What's The Matter With Events?

I just read the following in game under EVENTS while looking for something interesting to do today.

"sorry all. costs me 30K L$ to host a month... since not a group and no help from SL.. why do I pay US$125 a month and 1000L$ a day for games? that is 30K linden a month... so sorry all and ty for the support but that is just stupid to pay over US$250 a month for YOUR games. Thanks to the few but generous tippers.. and fu to those who host also but never tip.(including others hosts... look in the mirror.. I see you) Sad and lonely but 2 months later I can not justify the money"

Sad but true. Other than Tringo and the heavy hitter clubs who strive to make money on Dwell and who have many co-hosts to man their events, there has been a definite drop in interesting events since payment to host (a measley $250 Ls and $500 for prize money) stopped.

To the long standing resident of SL who posted the above, I can relate. There is NO way I can attract the people I used to to my PG trivia/gaming events at FunLand anymore. Funland is tucked away in my inventory and the land was sold after I tiered down.

Please IM Iron Perth. We will replace the funding you previously received from LL.

All we ask in return is that you simply and briefly make all event attendees aware of our products and services.

Somewhat a duplicate forum, I think.

No Pay? No Play forum

I wonder when people will actually start charging admission to play games / attend a club event / etc.

For instance, 25L / hour to play Tringo @ 4 people constantly = 100L an hour = 2400L a day = 1000L a day + 1400L -> 42000L / month -> GOM -> $160 a month US.

Now, I can't see why, if Tringo alone peaks at 20-30 players at a time, that someone can't average 4 players an hour all day, and completely cover all costs. 25L / hour seems to me like a reasonably small fee - 10 cents an hour US$ with the possibility of winning money.

I attended a Trivia Event last week where the host charged admission. There were all of three people in attendance.

I'd say we've reached the point where many events are seen to have less value, so nobody attends. You can only attend so many Tringo games, hot thong contests, and dance-all-night-clubbing-whatevers before you realize "Oh, they're in it for the dwell/traffic aren't they."

Not all, of course -- but it is more apparent now that the 'Event Welfare' has been shut down.

Perhaps one day, we'll have less full event calendars, however the events there will have more substance than standing around in someone's dwell-hole.

25L is half a person's base stipend for the average player nowadays; game players might not be hoarding in ratings or selling lots of products to have a stipend that would be able to fund their gaming in this manner.

Alternativly you could argue that for a mere $4.50 you can buy L$1000, that's 40 weeks stipend for those players you're refering to. Almost a whole years worth of stipend for just $4.50

In my early days I used to hold mature classes, charging admission fee. Because of mature subject, at the time the events did not qualify for support money from Linden Lab.

People attended and were willing to pay. So I was able achieve hourly income that was somewhere between normal event hosting income and what quality escort earns. I considered this most natural activity. I teach for money in RL. So why not teach for money in SL? And I even thought it would benefit SL more if I could earn money without adding strain to social welfare system in Second Life.

But the prize I had to pay for this was high. People, some who themselves charged others 1000+ L$ per hour for escorting, started talking bad about me. It was all about "bad Anshe" ripping people off for something that ought to be free.

It was then when I first realized that in Second Life there were "good" ways to earn money and "bad" ways to earn money. "Good" was basically what was generally accepted and most people or the most influential people were doing.

The "good" and "ethical" ways to make money in SL:

- Creating content once, then selling thousands of copies to new arrivals for months. Even ripping off textures from the internet or imitating RL brands was not considered any problem.

- Charging one person 1000+ L$ per hour for "escorting".

- Holding 30 minutes "SHOW ME UR AV" events and collecting 1000 L$ support money from Linden Lab, keeping 500, spreading 500 in prizes among your friends.

- Renting land or mall booths to other people

- Building games/art/exhibits and earning dwell and developer awards.

On the other hand it was considered by certain people as "shady", "rip-off" and outright "unethical" to earn money by:

- Charging admission to events instead of relying on welfare money

- Trading: such as buying and selling land. It was perfectly fine to rent out your land at 5 time tier cost, but reselling land with 20% margin was not.

- Building club communities and earning dwell and developer awards with clubs.

In my case this was especially interesting. It meant that it was perfectly fine to rely on government subsidy for events, while take admission fee from residents was frowned upon.

So I held classes several times and they also used to be well attended. But at some stage I stopped. Because when I did not teach class, it took me 2 hours create one new dress and nobody was there counting how much money I earned with it and telling me what one hour of my time should be worth. So why should I bother spend effort on creating better classes or events if I can earn more money create and sell content? Why get loathed for spend 2 hours to sell 10 tickets for event if I can spend 2 hours to make and sell hundreds of copies of one item?

If you ask me why there is lack of high quality events and no high profile teachers or entertainers charging tickets then I say it is what I just described above. If somebody with talent would really set up one quality show or class and sell, say, 100 tickets for 250 L$ each, then everybody would count the whopping 25000 L$ (= 100 US$) he or she would be making "in just one hour". Some people would bitch "greedy". Others would be motivated by misguided idealism and spend much effort rip-off the idea and provide similar show/class for free - just to proove one point.

Only once Second Life community stop try count other people's hourly income, some of the high earners will give up discretion of content baroning and become your event barons and stars. Until then event hosting will be limited to the middle class and those admirable individuals who are willing to work for less than what their time is really worth.

The event calendar was full of duplicate events at the same location when I checked. Around 5-6 duplicates/day for at least two places.

I thought we could only have 1 event of a certain type every day?? Did that change?

For aprox 3 or 4 weeks now all there seems to be is TRINGO and as much as I enjoyed it..there are NO events, I am BORED...i just mill about my store..looking at the same old tringo/bingo/slingo events and recall the prim guessing game events and word game events..
i came from There.com and the VERY same thing happened there...the small but important hosting credits were stopped...and on top of the monthly fees player pay to own land to entertain There.coms PAYING players...its a slap in the face...I mean who REALLY gains from this?

Surely you stop the fun and players stop logging in...money stops coming in...land sales have took a nose dive Ive noticed is that due to this too?

I had no idea about the hosting issues but I know Ive noticed a daily dull lack of ANYTHING interesting to do

BIG BIG BIG error Linden Labs...dont follow the footsteps of There.com...please?

Didn't change. Just that the system doesn't prevent it, and the Lindens (I don't think) check the calendar as often or thoroughly as they used to.

Of course, there *could* be more than one person billing these events since most places with constantly running "events" tend to have more than one person on staff.

nobody i hang out with goes to events and that's been how it is for months before the funding changes. funny thing tho is there's plenty of fun to be had without events. it's almost like events don't really matter in the big scheme of things.

anyways the solution isn't money for events or subsidies or whatever. the solution is use some imagination and make events that don't put people to sleep just reading the list. either way SL's doing fine and not dying.

Concerning Bingo/Tringo/SLingo take over I can only say that I sponsor all events the same. I was not even used give out prize money, so somebody attract 20 people for discussion meeting would receive same sponsoring as somebody who do Tringo and spends much money on pots.

It simply happened that those games events attracted most visitors. This in turn motivated many of my hosts to do less other events and more Tringo events. I saw same happening in places owned by other people.

I guess Tringo has become for Second Life what monster hunting has become for Everquest: it is activity many people enjoy and at same time allows them to advance in the game by winning L$.

Linden Labs has been slowly moving towards the There.com model since 2003, when they figured out, "Hey, people will pay money for virtual stuff." Granted, I've met people at LL and they seem to have the community in their thoughts moreso.

That and like There.com, you may be able to age-regulate, but you can't intelect-regulate, so everything gets dumbed down to the lowest common demoninator. Maybe this is LL's way to get the people who survive off immaturity to vacate.

This will interesting to see how many more closures people have over the next few months.

lol maybe I should run an event to get people to come up with different events.

Here Here!

Its the same old BS which ever virtual world you goto...the rich get richer looking down their noses as the les luckier skilled worshipped try to scrape a virtual living just to avoid BUYING linden ( never mind making that much they can sell it ) whilst the rich maintain their high morals and ethics preaching about politicaly correct earning within the community...it sickens me to be honest.

I dont CARE if something I buy was created by the person who sold it..cuz to me my money is just being recycled back into SL economy and if the person I bought it from had teh good business sense to advertise the product, display it and set a price good enough to make me want to buy it then thats fine by me..so long as were not lying theiving its 'fair game' I 'could' go on about escorting and how ppl can preach ethics when escorting and all that often goes with it happens and happens a LOT is considered 'ok' but re selling an item some-one else created isnt...is beyond my understanding.

As for Textures being 'ripped off the net' I have loaded 1200 ripped from the net textures into SL and sell them from my store, ppl are and should be happy to pay 10L$ per texture as thats what it costs me to upload it AND to take the time out to find it on the NET downlaod it to my PC and convert it to jpg or tga format...they are paying for the service time and conveniance of not having to do all the above them selves...I dont consider texture stores a rip off at all...is has cost me 12K just to upload my 'stock'

Events...well Linden labs made a huge error stopping credits...I hadnt known about this descison but it makes perfect sense as teh last 3 weeks have been bad bad bad on the events list.. i was JUST about to start hosting my own out of shear BORDOM and sick of tringo events 24/7 but am i misunderstadning this? Do I have to PAY to host events now?

There is a major lack of anything to do other than clubs & tringo...a society wont stay true for long without good varied entertainment...so there needs to be a recall of THAT decision * what ever it was as I am still unclear*

Ok im done LOL

I fully agree. If you like host some form of entertainment you feel missing I suggest contact me in world or via my website. I also want see more fun activities for people and am willing to sponsor interesting events on my land with 250-1000 L$ per event

Every now and then I can't stand it anymore and host trivia or yatzhee and pay out of my pocket. I used to have a lot coming to trivia, but the few times I have held it lately, very few show, even though I am paying $L for correct answers. Everyone still seems to be in love with Tringo, which I also enjoy. Don't know what the solution is, and I will still host contests from time to time and fund them.

Bored? Play some SL games - http://wiki.tinypirate.com

Chess, Deus Via, Mah Jong, etc etc etc, it's all there. Go look, there are some superb games in SL and good fun to be had alone or with a friend of three.

PC

Mud slingers and propogandists use the technique of innacurate language. It circumvents real discussion by stimulating emotion in place of logic. Events hosts never received welfare. They received money for which they provided Lindens and the community at large content. This money was tied to one's effort. It would more accurately be phrased as 'wages' than 'welfare'. Welfare is something one gets to support oneself at the very lowest possible rung. The SL welfare is the $50/month that basic users get.

Went to boxing match. Paid to enter and worth every penny. Would have paid double. Great laugh. felt like really going to an event. If it's worth it I'd definately pay and tip for events. Nice to go to something different. And lots of spectators heckling the bums that climbed into the ring, and just having fun. Lots were saying it was the best fun they had in SL.

I'd like to propose the First Annual Make Jack Lambert Wealthy Just Because We Can Event

Basically it costs you L$250 to show up.

You gain nothing, I get rich. I smile a lot from then on. Maybe you can be my friend?

--Jack Lambert

I don't know nothing about nothing but I do know that Tringo, Slingo, Zlingo and whatever bore the everloving life out of me. Those things may be for some people but not for all of us. I tried having a non-XXX dancing and music event and while it was well attended we crashed the SIM too much for me to want to hold another one in Vail.

My question is what do people want? I would hold events every day if I could figure out what people really want.

Straw man!