Unskilled jobs? Pay volunteers first.

Flipper instead of proving your point you just highlighted the largest problem with SL. People don't see value in SL.

They can give accounts away, and still can't convert and maintain the majority of the people who try the service. I see real value in going to a Bears game, getting those awesome tacos or maybe a polish and drinking a Guiness. Logging into SL, not so much. I couldn't put a dollar amount on it, it isn't even worth the $7 a month I was paying for my account (the account that was worth more last year than it is this year, Last year stipend 6-8K a month, this year 2K a month). The majority of people who try SL have made their choice, they log in once or twice or maybe even for a couple weeks and they never come back.


Give me a Triple Venti White Mocha w/Whip any day over another slutty belly top, or a useless "car".


Can we talk about doing something to get people to stay instead of pretending that people do, or should in the current enviroment.

What is it that people want out of SL though? It's (in my opinion) an unfinished product that's not going to mature to a point where most people will enjoy it for a long time.

We could do with bouncing around some ideas that'll work properly with the platform as it is, at the moment a lot of things being done are just imitations of things that can be experienced far better elsewhere. What's available to us with the SL platform that isn't elsewhere? How can we use these things to create viable uses of the system?

But why are you here Eboni? Or Flipper, or myself?

I'm not, and haven't been for months.

Ok. Well, I suppose what SL offers will hook some, and not others.

That's pretty much how it is with all things in life, I suppose.

You must have some interest in SL however, if you're here responding, no?

As I said . . .

"Just as in real life, when I work, or my husband goes to work, we are working to make money for our family alone. That doesn't say we don't do the type of work we do for altruistic reasons also. (As in Diana's case, loving what you do, and helping people with it, does make you good at it.) But the concept of altruism doesn't trump the need to put bread on the table"

Bread on the table, meaning, when my husband and I work in real life. That isn't a game.

The corollary in psychological terms: In games, people also like to put metaphorical bread on their tables, i.e., feel productive and doing something that has a payoff in terms of their own happiness and survival.

It should have been quite clear that when I talked about the bread, I was referring to our jobs irl. And it was clear, in fact, the way I originally wrote it. So I'm not sure what your point is.

coco

P.S. Why the heck - when I have to get on AOL cause my stupid cable has quit again for the fiftieth time a day (I do not exaggerate) - my signature looks all big and awful, whereas when I'm on Mozilla, it looks all nice and reasonably low-keyed?

I agree that you couldn't possibly come up with anything more boring than a camping chair. I remember David Pierce's gnome factory, which I enjoyed going to for a night or so before he had to stop paying out by the gnome.

It was based on TSO, and maybe it sort of tongue-in-cheek made fun of the gnomers, I don't know, and I didn't care. I liked it! Now that was something that took a lot more imagination to script, and was way more full of role-playing possibilities than camping chairs.

I can call camping chairs a job because people are using them that way.

Nothing costs Lindens anything in dwell. It doesn't cost the Lindens a cent to pay out dwell. And the Developer's Incentive is a specific amount that is going to be divided among somebody. The Lindens may not like it going to camping chairs, and that is understandable, but it is not costing them anything more than they would regularly be paying out anyway.

Camping chairs and money trees DO make SL more fun. I quite enjoyed the money trees when I was eligible for them, and still think fondly of those places that provided them. Camping chairs aren't fun in and of themselves, but it is fun to make a few bucks while you were just going to look for textures anyway. And quite possibly in other places they are fun, where you are doing other things anyway - talking, dancing, whatever - because it's ALWAYS fun to make extra money while you are doing something else you were going to do anyway.

Despite all that, I agree that they don't add much fun. And more importantly, they don't present a very good image to the player who asks how he can make money. "That????" they're liable to say in disbelief.

An activity most certainly can create value, if it creates values for the two parties participating in them. Nothing is required to create value for the non-participating parties not involved in the transaction in order to have inherent value.

If there is some activity which provides a poor image overall, however, and thus might culminate in a poorer value for SL and Linden Lab, then they might be anxious to provide an alternative to meet an obvious need which is more copacetic with the pr goals of the company.

And that is where the Lindens might want to come in, and provide something more attractive that will serve the same purpose.

I would also say that we aren't a bunch of lab rats who need to be reinforced for positive behaviors. I daresay most of the people in camping chairs know it's stupid. Money trees are stupid in the same sense. No one needs to be behaviorally manipulated in order to grasp these facts.

Yes, they can change the rules, but chances are people will come up with something even stupider that works within the new rule set, because they are filling an obvious need.

If the Lindens can come up with something more charming that will fill this evident void of ways for people to make a bit of money, more power to them.

coco

Please let it be prim mines please let it be prim mines...

*crosses fingers*

Must you make absolutely everything personal, and a chance to insult me? I'm having a lucid adult conversation with you - or was - with respect for your views - enough respect, in fact, to spend quite a lot of time talking them over with you. You just need to learn how to keep up your end of it without dissolving into personal attacks and whatnot.

You are the one who hasn't been reading if you are capable of putting a conclusion in my mouth - "it's better to pay people for sitting in money chairs than to pay them for teaching" - which I not only never said, I also clearly said that one thing had nothing to do with the other, and why - due to the AOL stuff you had brought up, due to the fact that volunteers can also use the Linden jobs, etc.

If you had been reading, you would have noted where I kept saying volunteers SHOULD get something. But, you know - you HAVE been reading. You know that is what I said. You don't want it to BE what I said.

Moreover, people ARE paid to teach. They still give stipends for educational events.

The people earning their money by these methods - money trees, free slots, money balls, camping chairs and whatever else - are not merely feeling productive, which is good psychologically, of course; they are being productive. They are making themselves money. THAT is PRODUCTIVE.

From the host's point of view, they are being productive by providing warm bodies, by dancing at the party, by looking at the ads by the vendors, etc. etc. etc.

And everyone is being productive by socializing, in those places where they do.

You think they aren't being productive because they aren't doing the activities you consider productive. But these ways of making money were so productive for me, they enabled me to live on a basic account for the first three months, yet "own" my own land from Nexus Nash, and set up and get started on my business. Without it costing me a real life cent.

You do not consider that productive? I do. The money trees, etc., were part of my own self-assigned "job" of getting myself settled in SL. Others do the same thing.

coco

They're not being productive because they're not producing anything.

When you first said this, I was thinking "mines" in the sense of the weaponry that explodes when triggered.

I wonder what it'd be like to have a gameshow like The Running Man in Second Life.

I didn't produce a house, or a dress, or a game show while I was making money that way. I did produce an income for myself, which I then turned into land for myself and a home for myself, and a vase I bought for that home.

It was productive for me. It was also productive for the guys providing the things, or they wouldn't have been providing them.

The exchange of money for non-physical returns, or no immediate physical returns, doesn't rule it out as a productive exchange in the economy.

coco

lol! I want to see avatars sweating themselves to death in dark caves and dangerous conditions, breaking their backs winching up the precious prims to the blinding light of the surface for a few pitiful L$ an hour. Ooh, I came over all lyrical for a second there, excuse me.

A Running Man style gameshow would rule! That's gonna go on my list of things to do if I ever get back into coding in my spare time.

/me wonders why so many discussions here get bogged down in semantics...

You're absolutely right!

You know what's a really cool business that I love? That Salvation Army. I don't know what they're making, but it sure must be special. People give them loads of money! I wish I could buy stock.

Because so many of us are anal-retentive, picky, pedantic mini-professors. (Meaning myself.)

But you know, that Running Man game idea isn't half bad! A game show sort of thing would be good, too.

coco

I'm behind on all my Soap Operas, I haven't seen a good Novella in years, so these forums fill that void.

Kill an orc for me will ya?

Will be in for FIH to join yas end of next week.

...

Marrrrrrria.

Marrrrrrria?

Marrrrrrria!

Oh, sure. But I'm not just talking about "being profitable" and "paying off tier" - I'm talking about actually getting noticed in the market at all. Bear in mind that what someone wants to do in SL may not even be something that makes money - it may just be a role they want to play that requires the involvement of others. That can be difficult to get, and can wind up requiring totally different skill sets to actually building stuff. So some folks might say or think: if I don't get noticed for the stuff I'm doing now, why would spending money and building stuff get me noticed? After all, it's a big map, and P2P's coming...

I know there's in-game marketing classes, but by definition they can't teach you to make your stuff stand out because everyone else can go to the same class too and learn the same things!

I think the difference is not so much level of effort but level of guarantee.

Camping chairs always pay out. The money ball will always choose you eventually. But if you spend hours building something you can still be ignored, and no matter how well you market, it only takes X other people to do so better for that to happen.

A fascinating adjunct is that gambling, despite how risky it is, is so popular—all the casinos in SL are evidence. I've had good experiences with camping chairs; money balls not so much, depending on my psychological state of mind.

Some of it, for me anyway, has to do with probability throwing. I'd like answers for why when I'm consciously looking for something in my life—and Second Life—I never end up getting it. However, when I look in the other direction, resources and help comes my way. It frustrates me a lot, especially because my understanding by now is that this is pretty atypical. However, I also realize that I have more of a fear of the known than the unknown, which is common.

It's nice to have easy goals in reach, something definite, safe, secure, snug to hang onto. Sometimes there's the mentality too that since this is a "game", we can "win the game" as a "player". The fact SL is short on NPCs and high on unpredictability is both an intoxicating draw and an upsetting aggravation. In a singleplayer video game, if monsters started dumping crap all over your land, you could prolly activate a cheat code and zap them. No such easy exits exist here.

The casinos are mainly just used in the hope of turning too-small-to-do-much-with amount of L$ into higher amounts, though. I doubt there's anyone buying $100 worth of L$ and then gambling it in SL casinos.... at least, dear god, I hope there isn't...

OTOH, buying land to set something up on at the risk of being ignored is a big gamble. And, of course, there's the "the people who're good at getting noticed already got noticed and got sponsored land, so if I needed to buy it that means I'm not good at getting noticed" situation.



Yea, that's true. But it's more the question of actually having to take a gamble to play the game you want to play on SL in the first place.

Yumi, you keep alluding to free land. Are you just talking about the occasional player who rubbed shoulders with someone who offered him/her a free place to live and/or vend on their land?

coco

Or build, yes. I don't know how occasional or otherwise it is. I guess I notice it because I know a relatively small number of folks on SL and at least two of them benefitted in this way, but it could just be that I'm working from an unrepresentative sample.