Gaming Dwell System?

Read this:

E-L-I-T-E spells DRAMA! As dancers defect to The Deck, Big John vows: "I will burn u down!"

Why is that allowed?

mm freely admitting they have 20+ 'employees' all basically required to log in every day.. and not allowed to be anywhere else for more'n 5 minutes before they get yelled at to come back...

no thats not suspiciously lining up with the dwell system.. not at all

Dwell for the great Dwellnor!

Dwell enhances His glory!
*genuflects*

Wow, reading the comments... sounds like sweatshop conditions.

And considering BJ's predilection for hotheaded temper tantrums, I sympathize with the dancers and whatnot... but also wonder why they didn't leave months before.

LF

thats one thing i really don't understand at all.

SL is basically an open social environment... theres nothing holding you as an 'employee' to anywhere other than yer havin fun there. If yer not havin fun doin somethin theres really nothing *STOPPING* you from well.. not doing it.

You don't *NEED* to work for income in SL, heck you don't really need an income at all, you don't have to have a roof over yer avatar's head or money in their non-existant pockets. Sure having a place to call home, and spending change is nice, but theres no requirement to do it, and if somethins really not being enjoyable, for gods sake go out and find somethin that is.

I tend to roll my eyes to all the 'i was trapped doing ___ for ___' kinda threads cause here in SL there is no trap, there is no forcing people to do anything really. Yer free to leave, or free to stay, or free to be a 20 foot tall pooping seagull...

The only shackles on your avatar, and your enjoyment, are in yer head.

Yeah, aren't there about 3 ToS violations admitted to there? Hey, I'm all glad that the situation in Federal resolved itself... but...

(1) hiring someone to spam the newbie area - and probably relay names to someone elsewhere to offer TPs... is a direct violation... AND LAME...

(2) forcing people through intimidation to ONLY hang in your spot is REALLY lame...

(3) using an outside application to avoid idling out is REALLY REALLY lame if all you're trying to do is game the Dwell system. NEWSFLASH: This doesn't help! If someone logs in for 10 minutes and stays in one spot, the amount of dwell is equal to the person logging in for 10 hours and staying in one spot!

(4) This kind of virtual slavery? BEYOND LAME... kinda scary.

(5) LAME LAME LAME. Play by the rules Elite. This is supposed to be fun. Most of you are nice enough folks, and who really cares who's #1 on the popular places list?

-Flip

i seriously doubt that most club promoters, mall owners and land barons give a rat what the general population think of them. that's true in real life; i see no reason for it to be any different inworld. they don't need affirmation from the community. ll has crowned them the "developers of second life."

there's a man in my town that buys houses for taxes owed, usually less than $1000. he then rents-to-own the houses for $500 a month. all repairs, upkeep, et cetera are the renters responsibility. when people are late one day, or pay one cent less than $500 on the due date, he evicts them and "rerents" the house. he's making a fortune. it's all perfectly legal. nobody likes him. nobody ever invites him to anything. i don't think anybody even talks to him in resturants. he's a complete social outcast. he couldn't care less.

*edited for clarification

That is the strangest part of this really, the idea that these people would ignore all the great things in SL to stand in a gloomy club thinking they are generating ever increasing dwell - when it completely doesn't work that way at all. What kind of SecondLife is it anyway.. standing in a big cube and paying real life fees to do it?? Extraordinary.

10 mins inworld or 10 hours - same dwell count.


Jai

What jumped out at me reading the comments are the accusations (and apparently direct confessions) of use of anti-idle scripts and such to gain dwell. That is so incredibly sad and pathetic. I feel sorry also for the dancers who don't get to enjoy SL because they are stuck working in a club all the time or just sitting there to achieve dwell. The whole saga, while amusing, underlies the fact that the entire dwell system has brought out the worst in some people. How can anything compete against Club Elite if the club itself does not play by the rules? It is like BJ has a psychotic need to be on top, to be big, to be this or that, and will do whatever he can to achieve that. That is not success, that is fraud, and since cash is being paid out in large amounts (not L$), that is a serious thing.

My only thought is that newbies roped in at Ahern by Club Delete's army of title-offering, t-shirt dispensing dancers simply don't know any better than to treat SL like The Sims Online. After all, if ten minutes spent making gnomes and dancing in cages is good, ten hours must be better, right? It also occurs to me (after reading the Herald string) that even if the dancers/employees learn how the dwell system operates, BMOC will go off on a rant about how that isn't the case, and he's been around since beta, he knows better and everyone else lies, and what could be better than the hottest club around?

This situation makes the club seem more a cult of personality, sadly driven by negative instead of positive reinforcement and implied or direct threats. "You want to leave? You think you don't owe us anything for making you popular and desired in Second Life? Fine! We have a waiting list of dancers ready to replace you!" Please. This is more than just taking advantage of someone who doesn't take the trouble to learn about SL, it's almost...dare I say it...Scientological!

Anyone know what BJJ's native language is? Did he grow up in a culture that was nothing like that which most of the US players are used to? From listening to him, I suspect so.

Deleted real life information.

well the idea is more they weren't allowed to *LEAVE* the club because them being somewhere *ELSE* for any amount of time will directly lower BJ's dwell

eltee, I believe Jai was referring to the use of an application to keep avatars from logging out while in the club. If you're using it to be on for 10 hours at the same location the whole time during a 24 hour period, its the same dwell as being on for 5 or more minutes at the same location the whole time during a 24 hour period... I think.

Thus, the use of an outside application to avoid being logged out to try to increase dwell is kind of pointless and sucking resources that don't need to be sucked.

Regards,

-Flip

That's exactly it. However, the employees may have been pressured to remain logged in at all hours to maintain that "lived-in" look and avoid the greatest of dance club evils, an empty floor.

And someone mentioned, perhaps not in this thread, that it's possible to get much more for dancing/hostessing (if not escort work) than is offered by Elite. Time for someone to form a SL-wide club workers' union...and come up with a better name for it, too. Professional Dance Association? Something cleverer than I can manage.

Who said anyone has had to stay? Most leave and open thier own club or do whatever. Noone can be forced to do anything in SL.

And Elite was not the First Club of its kind. Marilyn Murphy had the first and most popular club of that type in SL at the time. Elite Came Second..

So its been a couple of hours. Lots of read hits, but no Linden replies. Should I take this as a unwritten approval of these tactics? (Using scripts for dwell, gaming dwell in general.)

How about it, Linden Lab?

Is the wheel turning to prevent these exploits, or should we just write another chapter in the broken book of dwell?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the pointer, Mr. Monde. That was sort of like a forum version of an out-of-body experience. Or now that I think of it, a wonderful tour of a foreign realm as done by Lynch in Blue Velvet. Picture that club owner as Dennis Hopper with his portable nitrous oxide rig and it all makes more sense.

But what doen't make sense is why the hell Linden Lab with their oh-so-correct moral sanctity doesn't even bother to look. Or if they have, why they don't do something about it. Yes, these captive dancers are always free to log off, and yes, in principle they are consenting adults. But mein gott I really find it hard to fathom that the Lindens never bothered to look in on the one of their biggest draws - even out of sheer curiousity.

If a fraction of what was documented there was true, then LL really ought to invoke their power to make that scene go away. True, they are trying to hold themselves as a common carrier with no responsibility, but there has to be some limit to which that stretches. If I had a blog that people were using to mind-fuck others into virtual submission, I'd expect to be held responsible for at least looking into it. And no, I don't mean in any legal sense, just geez.

I mean geez.

Well, this is one of those things that can't really be solved by code. It's a social thing.

What's needed is social disapproval of these tactics and eventual boycotting of any services that utillize them.

Social organization is just a few forum posts away...

LF

i logged in 3 avs for 5 minutes each on my land yesterday and generated a dwell of 200.

OMG. Sorry. I laughed so hard when I read that headline and then I scrolled down and saw this:



LMAO! The Secondlife Herald rules, man. LMFAO! Sorry, I can't type anymore. I'm crying here. Aaaahhh. Nice.

Any random sentence by BJ is a verifiable cornicopia of hilarity

LF

What's disturbing is I understood that quote, and know that he's wrong.

nvm

This is really kind of . . .scary.

As some people said above, obviously nothing physical was keeping dancers there. I mean, you can't really physically hurt someone in SL.

But as to the question of why they stayed? I think there's some Serious psychological coercion/intimidation going on. Their statements (on both sides) remind me of cases of battered wife syndrome that I studied.

To an outside observer, it's inconceivable as to why someone would stay in a relationship that they were being abused in. . .

But it's a very real occurrence, and not something someone succumbs to just because they are naive or stupid. You would be amazed at some of the highly intelligent people that are held in adverse situations just by constant psychological and emotional threatening.

It's really scary to think what must have been goin on there on a daily basis.

Club Elite was/is at the top of the dwell charts, and obviously has been fighting tooth and nail to stay there. Not drawing the conclusion that the dwell system encourages/causes this kind of thing is really difficult to do at this point.

Back in a thread a while back, some of us were arguing that we too would like to be labelled "developers" for our efforts in game.

I take that back now. I don't want to be a "developer". I don't want any part of something like this. This has really made me sad in ways that are kind of disturbing.