Admission Charge

What provisions does SL have for charging admission to a landholding?

Are the existing methods sufficient for allowing land-based content producers to collect payments for their efforts?

Other than the parcel admission fee which is already in place, I'm not sure there are other provisions for this.

And as long as we can camera our way around a build without having to even step in it, I don't really see how the parcel admission setup would be 100% useful in most situations. An island could get away with it, since you would possibly have to pay before you were allowed to teleport in. But mainland parcels are kind of out of luck unless they have a really large parcel and kept the build or attraction in the middle with a kind of distance moat around it to conquer the camera's limitations.

Kind of sucks.

To answer your second question: Not entirely, no. The existing method I know of is flawed (see above) for mainlanders. And probably won't and doesn't allow them the appropriate collection of admission fees that they might be seeking.

It's been so long since I've seen an admission charge I can barely remember.

My memory is saying it had to do with being in a group, group land has it's own access restriction color... maybe my memory is getting them confused.

Can someone direct me to a parcel that charges admission so I can see what it looks like again?

I am wondering if the impending end of the developer's incentive might make admission charges worthwhile.

Paying for admission seems to produce a lot music, theatre, movies, smoky jazz bars, and such in real life. Perhaps that's what needs to be done in Second Life when the so called Developer's Incentive is eliminated.

Paying admission also makes for wax museums, coors factory tours and other fun stuff, but there is also a place in the real world for endeavours that cannot be commercially supported. These endeavours are supported by communities because communities find it worthwhile to have, say, a children's art museum or community theatre. Much of what we like about our real world cities is publicly supported in one fashion or other. In my town, we would not have a movie theatre, nor a museum were it not for the town (literally the town, in referrendum) voting to support these. Sure, we could make due without a theatre, renting videos at home, but it is sometimes great to actually get together and have fun with other folks.

I expect that people will move to paying entertainers directly via tips and that entertainment will move to the malls, who will only recoup if people shop after they see the show. Interactive events will not be sufficiently stirring for people to pay to attend them. People who get involved already feel like they are contributing, so why should they tip the event host, the manager or the venue owner?

Unless there is funding for interactive events (and there is the FFRC, but its coffers are nothing near the same category as the dwell awards) I expect the only entertainment we will see is in malls or on anshe-owned land for sale.

There's the admission charge feature in the land properties. That's the simplest way.

Then there's group membership fees. You could use that in conjunction with restricting land entrance to group members only. Have the group be open enrollment with a fee to join. That would work more like a subscription fee. Once a week, or once a month, boot out everyone but officers from the group so that people have to renew their subscription (rejoin the group).

The problem with both of those methods is it means using the hideous restriction barriers, and there's no good way to let people check a place out before deciding to spend money on a ticket or a subscription.

You could also just go with donations. Decide the amount of donations your place needs to get each month to survive. Have a sign that shows what's been collected so far and what still needs to be collected. Encourage people to contribute. Maybe offer prizes to the best contributors.

I had an idea once, which was for venues to form associations which would grant people access through a single membership. So for instance a bunch of clubs could offer a monthly membership that allowed access to any of the clubs in the group. I'd imagine it being managed through a web site like SLExchange and access controlled through scripts, not the in-world group tools. Basically you'd get the benefit of combined marketing, like casinos on the strip in Vegas. With P2P you could even do something like a web ring of in-world locations and reward "click-throughs". It would require management and organization, but the manager could make money.

It's my understanding that group monies are automatically distributed to group members and officers have no control over the distribution. How would a land owner use this to supplement tier fees?

Hmmm, good question. I'm not really sure how it works, but if the officers have no control over distribution of funds that would seem to defeat the purpose of being able to charge a fee in the first place. I've never been much of a grouper so I don't know the ins and outs.

When one goes to an event in real life, one is encouraged to put up with the hassle of parking, etc, by the pleasant experience of feeling like something exciting is happening. One goes into the lobby, gets a ticket, gets a program, (gets charged money) and is ushered to one's seat.

One isn't, the moment one steps onto the curb, given the warning "you must pay $120 in the next 5 minutes or you will be thrown out."

The overall experience lends to cognitive dissonance, or death to the venue.

A few things are missing from the scenario that would allow people in sl to pay for their entertainment. the lack of admission charging provisions is the least worry actually. the largest worry is that we are asking people to make a very large paradigm shift and most just won't. To go from being paid to come to being made to pay to come is too much of a shift for most people in sl. Also, again, people are willing to pay for some events but generally that willingness corresponds proportionally with their inability to do the said event themselves (this is discussed by Uta Haagen in Respect for Acting (hope I spelled her name correctly)). Therefore, interactive events that make the participants central to the action are much less likely to be able to support themselves through user fees.

This is what people are talking about when they say group tools need a serious look at. If you have people in your land group, they get an equal share of any monies paid to the group, including land sales. There is no way to specify different levels of memberships. There is also no way to maintain group funds; distribution is automatic.

I completely agree. I've always thought the group tools to be severely lacking. I think LL needs to put some serious thought into the kinds of business models they envision people using and then provide the necessary tools to make supporting them possible.

Very, very interesting.

I would add that being in a game gives a person an almost undefeatable feeling they already are central to the action.

I guess when LL gets things completely pared down to "build and sell things or buy money" then the game will be complete, huh.

coco

Linden Labs is supposed to be making money basically from land sales and tier payments, right?

Some people who pay for land and pay tier are paying for a hobby or pastime, like renting a video or buying a model airplane kit. Nobody expects to recoup the money spent on goods and services like that.

Other people who pay for land and pay tier are doing more than enjoying their virtual objects and virtual activities, they are providing inworld places and products and activities that give others something to do fun here.

A system that collects money from every landowner in the form of tier payments, then doles a portion back to some, according to some formula that, no matter what it is is just an arbitrary formula that doesn't make any real sense even though clearly defined, is needlessly Byzantine compared to one that is based on some kind of payment scheme that resembles an admission charge.

No scheme that involves joining a normal SL group and thus being subjected to yet more not individually controllable group chat is likely to work very well. Group tools at present are largely a sick joke.

If the admission charge notice behaves like the normal restricted access notice in that it ruins the use of the adjacent land that is of course not an acceptable method of access control.

So far as the idea of people not being used to having to pay to go places here, I suspect they'd best get used to it if they want to have any places to go to.

Sales at group vendos go to the group, I think, and LL rewards like dwell are distributed to the group, but my experience with the group I created is that monies paid to enroll in it go to the group founder, not to the group as a whole. They maybe go to the officers, but my group has only one officer.

If that is correct, you could use group membership to collect admission to an event by 1) creating a group or selecting an existing group, 2) limiting access to the parcel to that group, 3) allowing people to join the group as temporary members for the admission price of "X". The enrollment fee money does not get sprinkled back, but instead goes to the group creator/manager, who applies it to pay for the band, keg, bubble dancer or whatever. Just like a frat party. The opportunity to join would make crystal clear that the membership is good for one event only.

After the event, the group creator/manager ejects from the group all the temp members until the next event. That also prevents the members from being later harassed by group IM blather.

Why does this not work?

I often don't have any group slots left, and I am sure that is true for many others People who have multiple businesses already have to forgo joining groups for fun because they fill all their slots up with business related groups.

If the land restricted to group lines appear while you're still on the land adjacent to the restricted parcel that doesn't work well because it ruins the use of the adjacent parcel.

most people who run events already have groups that they use to let folks know of the event, but if you kick everyone out at the end of it, how are you to let them know of the next event? Also, has anyone ever actually tried delivering information by hand to, say 150 group members in the hopes that 30 will be available during the time of an event? I have. Talk about carpal tunnel!

We need a box office that people can use to charge admission and hand out programs and gently kick folks out if they don't pay somehow.

I had a "land admission fee" up for my property that was being used for the Doctor Who group, so that nonmenbers could pay to get into the meeting hall and/or TARDIS.

I never saw the green police line for it, but the line looked cool on other builds at the time.

Needless to say the land has been sold and I won't be doing that again anytime soon...

Ummm...how about a free "Info" group and a fee-to-join "Admission-paid" group. The admission paid group is cleared every day/week/month, and the info group is kept for general announcements. Piece of cake.

Which translated into SL probably means it should be funded by an individual / group that supports those types of events or enjoys that type of performance.

LL does not collect taxes as the government does, so they should not be expected for them to fund the arts, provide welfare, etc.

From what I have noticed in this game is that people think of this as the real world and LL as Uncle Sam. They seem to forget this is only a game and that LL is in it for the $$$ not as a charitable institution devoted to the free entertainment of the masses.

People don't always have one free slot, much less two.

The Info group is subject to the same "it's Friday night and I'm drunk therefore I need to talk on group chat" problem that all the group chats are, since we can't turn them off, like we obviously should have been able to from the inception of groups.

A good admissions system would need to be as easy as possible for both the admission charger and the customer, like paying admission at a movie is. Hand 'am the cash and your done.

Certainly there would be uses for things like subscription charges, as an example I could see paying a monthly fee to visit Luskwood, since I like flying there and jumping on the pads and walkways.

Why not a solution built in-world?

Have an event in an enclosed space with a door.

At the door, there's a ticket vendor.

Once someone owns a ticket, they can open the door.

Inside, a scanner periodically checks to see who has the ticket, in order to prevent people from sit-sliding through the walls, or sit-porting into the building.

Is there a way in LSL to check for an item in inventory?
Maybe the item has to be worn.. then the sensor plays marco-polo and ejects everyone who doesn't issue a response.

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Here's a more friendly method, but which requires more active moderation: Everyone has to buy a 50-50 ticket to get into your event. They must hold the ticket in their hand during the event. Moderators and bouncers will IM and kick everyone who doesn't have a ticket. At the end of the event, a ticket is drawn randomly and the winner gets half the proceeds.

So you'd end up with people spending more time with friends at home? That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's probably not going to attract people to SL.

One could very easily argue that LL should take some responsibility for funding the arts etc., since without compelling content, *nobody* would stick around in SL. It's in LL's best interests to incent *users* to build interesting things because they have chosen to absolve themselves of that task.

I would tend to agree that LL is not a charitable institution devoted to the free entertainment of the masses, however their decision to give away free basic accounts says otherwise.

Admission!????

I have to eat you know!

Use the admission fees that you collect to buy some food.