to host a popular event, be prepared to hand out money.

Zuzu - what do you mean by strange & unusual events? What would you like to see that you don't currently?

As long as it doesn't cost anyone any money to participate, and new residents might be hip to it, I might be game for a little experimentation.

Since you can rent better quality land than 95% of what you can buy, is there really any reason to own a premium account? Just fund either all your activities through sales (if you make something) or through LindeX. Might end up saving money in the long run. I don't what that does for LL's overall health however.

Perhaps what we need is a non-SL based events calendar for, well, actual events. The events list any more is just SPAM to increase traffic, and its quite annoying.

Perhaps I'll put a page up at SLBoutique.com where events can be submitted, and only those passing my/Brace/Jennyfur's definition of EVENTS get in.

In addition, perhaps we can be of service in hooking up REAL events planners with cash from businesses.

I'll brainstorm on it this weekend.

Regards,

-Flip

The reasons would be to secure that remaining 5% of desireable land (here I agree) or if you are establishing yourself long term in one location, not have the possibility of your landlord selling the land.

Also if you... what should I call it? perma-rent? buy? lease-hold? from a land owner, the land tools aren't such that you can sell as easily.



I wish you well Zuzu and I too find irony in a system that rewards camping chairs. It seems that in order to 'stay still' in the race for dwell, if you don't exploit the system you lose.

As a business, I am making a conscious choice to lose the dwell race. There will never be a camping chair on my land, even if it would make my traffic soar. I hope to be the pleasant surprise found among the low traffic numbers.

The system is rapidly approaching the point where those who don't game it, are effectively taxed. Watch the whole system be taken away when the gaming becomes slightly more severe than now.

give things away. A lot of creators, me for instance, will happilly give things away at your event, all you need to do is ask, give us credit at your event (signs not necessary, shout out will do), then when someone wins or even just attends, send me the name and I'll send them whatever it is they won. now we probably won't want to give away things every week, but there are a lot of creators. Clothing, furniture, vehicles, artwork, there may even be some services that someone is willing to give for an agreed on period of time. advertising in sl is a pain, and frequently a little expensive.

There are two issues you will face with this scenerio...

1) creators are frequently hard to get a hold of. A lot (not all) creators do nothing but create and don't particularly care to meet a lot of new people. You being a new people. The way to approach this problem is to be friendly, to the point, and not attempt to chat them up. here's what would work on me:

"Hi, I'm hosting an event and I'd like to raffle off some of your items for prizes. Do you have a minute? or can I come back in a while if you don't?"

Hint: don't ask them to im you when they're free. If they appear to be afk, state your case in 2 or 3 sentence then let them be. If they say no, then thank them and leave them alone, there are many many more creators out there.

If they answer in the affirmative, tell them what you're interested in giving away. KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THEIR PRODUCTS, don't just ask them if they have anything, find a vendor, look at things, ask them questions first, whatever. By the time you make you're pitch you should know exactly what you're asking for. They may ask you to promote a specific thing. decide beforehand if you're going to be flexible enough to do that.

They will probably ask questions about your event. Don't try to sell them, answer honestly.

if they ask what's in it for them...

"It will give you credit/advertising to around (probably attendence) consisting of (type of sl player)."

At this point they'll either say sure, let me think about it, or no.

If they said sure offer to im them names so they can give away the objects. Do NOT ask for objects with resell permissions unless the object is already sold that way.

WARNING: do not ask for special items better than what they normally sell. This implies what they normally sell isn't as good as it could/should be. Creators usually put as much effort into a project as they are willing to, so asking them to work more on something is a little pointless. If you want it known that the recipient got the item from your event, ask the creator to put something in the object name or description. Asking them to put your logo on it is an iffy proposition. I would say no, some might say yes.

Other ideas:
If they're pretty psyched about it, offer to let them use some prims for a vendor or even a booth.

This is NOT a gauranteed recipy for success. You will get turned down, maybe even most of the time. It is an alternative to backing your event with money out of pocket.

I suggested this in a thread yesterday. Alternative events and reliable event hosts need to be identified, supported and advertised. New people coming in need to be able to find alternative activities and to meet others of like mind. The events calendar has not served this purpose for as long as I've been here. If you want to change the course, you need to direct it. And by you I mean the people who have the most invested, and I don't mean dollars.

Most of all, you need to start attending these events and be a part of it.

Perhaps taxation to support Events is an option?

See it discussed here:

/108/23/74982/1.html

But it might take you a little while to gain the experience to know what land is better than the rest. And then there's the question of being able to afford that last 5%.

Future of SL?

Technically, LL should be making the same amount of money from a sim full of renters as compared to a sim full of owners. But I don't have the numbers on hand to know for sure. The disadvantage to LL - I would think - is that renters might be more transient than land owners. There is not as much keeping them in game paying a modest monthly rate (even if it is to a land owner who in turns pays LL).


The whole problem I have with dwell is that is nearly impossible to automate something as subjective as judging "content" and not expect it to be gamed once players learn the rules as to how it works.

But Zuzu, I think there are still some interesting events that still happen. It's just finding them through all the noise. But if we stop going, then there is even less incentive for those remaining ones to exist.

The thing that gets me, every time someone complains about the vast wasteland that is the events list, is that there are interesting events (and I do what I can to support this), but interesting events take much more thought than tossing up yet another "who has the best chest pixels/Tringo/FREE SLOTS AND CAMPING CHAIRZ!" thing.

Of course, hunting for the good stuff in the list isn't for everyone, although I've grown adept in that skill. (The thing that prevents me from attending events is time, usually.) A "controlled" event list would be nice, at least in a TV Guide "here's some good stuff from good people" way; I don't think money is necessarily a requirement if it's fun. (I pay a pittance of L$25 to correct guessers at Primtionary, and half of them give it right back.)

i remember a year ago there were a lot of people complaining that there was nothing good on the events list and that SL was a money rat race with people going to the 100th sexxxxiest whatever contest to win a few bucks that clubs were giving away, or begging posrates to boost weekly stipend.

i'm not saying that there isn't a problem -- I'm just saying that the problems still seem to be the same, they've just changed in outward appearance slightly

hmmm, what kind of events did I find fun in the past...

Lets see...
Axie Bauhaus used to have great events. no theme, no money, just her zen garden, new age/trance type music and a string of interesting people drifting in and out having conversations on all kinds of strange subjects.

The GLBT mixers hosted by Beta Rubio were always fun to attend. I may not be a big disco fan, but with the right crowd, it works.

I went to Tribal Drums a few times. Admittedly it is only interesting to build drumsticks the first couple times. But it is fun to just think up something on the spot and try to build it. Its also neat to see what everyone makes.



To be honest I mostly used to enjoy:
Hanging out at clubs that played good music and where the people actually interact with one another. The problem I have these days is that I can't stand pop/rap/80s music and once event supports went away clubs that don't play this kind of music all vanished. I still check out club events once in a while but what I usually find is: 2-3 people having a more-or-less personal conversation in open chat with everyone else quiet (presumably in IMs? or just not saying anything).

Building projects. Perhaps one of my favorite things was just hanging out with friends, thinknig up things to make. Bouncing ideas and critiques off each other. Unfortunatly most of my friends I used to do this with have moved on. Perhaps my all time favorite was for Halloween in 2004 when we decided to all dress up like characters from batman. My job was to build gadgets (made a batarang and "fight bubbles" that put up 'biff' 'bam' 'pow' signs over your head when you punch) and Naga Armitage made some wonderful outfits.

When I had been playing for about a month someone asked me what I found attractive about playing SL and I answered that "you can build just about anything you can think of". I still think thats true, but I just don't see any point to doing it anymore. I've never been an 'Ideas' person, to me the fun is taking someone elses idea and figuring out how to make it work.

I would love a filter on the events list that removed any description involving a word in all caps. Or any punctuation character repeated ("!!" or "**" or "~~" etc.).

Maybe this isn't such a silly idea. Email spam filters are at a pretty advanced stage these days, do something similar to the events list. If you're not interested in Tringo, stick it in your spam filter and you won't get any of them. This might not be so useful for the newbie, until they figure out what it is they're interested in.

The Lindens don't seem to realize the terrible damage they do to SL with the crappy events list. I believe most of the quality events went away because no one showed up. And as I remember, this coincided with the events list getting loaded up with a bunch of garbage so no one could find anything. The Lindens really, really need to think hard about the interface for events and make major changes.

Seems to me, Forseti, that some people a year ago were complaining about people "gaming" the events funding system, but there were also people concerned that once events funding was eliminated that only for-profit events would survive. This has largely happened.

I have event hosted both before and after events funding went and tried a number of solutions to the problem.

1.) I began doing events that would be heavier-dwell events to balance out the lesser-dwell thinking events, but those only work if I run them myself. I never make enough in dwell to actually pay someone else a modest stipend and come out breaking even. This is because I won't have gambling in my sim (other than skee ball, but that's more skill than gambling, and costs only $1L to play).

2.) I began charging people to attend events that were quite labour intensive, only to have people entirely stop coming even when the charge was only $5. When I quit charging, people started attending again.

3.) I sought donations from those interested in events, or who said they were, only to find that fully 4/5 of those who talked the talk (saying they wanted to support events) failed to walk the walk (by actually putting their lindens where their mouths were). After much hob-nobbing and begging, I ended up with 3k for many months of effort; clearly this was no way to support events for me. (Incidentally, a single application to the FFRC can now garner an event host $2,000L. As I am a funder of this, though, I cannot and will not also apply.)

4.) I did market research and spent months learning to make some products that sell. What other people do with their sales is pay teir and sometimes use that for income. What I do with sales is pay teir and run events at a cost at the spa. I also donate significantly to the FFRC.

In short, if someone wants to run an event and have it funded they can still do this, but they must go through channels that are not as official as LL, and may be reticent to apply or ask for funds (especially if the success rate is as low as the one I experienced). The bad news is that every penny of profit that I earn above my teir (and this is from several hours weekly spent on building, texturing, marketing and customer service) that might be used to pay my internet bill (which is substantial) goes in to paying for what LL used to pay for. The good news is that I really enjoy some awesome events and a great community of friends. Events at the spa include: mudwrestling, group story telling, video/pc game music recognition, best screenpics contest, theme storytelling, classes, and (this weekend) a fashion show and live music. We do our best to be diverse. For examples of what the group storytelling produces, one can get a copy of past stories from our library.

I hear what the original poster is saying in that SL seems to have become a more narrow world. I experience this also, but the only way to widen it is to roll up our sleeves and put our feet in the path of the closing door (the one closing against those who may feel out of place in a world of only merchants / consumers).

Cheers. I hope everyone has a great weekend. ~ Perse

Awesome!

Oh and, OMGZ! FIC EVENT TAKEOVER!!!!

No!

It's a non-issue...I have murmered!

In Soviet Russia, Linden welfare gives up on you!

I remember going to Show and Tell with Pituca when I first began making avatars.