Developer Incentives and Deeded Estate Land

The April Developer Incentive awards have been posted here. As I fully expected, the top award slot was the person owning the most private sims. Now, as I understand it, traffic/dwell anywhere on an estate (private island sim) counts for the estate owner's DI award, not the av to whom a parcel is deeded. That makes sense for most situations, but I don't think it should apply when you are "selling" land to others.

Now, on my group's sim we rent out a few little shops to friends, and they are in a separate parcel deeded to the merchant association so that we can better manage prim allocations. This fits well within the current model, as most of the traffic on the island is for events, and the shops are not (yet?) a big draw. But when someone buys a sim and subdivides it iand "sells" it off completely, and does nothing herself to generate the traffic on the island, why should she get a DI award for that?

My understanding is that DI awards are meant to motivate creation of interesting content by residents and to help make SL a more entertaining place for LL's customers. The criteria for DI awards has needed revamping for a while. This latest list just proves it again.

I think people are misled by the duel meaning of the word developer.

Check out this page...

After photography definitions, the next 4 entries describe the spirt of the meaning behind the SL Developer incentive awards.

The awards reward people that risk real world money to finance projects and have succeeded in that users have displayed their willingness to linger on that land, whatever form that may take.

But Editorial, if one of her residents does that, attracting huge numbers via an individual project on the land they were told they own, they are barred from receiving anything. The credit goes to the sim owner instead. Usually the only traffic the sim owner has generated is normal residential pottering about. Does LL give itself awards for that on the mainland?

Anyway this "is it a sale?" argument is dying. The Lindens have ruled that it is NOT a sale, and that advertising it in "Land Sales" is misleading and a temporary exploit which must not be used. They have warned anyone making a "purchase" payment to the simowner that they are placing heavy trust in another resident, and will NOT be bailed out by LL if the owner fails to honor it. You can't get clearer than that. It just so happens that one sim-owner is currently defying them (look in the list). An act of indiscipline which I find very disturbing and reflects very badly on her motivation and her trustworthiness to rule in her own territories.

I am sure they would like to remove the anomaly you so wisely point out too, Olmy. But every little software change takes time and effort, and must join the priority queue, sadly. Surely at the very least the traffic should be shared 50/50 ?

On the other hand this problem would not exist without the fiction that residents own the land when they clearly dont. Extending developer incentives to tenants of rented land doesn't seem quite so necessary for justice, does it? It wouldn't come very high up the queue.

I really don't have any problem with that, so long as people renting land on those sim know up front that they won't be collecting dwell. Since the cost of "owning" land there is less than if they were paying tier it seems a fair trade for their dwell to go to the sim developer... but agan, so long as they know up front that that's the deal they're getting.

Dwell in managed sims goes to the land owners (such as my customers), while the credits for developer award count to the person who is managing the sims. I think this is fair solution for both sides, given big investment and sim development effort involved and the fact that normal home owners don't usually qualify for developer award anyway

The daily dwell payments still go to the group for which the land is deeded. The DI portion of the dwell does to the owner of the sim.

DI awards are generated on traffic statistics generated grid wide, not just on private islands.

In fact you can generate fly-by traffic much more easily on a mainland sim than you can on an island. Users have to consciously choose to visit a private island. They can accidentally stumble across a mainland plot, or even have to travel over it to get to their destination.


So if an island has high traffic something is drawing them there. The owner of that land has the final word on what content is created there. therefore, no matter what content is created and no matter who actually created it the responsibility, risk, and the final bill rests with the land owner.

The big picture here is that something that makes people log in to Second Life is good, no matter what form it takes. the more people that are in world the more successful the program is going to be. If someone has an area that draws more users to it than average, even if that content is a big box with 30 people standing around cybering every day, thats still better in the long run for Linden Lab than the 10,000 prim work of art that no one ever bothers to look at a week after its created.

The DI award rewards those that pay the bills behind the areas with the most traffic. Thats how it should be.

(FYI I own about 2k meters in SL and I have never received any award in all my time here since fall of 2003)

Yup. I'm guilty of not checking my facts on the definitions of "dwell", "traffic" "developer incentives" and how they are allocated, but taking the first poster's statement of the situation on trust. The situation is more complex than I (and maybe he ?) realised. I apologise to all, and will be more careful in areas I haven't fully researched.

Difficult though, isn't it, for us all, with no single definitive source of info, like a proper LL game manual ?

It seems to me it is fair that the developers' awards go to the largest tier contributor in a land group.

It's funny how when it comes to paying out not play money, but real hard US cash, and in the thousands, and to the top draws of the game, the Lindens jetison all the socialism they apply at lower levels, and pick up a frank, cold, capitalism: whoever pays the highest tier bill and has the most traffic wins.

I'm for Anshe winning it for having private islands she developed because the idea that just buying and selling land is "effortless" and even "an exploitation of the People" is utter bullshit.

It takes loads of labour to parcel and manage sims, and if there are individual owners who appear on them, and they get traffic, it stands to reason even that the traffic go to the whole group because it's the manager who has provided that opportunity to have a beautiful lag-free, grief-free, and ugly-free life. Would that individual have had it otherwise? But we're told that the group made to hold the deed can collect that dwell -- and that the developer's awards actualy work different as Anshe explained.

I think it would be interesting to do more to encourage cooperative land groups by rewarding the entire group for its collective dwell, and distributing the award throughout the group in percentages based on the level of tier donation. Naturally, I'd like such an incentive system because I run a rentals group where some people have donated tier in lieu of rent. So I'd appreciate this kind of incentive program.

I think I could be convinced of this, however it would be nice if the process was a bit more transparent.

I am aware of the different accounting for daily dwell/traffic payments and monthly DI awards. My point isn't about daily payments, but about how DI award dwell gets accounted.

Prokofy, while daily dwell payments are split evently among all group members, dwell for DI awards is credited proportionaly relative to tier contribution to the group.

My point isn't really about one of fairness (though there are valid fairness arguments to be made). It is about the practiality of the current system. If Anshe continues to invest in estates and grows her rental business, eventually she could receive most if not all of the DI awards. 2% of dwell isn't hard to get when you own 20 sims out of around 800 - that's more than 2% of the land area already. I think it's silly of LL to continue a program that is trending toward rewarding only a single "developer".

i agree.

Yes, I know that.

But the groups of her tenants are separate from her group, and those groups get the dwell, not the Ansheland groups.

Are these payments big enough to be of any significance in the context of a large investment ? Just seeking to increase my understanding here.

Anyone know how much of the US$5331 the top person is likely to get?

Yeah, that's a very good question Lindar.

Perhaps you could ask it in the hotline?

you could post to the hotline about this. they tend to put out responses for public consumption there for specific questions like this.

if you want to do this, do it today. responses tend to start on sundays.

My guess is $150-250 usd.

I think the whole concept is flawed, and this incentive should be modified, or even abolished, on two counts:

1. If it is to encourage "creativity in attracting residents" or something similar, then surely it should be based on "attendance per sq m". If land area is ignored, it just goes to the biggest, who already have their financial reward, and who will anyway need bigger sums to motivate them. How does that encourage innovation ? Most of their traffic could be just residents at home, conducting their ordinary lives. Motivating smaller land holders to do great things with small areas would lead to much more creativity. And they would be motivated by much smaller sums of money.

2. I know people will scream at this, but I think it is wrong to specifically reward the attracting of large numbers of people gathered together. Once SL has the technical infrastructure to support substantial gatherings, this would be great, but it hasn't. Every success in this direction is paid for by neighbors, both in loss of amenity in fps in their client when trying to relax or create at home, and also in a drop in their land value. You take your success from your neighbors. I agree there are two sides to this coin, and I don't see an early solution, but I see no reason to drive eg clubowners ever onwards and upwards with the promise of substantial cash rewards (if thats what they are).

I'd better declare an interest. My home sim, over the last month, has "welcomed" a new club. Before, its sim fps was about 900-1100, and my client fps was fine. I could move, build etc etc perfectly well.

Now, when the club is full, I am nearly frozen solid. Time dilatation, the lot (not to mention large numbers of people having "shouting" conversations across the large building).

But this isn't all the time, I can put up with it. A prospective land purchaser is not that put off by these occasional events.

The killer is - this place is so stacked out with scripts, for gaming machines, lights, signs, heaven knows what, that the sim fps is now locked at about 50-70 max. Even if I am alone in the sim. The whole thing is virtually unusable. I don't think I'll be able to sell the land at all.

From fps 1000 to 50 in one blow. Doubtless the club owner is basking in his pride at a job well done. But who is paying for it, in real hard cash ? His neighbors have probably lost much more than he has gained, in fact.

Don't really know the solution, except zoned communities. That why I want these new land holdings to succeed, and to operate successfully within a fair and "legal" framework, on a level playing field. All this discreditable behaviour is doing them no service at all.

On balance, I support peoples right to screw their neighbors over like this, at this stage, because it is a necessary freedom. But I dont think they should be specifically motivated with financial incentives from the "government" to do more of it than they otherwise might.

Well, I did declare an interest. What did you expect ?

Ok, go on. Tell me I've got it wrong, at least on point 1 ? The incentive is already based on traffic per sq m? I'm willing to learn. And maybe my misconceptions are the same as other peoples, so I won't be the only one learning ?

Even as I got near to the end of my posting, I began to realise that in "point 2" I was muddling two quite separate issues together, one relevant to the thread, the other only indirectly connected.

My "permanent" lag problem is caused by the lack of control we have over scripts, a subject for a different thread.
The severe lag during events (which is relevant here) is less of a problem, and thus more acceptable.

It just so happens that in clubs the two separate effects often combine. Doesn't justify my muddying the water. I apologise.

I'm typically halfway to two-thirds of the way down the list, and my dwelloper is normally about $40.00. I can guarantee ya, especially for Anshe, that this is not paying her entire tier fees. Venturing a guess, I would say it could only possibly pay at most 25% of her total tier fees... which must be fairly astronomical.

Its a good thing the Lindens never plays Truth or Dare... or 20 Questions... with residents!

-Flip

25% is a lot .. it's pure profit.

Still, if you're 2/3's down the list, that means at least 2/3s of all people make at least $40.

2/3 of 73 is 140/3 = 47 * 40 = 1880. That leaves $3420 potentially left over.

If Anshe has 34 sims then that is $6800 / month or 50% of her tier fee.

Thanks Schwanson and Flip. Puts it in perspective. Not worthless, but not big enough to significantly alter your strategy if you're big enough to get it anyway.

How about changing it to be based on traffic/m ? Motivate the little guys, to whom the same pool of money would mean much more? Have much more effect on creativity, and the appearance of more, and more novel, attractions and events.

I was looking at the two quoted dollar sums, Blaze. I don't see how Flip's 25% could possibly follow. Seems not to fit, but to be far too high in relation to the other figures. Flip ?

If it really were 25%, yes, that would be HUGELY significant and justify drastically reshaping the entire business to get it.

I think we ought to know how the total sum is divided, not just the list of who participated. How can we deal rationally with people if the forces which motivate them are unknown, at least the government subsidies ?

Well, if a few people like Flipper could fill in their dwelloper fees I think we can get a pretty accurate picture of what's going.

Schwanson? How much do you make per month?

We know, mathematically, that n(r) >= n(r-1) for all 0 < r < 74 and that sigma(n(r)) 1..73 = 5331

So, any other volunteers?

Good grief, Blaze. What a calculation !
This could be the key to her entire current success and be controlling her entire strategy ! I gotta think about this. Get out the old spreadsheet. I've been totally blind to this till you opened my eyes, guys. Thanks.