All Sticks, No Carrots

I would be more concerned about the pathetic state of forum moderation and the selective mistreatment of residents here both now and in the past if I thought this game were even going anywhere.

OK, it's not a game? Well, then, let me ask you - what enterprise of ANY kind has ever worked when all anyone ever got was the stick?

(Yes, we have 132k residents and that is wonderful, or at least would be, if it meant that a good percentage of them were sticking around. What it mostly represents is a huge influx of free accounts, and that trick will work only so long.)

Other things I have payed to play generally gave me nice surprises every now and then. Or - basically - anything at all that I have EVER paid for is something that at least LOOKED like it was giving me good things, and even new good things every so often. And definitely not just taking away what good things it once gave me.

Worse, this game seems to be full of masochists, who cheer every time something is taken away!

Here's what I recall being taken away since I have been here:

1. Event support.
2. Ratings bonuses.
3. Developer's Incentive.
4. Referral bonuses for basic accounts.
5. Garage sales banned from the events schedule.
6. The ability to comment in the Classifieds section, and the ability to rate threads (unless, of course, you're hand-picked by the Lindens to do so.) Cracking down on what has been a pretty much non-existant profanity rule in the forums, with no prior warning. Installing a rule that makes what you say on the forums put your game in jeopardy.

None of that spells "fun."

And now it looks like stipends for basic accounts have been removed, judging by the fact that it's x'ed out on the from the page that lists the benefits of each account.

And people cheer!

Next up on the chopping block - dwell, traffic, the 10% land bonus, and premium stipends.

And what carrots have we gotten?

1. I recall being very excited about the ability to stream movies in SL, which happened shortly after I joined SL. I couldn't figure out why more people weren't excited about it at the time, but I still think it's a good thing. And because it happened early in my time in SL, I got the (mistaken) idea that good things like this happened often.

2. Being able to select more than one thing in inventory at a time.

There just hasn't BEEN anything in the updates for me to get excited about in a very long time.

And technically? Well, things have gotten lots harder to see.

Oh oh yeah - and we also got the reassuring knowledge that the Impeach Bush guy is free to do his thing!

(I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out on both these lists, but I'm not trying to be exhaustively and comprehensively complete right now.)

Now the REASON for all this cheering, as far as I can determine, is (a) people don't want it to be anything as mundane as a game (i.e., fun), and want it to be like "real life," with no game underpinnings whatsoever (even though it can't be, which makes it worse than real life), and (b) people think this is going to improve the "economy."

In other words, the whole deal is predicated on the shaky assumption that people are going to join SL in droves and buy up all those Lindens with real-life money on Lindex and the other exchanges. And then hang around, happy to do that forever.

Well, I don't think this business plan is going to work. Cause - well, just to put it plain and simple - I don't know about you, but I get tired of paying money just to get sticks.

I don't think that will psychologically work out in the long run, for either the basic or the premium members.

Plus, when the day comes when anyone will pay to be entertained in SL (or any other game they may have already paid once for), besides rich established members paying to attend charity and chi-chi cultural events (that does work, in this and other games), then I will be surprised. Good luck on THAT one, Lindens.

So what does that leave? Sex, basically. That is rewarding for many regardless of any game incentives. That will survive and thrive no matter WHAT they do, up until the day the plug is pulled.

But who's going to buy the rest of our stuff? And with what?

It also leaves the little intellectual exercises the Lindens are so fond of. Listening to this or that arcane expert no one has ever heard of pontificate about the metaverse. Or university groups coming in to experiment on everybody and talk about it endlessly.

What's there for the average premium-member Joe? Not a whole heck of a lot. Nothing but one stick after another. And even the average designer may find the pickin's pretty slim, as the money dries up. As for the entertainment people - well, we've seen those Sims shut down as they quit even trying to provide entertainment.

Common sense tells me that regardless of what vaunted hopes and expectations the Lindens may have for SL, this all-stick-no-carrot approach is bad for any business.

Discuss, if you like. Moderators, do your thing. Star-rate this opinion "bad".

coco

Well I guess I'm a masochist then. I'm still enjoying SL. Business is strong, indeed it's been steadily improving. Chaos is looking better and better despite the limited time Ferran and I have to build right now.

Most of the things that you mentioned were removed after they became drags on the system because of people exploiting them for profit. I guess it all depends on how you define fun. I'm here to build and socialize. Only grid downtime and functional bugs take away from that. The fact that our business can support our sim is just whipped cream for me.

Perhaps one of the reasons that we have done so well business wise is that (1) we only do what we enjoy, making $L off of it is simply a side effect, (2) we have a very flexible business model which so far has been able to adapt to changes in the climate, (3) we treat our business in SL to the same risk analysis as we would a RL business and don't have any pie-in-the-sky ideas about it, and (4) we do what we enjoy, and if we stop enjoying it... we stop doing it.

Most of the folks I know in game report the same experience. They are doing what they like to do and are not too concerned about your perceived "sticks". Of course we all have real lives... and SL issues compared to RL issues seem pretty trivial a lot of times. And none of them read the forums... that could be it too.

Well said! I can't agree more. I take a very similar tack with my own business, ambitions and expectations. I get occasionally frustrated with technical problems in the software, but conceptually, SL is really neat to me and I'm enjoying my creative freedom here.

But that's just me.

I guess it's time for you to throw in the towel and return to TSO, though, Cocoanut. After a year of litany about how dreadful this place is, your outlook does not appear to be improving. Wish you luck! Take care, now!

edit: btw, I thought more people like you were coming. But I don't see TOO much new blood posting new threads on how much they hate SL. Did their computers not have enough RAM or sommit?

Every single one of those things has been removed because people massively abused them to the point of screwing the entire system up.

Every.

Single.

One.

Blame the teeming hordes, not LL.

Sorry, I can't wrap my protest of the ResMod program with the items you mentioned, Coco. I agree with every one of the mentioned policy changes. I guess I'm still a "fangirl" at heart and won't start criticizing the 99% of Linden Lab's awesome decisions just because they stumbled onto a real stinker of a 1% with ResMods.

Hmmm, must be something wrong with me. I'm quite mellow about SL these days...

Oh yes, I had a few ups and downs to begin with, but these days I manage to sort things out.
LL have done some awesomely daft things for a company supposedly running a business. But these days I just expect it and tend to be tolerant of their eccentricities. Where they affect me I just work round them.

I find it helps if you take the point of view that SL is either being run by a group of like minded people as a hobby. Or that they are complete and utter amateurs. Or both.

I'm always finding stuff to do in SL and I enjoy myself a lot more than I did initially.

Lately the only things that get me down a bit are the sprinkling of rude/offensive people I run into occasionally, and the constant nibbling at the fringes of my domains by those who have apparently had any good taste they may have been born with surgically removed...

Otherwise... well, SL is to precious to spend looking for a 'system' to kick against. Though don't get me wrong, I'll take a pop at LL anytime they annoy me, I'm just not going to wast my SL making a career of kicking against the system.

No, you don't have to wrap them, Aimee - that was a purely subjective list off the top of my own head, pretty much containing what I see, and what I have felt. Summarizing the year, as it were.

And I have been here only a year - so I keep expecting something along the lines of the streaming video, and keep so NOT expecting everything to be taken away, though I now am expecting that. Now I'm always expecting everything to get harsher, and less fun. And that doesn't seem good to me psychologically.

And Enabran, Surreal - I'm not talking about my own business. I'm talking mainly about things that make it harder for OTHER businesses to survive. People who entertain, who put up big amusement parks, etc. And harder for beginning players to get anywhere. I make stuff - and to be honest, I really don't even NEED to have a house space of my own on Azure Islands and a shop of my own in Rosieri.

Moreover, I, myself, never benefited from ratings bonuses (too late), or from event support (too late), or from developer's incentive (never would even qualify). And I don't make diddly-squat from traffic or dwell, and never will. So I am not talking about my own business, except insofar as if people have less money, find it harder to earn money, or tend not to stay in SL, then my business will suffer.

Although I have benefited from basic member referrals, and - as an aside - I don't think removing this is so hot, either, because the people I refer tend to come to me in the game, get started, get help, get enthusiasm, get me wanting them to come back, get encouraged to go premium, and all that, which people just signing up on their own don't have. So I'm not sure how wise cutting that out is, either.

As for cutting out basic stipends, I think that is a bad idea. And anyhow, I just can't figure how it is supposed to be that the worst thing in the whole world is giving casual players a whole fifty dollars to play with. And that's IF they log in.

And the forums, well, that is just a whole nother arena where things only get harsher, but without doing much good, it seems.

So the entire thing is just - how I see it. It is how I see it. It is all sticks, no carrots! I don't even particularly care about why some of these things have been removed, due to people exploiting them or whatever; I'm pointing to the fact that they have been removed and nothing has been put in their place. And exciting new things to take their place haven't happened.

Enabran, more people like me HAVE come. Obviously. We now have 132,000 people here. But - how many of them are going to stay?

This is not a thread about how much I like making things, or how there is no place else in the world where I can go to make things like I do here, and get that same satisfaction, and the satisfaction of selling them to other people and knowing that other people are enjoying what I have made!

In TSO, it was kinda like that, because others could enjoy coming to my Game Show Channel and enjoying the way I had designed the place, and enjoy the entertainment for a couple of hours twice a week, so that is creative, too - but it just isn't the same as actually making your entire environment - everything you see on your screen in your house around you - with your own two hands out of a piece of plywood!

This thread isn't about me, my personal satisfaction, my business, or when I am going to "throw in the towel" and go back to TSO, which Enabran, you really wouldn't want me to do, cause then you couldn't make comments like that.

This thread isn't about the satisfaction content creators get. Or even the social satisfaction others get in their various groups of furries, Gor, club-goers, or what have you. I guess it is really about what makes people stick to a game, and I am observing that a bunch of sticks without at least some pretty good carrots isn't a good way to achieve that. Now I could be wrong about the entertainment part, but - like I said, I will be surprised.

coco

Well, I don't like some of the changed they've made, and I DO think Coco has a point. If you continue to take things away from users without giving them any substitutes, it does give the impression of "nerfing" and can make residents a bit frustrated.

Certain items, such as event support and ratings were taken away to stop folks from gaming them, but doing so seemed to have a more negative effect than a postive one.

The events listing is far more sad now than it was when there was full event support, and money chairs are somehow better than ratings parties??

Regarding non-technical issues, I would like to see some "fun" things inacted by LL, instead of taking things away, but I know it's tough to introduce things of that nature that won't lead to gaming the system.

Has Linden Lab shown a remote interest in enacting fun things in long memory?

About the only thing that comes to mind is Burning Life '05 and that was horribly bollixed by lack of LL even doing things like granting the parcels to the lottery winners. I've been meaning to rant about this, but I'll keep it short. Karen Linden's recent list of the 3 bugs they might have fixed and the 30 that that didn't because of "other projects" just drove the point home. So I won't give this its own thread but I will indent and biggify itThey seem to have gotten out of the policing biz, the forum moderation gig isn't their bag, they're selling huge tracts of flatland to land brokers, bug fixing has taken a back seat to something. Are they on Pier 19 drinking margaritas? LL is looking increasingly like an absentee landlord who will come patch a hole in the roof after a metor strike, but what are they so busy with? Presuming they aren't resting on their laurels (which are a bit threadbare at present) we'll likely never know.

Two recommendations: margarita time comes after you are well in the black, and your world is not nearly self-sustaining at present.

"All sticks, no carrots" pretty much describes your posting history. Let's see some substantive solutions. You're big on inventing problems but lacking in the invention of solutions.

I'll ask yet again... How? How do you want to improve these imagined issues?

I'm asking rhetorically, of course. I've already learned that I won't actually get an answer beyond "somehow!"

The actual growth of SL flies in the face of 12 months of your doomsaying. I'm not sure what else there is to tell you. Give me something a little more than anecdote, otherwise this begins to enter the realm of inadvertant satire.

I'm still really enjoying SL. What is wrong with me?


If sl caused me enough grief to feel the need to post about how awful it is for months, I'd be out the door. Actually I'd be out the door before I had time to to post about how awful it is for months. Gotta wonder about those who log in to the forums to do nothing but gripe.

I don't see how it's fair for us to have to listen to it all as people indulge their negativity.

Y'all know I'm a big supporter of carrots, but someone once said: Whatever that may mean. I suppose he meant "stockade". I could certainly make that out of sticks, but I don't know if it'd make me feel any better. On the other hand, not reading the forums probably would. Good idea, that one.

Uncertain, Ingrid.

Whenever the army of "People Like Cocoanut" shows up, I'm sure they'll be happy to assist in your re-education (they may be a year late, but I have been given no compelling reason why they will not arrive eventually).

Coco, there are some valid points here.. to me the biggest one being removing Basic stipends. i don't know what the situation is on that, but if it's being removed then it's definitely a bad thing. sure, it may prompt a few people to move to Premium, but it will serve to frustrate those who don't.. making it that much harder to do anything besides creating their own stuff, which not everybody is good at, nor should they be expected to be.

as far as the remainder of the list goes, sure some things are a bummer on that list, but as has been pointed out, they were removed because they were being gamed and causing distress on the system and the community.

another point to consider is that SL is being increasingly put into the hands of the residents. this has always been the plan and the removal of many of things was spurred on by the gaming that was going on, but in order for the community to be self-sufficient they needed to be done anyway. we are being positioned to survive on our own instead of relying on LL pay-outs or extra-support. i believe the stipends are still a good way to help the community, maybe for good.. maybe just for another year or two. not sure on that one.

and your right that there are more things that could be added to both lists. i remeber when we had "Land Rushes" where it was first come, first serve when new land was released. or when auctions were enacted and that was a carrot in my view. i was here when streaming audio was introduced. we have been given more extensive building tools and more extensive land management. we have seen the advent of private islands, which originally were non-transferrable which created a big problem and essentially killed a really cool RPG that was in development at the time.. shortly thereafter, islands were made transferrable and while it was too late for that RPG, it was a great improvement for future island owners.

i have seen SL perform beautifully, i have also seen it perform horribly. it's a constant ebb and flow. currently were in a protracted ebb, but there are big forward steps to be had in the future. (not sure when, but eventually we're going to see massive improvements)

is there any one thing that you would like to see improved that would greatly improve SL? what's something, either related to what you've mentioned or not, that could make a major difference for you? and do you have any ideas on how that idea could be implemented? i love seeing suggestions and hearing critiques on our world, it's what makes it grow.

So your business is good then. So how can you talk about other people's business with any degree of accuracy. You don't know what other people are experiencing. I talked about my business, and mentioned that my close friends report the same thing. Who are you speaking for, and why not let them speak for themselves?

As for content that requires a sim. Chaos is very content rich, and designed for anyone to enjoy. It's only going to get mores o, with more interactive things to do there. The sim is fully supported by us.

I can't answer for anyone else, but our business model has always been built by the same principals that apply RL... so it never depended on LL handouts. They were nice, but we didn't rely on them, knowing that eventually they would end - how could they not? 80% of RL businesses fail in the first 5 years... so that's what in SL time... 5 months? Businesses fail here for the same reasons they fail in RL: poor judgement, not enough capital, inexperience, poor planning, and just bad luck, or a random disaster.

That is true of retail businesses in SL, but SL has an odd culture that does not seem to want to really support any other type of business. They will pay for tangible items, but not entertainment. That makes it extremely difficult to run an entertainment business like a club and have it generate any income (aside from retail sales). The removal of DI and other things makes the process even harder for non-retail oriented businesses to survive.

The amusement park reference, like Spitoonie, is a good example. If dwell ends up being meaningless from an income perspective, how does a place like that make money? People won't pay for admissions, that model does not work in SL - so the only alternative is to turn most of it into a mall or casino.

Until the SL culture changes, it will be very difficult for those types of businesses, because they are not viewed as valuable as retail stores for some reason. Yes, they need to come up with compelling reasons for someone to want to pay to enter, but SL culture is still overly adverse to the idea and that is an uphill battle.

You don't, sadly.

Competing with a hojillion 24/7 packed clubs with moneyballs and (now, though not then) camp chairs sorta made it a moot point anyhow though sometimes.

Whatever it is, it's contagious

I personally think SL is fun no matter what is given or taken away. Its an open ended game where you can do anything your imagination allows. Its all what you make it and how you spend your time. I havent played a year yet but I have been learning how to build things and exploring my options. I have spent much time with old friends that I have met in other games. I have also made new ones. I also thing that it is more than a game because the friendships you make in the time you spend in Second Life are real. I try not to think about what i dont have and do the best to entertain myself. Although were all intitled to our opinons here and i guess im just giving you my own.. I do agree however that they do seem to be giving us less but to me the friendships and memories seem worth so much more.

It's because you like sticks, or so I've heard on the intarweb IRC chat room.

That was so good, I don't even have a come-back for it.

* bow *

Well, of course people who are already established can "still" enjoy themselves.

But for those who aren't... well, if you want to build a dream, it's getting harder and harder to reach the stage of being able to do that.

If they're seriously taking away Basic stipend, that means no uploads. So folks won't be able to experiment, either.

Some of these abuses are the results of removing the previously abused system rather than trying to modify it. For example, one cause of the camping chair fiasco was the removal of the ratings bonus... because there was no longer the same incentive for basic players to hang out and be sociable (or suck up to wealthier players, if you like) and at the same time it created an increased demand for small quantities of Lindens that was satisfied by the camping chairs.

The solution to massive abuse of a system is to modify it so abusing it doesn't produce massive profits. For example, if there was no way to get more money from each rating point than it cost to give it, there would be no reason for ratings parties. The ratings system could be made a net SINK of Lindens if it was tweaked right, and that would help solve another of the problems...