LL to Dump Developers Incentives

According to an announcement by Robin Linden, LL is phasing out Developers Incentives:



They promise some sort of replacement program as a follow-on. Depending on the nature of that (those?) programs this could have a telehub-removal impact on the SL economy.

Funniest line in the post, "But as many of you know, the program has not been a total success in rewarding the wide range of Second Life creativity." And here I thought Camping Chairs were a very creative exploitation of the SL system...

Good riddance, developer incentive! Let's replace the developer incentive with something that actually incentivizes developers, rather than those who bribe people for their dwell. Personally I think that only pay-to-use immersive content should qualify for such an incentive. If your content is of such quality that your own users won't pay for the experience, the platform provider probably shouldn't be paying you to offer it either!

I think initially, they indeed were. Some of the early popularized models, like Kenny Jackson's, and I found some variations on them (dance pads, "get paid to surf", etc.) to be rather smile-inducing. But, the problem for me was it didn't really splash out beyond there, and lots of copycats without much added to the new stew. Someone might say, "If it's not broke, don't fix it!" but even leftovers should be reheated before consumption.

They did show up in many diverse locales, however.

Well said, Shaun.

If they replace them with something that rewards real developers other then bribing people.

*cough* as I didnt say it in the other thread, I'll say it here....

About Damn Time!

kthxbye,
- Sam

If the content is so compelling that your users pay you for it, what do you need a developer's incentive for?

Because immersive content has not yet reached the point where users will pay enough for access to it to offset tiering costs, cost of development time, cost of update time etc etc etc. It would be nice to see a return on all of that cost and effort too. Immersive content doesn't seem to have the same market depth as take-home content (clothes, guns, cars etc etc) yet though.

Therefore, in order for it to be worthwhile for people to develop large immersive environments, there needs to be incentive until there is a larger audience to market to. Linden clearly recognized this in its creation of the developer incentive, which was a very good IDEA. It just got "gamed", like so many other good ideas, and went to all the wrong people.

Or, maybe you could invest thousands of dollars and hundreds (thousands?) of man hours into developing such content for us all in exchange for peanuts, if you disagree?

So, there won't be anymore camping chairs?

I guess that depends. If dwell is still measured and posted as a list of popular places and people are that desperate to appear in the list, stuff like that may well continue in some locations. But at least LL aren't rewarding it.

I sure hope so honestly. I can understand people not wanting others to "bribe" people into coming to their shop/mall etc. However as a casual player a lot of my income for buying toys/clothes/fun is from these chairs, I'd hate to see an end of some extra spending money for the little guy

Camping chairs (and their ilk) will probably continue to exist after the DI go away. For example, they could still be used as a way to attract people. A person might come to the chair to get some L$, sit in it for a while, look around the area while they sit, and see all the other cool, interesitng, fun things there are to do in the same area... they would leave the chair (which might only make one L$ payment per day per person) and go check out the other stuff.

I second that notion. I already work two jobs and am a single father in RL. The camping chairs have been my saving grace, and have been the driving force behind me meeting ppl in game. I find a place I like to camp, when i get time I check how it's going and end up chatting with those that are horsing around near me. Sure there are other means for casual players to get income (like money trees) by they tend to be so small in their output that it really makes it impossible to do anything short of look around.

Granted, I think a lot of the areas where there are camping chairs are boring, but some (shameless plug for Golgotha here) actually have a lot of people that are actively chatting and hanging out while dancing.

If camping chairs continue, I don't think it'll be for that reason! Would you honestly bring people to your place with the express intention of going AFK in a P2P teleport world and hope they'll look around them?! More likely they'll just tp to the next bookmark in their money making list and go shopping in all their usual haunts later.

Getting them in you shop is the first thing you need to do to make sales. For me, I dont really go exploring other than places that have camping chairs, and if I am spending money on games, gear, etc it's in those very same establishments. Speaking from this chair campers perspective, I never want to leave my camp areas cause thats where i earn my money. Even if things are more expensive there, the time I save by staying local to my camp area more than offsets any deals I would get by exploring.

Regardless I hope they DO continue, even if the pay rates took a hit.

Yay it is about darn time they got rid of the bonus. Finally my builds has a chance of making something from LL instead of camping chair galore...

/clap

Kavai

Will camping chairs disappear after the developers incentives are gone?

My earlier post noted that developers incentives are not necessary for camping chairs to exist. I gave an example of another reason why someone would want to put a camping chair on their land.

We could argue back and forth forever, but the fact is, all we have to do is:

1) Wait for the developers incentives to end and
2) See if camping chairs continue to exist (in perpetuity)

So it isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of observation.

I thought it was kind of interesting that they were proposing yet another directory as a replacement. Is this yet more advertising that they are trying to sell or what?

Seems to me that we really don't need another list of stuff.

What i read from this is that LL obviously has financial problems, and I sure would like to know how big those are. Already the constant adding of more and more un-needed auction sims is a good indicator for that... but i'm sure no one named Linden is going to answer that.

I don't think it neccisarily means they are having financial problems. The developer's incentive has been a dead end. It has fueled people to make copy cat content that is designed soley to get high dwell scores, it has not really caused people to come up with compelling content that would attract a large number of citizens to Second Life. They didn't say they were going to stop paying people at all, they just said they are looking for another system to decide who they will pay.

As for the auctioned land, they didn't flood the market until people started buying sims like crazy. I think the residents decided when the market would be flooded, Linden Labs is just enjoying the money that comes as the demand for sims goes up. I would think flooding the market with sims people are actually buying is not a sign of financial problems. I think a large amount of sim sales with greater amounts of teir being paid to them all the time is a sign that they are still in the growing stage. They won't grow or be successful forever, but I think at the moment, it looks like things are going well for them. They are still expanding.

I don't think it neccisarily means they are having financial problems. The developer's incentive has been a dead end. It has fueled people to make copy cat content that is designed soley to get high dwell scores, it has not really caused people to come up with compelling content that would attract a large number of citizens to Second Life. They didn't say they were going to stop paying people at all, they just said they are looking for another system to decide who they will pay.

As for the auctioned land, they didn't flood the market until people started buying sims like crazy. I think the residents decided when the market would be flooded, Linden Labs is just enjoying the money that comes as the demand for sims goes up. I would think flooding the market with sims people are actually buying is not a sign of financial problems. I think a large amount of sim sales with greater amounts of teir being paid to them all the time is a sign that they are still in the growing stage. They won't grow or be successful forever, but I think at the moment, it looks like things are going well for them. They are still expanding.

Really? What were you reading? How is a few hundred bucks in developers incentives going to solve any supposed financial problems? Jeez. If they really were looking for revenue boosts there's a crapload of far more sensible ways to do it. They could start with abolishing free accounts for a start. But LL are not in financial difficulty and this certainly has nothing to do with abolishing hopelessly gamed DI awards, no matter what you read into it.

I have to agree that the DI awards needed to be restructured. The main reason, it just rewards bodies. The Forest skyrocketed to near the top of the DI list while it was mostly an empty sim. It doesn't reward content, it just rewards warm bodies and that is not right in my book. The Chinatown build is what DI should be for, stimulating compelling content not paying a land baron to rent land for them. It's stuuupid really, land baron buys an estate then rents the land (they call it selling but it is effectively a sublease) utilizing the significant discount they get for profit then on top of that they get DI money and dwell. LL pays people to take money away from them... and ultimately no content is created other than the the same ol' prefab cracker boxes. I wonder when Phillip will run for governor of California cuz it shore sounds like a gubment program to me.

The problem is that the Lindens want some way to reward contributions to SL without having to do the work to discover who has contributed to SL.

I can't figure out how the heck they can do that.

People would just buy votes or bodies, as they did in the past and as they do now. I don't know how the Lindens could decide who is making original contributions without, like, getting into SL and looking. Even then people wouldn't think they were being fair, because they would overlook so much.

At any rate SL will continue to suffer from the same problems that it always has. People who play for popularity will buy popularity, people who play for cash will go after that, the drama queens will continue to stir up drama, and the folks who are in it for the shear art of the thing have to go commercial or perish.