Philip Linden on Zoning

thanks Pol! And you're right, I'm not a leader.... just someone who had an idea that other people seemed to like. Being "in charge" doesn't interest me in the least. Although i do feel somewhat of a responsibility to keep Boardman griefer free if I can.

I agree that Ingrid's style has been to be quiet and go about her business. But, I don't make too much of quietude, not being a quiet type myself, as you know, but being someone who has definitely put their money where their mouth is, at far above the level that Ingrid has put her "non-mouth" at, although of course part of what Ingrid's mouth shtick in the forums has been, as part of her quietude approach, has been to regularly, often, and frequently snipe and belittle me in forums. What-ever! Honestly Pol, you don't know me, fly around my communities a little while, then talk. There are no picket fences. They don't have the artistic elan of a Boardman, which is largely due to Barnesworth Anubis (an interesting example of someone who is actually quite modest even while effecting a funny persona of blatant self-promotion). But my communities are something, too. And they show what you can do when you do NOT have Lindens helping you behind the scenes like Boardman, when you do NOT have a pre-existing Linden zoned sim, when you do NOT have the fawning fetedness of older players lovingly lavishing on you free stuff, advice, investmens, etc. but just take the raw tools and circumstances of the game and run with them.

Who are the actions-speak-louder-than-words types in Grignano and Miramare? Oh my word. You cannot be serious! Look at their names, and look at their post counts here on the forums ROFL.

Pol, I know it makes for a great myth. The quiet-but-efficient determined Ingrid! Making a beautiful sim! But at least part of Ingrid's success comes from people like me outside of Boardman buying lots of her houses (even if most don't rent!). Part of her success is explained by LINDENS -- a Linden-zoned sim! Lindens quietly in the background doing stuff like removing all those dumb brown palm trees they had inflicted on the previous residents on Linden land. And so on. So while it's a very touching picture, to have lovely Lindens, lovely Ingrid, lovely older players all get together and All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (servers that work, we hope) make Happy Little Trees, it just isn't enough to build our world.

I'm sorry if I've had to sound really nasty and snarky to make these points. I do it so that you can all stop trying to hold up for replicating and feting something that is NOT a model. It cannot work for the rest of the grid. Because the Lindens aren't going to be everywhere. There isn't going to be any Ingrid. And there aren't going to be little coteries of fawning older players giving free stuff. Most people, in this world, are going to be on their own.

Actually in Grignano, as far as I know, Cua, Sal and Lordfly don't spend time in world with each other at all.



Oh I didn't know they were prima donnas.... you met them? Probably not but you just felt like insulting someone again.




Why?

A person really like this, Ingrid, would not be posting on these forums QUITE so frequently!!!! And...if you aren't "in charge," why did you react in such horror to my old proposal to have a tier-donation and tier-sharing scheme?

Panda I'm going to get you...

I just said about 3 posts up, that it can't be used as a business model...

Edit to add: I would watch Adam and Nexus closely if anyone's interested in seeing a zoned sim business model. Those guys seem to have a plan.

Wha? There are plenty of people who post in the forums who dont want to be in charge of anything... look at panda.

Tier donation from you? Oh i dunno... probably because, based on previous experiences with you, I figured you'd bite me in the ass with any help you gave me.

They wouldn't need to. They understand each other with but a word, a nod, a gesture. They are part of the same network. It is the name that dare not speak its name...

You didn't have to do tier donation WITH ME, you could do it with OTHER PEOPLE. Did you? This is what I kept explaining. My support of Boardman wasn't to "take over your land," but merely to support your project. Oh, well. You don't need me!

I agree Adam and Nexus have a plan, and that plan involves trying to make money, and given various factors, and given the harsh reality of the rental business and its thin or non-existence margins and poor economics, I'm going to bet that they won't be in the rentals business per so for long, or at least, will supplement their flat or loss sales from rentals with other cash cows like malls, and customer service queue-ups will become to be an issue.


Oh, I'm not talking about people on Miramare and Grignano I don't know. Oh, never that. No, I'm talking about people I know all too well, and people you know all too well

Buh-bye.

http://conspiracy.freewebspace.com/inner-freemasonry.gif



(I like panda's approach )

Like I said, you don't understand satire ROFL.

I made the post about Ingrid simply because you mentioned her specifically, and I know her and her work. I was not trying to disparage by exclusion the work you've done in your own communities, into which I know you've put a lot of effort.

Face it, as far as belittling you goes, you've intentionally made yourself a big target, and the "He-Man Prokofy Haters Club" has a large and diverse membership. Ingrid is not unique in this respect.


Barnesworth is certainly someone whose work (and bad-boy av) I admire, no question. And artistic elan is something I value, so I will naturally favor it over a build that is purely functional. As far as Boardman goes, I used to have land there. I sold it, because Boardman was uninteresting at the time. What happened in Boardman was not a super-secret process of insider negotiations and networking; it was simply a group of friends doing something together, lead by Ingrid's example. At the time I owned land there, pretty much anyone could have moved in, bought up half the land (cheap), and started a theme. Where I just gave up on the sim, Ingrid saw potential and did something. The difference between Ingrid and "anyone" is that Ingrid actually did it.

I notice you using the word "feted" when words like "friendly," "involved," and "accomplished" would be more accurate. "Feted" is born of jealousy, and should be beneath you.


Offhand I can think of Tiger Crossing, Marcos Fonzarelli, and Lordfly Digeridoo. Do some of them have a significant presence in the forums? Certainly. Do they have an even bigger presence in-world? Definitely. They are all people who, more than anything, do stuff.


You can try to make it into a myth, but really you're overcomplicating things (as is your habit). I've seen how Ingrid works. She buys a plot of land, she puts a nice build down on it, and people admire it. Then she does it again. Why are people willing to help Ingrid? Because she's a a nice person, doing something interesting. No one is being forced to buy her prefabs, they must like them. Getting the Lindens to remove palm trees? I'm pretty sure that anyone with a compelling reason to do so could persuade the Lindens (who do make an effort to be helpful and involved with the community) to do something so simple to improve a sim. It's not a conspiracy, it's just someone doing something. Quite the opposite of a myth.


I'm used to nasty and snarky from you Prokofy. You are a nasty, unpleasant, overbearing windbag whose posts clog these forums like wet, filthy hair in a drain. I made a simple statement about Ingrid's form of leadership, and you replied with your usual bitter, convoluted, operatic, and incorrect opinions. I don't for a second believe that you are sorry, and you should be, because Ingrid is a great example for would-be builders.

clearly I don't understand Prokofy's satire
http://www.benisadork.com/images/robot/dumb.jpg

I'm not trying to make Ingrid into a myth, YOU are LOL. Trust me, I know Ingrid, and I've known her since TSO days. I know what Ingrid's about. That makes me less susceptible to the Ingrid hagiography that's going on here ROFL.

It's great that Ingrid buys a plot of land, put a build on it, lather, rinse repeat. Guess what? I do that too! I just don't do the building, but hey, I know I'm a second-class citizen, then, mm? Funny thing is, I even put INGRID's buildings down! And they don't rent, mostly. And that's not a slam on Ingrid or her work actually, because I keep on buying and renting out Ingrid's houses. It's just a recognition of the reality of mass taste.

BTW, I started just a tiny thing like Ingrid -- nothing as fancy -- in Brown, a similar zoned sim but with less space available and more ugliness due to those ugly brown palm trees.

And even with my nasting and grating personality, I found that the Lindens who still zone this sim, were perfectly nice about answering questions, and putting out stuff, and explaning that they were going to fix stuff. They do that because they're Lindens, and they'll do it for me or Ingrid, that's the great thing about Lindens -- more or less (with some important exceptions), you don't have to be popular and "nice" to get a Linden to just do their jobs (well, most of the time).

The Lindens didn't remove the palm trees on Brown perhaps as fast as they removed them from beloved Ingrid's Boardman, but hey, I'm easy, I'm in it for the long-term, and I'm recognizing that their lack of alacrity on the brown-palm-trees thing might have something to do with their being busy, including busy on Brown rebuilding the whole marketplace on that sim (thank God those ugly stalls are finally being replaced).

Nobody says it's a conspiracy, Pol. It's unfortunate that forums and the Internet just reverberate like a fucking wind tunnel. I don't say it is a conspiracy. I say it's about friendship and connections, including to Lindens. Maybe they are the kind of nice little connections of friends and Lindens that are perfectly legitmate and make the world go round, but they are still friends and connections! Please! Let's not be children here!

Let me say that some people respond well to flattery when they take on a leadership role, however unsung

There's no bitter evil conspiracy of the FIC. Half the FIC doesn't even know it's the FIC on a good day, soaking wet. The FIC is a pattern of behaviour I've called and have passed judgement upon. I believe that to be a legitimate activity and a contribution to the further development of the game: the opening up of the portals of the game from the clutching of the tightly-knit, highly-skilled, artistic core which helped to develop it so that it can be of more appeal to the ordinary public. This is reasonable. This is just. My way of doing it isn't pretty. But it's a job that has to be done.

In Brown, even though she doesn't like, me, Ingrid donated 2 houses (a 3rd she donated was placed elsewhere). That's reasonable, I've bought tons of her houses for my communities. She wanted to display her work. I was happy to do so. She probably hates me more now and wouldn't help on a thing like Brown now, but back then, while through gritted teeth, she at least landscaped one of her houses just for the overall cause of making a sim look good and displaying her work.

It didn't rent.

Trust me, it's not because of my sterling persona. I would say 90 percent of the people renting from me in the game never heard of me and the 10 percent who heard of me from the forums don't care. Even those who hate me understand that you can right-click on a rentals box and have a nice waterfront property without being somebody's bosom buddy -- that's how modern commerce in the modern world works (it's that retreat from the modern world which we see from the faux-innovative Internet that actually gives us this horribly conservative tribalism and closed societies of sectarianism).

Now...where does Brown stand today, some 45 days or so since I first bought plots in it? Well, one tenant asked to have one of Ingrid's houses removed, as is his right under my system, and he put down his own house. Another tenant opted for one of Barnes' Boardman-style houses which I had purchased. A third tried another Ingrid house for a bit but left quickly, because the thing we're all forgetting here about Brown and Boardman is that they are PG, and people just do NOT feel comfortable and free in PG!

Even "being an asshole and not having any friends", I still got 2 people to rent the plots. And thanks to Khamon Fate, who really doesn't like my posts here, 2 other parcels in Brown that I had missed being for sale were purchased and will be available for rent. He just did that for the good of the cause, for which I thank him. It's an example of how people can do things for the good of the game.

Now, why isn't Brown going to be the coveted thing of Boardman? Well, Brown has some high-end artists, too, some really big names, but they never log in or show up, they are either busy in RL or on other sims doing big projects of other sorts. And my lots at least are for rent. They aren't for friends to just come in and move into for free. I don't just pay tier on land and invite my friends throughout the game (I do a little bit of that but not much or I'd go broke). I don't have nightly happy rezzing sessions around the pool where everybody can have a rollicking good time like you have in the artist-enclave bastion of Boardman. Boardman is the thing it is becuase of the people who form a closenit circle and come and hang out and rez stuff together in their little closenit kewl circle.

That's great. But you have to figure out how it will work for the rest of us.

I suspect I'm never going to be able to have Brown completely running full tilt and rented out always (and losing money because for PG I can only charge like $200/512). And it won't be due to my "sterling personality". Trust me, I could make an unknown alt none of you had never heard of, and the same market-tested realities will occur: in fact, zoned sims, especially PG sims, aren't as attracted to players as the perception, if not the reality, of their own freedom.

You are such a disingenuous prat.

Honestly Prok, yes, we should.
We expect LL to care about their profitability. Investors consider that rational interest on LL's part as one datum in the constelation of variables that must be considered in risk analysis, as I'm sure that you know, better than I.

LOL - One day you'll do some research into what you talk about rather than just spout off whatever theory pops into your head

There was no 'special circumstances' there is NO leadership - just a bunch of folks that bought some land bit by bit... Who decided it was more fun to build with some cooperation rather than piss each other off..