Linden Lab makes me sad

It’s pretty obvious I’m not opposed to gacha machines when I create gacha sets myself. Recently, however, Gogo brought up a pretty interesting conversation on Plurk about what’s okay to include in a gacha and what isn’t.

By the way. Is it gatcha, or gacha? How do you spell that? Because I’m pretty torn on that issue.

Anyway, here are my personal rules for content creation when it comes to Random Stuff You Stick In A Machine In Order To Get Money:

• Don’t set the playing price too high. I’ve seen some gacha machines charging 75/play or higher. Are you crazy? The only way I would play that is if there were relatively valuable items for commons, or if I truly wanted to win the rare.
• Don’t bait-and-switch your customer. Some machines show rare prizes on one sign, then farther below are the common prizes you’re more than likely to win. Come on, you don’t have to trick us into paying you for anything. If we want your rare prize, we’ll play anyway, right?
• Don’t use mesh templates for gacha prizes if you aren’t going to add unique textures to them. WHY? Why do this? For a few hundred more Ls, we can snag the original, full-perm item on Marketplace. It would be one thing if the art you add to the template were outstanding and worth it alone, but an everyday item with forgettable textures? That’s rude. Make it truly unique if you want to use mesh templates.

Gacha(gatcha?) machines are supposed to be fun to play. The dress I’m wearing in this picture, for example, is from Junbug and had reasonable common prizes to win on top of the rare corset I wanted as well. I was fine with playing the machine over and over in order to obtain what I desired. It’s an even deal when your machine is set up that way; both creator and customer walk away happy.

But when the practice gets out of control, it’s giving your client base the short end of the stick. They aren’t your enemy and they aren’t obligated to be your source of income. Treat them with respect when you create your machines, and they’ll come back to play again and again.

What I’m Wearing

Pink Fuel Skin
Junbug – Madame Corbeau’s corset (rare)/silk ruffles/split silk skirt (Ivory)
Blueberry – Tiara (hair fair gift)
Dura – Girl’s hair 51 (Strawberry)

Location: 005: Dreams of Secrets