LL to Dump Developers Incentives

I agree whole heartedly witht he above. Yes, camping chairs do attract somewhat of an "afk horde" and I do go afk for a good stretch to earn some spending money, but we're not all zombies. In a lot of clubs/attractions I came for the chairs and stayed for the fun. I love tringo/slingo and the other various events at the places I frequent and I make it a point to shop there or wherever I happen to camp. Not all of us are money-grubbers, some just want to have fun and chairs were a great way to facilitate that.

Anyone can compete for the Developers Incentive Award _if_ they _own_ more than 512-sq.m of land and thus have to pay tier fees (a portion of the tier fees are used to pay the award).

However, more land doesn't automatically mean a higher spot on the list. Only 2-percent of tier fee-paying residents qualify based on total Dwell/Traffic scoring over the course of the month. Plenty of residents with entire sims didn't make the list. Plenty of residents with small parcels did.



The most recent Developers Incentive Awards had a total purse of US$11,722.36
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and had 118-recipients.

The awards themselves are taken from a total purse, then divided up based on Dwell/Traffic scores. The more Dwell/Traffic scoring the greater the award. And vice versa.



The purpose of the Developer Incentive Award is to reward _land owners_ that _pay tier fees_. In other words, people that have a stake in the Second Life community and have taken on ownership roles.

Note that only 6.55-percent of the resident population (5,900 residents out of 90,000) actually owned enough land to pay tier fees during the month of November.

If new residents would like to benefit from "extra revenue" it's simple: Upgrade to a Premium membership and increase their weekly stipend from L$50 to L$500 a week.

Heya Ricky- i too have had fun at Traders functions, but only made that notation, due to the fact that i too put out alot of my own money to attract ppl to our events, and like Traders watch the patrons leave abruptly after the winners are announced. Trader has only been to ONE of ours, so his comments about our traffic certainly in my oppinion was more out of ignorace than anything else. Weve had heavy nites too & also plan entertainment that i consider fun not based on a cash award. The point i was trying to make was if your basing an income in SL from traffic, you'll pay out way more than you make to get it. For now the main traffic spots will be the only ones affected by SL's decision, and i doubt Trader or i have that worry..lol But i do see it turning around the entertainment industry, and for the best we can only hope ..smile

I do not give a darn about the morality or other philosophizing on the merits of the DI program. What I do give a darn about is that business decisions were made by myself and others in allocating resources and setting fees based on the existence of the DI program, which in effect refunded to island owners part of the maintenance fees *they* were paying into LL, and which *by the way it was calculated* was obviously designed to reward the type of immersion experience the Gorean sims (all of which were earning DI's last Summer) provided to their residents. I would certainly not have made the decision to expand Ar from one to three sims last Summer if the DI had not existed to help me break even eventually on the $600/month cost of maintenance.

To withdraw such a program in the perfunctory way it has been done looks and smells like Bait and Switch to me, and if it looks and squawks like a vulo ... The bottom line is that in order to keep my pledge to the residents of Ar that the city will be there perpetually, I will have to change the basis on which residents contribute to the substantial cost of keeping a three simulator city alive. That will in turn make *me* look like a bait and switcher, which is not something it pleases me to be required to do.

I wish you well.

I think if something is not broke it should not be fixed. DI is not broke therefore it should not be fixed. Why not talk to some Sim owners and see how much money they will be loosing because the Star Chamber complained about a non-issue, the camping chairs. And the Sim owers I am thinking of do NOT have camping chairs on their land.

Sorry that it took me so long to respond, I haven't been monitoring the thread too closely.



These are PG forums. I'd like to request that you please not attack my ideas in such a vulgar and nasty manner.



My content is of this variety also. For one example, please visit my Dalton Community Park. I do not advertise my park. I do not offer "camping chairs", "money trees", "money balls" or anything else of this variety in it either. This is because I do not expect Linden Lab to BRIBE ME for creating my park, so I have no need to game a system which was intended for something else.

It is, as you've said, simply a build that's "nice thing to look at", for friends or passers by who happen to share my tastes. It's not the kind of interactive and immersive content which is going to reach out to the outside world and help grow the populace, so a "developer's incentive" award in this case would simply be "welfare", rather than a compensation for developing groundbreaking content. We're also not talking about a "microscopic amount of lindens", we're talking about a USD developers incentive payout.



These examples are a little limited, no?



This is my point. A properly targeted developer incentive is not social welfare, it is an incentive for the development of amazing content. The system became social welfare through gaming, and thus it is GOOD that it is being retired. I am very anti-welfare.



This is incorrect. If it were the case, then you wouldn't need to add "camping chairs", "money trees", "money balls" and other similar instruments of bribary to get the award. People would come to your content for the sake of your content, not for a bribe. That was the POINT of the award in my view! Incentivizing developers to create content to which the masses are drawn. Content that they will tell their friends about, saying things like "come to this 3D world and do THIS, it's GREAT!".

It is a pity that the social welfare crowd gamed this system so horribly and caused it to be removed. It was a good idea in theory, and I understand that it was useful to some actual developers also. Hopefully whatever it is replaced with will be good in both theory and practice.

Mags, your forgetting I did own a sim, and I have another one on the way. And yes, DI has been broken for a loooong time. Someone who has been on SL as long as you should realize its been broken a long time. As far as FIC, Star Chamber, Im sorry, they are just figments in your mind. I will also loose money but DI going away is in the long run better for SL.

This is exactly what the developer incentive SHOULD have incentivized. Hopefully whatever it is replaced with will continue to reward this type of thing while cutting out the payouts to campground operators.

The developer's incentive was born in an era where people didn't care that much about money. The idea was to lighten the impact of the move to a tier system, by giving people a tier rebate if their content substiantially contributed to LL's income by keeping people entertained for at least 5 minutes. I believe that today SL businesses don't need this rebate anymore. If there's any non-profit community efforts out there relying on developer incentives, it is truly a pity that they will be deprived of income. But rules are made by the majority, for the majority. There is good reason to believe the majority of developers on the incentive list are really only here for the dwell. And to them I say good riddance.

No that's dwell/traffic, which will remain. The developer incentive is the newer USD payout to the top dwell/traffic gatherers.

well said Eggy and yes they were first started for that when 1.2 came out.

1.2 brought out both dwell and DI

The death of the DI awards meant the closing of my free apartments for new players.

But... I was thinking about closing them already, and in fact... I prepared a statement saying they were going to close just 3 hours before LL announced that the DI was being phased out, so I'm not that upset.

Since the start of the DI system, I had been in the middle of the list constently from month to month, and dropped to the bottom only in the last few cycles. In fact, in Nov, I was in last place... Though the payout was not that far below the usual.

I knew it as bound to happen. Second Life's population has been growing at 20% a month or so for some time now, and my apartments were set at 40-50 tenants without change. As that 20% represented a larger and larger block of players, my percentage of the total top 2% dwell was going to get smaller and smaller. It was inevitable.

I was sad to close the doors on the free apartments, and wasted about a month's work on a new building that now will never be used, but I'm okay with the change. Time for something new.

Though it WAS nice to provide something to the community and NOT have to worry about money and rental fees and making ends meet...

As far as I see it dwell is an awful advertising system.. as bad as RL is today.
What would SL be like without dwell/etc systems?

Everyone would use Search, Exploration, word of mouth, personal lists, not bad eh?

Needed: Better searching and browsing features.
Not needed: Dwell etc.

Oh right, dwell is a subsidy for ALL sl residents.. I see.

There's a great business opportunity for someone to create an in-game system for helping new and old residents find the (real) events and venues that suit their tastes and timetable. If that system had a physical locus it could be a driver for dwell rewards.

For example, a teleport destination surrounded not by displays of clothing but by displays of events and venues arranged by taste topics, each with a short description and perhaps user ratings, with a tp link to that location or a "listening button" to hear the conversations happening there at the moment.

Think of New York's Penn Station but instead of a train annunciator board, there is an event annunciator board. Instead of just a single stack, it could be a multi-stack sorted by "clubs-PG" / "clubs-M" / "Games-interactive" / "Games-puzzle" / Shopping / (etc)

Any reason this could not be created by a resident?

Expose the find places database so people can build web apps, example app: list of ALL words people have used in the descriptions and there use frequency... so people can discover everything SL has to offer, rather than just searching using the contents of there mind.

Expose the find places database so people can build web apps, example app: list of ALL words people have used in the descriptions and there use frequency... so people can discover everything SL has to offer, rather than just searching using the contents of there mind.

Come to Transylvania.. we have no gimmicks but still manage to stay in the pop lineup..its a shame that Sims like ours may suffer .. we are pure music and fun.. we do contests, Mental Drippings (poetry),HOT or NOT, Brain Damage (Trivia) ..these are weekly games to name a few and have been successful for over a year now..we have battle games and monthly we have a flea market type event called "The Black Market" that gives new members a chance to sell and buy wares at affordable prices. Check out our events.. http://transylvania.homestead.com/TransEvents.html
What is the incentive now to pay out $$$ ? One can only hope that a new program will be implemented that rewards the ones who trully work to make SL a thriving online community. Remember that newbies are the heartbeat of any online community and if there is nothing for them to play they lose interest fast.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before in this thread. I missed its start and reading around 90 messages will take a bit to long.

My Major complante about the Develpor rewards actuly comes from the island sims (Or the small prively owned contnent) the persone who owns the sim (but admitly pays the 200/month) is the one who gets the reward for the dwell for the sims. But realy looking at the top 10 from the list I am faily shure that 3 of them (two being the top two) do not use camping chairs or anything else to bost there dwell. Anshe owns a large amount of land and even tho people own the land on some of the sims where there homes are and what not. They are not the ones who get the deleloper rewards. Now Furnation (Nexxus ambassador) is up to 3 sims now and is constantly haveing various events going on along with haveing a decent sized shoping area. The third that I know of is one of the most popular clubs in sl The Edge (Jenna Fairplay) and is 7th on the list I am not shure if ther are other holdings being counted or if it is just the edge. I have kind of been out of contact with the mainland recently with working on my own are up the list (around 1/4 sim) and at about 61st palce and owned my my partner Raven Welesa. We don't get alot of money that low on the list but it dose help offset the tire costs. but we are curently looking at getting our own sim. But we Have to admit that our further expantion to it is going to be grately delayed with the removal of the rewards becuse we can't count that money as profit that we have made twords buying a extra sim. just 2cents from someone who was made the list and I think has recived just under $100 USD from LL and 100-200 L$/day from dwell (but then it sounds like the linden dwell payments will be staying)

Anshe Chung
Nexxus Ambassador
Jvizzle Jacques
Hiro Queso
Tony Beckett
Jesse Murdock
Jenna Fairplay
Blue Burke
FantasyDancer Olsen
Schwanson Schlegel
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I completely agree. As a game that encourages people to invest time and rl money for rl profits, sl can't be making such drastic changes with as little warning as they do. It makes it hard on the business owners who have already made investments and deals. I've only been playing this game for a couple of months and have already seen 3 quick changes that have greatly effected many businesses(Gom, telehub land, DI). This unpredictability of sl makes it more risky to invest in sl and with more risk, less people are going to invest; which in the end hurts sl. Who knows what will happen next. Maybe sl will decide next that it is best for sl that they get rid of all the different tier fees and keep only the $5/512 fee, aswell as get rid of the 10% group bonus. This would ruin all land barons, as their costs sky rocket upwards and cause them huge rl loses. Soon it may be better for people to just throw their time and money at their local casino rather then sl because making profits in sl is so risky.

Trader has only been to ONE of ours, so his comments about our traffic certainly in my oppinion was more out of ignorace than anything else.

On the contrary. This is more of an indication someone is actually looking out for the finances of the company, rather than just letting *popular* ideas roll, on the expense of the company's profits.