Second Life traffic gaming: A chat with a bot-operator, and dire portents for Lucky Chairs

The store is a fairly ordinary store in Second Life terms, except that it appears to sell objects that are mostly available for free elsewhere in the virtual environment. Reselling 'freebies' in Second Life is generally considered to be a reprehensible practice, but it does happen. This particular store is one of the places we routinely check out to evaluate the effectiveness of Linden Lab's harder-line policies on gaming traffic (and thus search-rankings) within Second Life.

In front of us are a row of 53 avatars, camping out. The provision of such camping facilities being one of the things that are prohibited under the new policy. We tried for a little while to get the attention of one of the camping avatars to see what they might think, and finally succeeded. As it happens, the avatar who responded was a bot – actually one of 70 bots being controlled by a single user who declined to give us a name. The bot-operator was, however, happy to answer a few questions for us, through the remotely-controlled avatar.

Firstly we were curious as to how the bot-operator was able to communicate with us. It was easy, he (or she) said, "The software lets me move them, speak through them, chat on IMs, join groups, edit profiles, dress, do gestures and all sorts of other stuff. If someone talks near one of my bots, it alerts me."

So, why run all the bots?

"It's strictly business. I used to have a store. I made and sold furniture. But it was a lot of work to keep up. A friend slipped me a copy of the bot-running software that he'd bought, and it's much more profitable."

How much more profitable?

"Depending on where I can get camping spots, between 100 and 200 a week. My bro's got better spots, but he won't tell me where. He makes over 300, and only uses 60 bots."

That's US Dollars?

"US dollars, yeah."

How much work do you have to put in for that?

"Maybe five minutes (laughs) Okay, well it took me a day or two to get everything set up right, but just a couple minutes each week now."

What do you do with it all? Do you spend any of it in-world?

"I trade the bucks for dollars. Doesn't seem any point in spending it. SL's just a one way business for me. Money comes out."

Do you have any relationship with the person who runs this store?

"Nope. Couldn't give a ***** about the bum. Selling freebies? That's so low."

Some might consider that the ironic statement of the year. Have Linden Lab's new policies made things harder for you?

"Nope! A few folks dropped out of the game so they wouldn't get ganked. More for the rest of us. You won't catch me going out early. Every minute is more money. They'll have to force me out, and the longer it takes, the better off I'll be when it happens!"

Have you gotten any warnings?

"Nothing! I don't know anyone who has."

Certainly all the places we've visited with camping chairs, or boxes of traffic-boosting bots don't seem to have changed. All the campers are still in place, and all the bots as well.

One of the big Second Life fashion designers though, received a warning late last week for having a "Lucky Chair" on "search-enabled land" at her well-known store.

A "Lucky Chair" slowly cycles randomly through the alphabet. If you name starts with the displayed letter, you can sit in the chair, and get a prize. Usually it is some special item that the store-owner has made for the purpose. The chair then picks a new letter at random, returns your avatar to its feet, and is ready for the next lucky person to come by.

In Second Life there are social/spotters groups that check out Lucky Chairs as they find them, trade information about which have the best prizes, and what letters they're currently showing. Generally, there isn't any actual need to actually hang around one of the chairs waiting, if you're a member of one of the spotters' groups.

Linden Lab, it seems, has decided that they're another traffic gaming tool (which, we suppose is more or less the case), at least when their side-effects would seem to influence search-rankings. It seems a little odd, to us, that one of Second Life's more successful designers is spanked for a Lucky Chair, while it remains business-as-usual for bots and camping-chair operators.

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