Second Life Jobs Editorial : The Case Against Camping
April 2nd, 2008 | Published in SL Entrepreneur Magazine, Second Life Jobs | 19 Comments
By Cheyenne Palisades
Camping— enticing avatars to remain on your property by paying them small sums to sit in a chair, stand on a ladder pretending to wash windows, or pretend to sell virtual hot dogs from a cart—can raise your traffic rating and can theoretically entice people to your place of business– but at what price? What price to you, what price to me, what price to the grid? Consider:
By keeping avies sitting in chairs, you encourage deadbeat behavior. Don’t kid yourself; $2L an hour isn’t going to buy a camper much, but it will certainly prevent her from engaging in meaningful in-world activities. While she sits in your poorly-textured camping chair, she won’t be exploring, learning the interface or building skills, engaging in interactions with other avatars, or contributing in any meaningful way to the economy of Second Life.
(Second Life Campers wander around Welfare Island)
Many new avatars and more than a few older ones think SL is a game and that accumulating Lindens is the goal. Camping chairs encourage and perpetuate this type of thinking—there the chairs are and how easy it is to sit! But when campers realize they’re making real-life pennies to be bored stiff for hours, they typically leave in search of a more interesting virtual world.
So think about it–you’re arguably driving people from the world. Avatars who might otherwise become content generators or heavy-spending fashionistas go to There! or World of Warcraft, and Second Life is robbed forever of their potential creativity, talent, and real-world income.
You would serve your fellow citizens, yourself, and your society better if you eliminated your camping chairs. Or better yet, script your camping chairs to explain to those sitting in them that camping is stupid before kicking them out Lindenless, but with a list of alternative and engaging places to visit.
Consider also: You are paying for this foolishness. Sure, 2L every 10 minutes doesn’t sound like much, but if you have four camping chairs and they stay filled three-quarters of the time, you’re spending more than $3 US every day or $95 monthly–enough to pay tier on half a region! And not only that, you’re promulgating what is questionably the biggest problem in Second Life—grid clogging by inactive avatars.
Linden Lab’s open sourcing of the Second Life client has allowed the development of text-only browsers that consume little RAM or processor power, enabling a single computer to run dozens of instances of Second Life. This creates an excess of sim-clogging bots that are scripted to find and sit in camping chairs. And you know what happens to any sim when there are a couple of dozen avatars present? Right–the sim grinds to a halt, creating a miserable experience for everybody. And when tens of thousands of these bots share the grid with real citizens, it leads to crashes, failed teleports, misplaced attachments–collective misery no matter how you look at it. If you don’t think people leave Second Life to escape this, you’re mistaken.
(Camping sign on Platinum World sim)
And finally; consider the theory behind camping in the first place–which is that the avatars “paid” to camp will become customers attracting other avatars to your site. That’s nonsense. Before the ban on gambling, many campers spent their Lindens on site. But now they’re more likely to keep their pennies. They can get by without that butt skirt you so proudly display, thank you very much. Most campers will never become productive citizens. They will remain virtual leeches and in the very best scenario, you’re going to get only a portion of your lindens back.
As for attracting others to your land; you’re kidding, right? Most citizens steer clear of laggy, clogged areas—and if they do choose to investigate and find a bunch of robot campers and a time dilation of .38, chances are they’ll leave immediately. I mean, wouldn’t you?
Finally, let me share with you a search technique practiced by myself any many of my friends—we simply disregard the top three or four hits in Search and skip down toward the middle of the page. Why? We know those places with 999,999 traffic counts are going to be bot-ridden, ugly, laggy, and probably pornographic–places we don’t want to visit.
The places we DO want to visit will be a feast for our eyes and ears, filled with high-quality merchandise we’re happy to buy. And if the place is laggy, it’s because the avatars present are spending money—not costing you $2L each every 10 minutes.
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April 2nd, 2008at 4:41 pm(#)
I could not agree more, its the ultimate false advertisement. SL is about engagement and interaction, I know some believe that by having avatars at their location it entices people to go to it, but the sad reality is that they show up and talk to a non active avatar and the experience is dreadful for the visitor.
Well said Chey…here, here!
April 2nd, 2008at 5:14 pm(#)
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April 2nd, 2008at 6:09 pm(#)
I agree! If you liked this editorial, you will probably enjoy my “Camping in Second Life” music video on my blog:
http://botgirl.blogspot.com/2008/03/camping-in-second-life-video.html
April 3rd, 2008at 9:17 am(#)
Good article, Chey. The picture of Platinum seems to be showing the old and the new. The old is to the left; the traditional camping that hurts us all. The new is to the right; it promotes a store’s search rank by having it in your Pick list, but only requires you to come by once a month to pick up your check. Plus, when you do come by you get a chunk of money that you might then be tempted to spend in the store.
Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of the old and less of the new. Of course, if this does take hold, there will be a clamor to add Pick List spots that rivals the current clamor to increase the number of Groups!
April 3rd, 2008at 5:18 pm(#)
It is a good article, however I disagree with some of the conclusions put forth.
The original idea behind camping chairs, was to provide a new player with an easy way to accumulate Lindens. This is a much preferable method rather than having to join the sex industry, which is how many a new player starts out. Myself included. Before the advent of camping devices, the sex industry was the only major revenue generating job type that was plentiful and easy to maintain. Security positions that paid more, went to longer established players. Same with club personnel or DJs.
Another popular use of camping devices, is to be able to park your avatar while talking in IM to many different people. This is especially helpful, when having multiple conversations in IM and other external IM programs. (i.e. MSN, Yahoo, etc.) Many older more well established players, park their avatars in this manner, in order to talk to either the players close to them or someone in another part of the world. I will admit, I have used them for this reason. It can be very difficult to keep track of local chat, multiple IM chats and multiple external chats while controlling an active avatar. Multi-tasking in any MMORG is par for the course. Just because you do not see local chat from parked avatars, does not mean that they are not socializing or talking to other people.
The tremendous financial drain from these chairs would be more of an negative aspect. Since to a big club or landowner, these chairs add to club event prizes, other games, etc. The payout can tax a credit card or budget to the max. The really big club/Island owners are putting in alot of money to keep things running. What income there is, is either from Rent from shops or percentage of sales, the percentage they have set for games, or rent from other players that have bought property/houses and such. A very few have considerable income from sales of items or scripts that they have created. Property is now a lower income choice, since Ashley Chung made a killing selling sim real estate
Attributing the lag factor to avatars not moving, is not entirely correct. The majority of lag factor comes from how many scripts are running in the sim, next comes the number of prims in use. This includes the items that each avatar brings into the sim. (Wearing on them) Such as any bling item, which adds a very high lag. Any Xcite! attachments also contribute considerably to the lag factor, since those are very complicated scripted items. They also are high prim. Another high contributor to lag, are the bugs that get written into the code with every update. For every bug that Linden Lab fixes, on average they create 2 worse bugs. Another lag factor, is voice. Lastly, the total number of avatars in the sim, adds to the lag factor. If they did not have any attachments on or scripted items running, then the lag would not be as noticeable.
April 3rd, 2008at 10:29 pm(#)
Second Life News for April 4, 2008…
From: The Diary of a Second Life Socialite Paper Couture Show a Success! Quote from the site - Ahh! So exciting! I just did my first runway show for the amazingly talented Lu sisters, and I thought I’d share some snaps of the outfits I modeled fo…
April 6th, 2008at 10:52 am(#)
[…] The SLENTRE.COM SL500 list is now available for download to those who have subscribed to SLentrepreneur Magazine. If you have recieved this email you are the first to get this free report hot off the press. Included in the report are the top 500 destinations in SL for both the months of Februrary and March. Also listed are the total number of visits for each sim for the entire month. As expected the top several contenders are all sims that offer spaces for residents to camp. If you aren’t familiar with camping read SLENTRE.COM’s recent editorial by Cheyenne Palisades, http://www.slentre.com/second-life-jobs-the-case-against-camping/. […]
April 7th, 2008at 12:59 pm(#)
Yes - Thank you !! Cheyenne Palisades.
Lets start serious conversations that will make us evolve away from our current Barbie Economy in SL.
Camping is NOT the solution for the current lack of reasonable linden generating occupations.
And agree camping also creates all those second-hand effects Cheyenne comments in her article.
Camping plain and simple is a drag and first step before sex industry. There is no comparision 2L and hour vs 500-2000L/hr.
1- Camping is a wrong solution for a real need
2- Real occupations as an alternative to sex industry needed
3- Evolve SL out of a Barbie economy - Barbie Economie will lead only to Barbie Jobs
4- Balance tour time in SL
We have lots of challenges ahead. Lets get to them.
P.S. We will open 2-5 positions promoting a Non-for-profit Group all tips are shared with volunteers (if anyone is interested pls IM me)
Cheers
April 23rd, 2008at 3:37 pm(#)
[…] has been a recent complaint regarding the camping editorial(http://www.slentre.com/second-life-jobs-the-case-against-camping/) published in SLentrepreneur Magazine. I would very much like to give opponents of the views […]
April 24th, 2008at 7:36 am(#)
Let me get the “full disclosure” out of the way first: I write for “SLenterpreneur” and other SL publications. So you, dear reader, may consider my comments biased. There is a deeper philosophical discussion to be had about whether someone can ever be truly unbiased (we all carry our own baggage around with us, and we all wear out own “world view” spectacles) but that’s not the topic of this comment.
My first observation is that en Editorial is, in the eyes of most people, a clear example of an opinion piece. Opinion pieces are inevitably going to present a point of view that does not pretend to be “objective.” The title of the piece, “The Case Against Camping” explicitly sets it as being anti-camping in nature and to think otherwise is to miss the point.
To criticize Cheyenne Palisades in terms of her stance is hardly fair because rightly or wrongly, the concept of Free Speech means that individuals can say the most outrageous things and not be stopped from saying it. You don’t have to agree. My favorite quote from Voltaire is “I may disagree with what you say but would fight to the death for your right to say it.” That’s the tricky thing about Free Speech - it can hurt people. Sorry.
My second observation is that it is indeed important to try to secure “facts” in any piece of writing. The problem is that some “facts” are open to interpretation and people tend to select the “facts” that support their perspective. This is, oddly enough, not wrong or dishonest. Only last week I heard from a cab driver in New Zealand that is was a “fact” that the 9/11 destruction of the twin towers in NY was an orchestrated plot by the US government; that the “facts” proved the towers have been imploded by bombs planted inside by government agents; that the “facts” showed the planes were remote controlled. An impressive number of facts there but none of which would stand up to very close scrutiny.
The point, though, is that he was presenting nothing more than a verbal editorial - an opinion piece that he was allowed to articulate whether I agreed or not. That’s Free Speech at work again, uncomfortable as it made me feel.
My response was to present alternate “facts,” encourage him to re-evaluate his own “facts,” and offer him other sources of information. There was no sure-fire way for me to prove that he was wrong and I was right because having the right data at the right time in the right place is near impossible. Still, by the time he dropped me at the airport, I had at least managed to get him to admit that maybe not everything he had heard was true. Small step.
Thirdly, and finally, I am more concerned personally with the financial underpinnings of camping as a technique. It seems to me that camping is at its heart nothing more than sponsored advertising; the camper gets paid to promote the camp site owner, and does this by sitting at a location to bump up automated statistics. What I’d like to know (and maybe I just have to get off my fat bottom and do it myself!) is the return-on-investment of camping. I’d appreciate some camp site owners coming forward and letting me know how much extra revenue is generated by having campers. Fundamentally, I want to know: does it work??
Adam Smith’s “dead hand” of the markets would soon pull the lever on camping if the amount of money put into it (payments to campers) was greater than the amount of money pulled in (revenue from sales by paying customers brought in by the campers.) The “problem” of camping is perhaps not a “problem” at all to the camp site owners if the ROI is great - it’s a problem to other people for other reasons. And the thing about “Point Of View” is that even “problems” are relative.
OK, just a few observations - from my own Point of View!
April 24th, 2008at 8:30 am(#)
In response to Sigmund:
Having used campers in my shop, I can relate my experience with them, which as you say will be strictly my own POV and others certainly will have different ones.
Campers, as I used them, were strictly to bring my shop ‘above the fold’ in the searches for the keywords that I wanted to target for my business. It is essentially, as you suggest, like paying for advertising.
I found that when I did not have the campers (a test which I ran now and then inadvertently by forgetting to fill the balance of my camping device over a long weekend or something) or if due to changes at competitors for my keyword audience, I feel ‘below the line’ of the first page of searches, there was a very noticeable drop in revenue, as well as the number of non-camping avatars that actually came to the shop to look, whether they bought or not. The drop was significant enough that I could not have maintained paying tier without the campers. In fact, that was the original reason that I invested in the camping device. I went a few months not making any money and paying tier on 16k sq. meters of land. With the campers, I was able to make tier and increase the size of my shop to 42k sq. meters and still more than pay the tier, plus all of my avatars other expenses.
THere was, for me, a very definite break point, however. If I had space available for 3 - 4 campers, and maintained a competetive rate which ensured that they were full about half the time, I achieved the traffic goal that I wanted most of the time. If I increased the number of seats or the amount paid, traffic increased and I moved higher in search, but I did not see a noticeable increase in revenue or actual non-camping traffic.
Admittedly, my testing was somewhat limited in nature, and I never actually tried to have 40 campers, so perhaps some greater benefit might have been achieved, but I doubt it. Not for my business anyway. Which I suspect is a consideration. There are probably different rules for different keywords, depending on the audience those keywords reach.
April 24th, 2008at 10:48 am(#)
I am probably not a case in point, however I do know my own experience.
I sometimes have a few lindens to spend, sometimes spend 2,000L on a shopping frenzy. But when I see the statistics of crowded places. Just avoid them.
When I see all those empty BOTS and DRONES, placed there as a joke by “smart” ppl shortcuting the system for pennies. I feel an urge to flee any camping site as soon as I see it.
The downside of traffic is that it lags, lag is not good for business. Unless you are Elika Tiramisu - read next please:
The hard road to a succesfull business is a WANTED PRODUCT or SEVICE, QUALITY, and Good old MARKETING. Is this too hard to get?
On the ROI matter that Sigmund points out! I would also offer my question What wold experienced and succesfull SL? about entrepreneurs would say about camping and its benefits?
In other words: Why there is no camping at Elika’s place? I go to Elika’s shoeless so I can help lag down the place, not a single bot or done there, just paying customers.
Who is loosing with the whole camping deal?
April 24th, 2008at 11:39 am(#)
@Sigmund.
Free speech is fine, but not when you are naming and shaming businesses without the right to contribute to the article. Thats just plain unprofessional.
Most professional publications and newspapers contact people before publishing information about them or their businesses. You only have to look at most of the SL newspapers to see this. Also most SL newspapers are objective about their content, publishing useful articles - not using free speech to form an opinion and knock others.
Publications like this have a social responsibility to people and businesses in Second Life and should give balanced views.
There is always two sides to debates and stories. It is far more interesting to represent both sides.
April 24th, 2008at 1:34 pm(#)
Re: Billy
Thanks for the information, Billy. This is certainly the sort of stuff we need to hear if we are to consider WHY folks use camping as a marketing tool. Your experience helps explain he business case for camping, irrespective of what observers may feel about the moral or ethical case. The reason spam mail continues is because there can be a significant return on investment. For a few hundred dollars you can e-mail literally millions of people, and if only 10 of those buy your “$500 perpetual motion machine,” then you have made a profit. If more camp site owners were to provide figures such as your, Billy, the case FOR camping might look different.
Re: John
I understand where you are coming from, John. I would simply reiterate that the piece in dispute was an editorial and even the real world press can produce these, so long as the content is not overtly libelous. One only has to listen to Rush Limbaugh for 30 minutes to realize that Free Speech can be a painful option. However, Rush is indeed editorializing, despite his constant reference to having “the real facts” about whatever he is talking about. For example, Rush has a different set of “facts” about global warming, which suggest that 99% or scientists are wrong and he, Rush Limbaugh, is absolutely right.
Nevertheless, I can understand how Cheyenne’s comments could be construed as being a personal attack on a single individual, but on re-reading a few times, I still consider it to be fair commentary from a point-or-view, and that this extended, open discussion in which we are now engaged demonstrated that SLentrepreneur is at least open to providing the forum for debate, and allowing criticism of its publishing policy.
Re: Mony
There is still no substitute for the old-fashioned idea of selling the right product to the right person at the right price. Quality and Service will still win out in any long-term enterprise. Camping as a marketing tool may (and this in opinion, folks, not a “fact”) be the moral equivalent of spam to some folks, but if statistics exist to show that X campers = 50% increase in profits, then it will continue. Perhaps, too, there are different types of camping strategies; from the “sit and chat with friends and earn money” to bot-farms where 50-60 alts are stashed underground purely to pump up numbers at a location. Is one of these more acceptable than the other?
The whole “search” thing in Second Life is in need of some work. Linden Lab(R) does have a formula for calculating “hits” on a location but camping can affect this. Marketing strategies like camping only exist because the SL system allows it too - it is a way of exploiting that system.
I’ve said enough. I just wanted to respond to the excellent comments from you folks joining the debate. See, I’m not a bad man!
April 24th, 2008at 7:38 pm(#)
Its amazing to see the very distinct and clear divide that exists in SL. Glad this has sparked this type of outlet. I suspect both side will gain value from the exchanges, although change is something humans often fear and fight tooth and nail against.
April 25th, 2008at 6:19 am(#)
@John
At the risk of being labeled obsequious, I think you have a point with regards to the notion of having a “Pros and Cons of Camping” article. The fact that we now have three threads going on here about that very topic suggest there are enough folks out there interested in the topic.
The danger here is that I think we are becoming focused on personalities rather than business practices. What was intended to be an opinion piece about the practice of camping has unfortunately become a rather public display of sensitive interpersonnal reactions with Cheyenne and Rebecca being the conduits. I have to say I don’t believe that there was any malice aforethought when Cheyenne wrote the article and that the use of the photo for illustration was intended purely for that purpose - illustration.
There’s a whole other area of discussion about what SL reporters can and cannot do in with regard to publishing. Most of the SL media seem to take the same view as RL journalists whereby anything that is publicly available is fair use (so a picture of a public poster cannot be seen as “private”) and comments not made “off-the-record” are also allowed. The publishing of logs is still an area of contention in that the Linden Lab(R) Terms of Service specifically ban the publishing of logs in-world and in the LL forums, but there is no exclusion for off-site locations.
To make things murkier (or clearer) here’s what the TOS says about privacy:
<>
None of this is intended to be an apologia but a statement of what I believe the status quo to be with regard to privacy, confidentiality, and publishing.
What I WOULD encourage - and we are seeing it already - is for folks to offer their perspectives on camping, both pro and anti. As a business magazine, you are right in suggesting we should focus on that topic - although I don’t think you’re suggesting we become just an uncritical, rubber-stamp mouthpiece for the business community. There is room, I suggest, for the Op-Ed piece such as Cheyenne’s, along with the more standard and equivocal “Pros and Cons of X” articles.
Thanks again for the debate, John. It does indeed keep me thinking about what I should be doing when I write for SLentrepreneur and also makes us ALL think about the more general issues involved.
April 25th, 2008at 8:56 am(#)
Postscript: The quote I intended to post for my previous comment failed to appear. Here is the quotattion that SHOULD appear where you currently see a symbol:
Disclosing Personal Information in Profiles, Forums or within Second Life
You may choose to disclose personal information in our online forums, via your Second Life profile, directly to other users in chat or otherwise while using the Second Life service. Please be aware that such information is public information and you should not expect privacy or confidentiality in these settings.
April 25th, 2008at 9:04 am(#)
Sorry Sigmund.
But your privacy point is complete nonsense. This is not about a legal issue or whats allowed, its about violating a conversation that was obviously meant to be private between two individuals.
I don’t think I have seen a publicised chat log on any other credible SL newspaper. If I am wrong, then please point me to the page.
This is why everyone is upset - its the ethics and morals that your newspaper are showing.
You can point out as much as you like, that you are within your rights to do what you are doing - but people reading this don’t like it. They don’t like you violating other people and taking the stance that you are taking and don’t like what you believe is right.
April 28th, 2008at 12:44 pm(#)
Its called SL Entrepreneur - the name itself lends to business innovation, success, new ideas, business people’s stories. Not unqualified editoral from someone that clearly doesn’t know what they are talking about and what can only be percieved as an article designed to attack certain people and businesses. Otherwise why use the photo’s that have been used. If it was a general article about camping - use general pictures, not expose names of businesses and now people that get upset.
Its quite clearly a personal attack article of which isn’t professional journalism.
John:
How can you call it a personal attack when no where in the actual article did it mention any names of people (Avies) or business? It has already been staded that it was not the writer of the artical that chose these pictures, but SLEntrepreneur.