Stopping Developers Incentive?

Why? The usual objection to camping chairs was that people were "buying dwell". Running games that depend on payout to be attractive is basically the same.

You are likely right. Except that it is marketed as a game, to gamers and competes for entertainment dollars. You get the market you sell to. And SL has been placed squarely in the realm of mmporgs in terms of competition.

Right or wrong that is the reality of the situation. Maybe that is what needs to change-the marketing strategy. But if you want to market to a different audience, say business, then you need a very different set of rules, and you may never grow outside your niche.

Now I am not disagreeing that true success in SL will and should be dependent on skill. I never have. I don't want SL to be a game. But I also know that it is an artificial economy, and one that depends heavily on the investment of USD inot the platform by users who do not, cannot or wil not ever buy photoshop and make a texture.

Thus a system needs to be in place to reward those who develop for the platform vs. those who participate casually. This thread is really about development. However this tack most seem to take is that certain things are bad-like money chairs, and other things are good. I say that is not so. The market gets what the market wants.

The issue of stipends and casual players only ties into this because casual players are, like it or not, the market. LL has made it that way. I opened the door to discussing player spending only because there seems to be an assertion that casual players are all freeloaders, and that runs contradictory to reality.

The mai focus of this thread as I see it is what happens now that the DI is gone. I think taking away the DI is a mistake, but that is really neither here nor there. Its going. And in the process we lose. But this whole debate raises important questions about what sort of content is acceptable in SL, and should be encouraged, and how is the best way to encourage it. Leaving this up to markey forces alone, will simply realign where the money chairs go. We will lose Slootsville and gain Jake's Pecuniary Porno Palace cause willow can't necessarily afford tier on a sim, and Jake can.

The issue is seperate from sort of the Ayn Randian struggle the forums typically make about entitlements and is really about what the SL community wants from SL.

I don't see that what you said disagrees with what I said. But then I don't have a real high opinion of video-games.

Well, I realise that kind of logic seems to be popular, but if I threw out a program if it didn't work the first time I'd never get a single debugged program out the door. And even without that... (a) they didn't say they were eliminating dwell, they said they were eliminating the DI, and (b) dwell has worked well in many places to produce exactly the results that Linden Labs was looking for. I will, as many others have, recommend you visit Taco to see how well it works.
Dwell promotes activities that paying customers enjoy spending time at. Activities that paying customers spend time at are profitable for Linden labs, because they're keeping paying customers engaged.

The problem is that dwell doesn't distinguish between paying customers and free riders.

It's easy enough to fix that without eliminating dwell.

So what will be next?

I predict our fees paid to LL will soon change.

Mar

It personally wouldn't have occurred to me to "prime the pump" with a fire hose. I see I have much to learn.

And all MMORPGs are identical?
The market is often an ass, and the market often destroys the very thing it's getting. The fact is that some things are bad, and other things are good. And you seem to be aware of this, given your comment about Jake's Porno Palace, so I'm a bit confused as to exactly what you're getting at in this comment.

I think the assertion is that the players on money chairs are free riders. Not that all casual players are free riders.

Someone who is neither a paying customer nor providing value for paying customers is by definition a free rider. That's what the term means.

Someone who is a casual player, and spends their time interacting with paying customers, makes the world a richer place for those customers. That activity should be rewarded. leaving your av dancing on a poseball doesn't, and so shouldn't be rewarded.

Here's another idea, related to dwell. Have dwell scaled based on the value (to Linden labs) of a player, but let everyone on the parcel get a share of secondary dwell from paying customers. Not much, and it shouldn't take away from the primary dwell, but enough to make a worthwhile increment to their stipend if they're social enough.

Maybe we are discussing definitions, which is always a bad sign for an argument. But let me explain what I mean with my obviously confusing words:

For me, "dwell" means the current system of simply measuring, how many AVs spend how much time on the parcels of a given land owner. You could call it "traffic" or whatever. The current DI is based on dwell - with this definition.

And this kind of dwell is not equivalent with a behaviour which is interesting (in a business sense) for Linden Lab. There is a relationship between the two: Activities of a resident which are beneficial for the bottom line of Linden Lab might generate dwell for that resident. The reverse is not true: activities which generate dwell are not necessarily those which are beneficial for the bottom line of Linden Lab.

Correct! A bonus based on dwell therefore will promote activities which are profitable. But it will promote activities, that are not profitable, too! That's why dwell is unsuitable for measuring if an activity is good for Linden Labs bottom line or not.

As I already mentioned, I am all for a Developer Incentive that motivates activities that are really effective for the success of Second Life and Linden Lab. But I would not call the metric on which such a system must be based, "dwell". Just a question of meaning ...

So, maybe we don't disagree so much at all.

While I support enterprises like SlOOtsville, I'm against socialist welfare redistributions. Though this may be a temporary setback for you, I'm sure that with a revised business plan and enhanced attention to marketing, you will come out of this more efficiently than ever before and make your undertaking an economically viable one.

I suppose it's possible that "changing the formula used to calculate dwell" is a possible interpretation of "getting rid of dwell", but given that "getting rid of telehubs" didn't mean "changing the way telehubs behave" and "getting rid of the reputation bonus" didn't mean "limiting the reputation bonus so it's not gamed" and "getting rid of the developer's incentive" doesn't seem to include "changing the rules for the bonus", I have to assume than when someone argues for getting rid of dwell they really mean to include variants of dwell as well.
That's why the current formula for the calculation of dwell is unsuitable. Traffic measurements based on paying and productive residents will not be so trivially gamed.
Why not?

So you think that movie theatres should stop selling popcorn, recreational areas should eliminate vending machines, and Disneyland should shut down the Disney motels and other franchises, because these are all the same kind of "socialist welfare redistributions" as Dwell and the DI.

Just hitting reply

Reading all of this, and trying to take Development Incentives at its most literal in finding a replacement idea, in both supporting the players and Linden Labs, I wonder how well the arguments could be resolved by a very simple K.I.S.S. idea;

DI = Peak Square Meter Usage %4

So basic accounts would still just get their $50 a week

Premium accounts who actually use their 512m would get around $628 week stipend ($500 base + $128 DI)

Someone using their full 8048m that month would get around $2512 week stipend ($500 base + $2012 DI bonus)

ect.

Of course if that is too close to just being able to exchange weekly allowane to subscription fee's, then maybe a formulae of Peak Square Meter Usage%5.

In any case it rewards those who actually do pay to play and based on how they're actually using, so in this regard entertainment parcel development would not be at such a disadvantage over vendors/creators, and it would provide an incentive for basic accounts to "tier up", as their weekly stipend will increase right along with it.

Just my $0.02L worth

Because the definition of the word "dwell" (and not only its current usage in the context of SL) does not imply any activity that is beneficial to LLs bottom line:
Simply measuring "being there", IMHO, is not a good metric for a bonus.

And I don't think that weighting this "being there" by a kind of "value of the AV" (uh oh ...) - like it was suggested in this and other threads - will result in a much better metric. Even a premium account holder on a 2-sim tier level can spend 22 hours a day somewhere while being AFK (for whatever reasons) and in the remaining 2 hours do that what really makes him stay and pay.

So what? English is a whore of a language. Words mean whatever they're used for. Here and now, "dwell" refers to a calculation that is used to award a bonus (dwell bonus or developer's incentives) based on traffic. Whether that traffic is weighted by the income, size, or hair color of the resident or their avatar doesn't change the nature of the process in any way that would make the term inappropriate.
It will result in a hugely better metric, because it will be preferentially measuring the traffic of people who are valuable to Linden Labs.
First, being AFK for 22 hours only counts for 5 minutes of dwell (which is another reason this is a technical term, not Olde English). So at least half the guy's dwell is still going to go to the places that he's hanging out in for a reason. And second, dwell doesn't have to work perfectly for every case, it just has to work well enough on average that it rewards builds that paying customers spend time in.

5 minutes is the minimum necessary for dwell to count, but after that it's based on proportion of time spent, so it does still increase with time spent.

If somebody spends 22 hours AFK then does the other stuff for 2 hours, that means they spent 22 hours of a 24 hour session. 22/24 is about 0.9, so they would generate 0.9 dwell for the location they spent 22 hours at, and the remaining 0.1 would be split between the other locations they visited.

"And second, dwell doesn't have to work perfectly for every case, it just has to work well enough on average that it rewards builds that paying customers spend time in."

Most people aren't AFK 22 hours. It only has to work for "most people" to be worthwhile.

You are free to define a word with any meaning, of course. I was just trying to explain, why I think "dwell" is not appropriate term for a better metric.

I still think that this is so. Contrary to your opinion, I don't believe that simply weighting "dwell" (presence at a specific location) with some kind of perceived value of the AV will result in a much better metric. The reason for my not-believing is given by you at the end of your post ...

I would like to question this; vehemently so. Any hole in such a system can be gamed and will be gamed. I dont know how this gaming will look like. But I believe in the creativity of people to find and exploit any hole if the rewards are high enough.

Thats a personal opionion. I can't prove it. Only time will (would) tell. But RL experience tells me that people can be very creative while gaming subsidies.

And if you are looking for a reason, why one should spend 22 hours AFK in world, what do you think about "getting paid for it" as a reason?

They're going to get rid of dwell. Says so in the Hotline.

coco

Bring back dwellnor!!

Stop bringing back old posts! It's annoying.

Just trying to get it in while the getting is good

By bring up > 8 month old threads?

Well, I think if we bump enough of the classic old threads, LL may realise how useful the forums are and won't get rid of them

I think the exact opposite, that LL will see how childish people who bump old threads are, and close them down faster.