The “campy ex-marine” who started VGI

New World Notes has a detailed post/story about ex-marine known as Games Prototype in Second Life.

I found this quote from Games Prototype curious:

Well, I see it as this. People want money, and they will do anything to get it. So they come and sit, and maybe play some,” he reasons. “People who sit in the chairs aren’t the type that will build Second Life. The people who really make SL what it is won’t be found in a chair, because they are building and creating.”

There continues to be this focus on campers being something less than human which I find hypocritical coming from someone making $2,000-3,000 USD every month. I don’t think he’s making it from the chairs though, but from the VGI machines which have no moving parts and more likely from the commission of the casino annex operators in the group.

One of our group members, Lestat, owns one of the VGI annexes: VGI Mud, so I thought it would be interesting to get his insider perspective on this story.

Lestat agrees with Games on the point regarding dwell and developer incentives not meaning that much and even with the point above.

Though I’m not a casino owner, it’s my belief that these campers still present a potential business opportunity. Hey, traffic is traffic even if some of it is zombiefied. I like the basic concept Games has for the chairs to pay more based on more gameplay and I wish the chairs operated more like a comp system does in a real casino. The more the player cycles through in play the better the comps (chairs). This would encourage more gameplay and if the machines are set fairly should mean that sometimes the players will do much better than the house, but on the whole they will only lose a little bit of their stake over time.

This is something I’ve talked with Lestat in detail. Most the casinos in SL don’t seem to take into account the gameplay as being important as the profit/loss (leaning on heavier house advantage) but Lestat is working on implementing these business plans in running VGI Mud and I hope he succeeds. If the odds are fairly set — and that is a bone of contention for anti-casino residents since they believe many of the games are fixed — then it should be more important to focus on gameplay. If the machines were all set to pay 90% or better then you get enough people to play and the 10% will be just fine. This is how the regulated terrestrial casinos operate.

Still, there are some SL casino games out there paying much, much less than 90% in my tests. I’ve bought a number of the slot machines out there and run tests. One popular vendor claims his slot machines payback 75% but in my tests with tens of thousands of L$ cycled through one machine was paying back no better than 62%. Since the code is protected there is no way to audit the code other than to run manual tests cycling through coins. It’s possble I need to run through hundreds of thousands of Linden to get a completely fair picture since truly random numbers can take awhile to pan out, hence the reason I’m not naming names here.

The TD Dice Cube game I created has a secret dice game in that pays back over 110% on average and offers the chance at a larger progressive jackpot which can run into the thousands of Lindens. This game is one of the best fair plays in all of Second Life. The only way to play this game, however, is the main dice cube game must also be played which costs L$50 for the TD Dice Cube or L$10 for the new TD Dice Mini. SL gamblers should be asking all their favorite casino operators to buy a copy of these dice games which are reasonably priced and available via SL Boutique and SLexchange as well as at my TD Scripts store. For live cube action, just visit VGI Mud.

Note: the owners of these dice cannot change the gameplay odds — they are random — and the owners can actually — at their option — be at a disadvantage when they first start the dice game based on how much they start the pot (configurable). The more the pot grows, the greater the likelihood they’ll make back the money and turn a profit. It’s a fair game. I encourage folks who want to test this out to simply buy one and see for themselves that the gameplay odds cannot be manipulated by the owner.

Getting back to the camping chairs, this is another clear example that the dwell bonus going away will not rid SL of the chairs. It could make the uses of them even more creative, and that’s not a bad thing from what I can tell.

BTW, the title of this post is taken from a comment on the New World Notes story that I really liked from “Dildo Baggins” (ok, the name, I know).