Money, money, money, money... Money.

This is the first of what I hope will be more joint topic posts that I make with Lotus Ceriano at her awesome blog, Lotus-Pocus. We were chatting about topics and discovered we were both thinking of posting about money, and after a brief spell of, "You go ahead," "No, you go ahead," we found we were going to be addressing pretty different aspects of the same general theme. So I'm taking on the players' side, and she's going to be discussing the club owners' side. Hopefully we'll be finishing up near enough in time that these can be read together.

Front: Hacob Hollwood and Hilda Static. Back: Niina Jenvieve, me, and Sinnamon Sands. "Win Thorn's Money" trivia at Double Standards

From the Ground Up

Not all trivia in SL is played for money. Gogomodo proliferates in many nooks and crannies, and... well, I can't really think of any other common examples. So I guess it won't be off the mark to say that nearly all trivia in SL is played for money. When I was a poor noob, my first friend and mentor took me to a dance club with a trivia orb running, and I pretty much swept the game, L$5 at a time. Since the noob wardrobe is typically substandard, and the "Best in..." contests this friend pretty much thrived on were beyond my reach, trivia quickly became my primary source of income, and that remains the case today.

The amount of money a game pays off matters, but how much does it matter? Who does it matter to, and why? Does it stand on its own as a factor or does it interact with others in building the sense of a game?

It might be because club Shiraz is the place I've been attending the longest and still the most often, or it might be because of the whole range of payouts across the trivia landscape, but I sort of see L$20 per question as a baseline, and before I began spreading out in order to write up new games for this blog, any game that paid less than L$20 didn't really capture my attention. It wasn't just that the money wasn't worth my time but that I almost didn't take such games seriously. Money attracts competition, and it's a lot more fun to win money when you're beating out speed demons and brainiacs than when you're beating out folks who aren't really either. One might say I grew out of the L$5-per-question stage.

I'm not so much of a snob these days; there are some games paying out L$10 or L$15 that are a lot of fun and worth going to, and there are some (well, one, really) that pays out well but, frankly, isn't that high on the joy scale. Obviously, every game is a balance of factors: quality of the questions, effectiveness of the format, personality of the host(s), atmosphere of the location, friendliness of the crowd, and -- last but not least -- money. If a place is strong enough where all those other factors are concerned, then you can have a bunch of friends kvetching around a gogomodo board (or several), earning no money but running up a location's team score. But those scenarios are rare, and winnings, I'd suggest, aren't just a draw because people like money but because the presence of money changes the balance of all of those factors.

I pretty much stuck to Shiraz over my first summer in SL, only branching out gradually. Come fall, though, I was starting to discover that elsewhere, I could win enough not just for a couple of cute dresses a week but to rent a home. AllieKatt Knipper's games, with their healthy bonuses, Thorn's with the first three-winner format I'd played, and eventually Chadd and Shale's first Shotgun games (at which I won only one question at the first game, but it was for something like L$800 and was about sashimi [you don't forget your first L$800 question]), gave me a new perspective on how cash can alter the fabric of a game. By December, I'd begun going to Marine Park and had reached trivia winnings nirvana.

Marine Park Mardi Gras, February 27, where players got paid not only for trivia but for telling ghost stories, flashing their boobs, and dressing for the Bests contest. (Sorry, too long ago for me to remember who is pictured here.)

No Post on Winnings is Complete Without Talking About...

I was winning too much to spend, actually, and that's one of the reasons I collaborated with Thorn to develop the Buccaneer Bowl, began paying for questions at Chaos (the truth or dare challenge was the only prize offered there for the first five or six months it was running), and eventually started conducting spontaneous trivia games in Impromptu Garden.

For those who are still unfamiliar with the enigma that is Marine Park, it is a long-running, three-winner trivia venue where the prizes are a minimum of L$300/200/100 per question and sometimes more. There is an entrance fee (L$100 lately), and you can't always find it by searching for "trivia"; you need to type in "Marine Park," and events are added and deleted regularly. People have mostly discovered it by word of mouth, and many go only once and decide the money isn't worth it to return, or that the stress over trying to make their entrance fee back isn't worth it. Others become addicted. (/me raises hand)

When people hear about MP and its winnings for the first time, they often ask, "How can money like that not be worth it? Worth what?" Well. Let me try being diplomatic about this. They're strict. They have very rigid rules of conduct that drain the game of any kind of social element it might otherwise have, and -- I'd say this is an even stronger aspect -- they create a nerve-wracking (for some) atmosphere with a patently hierarchical and socially segregated host/guest structure and an infamous tendency to ban people arbitrarily, with no explanation, and with no opportunity for recourse. And they seem to be completely oblivious that there's anything odd or questionable about that.

The funny thing is, all of this added to the excitement of the game there for me. The winnings raised the stakes and made the competition feel more fierce, even when I found myself scrambling to answer questions like, "What is your favorite animal?" Even the rules (speaking during the trivia is discouraged, for instance) and the owner's tendency to spring the next question without warning contributed to a more thrilling game. You frequently hear people say they attend Marine Park games "just for the money," but I believe the money element operates not only directly but indirectly, and that it is the indirect impact that is or was stronger for some of us. It draws in some of SL's best players, which makes a successful game that much more exciting, and although it makes the atmosphere tense, it also makes the atmosphere serious. I've never had qualms with the silence rule (though I have major qualms with their means of enforcing it) and think it contributes positively to MP's MP-ness, even as it becomes something people "put up with" because they want the cash.

Lillian Shippe, Bucc Bowl banker

Such a Thing As Too Much?

I certainly hope that there aren't equivalent aspects of Bucc Bowl that people put up with because they simply want the cash. I can't do a similar kind of analysis about the effects of money on Bucc Bowl because I don't experience it as a player, but there are a few things that were important to me in designing the format. First, we decided to make it high-paying because unlike most games, players need to make the full two-hour time commitment -- they can't just pop in and out as they wish -- and we wanted to make that time commitment worth their while. There is also some pre-game organization required of not only planners but players as well, and so it seemed appropriate to reward that effort. Second, after the extremely laggy first game and the institution of ARC bonuses, we were pleased to find that it relieves a concern we originally had: that it would be possible for people to make that entire time commitment and work to put a team together and still leave empty-handed. Now, if anyone does leave with nothing, it's only because they decided to prioritize appearance (at a game where many people turn their rendering off anyway) over sim performance.

But there is another side of giving away a lot of money that I've framed positively in this post but that not everyone necessarily sees as a good thing: money, as I've noted several times, draws competition. And although I love the adrenaline rush that increased competition gives me, I recognize that for some people, there is such a thing as too much. Although we get a lot of positive accolades for Bucc Bowl, as well as some constructive criticism, the one recurring complaint is that it's very stressful. Teams invest a lot of work and strategy in choosing players, and they don't want to make a poor showing, more for the sake of their teams than for themselves. Many people want to attend for the first time without playing, in order to see what the big deal is before committing to a team, but the sim's avatar capacity makes it difficult to grant every request. I believe that the fact that your performance affects not only yourself but your teammates, as well, is probably the most significant factor in the stress level, but the money once again plays both a direct and an indirect part. It shapes the game's atmosphere, for better or for worse, and I honestly can't see Bucc Bowl functioning for less than L$10,000 per game (the minimum total payout if there are no ties and no one complies with the ARC bonus).

We've created something that I acknowledge might be just as nerve-wracking as Marine Park, but for entirely different reasons (I, for instance, am capable of scrolling through chat to find the three winners out of 35 players while people are socializing). With games like these, I'll be the first to admit that it's kind of nice sometimes just to go to a 20-question, L$20 game, relax, and hang out when there's nothing on the line but your own pride in getting an answer in first. Nonetheless, in my case, the only reason I'm able to relax in this way is that I saved up enough money before being banned from MP that I now see the winnings elsewhere as merely symbolic, and I usually tip most or all of it back.

But I can only speak for myself. Here are the questions I asked at the beginning of this post, once more: The amount of money a game pays off matters, but how much does it matter? Who does it matter to, and why? Does it stand on its own as a factor or does it interact with others in building the sense of a game?

What do you think?

Lemmings: the official mascot of SL trivia. Cinna "The Lemming" Xaris in foreground; AnaMaria "every day is Thorn day" Quintessa and Chaddington "I like to watch lemmings" Boomhauer in background.

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