Second Life Forums Archive - Another curious economic exercise

Eloise Pasteur

Curious Individual

Join date: 14 Jul 2004

Posts: 1,952

02-20-2006 05:46

Either I'm being thick, or someone else is.

I've been experimenting a little over the last few days and it appears that, roughly speaking, an avie's dwell is worth about L$1/hour. (It might be per 40 minutes, or per 90 minutes, but it's close enough.)

Method: I've had an alt camped over a plot of my land for a known number of hours each day and looked at the variations in my dwell. It's not 100% robust as I get dwell from other places too, but my daily dwell essentially doesn't change ±$1 typically, and I get pretty much $1/hour that I've been alt-camping.

Now I understand, although I've not tried it personally, that there are camping chairs tied to gambling etc. so the more you gamble the more you "earn back" per 10 minutes or so, that makes some sort of sense - the casino owner is paying you from your own money essentially.

But a quick trawl through find revealed several places that don't seem to tie to a casino or similar and typically offer $24-30 per hour ($4-5 per 10 minutes).

OK, I guess camping puts you higher on the find list, that's not necessarily to be sneezed at. Presumably the owners hope for queues to sit in a chair. Presumably they also hope waiting people will spend money in other ways (although it seems a little unlikely, they're there to get money, why should they have any over to pay you with?).

Money trees made sense as a gift to newbies combined with a relatively nice way to show newbies your wares - it was a known risk rate after all.

But my curiosity is piqued. What am I missing, how do they make the books balance, or is it a write off as advertising overhead?

Kris Ritter

paradoxical embolism

Join date: 31 Oct 2003

Posts: 6,627

02-20-2006 06:24

hehe. your post reminded me of this article on 'making money' in SL - and other harsh endictments - http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=3330

I tried to pare this down to some shorter quotes, but frankly it works better in context.

From: someone

...

You’d think this wacky bunch of Whyte Ave-meets-Night Breed misfits would have a lot to talk about, but there’s really not much to say. We’re all just “camping”—in exchange for keeping his establishment’s traffic numbers up, the proprietor’s programmed the stools to pay us out two bucks for every five minutes we sit here.

All we have to do is jiggle the mouse every 20 minutes so we don’t fall asleep at the bar. Camps like this are the cornerstone of the Second Life economy.

The exchange rate sits at about one American dollar to 250 Second Life Lindens, but if you’re not putting real-world money into your wolf-man’s pocket, there are lots of ways to build up a stake in this virtual reality.

For one, you can literally pick money off trees. You have to get there first, of course; this morning there was an hour or so of system downtime, and when things came back up, I raced like a madman around the SL globe, teleporting from money tree to money tree.

Six trees and 25 Lindens later, things started to dry up. There was somebody by the name of “Fried Fish”—the trees record the names of their harvesters—one jump ahead of me. I caught up with him at a money tree in the lobby of a shitty virtual art museum, an open-air tower slathered with imported .jpgs of famous paintings, and he turned out to be an OK guy; he gave me some cash-harvesting pointers and tipped me off to a couple of trees that were still loaded with cash after he’d taken his limit.

Thanks partially to his info—it probably didn’t hurt that I was wearing my cutest hippy-girl shape—I came out of an hour and a half of money-picking with about 80 bucks.

And then I dropped it all at the casino. If camping is the cornerstone of this economy of over 100 000 consumers, gambling is the rest of the damn building. You can’t /SPIT without hitting a slot machine, poker table, wheel of fortune or raffle box.

...

Yeah, the American Dream dies hard, even in the limitless realms of the fantasynet. Check out any neighbourhood in SL; beyond the lingerie malls, porno shops, casinos and cheesy streaming-audio discotheques populated by animatronic dance-campers, there lies hillside after crammed-up hillside of participants’ personal palaces, vast favelas of countless bleak McMansions furnished with virtual Nice Things and idle cyber-sextoys.

At first I thought 'ouch!'. But having thought about it, that sounds about right *shrug*

_____________________

Jesrad Seraph

Nonsense

Join date: 11 Dec 2004

Posts: 1,463

02-20-2006 06:38

Camping chairs the cornerstone of SL's economy, ya rite

_____________________

Either Man can enjoy universal freedom, or Man cannot. If it is possible then everyone can act freely if they don't stop anyone else from doing same. If it is not possible, then conflict will arise anyway so punch those that try to stop you. In conclusion the only strategy that wins in all cases is that of doing what you want against all adversity, as long as you respect that right in others.

Jamie Bergman

SL's Largest Distributor

Join date: 17 Feb 2005

Posts: 1,752

02-20-2006 06:52

From: Eloise Pasteur

But my curiosity is piqued. What am I missing, how do they make the books balance, or is it a write off as advertising overhead?

I use camping chairs as a way to give back to the community. Generally, the poorest or newest players sit in them, so I see it as a great way to make a contribution to SL's newest citizens.

Kris Ritter

paradoxical embolism

Join date: 31 Oct 2003

Posts: 6,627

02-20-2006 07:25

Yah. So after a day of sitting in a camping chair, they can afford to go buy some freebies!

_____________________

Jamie Bergman

SL's Largest Distributor

Join date: 17 Feb 2005

Posts: 1,752

02-20-2006 07:31

From: Kris Ritter

Yah. So after a day of sitting in a camping chair, they can afford to go buy some freebies!

You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us.

We're all part of the circle of life.

Candide LeMay

Registered User

Join date: 30 Dec 2004

Posts: 538

02-20-2006 07:32

Each avatar has a fixed amount of some sort of dwell points that are distributed proportionally to the time spent on parcels (minimum is 5 minutes I think). So if you spend 30 minutes on parcel A and then 30 minutes on parcel B and then log off for the day, each parcel gets half of your dwell points. The same happens if you spend 5 hours on each - it's not to total time that counts but the percentage of the time you're inworld.

Camping places pay for staying to ensure you don't spend your time anywhere else and they get all (or most of) your dwell points. Because if you spend one hour camping, and one hour in a sandbox, the camping place gets only half of your dwell.

_____________________

"If Mel Gibson and other cyberspace writers are right, one day the entire internet will be like Second Life." -- geldonyetich

Lewis Nerd

Nerd by name and nature!

Join date: 9 Oct 2005

Posts: 3,431

02-20-2006 07:56

From: Jamie Bergman

You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us.

Community minded business owners? Really?

How about all the other players who don't get any visitors because they're all flocking like zombies - literally - to places with camping chairs.

If you really cared about the community.... you'd get rid of the chairs so people visited places and stayed there because they were good - not because they were being paid to sit there.

There are many places - myself included - who offer a quality experience but hardly get any visitors for the simple reason that we don't pay people to come and see them. Meaning our skill isn't rewarded, and thus we don't reach any 'popularity' list.

Any idiot can put a box together and stick some camping chairs on it - after all, who cares what the build is like if nobody's there?

Camping chairs are simply an admission that you don't have what it takes to be successful without bribing people. End of story.

Lewis

_____________________

Second Life Stratics - your new premier resource for all things Second Life. Free to join, sign up today!

Pocket Protector Projects - Rosieri 90,234,84 - building and landscaping services

Eloise Pasteur

Curious Individual

Join date: 14 Jul 2004

Posts: 1,952

02-20-2006 08:00

Ah, I must live in a very secluded part of SL. I think my nearest camping chair site, and casino, same place inevitably, are about 1km away from home.

The last time I was in such a place - well not in this month.

It does make me wonder what the poor person that wrote that will do when they're too old for money trees! It also makes me wonder why dammit. They're talking about the American dream apparently without seeing the irony of the fact that by chasing the bucks this way they're simply living a different part of it.

Barbarra Blair

Short Person

Join date: 18 Apr 2004

Posts: 588

02-20-2006 08:20

I have nothing against camping chairs, but they shouldn't be listed on the calendar as "events."

_____________________

--Obvious Lady

Kris Ritter

paradoxical embolism

Join date: 31 Oct 2003

Posts: 6,627

02-20-2006 08:26

From: Jamie Bergman

You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us.

We're all part of the circle of life.

It's not really any kinda noble notion of a circle of life when there are people pretending to give with one hand then stealing and ripping people off with the other. Sure, the real community minded business owners are genuinely giving back to the community as you say. And then others are just parasites who prey on them - til often they just stop giving at all.

_____________________

Sara Sullivan

Registered User

Join date: 21 Nov 2005

Posts: 211

Circle of Life?

02-20-2006 08:41

Originally Posted by Jamie Bergman
You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us.

We're all part of the circle of life.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah yes I get it now
Hyenas , vultures,....right?

Ordinal Malaprop

really very ordinary

Join date: 9 Sep 2005

Posts: 4,607

02-20-2006 09:08

I can't be the only person who thinks that new players are helped far more by giving them advice, directions, building tips, freebies etc, rather than money. Even a landmark to Yadni's Junkyard is going to provide a lot more fun for them than having them spend hours in a camping chair and then buy a pair of shoes with the proceeds.

Games Prototype

Force Recon Sniper

Join date: 4 Aug 2004

Posts: 159

02-20-2006 09:57

From: Barbarra Blair

I have nothing against camping chairs, but they shouldn't be listed on the calendar as "events."

I fully agree with you barbarra. Camping chairs shouldn't be in the events. Camping is not an event, and shouldn't be posted as such. I only post my VGI casino in the classifieds where it should be. I myself am baffled at how these other places who don't have camping chairs linked to their slots are providing so much money to these parasites that feed off of them. I know I have a few people who have about 10 alts sitting in my casino camping chairs. That is why I was forced to put limits on the earnings so its the people who are there to play the games and actually have fun that can make the money.

But lets kill the rabbit and get back on the trail. All of this talk about the dwell and camping chairs are starting to get a little futile now seeing as dwell and developer incentives are about to go away next month. we will see how many of these camping chair locations still clog up the events then.

You ask "Why are there so many casinos in SL?" I tell you why. because from the dawn of SL time, people have always asked the same question in SL. How do I get money? Not how do I make money in SL, but how do I get it. People want something for nothing, and everyone turns to gambling to get "FAST CASH!" Yes, I will say the cash is there, but just like in RL, there are those who will lose the money so that others can win it.

Gambling is a disease in SL that makes some rich and most poor. But people keep coming back and blowing all the money again. I have run casinos in SL for 2 years now, and I could honestly say I have seen it all. It really suprised me after I took a 6 month vacation from SL, to come back on and find that casino owners were using camping chairs to get people to come to the casino in hopes that they would play. This kinda backfired on them as I talked to one casino owner who was losing 16K/day to camping chair payouts.

Why you ask do people sit in camping chairs? The same reason they gamble. something for nothing. Yes you all know that I am the original creator of the casino camping chair system where the camping chairs are linked to slot machines. maybe its the fact that where the business is at its strongest, that is where the business men will go. Like a moth to the flame.

_____________________

Life is serious, Games are fun. Enjoy your second life.

Introvert Petunia

over 2 billion posts

Join date: 11 Sep 2004

Posts: 2,065

02-20-2006 10:11

From: Jamie Bergman

You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us.

We're all part of the circle of life.

You were able to say that with a straight face? Impressive.

Argent Stonecutter

Emergency Mustelid

Join date: 20 Sep 2005

Posts: 20,263

02-20-2006 14:41

From: Jamie Bergman

We're all part of the circle of life.

So's gangrene, and leprosy, and genetically enhanced smallpox.

Welcome to the Second Life Forums Archive

Another curious economic exercise - camping

Another curious economic exercise - camping
Eloise Pasteur Curious Individual Join date: 14 Jul 2004 Posts: 1,952	02-20-2006 05:46 Either I'm being thick, or someone else is. I've been experimenting a little over the last few days and it appears that, roughly speaking, an avie's dwell is worth about L$1/hour. (It might be per 40 minutes, or per 90 minutes, but it's close enough.) Method: I've had an alt camped over a plot of my land for a known number of hours each day and looked at the variations in my dwell. It's not 100% robust as I get dwell from other places too, but my daily dwell essentially doesn't change ±$1 typically, and I get pretty much $1/hour that I've been alt-camping. Now I understand, although I've not tried it personally, that there are camping chairs tied to gambling etc. so the more you gamble the more you "earn back" per 10 minutes or so, that makes some sort of sense - the casino owner is paying you from your own money essentially. But a quick trawl through find revealed several places that don't seem to tie to a casino or similar and typically offer $24-30 per hour ($4-5 per 10 minutes). OK, I guess camping puts you higher on the find list, that's not necessarily to be sneezed at. Presumably the owners hope for queues to sit in a chair. Presumably they also hope waiting people will spend money in other ways (although it seems a little unlikely, they're there to get money, why should they have any over to pay you with?). Money trees made sense as a gift to newbies combined with a relatively nice way to show newbies your wares - it was a known risk rate after all. But my curiosity is piqued. What am I missing, how do they make the books balance, or is it a write off as advertising overhead?
Kris Ritter paradoxical embolism Join date: 31 Oct 2003 Posts: 6,627	02-20-2006 06:24 hehe. your post reminded me of this article on 'making money' in SL - and other harsh endictments - http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=3330 I tried to pare this down to some shorter quotes, but frankly it works better in context. From: someone ... You’d think this wacky bunch of Whyte Ave-meets-Night Breed misfits would have a lot to talk about, but there’s really not much to say. We’re all just “camping”—in exchange for keeping his establishment’s traffic numbers up, the proprietor’s programmed the stools to pay us out two bucks for every five minutes we sit here. All we have to do is jiggle the mouse every 20 minutes so we don’t fall asleep at the bar. Camps like this are the cornerstone of the Second Life economy. The exchange rate sits at about one American dollar to 250 Second Life Lindens, but if you’re not putting real-world money into your wolf-man’s pocket, there are lots of ways to build up a stake in this virtual reality. For one, you can literally pick money off trees. You have to get there first, of course; this morning there was an hour or so of system downtime, and when things came back up, I raced like a madman around the SL globe, teleporting from money tree to money tree. Six trees and 25 Lindens later, things started to dry up. There was somebody by the name of “Fried Fish”—the trees record the names of their harvesters—one jump ahead of me. I caught up with him at a money tree in the lobby of a shitty virtual art museum, an open-air tower slathered with imported .jpgs of famous paintings, and he turned out to be an OK guy; he gave me some cash-harvesting pointers and tipped me off to a couple of trees that were still loaded with cash after he’d taken his limit. Thanks partially to his info—it probably didn’t hurt that I was wearing my cutest hippy-girl shape—I came out of an hour and a half of money-picking with about 80 bucks. And then I dropped it all at the casino. If camping is the cornerstone of this economy of over 100 000 consumers, gambling is the rest of the damn building. You can’t /SPIT without hitting a slot machine, poker table, wheel of fortune or raffle box. ... Yeah, the American Dream dies hard, even in the limitless realms of the fantasynet. Check out any neighbourhood in SL; beyond the lingerie malls, porno shops, casinos and cheesy streaming-audio discotheques populated by animatronic dance-campers, there lies hillside after crammed-up hillside of participants’ personal palaces, vast favelas of countless bleak McMansions furnished with virtual Nice Things and idle cyber-sextoys. At first I thought 'ouch!'. But having thought about it, that sounds about right shrug _____________________
Jesrad Seraph Nonsense Join date: 11 Dec 2004 Posts: 1,463	02-20-2006 06:38 Camping chairs the cornerstone of SL's economy, ya rite _____________________ Either Man can enjoy universal freedom, or Man cannot. If it is possible then everyone can act freely if they don't stop anyone else from doing same. If it is not possible, then conflict will arise anyway so punch those that try to stop you. In conclusion the only strategy that wins in all cases is that of doing what you want against all adversity, as long as you respect that right in others.
Jamie Bergman SL's Largest Distributor Join date: 17 Feb 2005 Posts: 1,752	02-20-2006 06:52 From: Eloise Pasteur But my curiosity is piqued. What am I missing, how do they make the books balance, or is it a write off as advertising overhead? I use camping chairs as a way to give back to the community. Generally, the poorest or newest players sit in them, so I see it as a great way to make a contribution to SL's newest citizens.
Kris Ritter paradoxical embolism Join date: 31 Oct 2003 Posts: 6,627	02-20-2006 07:25 Yah. So after a day of sitting in a camping chair, they can afford to go buy some freebies! _____________________
Jamie Bergman SL's Largest Distributor Join date: 17 Feb 2005 Posts: 1,752	02-20-2006 07:31 From: Kris Ritter Yah. So after a day of sitting in a camping chair, they can afford to go buy some freebies! You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us. We're all part of the circle of life.
Candide LeMay Registered User Join date: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 538	02-20-2006 07:32 Each avatar has a fixed amount of some sort of dwell points that are distributed proportionally to the time spent on parcels (minimum is 5 minutes I think). So if you spend 30 minutes on parcel A and then 30 minutes on parcel B and then log off for the day, each parcel gets half of your dwell points. The same happens if you spend 5 hours on each - it's not to total time that counts but the percentage of the time you're inworld. Camping places pay for staying to ensure you don't spend your time anywhere else and they get all (or most of) your dwell points. Because if you spend one hour camping, and one hour in a sandbox, the camping place gets only half of your dwell. _____________________ "If Mel Gibson and other cyberspace writers are right, one day the entire internet will be like Second Life." -- geldonyetich
Lewis Nerd Nerd by name and nature! Join date: 9 Oct 2005 Posts: 3,431	02-20-2006 07:56 From: Jamie Bergman You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us. Community minded business owners? Really? How about all the other players who don't get any visitors because they're all flocking like zombies - literally - to places with camping chairs. If you really cared about the community.... you'd get rid of the chairs so people visited places and stayed there because they were good - not because they were being paid to sit there. There are many places - myself included - who offer a quality experience but hardly get any visitors for the simple reason that we don't pay people to come and see them. Meaning our skill isn't rewarded, and thus we don't reach any 'popularity' list. Any idiot can put a box together and stick some camping chairs on it - after all, who cares what the build is like if nobody's there? Camping chairs are simply an admission that you don't have what it takes to be successful without bribing people. End of story. Lewis _____________________ Second Life Stratics - your new premier resource for all things Second Life. Free to join, sign up today! Pocket Protector Projects - Rosieri 90,234,84 - building and landscaping services
Eloise Pasteur Curious Individual Join date: 14 Jul 2004 Posts: 1,952	02-20-2006 08:00 Ah, I must live in a very secluded part of SL. I think my nearest camping chair site, and casino, same place inevitably, are about 1km away from home. The last time I was in such a place - well not in this month. It does make me wonder what the poor person that wrote that will do when they're too old for money trees! It also makes me wonder why dammit. They're talking about the American dream apparently without seeing the irony of the fact that by chasing the bucks this way they're simply living a different part of it.
Barbarra Blair Short Person Join date: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 588	02-20-2006 08:20 I have nothing against camping chairs, but they shouldn't be listed on the calendar as "events." _____________________ --Obvious Lady
Kris Ritter paradoxical embolism Join date: 31 Oct 2003 Posts: 6,627	02-20-2006 08:26 From: Jamie Bergman You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us. We're all part of the circle of life. It's not really any kinda noble notion of a circle of life when there are people pretending to give with one hand then stealing and ripping people off with the other. Sure, the real community minded business owners are genuinely giving back to the community as you say. And then others are just parasites who prey on them - til often they just stop giving at all. _____________________
Sara Sullivan Registered User Join date: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 211	Circle of Life? 02-20-2006 08:41 Originally Posted by Jamie Bergman You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us. We're all part of the circle of life. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ah yes I get it now Hyenas , vultures,....right?
Ordinal Malaprop really very ordinary Join date: 9 Sep 2005 Posts: 4,607	02-20-2006 09:08 I can't be the only person who thinks that new players are helped far more by giving them advice, directions, building tips, freebies etc, rather than money. Even a landmark to Yadni's Junkyard is going to provide a lot more fun for them than having them spend hours in a camping chair and then buy a pair of shoes with the proceeds.
Games Prototype Force Recon Sniper Join date: 4 Aug 2004 Posts: 159	02-20-2006 09:57 From: Barbarra Blair I have nothing against camping chairs, but they shouldn't be listed on the calendar as "events." I fully agree with you barbarra. Camping chairs shouldn't be in the events. Camping is not an event, and shouldn't be posted as such. I only post my VGI casino in the classifieds where it should be. I myself am baffled at how these other places who don't have camping chairs linked to their slots are providing so much money to these parasites that feed off of them. I know I have a few people who have about 10 alts sitting in my casino camping chairs. That is why I was forced to put limits on the earnings so its the people who are there to play the games and actually have fun that can make the money. But lets kill the rabbit and get back on the trail. All of this talk about the dwell and camping chairs are starting to get a little futile now seeing as dwell and developer incentives are about to go away next month. we will see how many of these camping chair locations still clog up the events then. You ask "Why are there so many casinos in SL?" I tell you why. because from the dawn of SL time, people have always asked the same question in SL. How do I get money? Not how do I make money in SL, but how do I get it. People want something for nothing, and everyone turns to gambling to get "FAST CASH!" Yes, I will say the cash is there, but just like in RL, there are those who will lose the money so that others can win it. Gambling is a disease in SL that makes some rich and most poor. But people keep coming back and blowing all the money again. I have run casinos in SL for 2 years now, and I could honestly say I have seen it all. It really suprised me after I took a 6 month vacation from SL, to come back on and find that casino owners were using camping chairs to get people to come to the casino in hopes that they would play. This kinda backfired on them as I talked to one casino owner who was losing 16K/day to camping chair payouts. Why you ask do people sit in camping chairs? The same reason they gamble. something for nothing. Yes you all know that I am the original creator of the casino camping chair system where the camping chairs are linked to slot machines. maybe its the fact that where the business is at its strongest, that is where the business men will go. Like a moth to the flame. _____________________ Life is serious, Games are fun. Enjoy your second life.
Introvert Petunia over 2 billion posts Join date: 11 Sep 2004 Posts: 2,065	02-20-2006 10:11 From: Jamie Bergman You need to stop dwelling on the negative side of life and focus on the positive... me, and many other community minded business owners, are giving back to the community that has given to us. We're all part of the circle of life. You were able to say that with a straight face? Impressive.
Argent Stonecutter Emergency Mustelid Join date: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 20,263	02-20-2006 14:41 From: Jamie Bergman We're all part of the circle of life. So's gangrene, and leprosy, and genetically enhanced smallpox.