Stopping Developers Incentive?

To grow the *PAYING* population of the game. Which is why LL is killing it, because it wasn't doing that any more.

I really wish they were more willing to tweak things gradually instead of making grand changes.

You think that's what was going on? Did you ever visit some of these zombie farms that were in the top 20?

And I'm not talking about places that had a good mix of activities, I enjoy a good game of Tringo now and again, and I do think some popular places were engaging and entertaining. I'm talking about the numerous "popular" places where it's just a bunch of avies, afk, sitting in chairs, collecting their kick back in exchange for their dwell.

That's not entertainment. If the player isn't there, they aren't being entertained.

Is this yet another opinion or did a little LL bird tell you this. I do agree with you though, I wish this announcement came with more details. Face it, its all specutation as to why it was done.

This whole thing strikes me as a simple cost reduction exercise. Some bean counter looks at the amount of money going out each month for DI and realizes that they are getting little to no ROI on that expense.

The $120K USD figure someone mentioned could mean that two people get to keep their jobs for another year. It might also be the difference between getting more funding and being shut out.

I won't be surprised at all if even more cost cutting happens.

On this we absoultely agree, I have often thought stipends should be tied to tier.

Except that then the most popular events could easily be things like open show and tells, business proposal presentations, and similar - which wouldn't be of interest to the majority of players. There's also a chance that it'd cause problems with private meetings which happened to relate to people making a lot of money - ew boy, it'd blow the conspiracy theories through the roof if Chip's house made the high-dwell places list because he had 10 other big designers come over for tea one night. Events designed to integrate new players, like classes or newbie meets, would be wiped off the map because newbies don't make money.

Ok? What exactly is wrong with the DI? I mean people concentrate in drives around certain sites, and those people get rewared for making things that people want to do? So fat all I have heard is a lot of seeming sour grapes over people getting paid for making money chairs. Well that capitalism in action.

If you don't like money chairs go out an make something people want to do instead, and see if you can earn your spot on the DI list. So far everyone has said how the DI failed to produce meaninful attractiosn, but I haven't hear any alternative that does not resound firmly in the "get a job and buy my products category." Of course in removing DI from heavily concetrat4ed places you are also removing jobs. Eh. So wjhat as long you lot all get rich selling stuff what does it matter. We can fleece and loot the resident population of SL just like the good businessmen looted Enron.

The problem is not the DI, the problem is SL itself. It is neither a good platform or a good game. It needs to pick one and be that ad not the other. Chances are that either way it goes, the curent business model will be radically atlered. Taking away the developers incentive is putting a bandaind on a sucking chest wound and saying "its all fixed."

Developers Incentive only rewarded gaming of the system. Any system that replaces it will be gamed just as easily, or turn into another system whereby the favorites of LL get the benefits.

I say we should go back to the original days when SL was a lot more fun to play. I'm not sure exactly how to do it, but we may want to revisit what existed in SL prior to the present, and see what worked out better than the current system.

Yea, this is what I sort of thought when I first heard about this:

LL: We shall give people money to encourage them to do things we want. Here, develop good creative places and get DI!
Owners: We shall give people money to encourage them to do things we want. Here, come and sit in our locations so they become popular!
LL: Hey! You gave people money to make them do things! You're not supposed to do that!

Who wants to sit on a chair afk all night? No one wants to do that. The DI was not a measure of entertainment value. Much of the time, people would set this up on the PC, and then go to sleep while their avi sat in the money chair. This is not entertainment. It's not what anyone wants to do. People do it because they are getting paid.

There are plenty of people who will play Tringo without earning money, or dance in a club and chat with friends, or even pay a little bit to play games like Dark Life. No on will park their avi in a chair all night because it's fun.

I agree with this with one minor edit. Its like putting a band aid on a sucking chest wound and saying 'oh, no there was never a wound, we just like the way band aids look.'

Well if people don't want to do it, why do they? See this is the hubris that leads to claims of tekki-wikkiati and FIC. You assume people do not want to do it, because it does not appeal to you. Yet in contravention of this fact, I offer the evidence that people do, in fact do it, it just does not add much to what some of us think the SL expereience is. My point is that for many people, sitting in a money chair IS the SL experience.

If you want them to have a different expereince, then i invite you to make or propse an alternative. My fear is that Doing away with the DI will do away with things that people are doing, and not only will some people tier down, we will lose a lot of residents in the process. Basically taking away the DI tells us that the entertainment content created in SL is not the right sort of content . But there is no guidance as to what the right sort of content is.
If I were a game developer I would develop on the Unreal engine. Hell Garys mod and monster onslaigh already incorporate so real time buiding tools. And there are some interesting skins. Its a long way from SL to be sure, but then it incorporates the havok enigine and has more players than SL. the metaverse will likely be the eveolution of a platform that is used.

SL could be that platform, but right now it has neither the player base or the interest in the internet community to be a platform or a game. So how do we make it work? How would you propose increasing new resident retention and conversion from basic accounts to tier paying?

Because they are getting paid. Not because it is fun.

They do it for the same reason people file share instead of paying for music... because they can, and because they want a free ride. If file sharing didn't exist all those people wouldn't stop listening to music. Most of them would buy it. There's plenty of entertainment content in SL already that people would be willing to pay for. The only reason they don't is because the expectation has been created that they shouldn't have to. Welcome back to reality.

Heh - it just dawned on me:

Doing the math, we're going to have to tier down a level so that the Shelter can continue to pay the bills with donations.

Unfortunately, the big change just before this one (P2P) has rendered our Telehub land a tad hard to sell off right now.

Yes, I know - I'll acclimate to change, and no, its not the end of the world. But the 2 by 4 with a Linden Logo that's lodged in my ass is starting to throb right about now.

Yes, Travis, I see it as just another thing that's rough on entertainment and services. Then again, I long since stopped worrying about entertainment, figuring this is a dog-eat-dog world anyway - OOOHHH! So sorry! Didn't mean that! lol

But here's my little prediction for everybody: Money chairs will still be around!

coco

I'm torn.. I hope they'll come up with something that will reward people that deserve it.. But I know some wonderful places that need the bonus might miss out..

This is my grim vision of the SL future:

1. No, there won't be a replacement program that offers incentives in a way that anyone can use them to cover costs. Why do I think this? I tried to actually give input to the suggested link (the [email]proposals@lindenlab.com[/email] one in Robin's announcement) and the
mail came back. Also, the Events Work Group withered away into nothingness. We were told that something along the lines of a funding foundation would be developed and never heard another word about it until a resident started the FFRC. I'm assuming this is the model LL wants: them to be getting money rather than giving it and people paying out of
pocket for tier rather than earning and breaking even (or if earning it, earning it from fellow residents, with no incentives from SL).

2. I imagine that land will be very very cheap for a very long time to come (great news for land barons who are in the market).

3. I imagine that cries of "it's so boring here" will resound. I imagine that folks who do small interactive events, as we do, will not be able to recoup money from attendees. I imagine that "professional" and rather non-interactive events (live music in SL for example, which is great and all, but I want interactive stuff too) will be able to recoup money for attendees, so the night's entertainment will be more about a clear separation between entertainer and entertainee. It will also be prettier in the papers: so clean, no visible thongs, all nice, well behaved avies dancing on salsa balls. Many folks will approve of this, I imagine. It troubles me because I worry that art can sometimes be coercive and that it becomes more so when it is less interactive (read theatre of the oppressed by Augusto Boal if you are interested in this idea).

4. I imagine that LL will ride what profits they can get from the world before it becomes dust and that will make me sad. SL is my favourite place to socialize (well, frankly, due to my geographic isolation, my only place to socialize).

5. I imagine that the FFRC will get more applications for funding actual content, and that is a good thing. I HOPE, I sincerely and earnestly hope, that LL or other business interests will invest in making community-building content in some way shape or form. If the world is nothing but malls, it will be a ghost town before long.

6. I imagine that we will see more direct home-based escorting, cutting out clubs as middle-men. The clubs have less incentive to do the escort thing, but people who once camped for money and who for whatever reason won't buy $L, will likely try to cash in on the one and only bodily need that SL can meet (entertainment industry becomes more direct service industry).

7. I have no idea what this means to the spa and our wonderful staff and VIPs. I will have to confer with folks and see what they think. We just built a new art gallery for original art of some of our residents and a lovely cafe and roman baths (ty to Samuel Frost). As well we have a plaza with skeeball and vendor huts, a floating bar, underwater gardens, themed sky suites for couples, a mud wrestling ring, a steam and massage room, a salon, and a library / lounge. The investment in hours, in teir, in team building, in conflict resolution, in scheduling, and in bought content is significant. I hate to see it go to squat and will do all I can to keep it alive, but I pay $180 every month for my internet access and another $180 for teir. At present, I pay $40-45 USD in staff costs to keep events going 6 nights a week (when everyone shows up). This is with staff working for the equivalent of $1-2 USD per hour on average. Unless people are willing to pay for content, I imagine that the spa will slowly disappear (unless I want to just relinquish $1,800 USD worth of land to the Lindens which I am loathe to do).

Gosh, I'm actually struggling not to cry atm. I know it is probably absolutely ridiculous that a grown woman would feel so sad over a fantasy world, but it was the fantasy of a community and it is sad to see it imperiled. The simplest solution would be to keep my giant playground my own, fund it with sales, and quit doing events altogether since they are the only cost Dwell was paying for anyway. That is, if sales don't dry up because people have nowhere to wear their cool gear. That's probably my biggest fear: the whole thing is coming crumbling down and LL is riding it into the dirt. I really really hope not.

I'd miss this place. maybe even, after a very long while, I'd even miss the griefers. ok. probably not. heh.

That feeling dulls after a couple of months...

I agree with this agreement but with an alternate edit. I see taking away the DI as one of several radical alterations that will result in the packaging of SL server & asset software, complete with relevant APIs, which will allow us to build grids all over the Internet while LL sits back, operates SL for the cute little game world it is, and collects loads of annual licensing fees.

Oh my, did that all come out in one sentence?

I don't know if I believe this wholeheartedly, but it belongs here as much as other speculation.

First of all, money chairs had to be a factor. The only debate should be whether they were a small part of the reason or the primary reason.

Now... one of the problems with money chairs is that the people there are AFK. So it's not just a matter of low-brow vs high-brow entertainment, we're talking about people staying logged in while they're not even awake. That's not entertainment.

At the development changes meeting (in-game), I heard that half of their entire programming staff is busy trying to keep the grid stable. Half! And the reason is not the asset server or script execution or whatever... the reason cited was the number of concurrent users is increasing rapidly. Having a bunch of people logged in all the time AFK probably isn't helping matters.

So... there could be significant technical reasons, not just philosophical ones, why money chairs are bad, and won't be encouraged any more.

So you change the culture by starting to make changes. The culture wont change on its own.

Course changing the culture takes planning, cooperation, vision, coordinated activities, stuff like that.

that is another issue that has constantly crept up... people ask us to do custom work for them, and then *BALK* when we ask for about $2.83 US for the 30 minutes of our time it'll take not just say nah thats okay, but somehow get mortally offended that we ask for something approximating the US minimum wage when they ask us to put in real hours for the work they ask for.. because it might have taken them *FOUR* hours of sitting in a chair to 'earn' it..

if money chairs are one of the main reasons for the removal of the DI as so many have speculated here could they not have some better way of loging people out if they have been AFK for a while.

i dont know any programing but it seems easy enough.

i know i made the DI cause i created 2 beautiful islands where people can truly call home and they spend a great deal of time there in there homes building and decorating and landscaping and doing it all on a peaceful private sim.
and having a great and fun time doing it and never are they afk while on the island for extended periods of time.

i really think the answer here is to find a better way to get afk aves logged out. if this can be done then you will see the 10 ten drop off the list very rapidly. or if afk aves cant be logged out efficiently then any one that goes afk at all ceases to contribute to the traffic / dwell of the land untill they come back from being afk.
or maby have a maximum a single ave can contribute in a 24 hour period to a particular lands traffic.

there are certainly ways to deter the use of the money chairs its just a matter of wanting to.

I was under the impression there already was a maximum amount of dwell an avatar could give out. Wasn't there some six minute rule or something. Where if you spent 6 mins (or whatever) on any one property, the amount of time you spent beyond that time period was pretty much useless (meaning: didn't add any more dwell than you had already given).



If that is the case: Why do the money chairs keep paying out endlessly. Wouldn't the more financially profitable thing to do would be get people on the chairs for that first 6 minutes, pay 'em, then kick them off/out to make room for the new avie who hasn't been in the sim yet and contributed their 'daily dwell allowance'?