Incubator Program

I am posting a reply to this post here, as this should really all be discussed here.


My reaction to this proposal, while not completely prompted by the current Linden sponsored project, certainly is motivated by it in large part.

The issue is not that Linden Lab has sponsored this free content. That is a wonderful idea. At issue is that others, even under this proposal, will still be required to pay if their content is not approved under the program. This makes creating free content prohibitive. It also makes it hard for potential customers to justify spending money to support that content when others are supported and given the freedom to give it away for free. This makes supporting content much more difficult, and in my feeling almost redundant.

One thing from the post linked above that bothered me was this statement...



I see projects hastily adding some commercial angle on top of the artistic vision. Not to profit, but to offset some costs. Those cost in most cases are land fees. Without land fees there would be no need to worry about making money off the project, and it would remove much of the involved stress.

If you are not paying these land fees why would there be a need to make money from dwell and incentives? Certainly builders costs could be paid out of collected payments from your clients.

In addition projects such as this are free advertising for your corporation. With major real world advertising, as well as Linden sanctioning and backing of your content you could hardly fail to take a majority of the event planning business in Second Life for a long time to come. That doesn't seem very non profit oriented.

Will all land grant winners be allowed to advertise their for-profit ventures so prominently? If so its another large blow to private ventures.

In summery Linden support for projects is terrific, and I'm sure Baccara and Fey's venture will be a wonderful addition to Second Life. How will you continue to make private island ventures and other large projects economically viable if they are required to compete in that market?

In all honesty I would like to see all development awards done away with and replaced with a slight lowering of tier fees.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and ideas.

Several of you have expressed various levels of concern about losing the Developer Incentive Awards. It isn't at all certain that we'll cancel them -- we've been aware, though, that people are unhappy with how that system can be gamed and how it's an incomplete way to recognize contributions, so we continue to look for ideas to improve that system.

If we do decide to eliminate the DIAs, or revise them in any way, we'll make sure we give you plenty of notice. Those of you who count on them as a way to fund ongoing efforts will know with enough time to make other plans.

That may be true from our regular social events, even though the detail work truly makes these events get paid at a very small hourly rate. Most of the work is custom and not reused again and again, as our customers will attest. So, we have found that others who have started get worn from trying to do this work, and drop off. You REALLY need to have a love for it. (and tons of time)

As far as this type of work (Neverland) we can't imagine how long it might take to recoup the total amount of money, texture upload dollars, etc that it cost to put this together. We know that other developers who have done things like this for profit have had an extremely rough time making their expenses back. So what to do? It will be interesting to see. In the meantime, let us say that the idea of Neverland has nothing to do with profit or anything but a desire to bring something wonderful to Second Life. We hope that most people who know most of the Spellbound crew will appreciate this... Please come and enjoy ! Then as we see the attendance we can all debate !

Hi Lindens, we like the idea of you supporting content creation.. but it does sound like you risk disenfranchising a lot of people who've put a lot of time and money in to the game already to support great projects.

How you balance out rewarding new content while not pissing off old content is going to be tricky but I really hope you work it out

Perhaps consult with some of those concerned, I bet they have good ideas.

PC

Yes. Exactly. How can private projects be expected to recoup their basic tier fees, let alone contractor costs, especially when competing against sponsored projects with deep pockets? Why would anyone bother to try? I forsee a steep dropoff in large landowners under the new system.

Is that a bad thing? I don't know. I think thats really for Linden Lab to decide. I do think that there are many interesting projects here that probably wouldn't qualify for Linden support under the proposed rules that may fall through the cracks.

Well, I am 100 percent for this Idea. BUT, I do have mix feelings about it. For one, when we started working on Sim Horror. I asked for support. We where told that Lindens don't offer support. Fine.. I move on. I purchase two sims for Sim Horror for this project. That's over 2000 dollars plus monthly fees that add up. We started working at the end of August and then we opened in October. I also racked up another 800 in paying people. The reason we sold tickets was not to become Linden-filthy-rich. It was because this was a deep pocket expense so it was only right to recover something back from it since I had no Linden support. We managed to sell 768 tickets which was pretty good, as well as alot of AV costumes. I didn't even come close to making half of it back, but I am still very pleased with the results and the positive feedback I got from everyone. To me, that was enough of a payment back to keep me going and purchase my third sim to do a new project that my group Bedazzle is currently working on. So, to add this all up I am well over 4000 dollars of RL money that I have invested into SL. I invested that amount because I enjoy SL and truly believe in my group. I feel that my group is full of talent and I believe that they can contribute huge to SL other than monotonous stuff that is out in SL. I've dedicated alot of time and money into my group to make SL better and more fun for others to enjoy. I 100% like the fact that Lindens step in and help out Spellbound to create something that is magnificent and I hope to see more of this in the future. But at the same time I am kind of bummed out because I have spent so much on my projects and I still am and now they are doing this. What do the people who have spent the money to do large scale projects get out of this? If I would have waited 4 months and this would have been brought up I could have waited on my projects or maybe I would have only had one sim and not three. I think that there has to be an advantage to both sides on this as for the ones that need the resources which its a great idea and would only make SL better in my opinion, but as well as something for the ones who have put so much into SL.

In a nutshell, you get dedicated teams of committed, creative people together to really make the fireworks go BANG!, and this would rapidly expand the amount of unique attractions exclusively available in Second Life.

Robin, it sounds like the first draft of your incubator program is well thought-out and screens selectively, but not so tightfisted that it would "kill the cool". While community praise from us is great to people who make projects like this, I think there will always be a place for official Linden recognition, just because there's this amazing WOW factor when you -- the Lindens -- make and work on something like Second Life, and it's like this pingpong (or table tennis, take your pick) game of "Here's our dog, let's teach him to do new tricks!"

Subsequently, people come up with ideas that perhaps you Lindens have never thought of, and in turn, you challenge the SL community with progressive change and updates to the codebase and new inworld paradigms of thinking, feeling, interacting with things and with each others as human beings.

Some massive, massively wonderful projects could come out of this. There are those who want to realize grand visions but are understandably afraid the bottom will drop out under of them because of problems with funding and all that. Official recognition, support -- and sponsorship (I don't have a prob with that world in itself although some do) -- goes a *long* way towards strengthening and solidifying the community as we collectively go "WOW, COOL!!!"

Unfortunately, we cannot go back in time and grandfather the big SL projects of the past or are ongoing, as some have expressed. As we forge ahead, change will scare. But this kind of change is also very likely for the better. I have a lot of hope. It's promising.

After all...

We're all in this together.

First, the program, if implemented, has to start sometime, and had to be thought up at some point. Yeah, there are going to be people that will curse the timing, but that would happen no matter what. I hope no one thinks that's a showstopper of a problem, regrettable as it may be.

And now...
I've been thinking about this part of the proposal here, added in with Robin's comments about the current Developer Incentive program not going way for sure, and not going away without adaquate notice. The part 3 here sounds like the DI program focused on the program's participants. The part 2 sounds like what many people have been asking for in the way of non-dwell based awards.

What it comes down to, in my mind, is that Linden Labs, who creates very little content themselves, WANTS there to be great content in the game. That means the players have to make it. Now there are many levels of effort that can go into such content, the smallest efforts may be just as contributive as the large. But the large need help to get started and to keep running.

If it were possible, in this new plan, for one person or group to have an idea, propose it, get accepted, get an island or two set up, create their masterpiece, charge people to visit/use/play there... AND get additional awards from Linden Lab if they make GOOD stuff... It might be possible to jump-start an idea from nothing to, if not profitiable, then at least not a RL money sink.

So it comes down to WHICH ideas should LL help out. They are taking a chance at backing something that may die a quiet death, the lead members vanishing from SL. They may get someone that, while filled with good intentions and talent, doesn't have the time or energy to get the job done. Or they might get individuals or groups that are powerhouses of talent that help get Second Life mentioned more in the world press.

I'm sort of thinking about it this way. WE are content creating contractors for Linden Lab. They have a budget prepared to pay our fees for what we do. They want to pay the people that add the most to Second Life and make the community a better place and a bigger draw. If they put some of that budget into a pool of hardware and some into US$ checks and some into L$ payout (though that doesn't really COST them anything, it's just somthing they have to be careful about)... Then they have a lot of options as to how they compensate us for our work.

That $980 set up fee for an island is necessary. If they just charged a monthly fee, tons of people would sign up for islands, then drop out with LL stuck with the hardware. The $980 separates out the people who WILL put the effort into their creations. (And yes, it helps pay for the hardware too, but islands come and go, and hardware will be reused. The fee still stands.) But now, LL is proposing to weed out, by hand, the wheat from the chaff in a formal application process.

Oh, and no one ever said that this is JUST for island buyers. Is LL also considering helping out mainland attractions?

This is all very interesting, and has got me thinking about larger progects and how they would work for any possible program plan Linden Lab, and we the community, work out.

I think if it's worth doing it doesn't need Linden support.

I'd rather linden supported us by adding new features and improving the framework.

I like this idea quite a bit. Neverland is a wonderful example of the kind of thing SL needs a lot more of... large scale interactive attractions. It's absolutely vital to make SL appeal to casual explorers and people who aren't interested in creating things themselves. It's up to the developers of these projects to make them self-sustaining in the long run. That can't be LL's responsibility and people shouldn't depend on special rewards programs to make them sustainable. The up front costs of getting the sims and doing the development are more of a problem and this sounds like a great way for LL to help large projects get off the ground. I think it's important that people not think of this program as an award. It's not. As such the fact that it won't be available to everyone or applicable to everyone isn't really a fair or valid criticism in my opinion.

I was thinking about this some more . . . there could be some considerable cost involved in proposed projects -- things like sim setup fees, etc. Will loan applicants be subject to rl credit checks?

Even simpler would be to wait for wonders to be built and then have Linden Lab take over the maintenence RL costs while still allowing the entrepreneur's control.

Back of the envelope calculations show that the LL costs for Neverland would be about $8k/annum. Given the value of the myriad contributors to the project, this is obscenely cheap for professional grade game content creation. If they tossed in some recompense to the creators they'd still make out like metaphorical bandits. Try hiring someone to make 20 hectares of great content for $16k and they'll laugh at you. Give a kickback of $8k to the wonder developers (even in zero cost fee discounts) and Linden Lab gets amazing content for a pittance and only has any liability after they've been created.

Yes, I know that LL did support the Neverland build from inception so one could argue that it couldn't have happened without them. But, looking at the roster of contributors they could have rustled up the starting land if they wanted.

No contracts needed, no evaluation of plans, no issues with key players dropping out, no half completed projects or paybacks of "grants", just dirt-cheap content for LL.

I think this is a very good idea. It would help to generate large-scale, quality content that showcases SL's potential, and is the next best thing to Linden Lab hiring professionals to build up the world. I think this program could have an even greater beneficial impact if LL used these projects to help prioritize its development of SL functionality. I came across this '98 article recently which compares the state of VRML to the success of Quake, and it reminded me of SL: http://www.shirky.com/writings/quake.html

It argues (in part) that VRML's problem was that its development wasn't focused enough on any particular goal.

"Every time VRML practitioners approach the problem of how to represent space on the screen, they have no focused reason to make any particular trade-off of detail versus rendering speed, or making objects versus making spaces, because VRML isn't for anything except itself. Many times, having a particular, near-term need to solve brings a project's virtues into sharp focus, and gives it enough clarity to live on its own. "

Obviously SL is a lot more focused than VRML! But I still think SL has a similar issue in that it offers a set of tools that aren't concentrated on a particular goal. With thousands of users independently working on diverse projects, how does LL decide what to prioritize when improving SL? If LL prioritized the obstacles facing the developers of its incubator projects, this could help focus its efforts.

(I know I don't know the guts of your business, I'm just offering an opinion from my limited POV)

OK, I have thought about this and am not as oppossed as I may have sounded in my initial postings. This type of program can really jump start large scale projects in SL. Of course the timing just rubbed me wrong as did the secretive nature of the initial project. I am over it. Moving forward I beleive care must be taken to ensure that this does not offer a direct competitive edge to those who are chosen, a nearly impossible task.
I also beleive the program needs to be open to everyone with equal opportunities to participate. Back room deals always look suspicious.

Regardless of what LL's final decision on this is, I beleive the current monthly dwell based awards should continue. They are finally starting to work IMO. I know there are people gaming it, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as the world grows. Look at the massive dwell numbers being generated lately, this cannot be due entirely to alts. I look around the map at the popular places lately and I see 30-40 avs regularly at several sims at the same time. These people are working hard to provide a place for people to socialize within SL and deserve to be rewarded.

Robin, I appreciate your prompt replies and wish you luck with the development of this idea.

I think this is a brilliant idea and can extend beyond the "make an amusement park and get people to show up" paradigm. SL can do a lot more and in some cases, it does cost money and heck -- it could become a commercial venture.

So what?

Not everything that makes money is evil. If I just created for creating's sake then I'd be stuck in a cubicle or on an assembly line for 1/3 of my life. I sell what I create so I can spend time doing something I'd good at rather than something I dislike.

Besides, it's not like this sort of program has to fund an entire project. Mayhaps your project needs a dataserver for a website that LL can front the cash for. If you plan it properly and take the risk, you could pay off that server at the least... and guess what? You create something that everyone likes! w00t!

Myself, I'd like to see more on this as I have a project I believe LL would be interested in supporting. So lets have it Robin!

This idea sounds great, BUT what happens to those of us that have already funded our OWN projects?
For Example:
*I* own Le Cadre, Navora and Eclipse, I am the physical owner of these 3 islands but they involve alot of people... The current Develepoer Incentive System is what turned me into this direction... NOT because I depend on it for costs of the islands but because it does help when taking on such a large amount of costs with land fees and reimbursing those that work hard to make these islands a great place for the community to enjoy.

There is always complaints every month about this sytem and the way it works, but it has been this way since I joined SL, and ALOT of people use this system to decide on how much land they will own or what kind of role they will take on in SL. Currently we have paid $6000 to Linden Labs in Island purchases and $600 a month for these islands... this is all money out of pocket... in no way can any award be big enough to cover these costs.... but when we do receive an award each month form the curent system we have worked very hard for it. Long hours of planning, organizing, and entertaining.

If you are going to change the current system as it is... Will there be anything for those of us that planned our SL around it? Or will you consider adding a new system and leaving the old one as it is?

I enjoy that we have these islands and they all focus on entertainment and enjoyment to the community...we currently do not charge anyone for coming to our events or using our islands as vendor space , living, or just to have fun... but we could not do this without the Dev Incentive System...we are already putting ALOT of money into SL...

I think that "replacing" this system would hurt alot of people in SL, but I am all for "adding" a new one to the current system.

I am just rambling now and my post probably does not make much sense but hopefully someone will see what I am talking about... lol

Fine, but I would like to see incentives for the smaller builders/scripters. Not building something that gets visited (dwell), but making things that get sold to individuals. Take our dogs, for instance We don't get dwell bonuses because people come, look at the merchandise, buy, then leave.

And we are not considered a "large scale project" by any means. I'm not looking for money, per se, but some form of acknowledgement about the work we do.

Granted, our current incentive is being able to sell our products, and hearing from the many happy customers. But with other incentive programs out there, I kinda feel a bit out of the loop since we can't really participate without changing the way we do things.

Just my L$0.02

My experience with large projects has been mixed. Over the eight months i've been in SL I've worked on 4 large scale projects. My first was helping out Mysterious Jorney, one of the Game Developement Contest teams. The second project failed outright. The third suffered a Major setback. The forth is currently in the works.

My experiance has shown to make a sucsessful large scale project you need something that will draw people in but also hold thier attention for an extended period of time. It can't be too complicated or to simple. Charging money for a game will turn some people off, others just won't be able to afford it. What is needed is a highly skilled design team, one that can build anything they dream up, and they need to be able to dream big. The team members need to be people who have good long attention spans; they will need to be able to stay focused for months at a time.

The best projects are the ones that come together quickly. After the first month getting anyone to work is difficult. Having deadlines far in the future makes motivating people difficult.

I have yet to work on a project that hasn't had problems.

Well said, Strife. VERY well said. I am in agreement.

In a context like this, everyone has problems -- not everyone can solve them or even begin to deal with them.

Long-term persistence of vision is essential.

With these long term projects that I worked on it wasn't that they were based off bad ideas, or the project leaders were crazy. The group was the problem, the ultimate failing was at the person to person level.

Every one of the projects has been a very good idea, and more over well sold by the project leader. After my third big project I swore off doing any more projects. Not because I didn't enjoin working on them but because they were mostly doomed to fail. Then this new project fell in my lap and the project leader did a wonderful job selling it, so here I am working on project number four.

People in SL can be friends but they can't be coworkers. As a project leader finding compatible coworkers is close to impossible as the only ways to judge them is they are friends and by prior works. Finding prior works can be difficult if not impossible.


The point I'm trying to make is that projects may fail or not. Like all things in life it's difficult to determine. The decision shouldn't be left solely up to Linden Labs, there should be some sort of forum that the general public can participate in and give feedback on the viability of these Linden sponsored projects.

The barricade of documentation for these projects won't shield LL from project failure. The Game Development Contest should make that obvious; some of the teams had problems meeting deadlines (these were monthly progress deadlines). These were hand picked projects. While I don't fault the decision making of LL for backing loosing projects, I don't think they alone can accurately ascertain which projects will succeed.


To the Game Development Contest teams, I know the situations were complicated, I mean no disrespect.


EDIT:
I am annoyed by this sudden change of policy. Of the big projects I have worked on two failed because of lack of land. We couldn't find a backer who wanted to front for the land (who we hadn't pissed of at some time or another). LL has said they won't support groups and haven't released any zoned sims. So they don't want to get too close to the customers (as to have to deal with Drama). My dealings with LL has been that they don't grant favors (going to a neighbor asking to borrow a cup of suger is a favor. If they say no, but then make it so bags of suger you buy at the store hold more suger, that isn't granting a favor). I don't like double standards.

Strife, you speak the truth.

But even the most successful project (take the current Neverland for example) will wear thin in a couple of visits unless someone is constantly developing new content and integrating it into the build. That takes a long-term team, long-term manager, all working very hard, and Second Life is just not designed for long-term.

I admire those folks who can host events day after day and still hold the interest of the crowd. People will come an look at a spectacular build, and they may check in for a chance to win some money, but other than that what they really need is something fresh to do. In my opinion, the events hosts are underrewarded.

- Malachi writes a lot of truth

- this proposal is not Neverworld. Neverworld will not bring in money, since its not a mall, club or casino.

- the proposal does not change the measures by which builds are assessed, ie Dwell/ Profitability


What I think is: it's marketing hype, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it might lead down some interesting avenues. Like really large malls, clubs and casinos


Azelda

Well said!

As for the discussion on large projects, I just wanted to pass on one idea --

Perhaps the lack of interest in participating in projects until completion is what Strife is saying. This is what I'm hearing anyway. Based on that assumption; what is the reason for the lack of attention span?

My major response is that there is no real compensation for people to invest a considerable amount of their time. If they have to put in as much effort into something that pays less than their daytime jobs, I'd imagine that holding their interest and more importantly -- their passion -- would be horrendously difficult. Especially if you don't know them personally and can see them face to face.

Now obviously this isn't always the case -- open source comes to mind. But look up on freshmeat how many projects there are, then see how many are active, then look at the ones that have come to completion, and then the ones that are actually useful and successful (if guaging success by how many people downloaded/installed/use it regularly). One may note that the numbers get smaller and smaller. Ultimately it takes fanatics to work for nest to nothing and invest great amounts of time and energy into creating for creation's sake.

It's a romantic thought to be able to do so, but it's just not economically and practically feasible for most people. Most people like to put dinner on the table and enjoy themselves away from work -- wether that work is pleasing to them or not.

An incubator program like Robin is suggesting however could tip the scales. Perhaps it will allow entrepreneurs with great ideas for SL the ability to compensate those who contribute their time and energy. Perhaps it will let a small team acquire the resources they need. Perhaps it will cover upfront costs or operating expenses.

We also have to realize that there is more to SL than malls and casinos. That commercial ventures designed to make money aren't ONLY malls and casinos... that these sorts of capitalist enterprises could have a positive effect and bring amazing new things to SL. I think the prohibitive costs involved in developing and maintaining a real project beyong a mall or casino or fantasy island is what limits the possibilities in SL.

Strife already mentioned that two large projects he's been involved in failed due to lack of resources. I've been in several that have failed due to lack of participation from group members. Right now it's uneconomical to own anything more than a few thousand square meters of land. A select few might be able to break even on owning a whole sim -- but just remember that back in 1.1, people thought owning an entire sim was ludicrous and way over the top... now there are people aiming to own 2 or 3 at a time, even though they are the cream on top. The rest of us can't support a sim, but still have the ideas to push the economy forward.

The only way to do that is through lending.

Once it is economically feasible for an individual to invest several hours of work per day on top of their day job (or to cut back hours from their day job to invest more time in a project), we're not going to see SL grow beyond being a few sparse temporary attractions, basic games, malls, and casinos. This is why we need lending so that real entrepreneurs can use greater resources to develop serious projects which requires properly compensated workers.