Are Developer Incentives doomed?

Lordfly, this seemed to be the question you meant to ask. There are three parts to the dwell question: its being awarded at all, the dwell bonus in $L, and the Developer Incentives paid in US$. Most of the discussion in Lordfly's original thread seemed to conflate those elements. I'd like to read people's thoughts specifically on the issue of LL paying people in US$ for having the highest dwell numbers for the month.

I don't think the Developer Incentives have had the effect LL intended them to have, though I'd love to see confirmation of that. I could go on at length, but instead I'll propose a modification: restrict the number of times the same person or plot can win the incentive. This could take a variety of forms, from lenient (no more than nine months in a year) to draconian (only once ever). Imagine that a plot or avatar would not be eligible for the DI in the month after it won. (I say "plot or avatar" to prevent the easy trick of selling a popular plot to a friend to keep it eligible.) Those plots wouldn't lose any dwell, but they'd be ignored when highest-dwelled plots were picked. Good, bad, indifferent?

Bottom line, I suppose, is that LL will keep paying the DI as long as it makes financial sense for them.

Edit: corrected some formatting

Hey, anyone, is this camping chair reserved?

Anyone?

Ah well. Must all be AFK or something...

Where's that post, like from 7-8 months ago where they (the Lindens) wanted input because they were getting ready to replace the developer "awards" with something better?

Developer incentives have aided the stagnation of content development in Second Life longer than I expected LL to prop the casino/mall/apt model that "supports" most estates and large tracts of group land.

That stale old pattern seems to be failing in todays expanding Grid All Hail The Central Grid even with the incentives. I steadily hear estate managers and mainland lords begging for new ideas to attract customers and complaining that they can no longer cover costs.

Considering that Philip is beginning to understand that the Second Life community consists of groups of people with common interests rather than one giant mass of people sharing a common space, programs such as dwell and developer incentives may be very short lived.

I think the DI awards are working as LL intended.

The DI awards are in place to award the land owners with the highest 2% of traffic. That means people are spending time in SL on your land. You are providing something that keeps people logged into SL. Ideally if that content is compelling enough, people will become paying members in our society.

What about this isn't working?

Just like most incentive programs that anonymous internet users are afforded, it's being gamed, and therefore is ultimately doomed. That's a "yes".

I think most of the gaming that is occuring is to achieve a top ranking, not to get a DI award.

Assuming that the top position on the DI award list were paid $400 USD, that breaks down to ~ $140 L per hour that owner would have to pay out to "camping chair" people to break even. Most of the chairs I have seen at these popular places pay out $50L per hour, with at least 10 chairs in use at any given time.

It's a money looser with or without the DI awards. My guess is these people are shelling out $USD to purchase $L to maintain their rankings. That is a good thing.

I hate the whole idea of the camping chairs as much as anyone, but if people want to continue to shell out money, people will continue to use these chairs. The DI awards simply do not soley support money chairs. And if a person's entire DI award goes towards the purchase of $L to hand out to newbies, I don't see that as a bad thing.

The solution IMO is not to punish the people actually getting the dwell, the real challenge is to develop some content that people would pay for. Develop a space or event that people are willing to spend money on, thats the real issue here.

Camping chairs pay out $0.20 USD per hour to people willing to use them. Develop something that is worth more than $0.20 per hour for people to do.

Hopefully they are doomed. They don't compensate developers at all, only camping-chair owners or worshipers of Dwellnor/Trafficvs.

I agree that this is the issue; however, I also think that the resistance of a large segment of SLers against wanting to pay for even compelling entertainment is a big factor. Many feel it should be gratis, and that is probably an insurmountable hurdle. If people would rather sit in a chair and chat or go afk to get money, versus paying to attend events, how do "we" combat this? Who is going to provide it, and how to change the mindset of "pay me to be entertained" to "I will pay for entertainment"?

After what has now been weeks of debate about these issues, I see no solutions in sight.

Someone has to pick up the ball and run, but who is going to do it?

Talking about it is nice, but at some point it becomes cheap.

Indeed.

It seems the only "solution" to the blatant disregard of quantative traffic analysis is to move it over into the qualitative, which is always extremely subjective, which then leads to cries of favoritism, and so on, and so on. And even if a place is rewarded for being "innovative", if no one goes to it, it didn't really friggin work, did it?

The whole camping chair phenomenon is partly a cynical gaming of the traffic system, and partly a result of MMORPG culture in general. People are conditioned to spend long hours "grinding" away at something in order to get some sort of minor financial/equipment gain. It's almost Pavolovian. In SL, that gain is represented in $L. There's absolutely zero obvious way to get money (and hence "advance" in SL, and people are generally averse to paying for more poker chips.

So, I dunno what the solution is, but I think if SL has proven anything, it's that anything quantative that's tied to monetary gain will be gamed obsessively.

Another solution is to realize that anything quantitative that's tied to monetary gain will be gamed and just eliminate payout programs altogether. However, from their perspective, granting people a bit of free tier every month might actually boost the retention of several of the major land holders. I have to agree that as long as they believe these tax breaks are boosting the bottom line, they'll continue providing them.

I still believe that the old casino/mall/apt model is swirling down the tubes. I'm picking that up from listening to people that own or operate them. It'll be very interesting to see what someone finally invents as a replacement for them all to copy. again.

All hail King Dwellnor! TRAFFICVS MAXIMVS!

A lot of people have the perception that it would be more fun to be an entertainer than to be entertained. Often that's not true, since being an entertainer can be a buttload of work, but people believe it anyway and some of them would probably enjoy that work. So for that type of entertainment, of course people think it should be free, because from their point of view, they're doing a service to the other person by turning up; the service of allowing the other person to be an entertainer in SL, which perhaps they also wanted but couldn't get. After all, no matter how impressive a thing they've built or idea they've set up, it would be worthless if nobody turned up.

Also, don't forget that many of the folks in money chairs are not in them in lieu of other behaviour. They may, for example, have sat in a chair and then left an idle-guard running while they go to RL work. In that situation, there is no entertainment that can offer greater appeal than a chair because any other entertainment would require them to be present.

How about this alternative: dwell/incentives work the same as now, with one change: basic accounts don't produce dwell. Only traffic from premium account avatars would count.

Premium account holders who get L$500 a week won't be as easily tempted by a trickle of cash from a dwell chair or money tree; and having paid for thier time online, they will want to use it productively, not just idling in one spot. Traffic would have to be built based on merit, not bribery.

It means the loss of an income source for newbies, of course. You could make up for that by giving basic accounts L$20-25 each day they log in, rather than L$50 each week. It's a little more spending money, incentive to log in every day (and therefore make them more likely to get hooked, hehe...), and they'd be out exploring the world rather than dancing AFK under a money ball or some such. (Yes, I know it would create a need for another money sink, but that can be done. L$10 per p2p teleport perhaps?)

Comments?

I think I'll pass on responding to this.

You've more than amply illustrated the problem.

Well... two things here...

#1 - There's a popular misconception (amongst coders) that when LL is using the term "Developer" in the context of the DI, they are referring to Software Developers.

The explanation from Linden on the intention behind Developer Incentive indicates otherwise... rather, they are referring to People developers:

Hotline Post 11-28-05

Also note that the term Developer itself has multiple meanings, as indicated in this post.


#2 The idea that the DI only compensates camping-chair owners or Dwell-worshipers isn't completely true either, although I'll give you that those at the top of the list are probably doing just that.

I learned long ago that quality is more important than quantity. Fostering friendships is much more exciting than fostering zombies. I may not be able to make the favorite places list with that ethic, but I'm still able to help pay the tier bill with the DI.

The part where free account holders are being paid to be logged in to SL with a macro running to keep them from idling out while they do other stuff.

Don't worry, no macro-running needed anymore! Just imagine the auto-teleporting, world-lagging, PTP-Teleportation Camping Chair Networks!