Subsidies.

Chip, it isn't that I "can't". It's that I took the job with much better pay.

coco

I think disagreeing with an argument by saying its silly is one of the reasons why people engender such hostility. If you have a good counterpoint it should speak for itself, I see nothng accomplished by calling my argument "silly." As it happens you counterpoint was good, and your personal attack superflous.

As far as just compensation, how do expplain that people make content and give it away free? there was a whole thread about free stuff being bad for SL, with people taking the position that makers of quality content had to charge for it to protect the value of the linden. Adn the point about no economic reward for people seeking to do business in SL presupposes that business is the reason for SL. Yet others argue that SL has to account for all styles of game play. this is the essence of my point: "why is business sacrosanct, and the interests of the causal player insignificant." Obvioulsy LL when they created the game, thought it important to reward those who are making more than just clothing or bling, but who are contributing to the formation of an SL community. That is my understanding of the purpose of Dwell, ratings and such. I have seen no convincing argument that stipend is not necessary, not have I seen a convincing argument that a minor increase in stipend for premium accounts and dwell or buns would send the value of the linden plummeting.

Coco, I see your point about prim allotments, but prim allotments are tied to me buying land. Maybe an innovative solution would be to tie a prim allotment to amount of tier paid rather than amount of land owed? Is this even possible?


In considering the point about creation tools being available to everyone and therefore everyone is subsidized. I would pointout that bonus and dwell are also available to everyone, and thus increasing these payments would benefit everyone. If you want to get dwell make somethign that entertains. If you want bonus, do things that get people to rate you positively. I mean anyone could invest in land build a club and make people come and get dwell.

I so agree Coco. Has there ever been an entertainer that has even come within the top 100 SL earners? Hell no. Who is making the real cash in SL? The designers, scripters, animators, land barons. The entertainer never comes remotely close to making the list.

I wish Astrin were here so he could comment if he wished, about what kind of income he makes. He directly entertains with live music, has a wonderful talent, and one would hope makes some good tips. Also, DJ's entertain as well, and they may make some decent cash. But those that think of, implement and host events for education, social or entertainment reasons rarely, if ever, make any cash. It's just the way SL is set up.

Well, the loss is yours. I currently have choices in my Real Life. I can take the nice, shiny BS I'm about to earn and use it to make a nice annual salary.

I could also throw myself into, say, stand up comedy. It wouldn't pay anywhere near that. But if I truly loved it, it would be worth doing. And one day I might make more than I ever could with my degree.

You have to love what you're doing in order to be good at it. It's not about the money. The money comes from your excellence and excellence comes from loving it. If you bribe people to do something they don't even love, do you really, truly expect them to create something amazing? Something worthwhile?

I remember a scene from Comedian, a documentary about being a comedian (Jerry Seinfeld was in it, and was Executive Producer). A young comedian was talking to Jerry, by the name of Orny Adams. Orny was protesting at his lack of stardom as a comedian. He asked Jerry, "What do I tell my family?" He wanted the fame and the stardom of comedy, yet he didn't seem to enjoy doing it very much. Jerry just started laughing and said, very simply, that it's not about that. Entertainment comes from the soul. You can't bribe people bring that out with money.

Well right now , people will pay a lot for Scripts, clothing, animations, skins, hair , etc.

They wont pay much or at all for entertainment.

That being the case , Entertainers wont make much money. Simple as that.

Think the real problem is why people will pay for one and not the other.

Anyone who argues against the freedom of people to do anything at all is an ass. The argument that giving away tools or information harms Second Life is one I completely discard. People are free to expect compensation, or not, for their work. People are free to do anything they want without abridging the rights and freedoms of others. It doesn't have anything to do with this discussion: If a commercial product and its manufacturer can't compete with a freebie script or tool, the commercial product isn't worth much anyway.

I spend days or weeks (or months) preparing a new product. How much time is spent on creating entertainment? How much effort goes into the production of one show?

I just got done helping to organize a live music and comedy event in RL, meant to benefit a charity. The event was a huge success, charging a meager $5 for admission. The charity got several hundred dollars thanks to our work. It took us 21 days of over a dozen people working hard to make that happen.

Is this preparation going into creating entertainment?

Create value and you will be paid to share it. Create rubbish and no one will be interested.

Look at the real world. People don't pay much at all to watch TV, or listen to the radio. Who pays for that?

As a new vehicle designer, I would pay for better exposure of my vehicles to the "general" SL market, which includes those people attending events. I would be willing to bet there are a number of other designers like myself who would do the same.

I'd be quite happy to provide vehicles for prizes, or gift certificates, or whatever. But I really don't like having to chase down all the event organizers to do it. I don't like marketing, but I recognize its importance.

I suspect people could make pretty good money acting as liasons between designers and event groups. Especially if they could come up with ideas for events that are oriented more towards the sponsor's products, and then organize and run those events.

- Jon

Fair enough. I really wish that someone would come along and set the bar for entertainment though, and charge for it. The precedent needs to be set at some point. With your previous experience you seem well suited to the job

Why "beyond" dwell payments and bonuses? Those don't count for some reason? What about having the ability to set land to a cover charge? Is that a subsidy that also doesn't count? How about showing up as abig blue or pink star on the map every time an event is listed? Wouldn't this count as a built is subsidy equal to or better than those you claim content creators receive? I'm not allowed to list a sale or a new item release in the events list, and there's absolutely no way for people to know about it unless I post in the forums or pay to advertise.

Event hosts already get more built in subsidies than other creators do. That just doesn't seem to be enough. They want cash, whether their event is entertaining or not.

well this whole discussion started from an arguement to end Dwell payments. My take was Jake's opinion was to keep them.

Dwell payments being Subsidies.

Misty Rhodes

Jon, glad you reminded me of a point I made awhile back.

If people want to make money on events without charging for admission, they need to find advertisers. They need to demonstrate an ability to gather a metric assload of eyeballs, and then charge potential business for exposure to the same.

When I mentioned this awhile back, I also mentioned I would be thrilled to talk to people who host weekly events. I would be willing to pay as much as L$1000 a week to a very hoppin' event, assuming I would be named as a sponsor and I could put up marketing materials in the venue.

I have yet to receive any IMs for my offer.

edit: Also, my idea, I was told, was a good one. But those I was talking to wanted to wait until Linden Lab created a special system to help people coordinate between advertisers and event hosts.

For the love of god, people, get off your asses! Make miracles happen! Only you can do it. Not Linden Lab, not anyone else. You must be the amazing and wonderful thing maker of change that you sit here pleading and pining to burst into existence. The power is yours, not that of Linden Lab! Stop making excuses and start making!

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Course in addition


- our cable bill is $100 a month.

- movie tickets are $9 each

- Rent a movie $4

- a ticket to a concert is what $40+ ?

Well both points are true, but a lot of the purpose of this thread was to elicit relevant poitns and ocunterpoints regarding a dynamic I percieve in the SL community. I had intended it as a way to get a lot of arguements out, without letting the thread go ballistic and get out of hand. I suppose in away it is an argument, but really I want people do disagree, because I still think the discussion is furthering my understanding of the dialouge. To some extent I am playing devils advocate, especially when I think points are made.

Sorry..but she didn't hit the top 100 from entertaining. In fact, I believe she paid out alot. Plus others donated to her events.

Exactly my point, as I went on to illustrate in my message.



Yes, and all that is peanuts compared with that entertainers are paid. The stars of Friends got paid something like $1 million per episode.

Of course, the SL economy isn't anywhere near big enough to support that level of payment. But if you want to make money in entertainment, you'd better start talking to the people that make money from the people you are trying to entertain.

- Jon

Jonquille,

I'm sorry I wasn't clear. It was my intent to suggest that Dwell and Bonuses were the subsidies for providn content. As it happens I think they are an appropriate reward, I was not suggesting that there needed to be further subsidies. Dwell and bonus absolutely do count. Sorry for being confusing on this.

I have not seen any events in SL with cover charges, i think they tend to be fatal to attendance, but I could be wrong. As this thread as progressed it has sort of dawned on me that perhaps the fucntion that iis rewarded with dwell and bonus payments is the creation of cummunities. Clubs seem to me to foster a sense of community in a way that the telehubs never will. I don't have much expereince with tringo and slingo, so I don;t know about them. But I do know a lot, and i mean a lot, of people who are casual players like myself who don't create or script or build, they just hang out at clubs and socialize, and have parites. And shop. So really I see dwell and bonus as rewards for cimmunity building. So maybe the tite of thread has already outdated itself in my mind.

Yeah, I got that. But going off about how unappreciated the entertainers are while the other creators get all these imaginary subsidies is just false, and obvious. It's an attempt to create a division where none really exists, or in the best case, to say, "But mommmmmmmm, his slice of cake is bigger than miiiiiiiine!"

If someone wants to argue for keeping dwell, they can do it without trying to pit entertainers vs. other content creators, and they'll get a lot farther. Otherwise, it's just a call for drama and fighting. If that's what you call for, that's what you'll get.

I'm not an event host, and I say keep dwell. It's a reward for creating content that people want, just as my reward is someone buying my stuff. If no one wants your content, you shouldn't get paid for it. But don't try and tell me how much Linden support and subsidy I already get for creating content, because I've been doing it for a year, and I get none.

Absolutely, and I would as well.

- Jon

Well for the sake of argument I suppose the Linden labs could remove the content and scripting tools from SL and put them in a seperate application, since much of the content creation requires knowledge of third party programs. If one want to to build or create colthes or script objects, this could all be on in the third party software (or the lindens own software) and then we could pay to upload it into sl.

the event listing feature, putting pink and blue stars on the map, showing green dots on map, listing popular places, these are indirect support for event creators - in fact using the event system for advertising makes people cranky.

there are also the forum groups for events.

This little pep talk presupposes that I don't love building, too. Or that I wouldn't be good at it, too.

I think many of Jonquille's points are well taken.

Yes, entertainment does require huge amounts of time and effort before even putting it on, as that example of that charity event mentioned earlier shows.

Jake, the prim allotment is tied to tier - you get more prims the more land you buy and pay tier on.

Taking up for entertainers in the game and pointing out what I believe to be an imbalance is hardly being "divisive." I don't know why people keep making that accusation, but I imagine it is self-serving. Seems to me anybody taking the opposite side of anything could always be accused of being "divisive." It's ridiculous. It's just trying to make the other person stop talking.

coco

The different occupations are already there, and their different rewards are already there. I didn't invent them. I'm just discussing them.

coco

And I don't see this discussion as particulalry divisive, nor do i see anyone with any intent to divide the community. The use of a discriptor to discuss prevailing trends does not in itself have to ploarize the community. I think the fact that we have had thread upon thread of discussion on these issues makes the valid.

But the point that these dynamics may not exist, and may be the artifical product of the forums is a valid one. But I don't think Coco, or I, oranyone else intends to polarize this discussion.


I suppose I had not thought about the event listing on the map, that is a good point. I also sort of leave the forums out of it, because I see them as sort of universally applicable. I think the forums have done a very good job of supporting every part of the community.

at one point ll gave everyone 2500 l$ because of problems with sl. this caused a big dip in the value of the l$. so adding money to the economy also, note that the value of l$ has been around $4/l$1000 (+/- 5%) for months. this has been as over the period that ll has been reducing the amount of money coming into the sl economy through subsidies.the trick is that if the reward is in l$ and the value of the l$ goes down, then the reward isn't worth much. the point of subsidies would be moot.

the event system gets better direct subsidies through dwell and develeper incentives than any other sector of sl.