A shocking discovery...

.... Four Seasons has been deleted.

Nothing there but a bunch of sale snow plots.. and an Impeach Bush sign.



Anyone think this might be something to do with DI's decline?

What's DI?

OMFG.

No way.


What's Four Seasons? Is that a club?

Developer Incentives

It was a theme park where the old Ice Dragon Resort was.

DI is developer incentive

Edited: Damn Aimee beat me to it

Yes, someone clued me into this a few days ago. Very sad.

coco

Ahh, I see. Sucks to lose something like that, but now it makes me wonder if that had something to do with it.

So why did the Ice Dragon shut down?

They moved to a private Island. Dragon Playpen = Ice Dragon

Not sure when that happened, but when I visited a couple of weeks ago, I found wasteland and signs.

If anyone knows of any other theme parks, with rides and amusements and the whole deal, please let me know.

kthxbye

ps, for the record. I'd be willing to pay admission to something like that. Just in case anyone is interested. Maybe if we could find a business model where stuff like that was self-sustaining because the people that use it, also pay for it, government subsidies like DI wouldn't be such a crutch. [/soapbox off

Maybe they needed more advertising. Can't remember seeing anything from them.

Ya know every amusement park I ever saw in SL went belly up, including the Linden sponsored one (where Dwell was first tested).

I'm sure I've not seen all of them - but everyone I did has gone under...

Maybe it's not DI.. maybe it's me...

Keep me away from your amusement parks!

Personally i was gonna make one that also tied in one of the biggest industries in SL for good measure.. was gonna call it 'ThrustoPorno Land'

The most magical place on Second Life - where dreams DO come true!

I can imagine what your version of space mountain would look like.

Imagine what my lounge acts would be like!

Sing it with me!

Ooooooh I........ am the great.... pudenda...

I think Four Seasons died because the park keeper had to leave SL for personal reasons. Apparently the guys at IceDragon had this person hired to take care of the park and I suppose it is too big a place to take care of it by themselves (specially after DI are gone).

Anyway, if someone wants to build a serious full sim theme park I'd subsidize it Which means I'm willing to invest some money AND place some of my rides there for either a discount price or free. I wonder if someone has the guts to try this when so many others have failed hehehe

It is quite strange to see the failure of these parks. After all, separate rides are selling better than I could have ever imagined, and my clients say they enjoy them :?

Where would one find these other rides at?

I have looked and only found a swing and Sarg's slides (have 2, love them).

CC

The problem is, in my experience as one of the Spitoonie Islanders, is that they just don't make money. That's fine to a point, it was never about making a killing... But any signifigant amount of land is a serious investment of money every month. Even breaking even for a themepark can be very tricky. Most people wont ride the rides if you charge, even tiny fees, at least not more than once or twice. The point of making them is to have people enjoy them, so nobody wants to charge for the rides... So you set up other things around the island to get money, and people either ignore them or don't involve themselves with them. If you open a casino your just another casino, and the crowd doesnt really mix much with the themepark, and you have all the headache of running a casino as well...

You can try selling rides, but sometimes you have a lot of work in rides, or other reasons you don't want to sell them - For example, the rollercoaster we built was extremely prim-heavy in the tracks, and was a lot of work to code and set up... And coulnd't just be sold "as is". Bumpercars were a sim-crasher so we couldn't dare sell them. Extreme-G rides had a tendancy to do really strange things after a while and enough use, so the tech support would be extremely frustrating. Etc. But even if you do sell the rides, IME, the sales are not *that* great... not enough people have land for them, or the money to buy them if you charge in any way proportional to what you have invested ina good ride.

You can try combining it with other things, a club or a mall... But those create a ton of lag, and a themepark that is lagged is no fun for anyone.

In short, it's a logistics headache the size of Africa :/

I thought it was more an important point about the removal of DI.

The most commonly cited reason for the removal of DI was that it was subsidising things like camping chairs, Tringo halls, and similar. But if you're Ice Dragons and you need to lower your tier, what are you going to take down - the popular camping/Tringo/Slingo island that makes money, or the less popular and far less money-making but awfully neat theme build you sponsored someone to put there? Far from reducing "gaming" it's made it even more essential.

We will not even get INTO the fact that the area is now an empty wasteland of sale signs with a huge Impeach Bush notice floating in the air on a parcel named "Anshe cheated me" or something similar. Yea, they wanted to make a political statement, and it's best to make those in empty areas where no-one will see them, isn't it? Couldn't be anything to do with the land being on sale, could it...

Again, I think that dwell is measuring the wrong thing.

Dwell serves two purposes, it provides Linden Labs a mechanism to subsidize builds that make SL more profitable, and it emulates a part of the economy that would be really annoying for players to have to deal with on their own. The first purpose is obvious, the second less so... so I'll go into it a bit further.

In RL, almost any public entertainment is partially funded by concession sales: popcorn, drinks, snacks, restaurant meals, gasoline. Some operate entirely off concessions... most restaurants and bars with any kind of entertainment fall into this category. in SL, none of those sales are ever made, because avatars don't need to eat, or drink, or buy gas. It would be possible to make avatars get hungry and thirsty and tired and cold, so they'd have to buy food when they travel around the grid, but "that would be really annoying".

Having all residents "shedding" the same amount of dwell doesn't serve either purpose well. Some people have more money to spend on food and drink, and it's just as worthwhile having the economy reflect that as having it reflect the fact that some people buy more stuff elsewhere. And some people, obviously, are more valuable to Linden Labs.

Currently, dwell promotes builds that attract free riders to SL, because they're the majority of accounts. Instead, it should promote builds that attract paying customers to SL, and the amount of dwell you get from having an avatar on your land should be based on the role that avatar plays in the economy, both in economic terms and in terms of its value to Linden Labs.

Basic accounts shouldn't be worth as much dwell as premium accounts.

Players that aren't an active part of the economy shouldn't be worth as much as players that are.

If the amount of dwell shed by an avatar now is "1 point", then perhaps the formula should be:

Basic account: 1/4 point.
Premium account: 1 point.
Buy L$5000 or more on LindeX: 1 point.
Pay tier on 4096 or more: 1 point.
Sell L$5000 or more merchandise: 1 point.

Maximum "value" of an avatar would then be 4 times current, minimum 1/4 current, and ordinary premium members would stay where they are.

The snow sims have always been an empty wasteland of sale signs.

Does this formula take into account that a premium account of today is 1/4 to 1/3 less than it was 2 years ago? I dropped to basic because I was paying the same money for less of an account. Make premium accounts worth something again, then talk about a weighted dwell system.


People don't want to ride some fake amusement park ride in a world with craptastic physics, they want to pixel bone. Amusement parks suck in real life, the only thing tha tis worse is a fake one. Come on you.can't even drive a decent car in SL. Until they do something about this doomed platform that is the home of lag and innovations from the 90s, this is a pointless conversation.

I dont think Lindex should be used to in any way determine a person's "worth" or "value". It seems... offputting, in so many ways.

Welcome to 2005-2006 SL, cold hard $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ is the only thing that matters here.

This does not bear out with the comments and experiences we got running Spittonie. There were critics, sure, but the overwelming majority of the comments were purely positive.

Except Lindex use isn't even tied to $, be they L$ or US$