Joe Essid directs the Writing Center at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. He is a Richmond native who attended the University of Virginia and earned a Master's and PhD at Indiana University. His research interests include technology in the classroom and Southern literary humor. His academic writing has appeared in Computers and Humanities, The Writing Lab Newsletter, and anthologies about technology and writing. He is a contributor to Style Weekly and has appeared in Eighty One and RVA. Ignatius Onomatopoeia is the "avatar" who represents Joe in the game-world Second Life. Ignatius will be wandering the virtual terrain of Second Life while his creator writes here about what may be either "the next big thing" for the Internet or the latest darling of the cyber-hip... the reader can decide.
E-mail contact: jessid@mac.com | Web address: writing2.richmond.edu/jessid

Location: Sucking Money Out of The System

I’d reported, some time ago and much after the fact, that Linden Lab® had changed the traffic “metrics” in Second Life®.  Now popular places are part of a “Showcase” voted upon by residents. Mere presence of camping-zombies and bots will not help a location bring in active avatars. None of the old camping spots show up in Showcase’s top listings.  As a result, camping rates have fallen off sharply. The old “Free Spirit” group at HippiePay once gave out 2L every 5 minutes.  Now avatars try to crowd in anywhere that offers 2/15.

Pappy Enoch, who covers the freeloader-and-layabout (dead) beat for “In a Strange Land,“ went around to check on the status of camping these days.  He was in a grim mood when he came back.  He handed me a faded “fotygraph” of the good old days of camping and began his lament.  As he put it, “them was sum times, Wiggly. I camped on mah tractur a-cuttin’ grass (n’ smokin’ sum) wif them-thar Hippies at Woodstock I-land.  I luved chasin’ wimmin, like that-thar purty gal in knotty britches in my fotygraph. Yu cood scoop in 100L in a night, ol’ son’!“

Pappy got all misty-eyed at this point, so I translated the rest of his report, below, from the original hillbilly:

Land owners are trying a series of strategies to get visitors to their locales to spend money.  Zyngo games are popular draws, as are Sploder balls. For those new to Second Life, those are virtual versions of Bingo and a type of “office pool” that disburses money randomly after avatars have put in a certain amount.  Treasure-hunts, cheap or free items, and lucky chairs of all sorts still abound.  Pappy spotted a large group of avatars at one spot, crowded around a cluster of lucky chairs, hoping the chairs’ letters might match the first one in their names.

Pappy just shook his head and walked off.  These avatars did not talk or interact in any way. They were just there, desperate for a few Linden Dollars and the chance to be the first to sit down.

A system that permits avatars to do other things while camping, and not using pose-balls or camping chairs, comes from Anywhere Camping. In theory, the avatar can earn as much as 10 Linden Dollars every 15 minutes.  The trick involves completing marketing surveys, though the bonus is the ability to leave a camping sim and earn money anywhere in the metaverse.

It’s clever, but will it prove a sustainable business model?  Without visitors paying something back to sim-owners, it cannot last. Yet time will tell, and Pappy, who does not want to do anything productive, will be on the scene to tell you.

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