Darwinian Effect :: Will stopping DI stop Camping Chairs?

I was talking with a new club owner yesterday, he was trying to find ways to get people so shot up. I gave hime what advice I had, like.... finish building the club first. And then making it somewhat exclusive to get into. Because he/we can't compete with lame AV contests, games, and camping chairs.

But this isn't about his club, it's about my disbeleif at SL dwell gathering.
I often can't TP people to come explore, because they're sitting on a #$%! chair and saving up for, and I quote, "a new nipple ring".

*sigh*

If they kill DI, they take away the primary motivation for Dwell and people, right, they might drop this camping chair nonsense, or am I missing something here?

A few people with no business sense will cling to the notion of camping chairs, albeit at an extremely discounted rate ($L10 per 60 minutes! woo!), but without the DI subsidy, their profit margins will be even slimmer.

This is going to have a gigantic cascading effect, I think. You're going to see a lot of people "laid off", and so on... it's going to be fun seeing a dozen "will dance for food" placards at the WA with all the escort services imploding.

Although it doesn't really matter, I don't think; if SL has shown anything, it's that a sizable portion of the population will always game something and cheat their way to the top, via whatever means possible.

Maybe the next trap will be a TP trap; set the landing point to some place, trap the av in a cage, and keep them there for five minutes.

****MONEY CAGE AT CLUB PANTS****
CUM GET UR FR33K ON @ CLUB PANTS WHERE THE DACNE DONT STOP TIL LAG DOES ROFLLLLLLLLLLL FREE MONEY CAGES FOR ALL AVS @ 5 MINS!!!!1111

To answer the question, No - I think not. In a nutshell - it'll be the elimination of Dwell, not the DI, that will ultimately end the camping chair phenomenon. And while I think that's ultimately coming too - LL doesn't have a plan for that yet.

Allow me to repost what I had to say on the subject from another thread:

The larger enterprises that receive Developer Incentive will likely only be marginally affected by this change. This is because the DI only made up a small percentage of their monthly budget.

It is the small-to-medium sized venues that will be hit hardest by this change - not those you see on the Popular Places list every day. The DI made up 90-100% of the budget of the smaller venues, and those are the ones we are in jeoprady of losing.

What's more - Dwell/Traffic itself is NOT going away by this change, at least at first.

Consider my hotline post:





I'm interpreting Robin's response to mean - Yes, we believe Dwell/Traffic is an ineffective metric, but we have no plans in place at this point to remove it.

What this means to you & I is: If you honestly believe that the removal of the Developer Incentive will rid us of camping chairs, you are mistaken.

Instead, the loss of the DI will only minimally impact the heaviest 'abusers', and cut out a lot of the smaller venues that depended upon it to get established.

Once LL gets rid of both DI and Traffic/Dwell, maybe we'll see some dramatic changes. But for right now, make no mistake - these changes will simply consolidate traffic to a fewer set of venues rather than eliminate them alltogether.

As Elex Dusk has mentioned elsewhere: LL's decision to eliminate the DI has little to do with addressing the gaming of the system, and a lot more to do with belt-tightening. Its just convienient timing that camping chairs are a hot issue right now.

----

The removal of the DI may lower overall how much venues pay out in camping chairs - but it wont remove them. If anything, it will make things better for the larger venues with an environment that is much more expensive to compete in before one has become established.

I don't think so.

The elimination of events funding early this year was touted as a good thing because it would eliminate or at least reduce so called "lame" events which were being held to game the system. So here we are nearly a year later. Do you see an improvement in the overall quality of events? Did we work towards building a system which fosters creative builds and interesting things to do? In reflecting upon the past year, the predominant impression I have is one of pervasive negativity which is void of the followup efforts which are necessary to effect a change. There are exceptions of course, those individuals who do take the next step towards building a social structure but they lack the support which they need to prosper.

The pattern seems to be to criticize, which is certainly a necessary first step, without a constructive followup effort. Rather the momentum born of that critique moves on to yet another aspect to harp on. The lack of that critical consructive next step is what gives the overall impression I am left which is that of overall negativity, charged by the bitterness and anger of a few.

There are pockets of positive energy and efforts which exist primarily in disconnect from each other and from the majority of users. Without working towards the development of a structure which supports these endeavors, I fail to see a different scenario for the future. The details may change, maybe camping chairs will be replaced by some other despised activity, but the game will remain the same.

The bottom line is that good things require the effort and support of many, not just a few, in order to take hold and predominate. This society needs to get past whining about what it doesn't like and to begin yet again to channel the positive and creative forces from which it was born for a change in direction to occur.

But, what for ?

if you keep an av on a spot for 5 minutes, you get a portion of their dwell^H^H^H^H Traffic points for the day. Ergo, you get more $L.

Thanks. That was just my little morning before-coffee question. I don't look at Events unless I accidentally get to it when pulling up People or Places.

I looked last night.... I'm glad I don't post events.

I interpreted Robin's post to mean that yes, dwell will be going bye-bye. Considering the Linden comments last August that they had no intention of getting rid of hubs at ALL. Robin did say they'd try to give more advance notice this time.

So - get rid of DI, you still have dwell. Get rid of dwell - you no longer have popular places, right? Or am I misunderstanding that?

Even then, there will still be people wanting people at their places, and one way of having them there is money chairs.

coco

I agree it does seem they plan on removing Dwell income at some point in the forseable future. However it doesn't say they'll remove traffic counters. In fact traffic counters without dwell should be a darnsite more accurate than with. Why? Becuase the figures are not skewed by the effect of chair campers etc.

Aha... but... what if the traffic counters are skewed on account of camping chairs.

It happens today: Large venues pay money to encourage folks to camp out just so they can get on the Popular Places listing for advertising reasons.

To them, the cost of camping chairs merely comes out of an advertising budget.

I'm not seeing anything here that's going to change that - other than possibly reducing the amount the large venues have to spend for the same effect.

OK, that helps me understand.

If they still have traffic counters, people will still have camping chairs, because they will still want to be the most popular.

coco

zactly

It is timely. I would like to share this picture of an especially special camping chair variant by Smith Peel:


Yes, the bars do conduct warmth.

I believe most of the reason for chair campers is the fact it generates dwell. So the dwell go's in the direction of the chair campers. If you don't have a guaranteed income of this sort then you can't pay chair campers because it would be a pretty big drain on resources.

Also if Linden made it so that it checks for unique av's not the same one. So you have to be in venue for more than say 5 mins BUT if you stayed you wouldn't get counted more than once. Therefore the numbers would reflect numbers of people arriving and staying at the venue. NOT the av/s per 5 mins as I believe it is currently.

Traffic figures with this would be a lot lower but also a lot lot more accurate.

Anyone looking for product exposure is going to pay more to have it placed at a high traffic venue.

Fair point, would you agree though if traffic was based on unique visits (or at least number of visits ) rather than, as appears to tbe the case the current time based setup it would be better?

Easy to game.

"Come to club pants and receive $L10!"

Ta-da, you have 40,000 people visiting your club. If they don't stay, fine; you got their dwell points for $L10. Even better, you don't have to bother entertaining them.

Except, you made L$40,000 in dwell bonus and spent L$400,000.

I was speaking to someone (who owns a sim, shops, etc and has some knowledge about such things obviously) about this, I'll let her decide if she wants to chime in, but anyway she was telling me there is a cap on dwell? And from what she said, it seemed this cap is relatively low?

If this is the case, it seems like dwell wouldn't be that much of a motivation for camping chairs, it wouldn't be worth what you'd have to pay out.

I seriously hope ending DI spells the end for camping chairs, I just wish we didn't have to wait until april to find out one way or the other.

Sounds good in theory but only in terms of people camping in chairs. I believe that the reason that time was incorporated into the evaluation was because someone spending time at your place was considered a good thing. Your system may be "better" but can and would be gamed as well.

I think a major problem is in identifying DI and dwell payments as the exclusive motivation in the pursuit of traffic. In previous analysis of the camping chair financial equation, I did not see any accounting for revenues generated by vendors at these locations. Last week my friend referred to paying an outrageous amount (in his words) for a spot at a popular place which I was familiar with from a thread in this forum. Hence my statement, anyone looking for product exposure is going to pay more to have it placed at a high traffic venue.

So I'm thinking maybe we need to address the inability to quantify traffic which results in content exposure and sales before we can ferret out traffic indicative of a quality event or build. This kind of leads us back to the inavailability of hard economic numbers with which to make credible business decisions. What else does a vendor agent have to go on when trying to rent out their spots other than the numbers indicated by traffic and popular places?

Even at L$10/60 minutes, that's easy free money for some.

Suppose I spend US$10 to create an alt account to go camping with. I use an old computer, with the graphics settings as low as they go. I wear a centered HUD attachment that is nothing but a fullscreen black block. I keep myself logged-in 24/7. Now, some rough math at an everage exchange rate (L$260/US$1):

US$ 10.57 = L$ 2,850 = Basic sign-up bonus/weekly stipend per year
+
US$. 0.88 = L$.. 240 = 1-day of camping
US$. 6.23 = L$ 1,680 = 1-week of camping
US$ 26.72 = L$ 7,200 = 1-month of camping (30-day average)
US$325.00 = L$87,600 = 1-year of camping

So, I've made about US$300.00/year barring losses from downtime. Multiply that by as many low-bandwidth alts as I can get.

And subtract the costs for electricity necessary to feed 5 pentium-IV-class machines with 400w power supplies

And any overages you may be experiencing with your ISP.

And the time needed to set up whatever macro program you're using to stay on 24/7.

I mean, I guess it would work, but I could probably make more money panhandling downtown.

Ok, with the reminder that I am still learning the ways of SL economics, bear with me.

I may be very wrong here, but I think you couldn't be closer to the truth. People will still offer camping chairs at a very cheap rate, because many new residents will think that this is actually a very good way to make money vs what the stipend on basic accounts are (250L$/week?) So, we have 168 hours in a week, and lets just say for the purpose of saying that these people run a mouse macro on their pcs while they are at work and sleeping. For the purpose of saying (again) lets suppose that all of these people work a full-time job and get a full night's sleep (in the 1950's sense) so, everyone puts in 16 hours a day in 10L$ an hour camping chairs, and lets say they spend another 3rd of their free time in SL (2.66 hrs) in the club's facilities, where they spend a good proportion of their earnings. oh, and 16 hours a day of camping = 112 hours a week (L$1120 - 4x basic ./ 2x Premium and some change).

2.66 x 7 = 18.62 hours a week actually in sl at the club's facilities (we are stereotyping a certain type of social group here).

Now, the best part of this is, if you own a casino, those people will probably try to spend most if not all, on gambling. Around here, most people, just like in RL, will try to take the easy way out.

And, lets not forget that there will probably still be a "popular places", even without the dwell, and where did you go to first as a n00b?

They say first impressions make all the difference in the long run.

I appologize for the randomness of this post, its 4:30am here, and I live on a solid caffeene diet.

This is, assuming the value of L$ vs USD remains steady or goes up.
Also, there is a good possibility that the by doing this, you yourself will affect the economy of SL in some way. It just seems to me that a program with 100k users and a more controlled economy is much more volitile to try to game than an economy similar to WoW (close to 10M users, and an ever-increasing economy). Lets just put it this way, its much easier to predict where WoW's economy will be in a year then it is to predict where SL's will be (although I hope for the best).

I can tell you that by your estimates, it would take me approximately 124 accounts to make 40K a year, which I would consider to be a good living, unless I have powerful enough machines to run multiple copies of SL at the same time, that would take alot of money and alot of electricity. Not to mention a huge cable mess.

Oh, and for those of you who want to be rich "overnight": 3077 accounts, sitting 24 hours a day in L$10/hr camping chars will (currently) net you US 1 million dollars and some change in a year's time... I dont think there are this many camping chairs rezzed in SL, and I doubt this many have even been sold/created.

Personally, if you want to get rich quick playing games, I would recommend WoW gold farming, I don't think WoW (from my personaly experience) takes as powerful computer as SL does to run (not to be dogging SL, I quit WoW to play SL, and I would much rather run a business in SL, than an illecit gold-farming operation in WoW any day =)

I believe your are totally off track, Lordfly.
As long as camping chairs give traffic points, a few people with business sense will have the chairs out and set the payout rate to a level where they get the best return for their money.

It seems to me that you have no idea how much money you can rake in on a highly automated, well run high-traffic joint.

The money chairs gives good listings. Good listings gives heavy valuable traffic, willing to spend money. Be it gamblers, buyers, sellers or tenants. The target is the mass market, not a sofisticated architect or an already successful designer.

The Developers Incentive is just pocket change in this perspective, really. When I was running for #1 in pop places this summer, DI covered roughly 7% of my expenses. Even if I had marketing expenses at over 500K per month, I was quite profitable. 7% is hardly a huge hit. To give you an idea of how much money goes in and out when you are #1, the account history refused to load in-game and some days even was too long to load on the web site and timed out.

I have since adjusted my rates to a level where i can cash out the most per month, instead of trying to get to #1

As long as the pop places list is there, and you can buy your way up, there will be no major change. Pop places is the best marketing you can get in SL. Even the PG list is valuable to get into, since the mature checkbox is unchecked on new players.

Buying traffic points is marketing in practice. As with all other prime marketing channels RL, it is expensive, and the trick is to get enough money out of those exposed to it (viewers of the pop places list) to be profitable.

The business minded will experiment and figure out the optimum mix of marketing expenses (money chairs/balls, events, hosts) and income. This will not change without the DI.

The smaller venues may close shop without the DI, but they weren't really profitable. Sooner or later more professional competitors (or gamers of dwell as some like to call it) would have driven them out of the list anyway.