What Bergeron factors does SL have - and does it need them?

I imagine most people here know the reference but I should mention that a "Bergeron factor" is one that reduces the ability of skilled people to use their skill, so that less skilled people can have a chance; taken from the Kurt Vonnegut short story.

What are the Bergeron factors of SL? I can think of several:

1 - SL optionality and L$ floating exchange
Problem it creates: "It went down AGAIN!?"
Problem it solves: None directly
Even though it doesn't solve a problem directly this is the biggest one of the lot because it's what makes the other ones necessary. In a pure meritocracy, the people with high merit still need people of low merit around in order to have someone they can ocracy, and in a virtual world like SL nothing compels them to stay around unless they're getting at least something they want.

2 - Prim building
Problem it creates: "WHY can't I just use a LATHE.."
Problem it solves: "Here's the elementary building class, but for anything that's going to be deemed good you need to buy a US$3000 software package. No, we're not encouraging piracy.."

3 - 40-100 avatar sim limit, extra avatars rapidly add lag
Problem it creates: "Cannot enter because parcel is full.", "Why can't I see anything in this mall?"
Problem it solves: "Hey, I hear there's 3000 people dancing in The Edge, better head over there.."

4 - Tier fees
Problem it creates: "I made a beautiful build and now I have to pay my real US$ for other people to be entertained."
Problem it solves: "From here to the edge of the grid is X's cyber city, or if you go right for a bit the rest of the grid is the fairy grove.."

Are there any others? And how valuable/necessary are they?

The original story reference by Yumi, "Harrison Bergeron" of course, is one of my alltime favorites. I don't have any others to add at the moment--wish I did!

I don't have my copy of Welcome to the Monkey House at hand, but Bergeron may be where I stole the "Era of Diminished Expectations" from.

You forgot the question dearest to you heart, Yumi.

"How can we add more?"

Fixed that for you.

- I can't tell what that means.

I don't understand your comments. Prims are used because they stream well. Better skilled builders build better things from prims than lesser skilled builders do. Builders who market their prim based work better than other builders do better financially. Where is the equalization handicap?

Lag is not to my knowledge an artificial, externally imposed technique for leveling anything. I don't see the Bergeron factor about lag.


How does charging for the use of server storage and processor capacity impose difficulty and hardship targeted at those more skillful and talented?

I don't see a relationship between any of the factors you listed and the 'Bergeron Factor'.

#1- That is called a free market. It seems to me if the 'dumbed it down' and set a flat rate for the $L it would be more analogous to the 'Bergeron Factor'.

#2- I beleive we have this limitation due to current constraints in bandwidth and processing power. A mesh set up would be far superior, but current limitations do not make that a practical option yet.

#3 - See #2 above.

#4 - LL is a business, they must charge us to remain a business. If they were to make everyone pay the same amount, and only let us hold a set amount of land, then that would more closely resemble a 'Bergeron Factor'.


The only thing I can think of that LL has done that could be considered analogous to the Bergeron Factor would be the elimination of rating bonuses. But I believe that was removed because of excessive gaming, not to even the playing field.

I am disappointed.

Vonnegut is one of my faves, and the Bergeron factor too, but nothing after this first paragraph makes any sense to me. I don't see any of this as Bergeron factors at all.

It's a Bergeron Factor - or the cause for other Bergeron Factors - because it means that there have to be people around who are buying L$. For every successful person who is paying their tier in L$, there has to be someone who is paying US$ for those L$. Which is a problem: someone who's successful, usually would not do any exchanging, or sell - rather than buying - L$. If someone is too unsuccessful at getting anything they want in SL, they're liable to quit, or give up trying and consume only free items, in which case they won't buy L$ either. So whatever kind of -ocracy SL has, it can't let the low end drop too low. That doesn't happen IRL, because RL isn't optional and people have to buy food.



Well, I didn't mean that the factor would be deliberately planned to be a Bergeron factor. In many cases it might be there for other reasons, such as technical reasons as in this case, but may at this time also act as a Bergeron. The question is what would happen when we get to the stages where these technical limitations can be lifted - do they have to not be lifted after all, or put back in different ways? Whatever Enabran thinks I wasn't trying to think of ways to add new limits to people. I can understand him anticipating this, but I do actually sometimes, you know, change my attitudes as the result of discussion.



See my #2 above too. The Bergeron factor here is that it means that the popularity of a single location is capped. If there was no cap, then because of network effect (the more people in a club, the more fun it would be to go there, in the absense of lag and limits), the first "big" social location could easily become massively dominant. I believe something similar happened on TSO when it was first starting.



Sure, but tier is only one way of charging. And it also has the effect of limiting the expansion of any individual's controlled area. Ok, there are land barons with huge numbers of sims - but they can only support that by reselling them to others.

I mirror your sentiments. When I first saw this thread headline, I thought to myself, "Oh, great, Yumi is finally going to come clean and admit all the nonsense she has said about fairness is impractical to the point of absurdity."

Because, of course, that is the thrust of Vonnegut's story. The demands of the mediocre majority for fairness cause exceptional people to be needlessly, arbitrarily hobbled to conform to the limitations of their mediocre peers.

I see nothing here that stems from that. Indeed, the lmitations I see stem from practical reality rather than overzealous social engineering. If anything, SL is (blessedly) guilty of a meritocratic reward system. Said plainly, Linden Lab is interested in the greatest advancement and success possible for their platform and will reward the exceptional residents who drive it toward that goal. It is a small, vocal mediocrity that seeks to reverse that and deliver us into a technologically-imposed Harrison Bergeron-esque micro-society.

Take a guess at how likely that is to happen.

I suppose you're referring to builds adorned with baked textures. I don't see why that couldn't be done with Blender / Yafray; that the people who do that kind of stuff atm mostly use commercial software packages might be because they have a (RL) professional reason to use those tools, and therefore also the needed proficiency with said tools.

As I mentioned above, what I was describing was factors which have the effect of doing some of that social engineering, even if they were actually developed for completely different reasons. But if LL suddenly could lift the 40-100 avatar limit on a sim, or eliminate the lag for large numbers of people in an area - would it be a good idea? Or would it lead to the existing popular locations becoming the only place anyone ever went?



LL have just stopped directly rewarding residents in one way - by abolishing DI. They've stated they're depending on other residents doing it. But in order to convert that reward into being able to pay tier or make real money, that has to involve other people buying L$; without this, I doubt many people would be happy to have to spend lots of US$ every month just to see their work rewarded by getting more play money. That creates a tricky situation. The behaviour that's necessary for key parts of the reward system to work - that is, people buying L$ for US$ - is exactly the one that's rewarded the least; and the people who do it are the ones least likely to be accumulating rewards from other sources.

Now I know you've probably heard this before in Mark Twain ("we should be grateful for the fools else the rest of us could not succeed" or as an anti-capitalist argument ("the rich should feel indebted to the poor because if there were no poor the rich would have to clean their own drains" but there's an important difference. In real life, the "fools" or "poor" or whatever, have to stick around - they have no choice but to live. In SL, they don't, and so they have to be encouraged to stay somehow - there has to be, effectively, some reward for them just being there. So how can that be managed?

No, I'm saying that if the limit of having to build with prims was removed, people would be exposed to the full complexity of 3D modelling tools. Even if there was a simplified version available, or an in-game editor, people using it would still be competing in the market against those people with commercial software packages - and let's be honest, if the commercial packages didn't make it easier to do better work, the professionals wouldn't pay big bucks for them.