Shep Korvin - Blog is the new Black

N.F.J.B.M.W.Q (part 2)

...Being the second installment in a series where Nubile Female Journalists bombard me with insightful and illuminating questions.

And dirty pictures.

This week, our Nubile Female Journalist bends seductively over a lucky chair, and demands that I give her exactly what she needs...

Good, hard, vigorous, ANSWERS!

"How long did it take you to think up the idea of the original Lucky Chair? and did it give you many headaches whilst putting the idea into practice?"

The first Lucky Chair was originally designed as a relatively minor (!) component of a much more elaborate in-world puzzle/rpg game that I was designing (and before you ask: no.. the rest of the game was never finished... I guess the Lucky Chair led me onto a major career re-think!).

I wanted to build a viral entry-point into this game; something that would give the initial players a strong incentive to introduce _other_ players ... so I came up with a task that involved convincing a sequence of people - whose names began with randomly selected letters of the alphabet - to sit on a "magic chair". I envisioned players pulling in people from their friends list, or just asking random passers-by to help them get through this task .. and these people who had been drawn in would all have their interest piqued - "hey, what's this magic chair thing all about anyway?", and maybe join in with the rest of the game too...

Then, while I was thinking this idea through, another idea clicked into place. Something along the lines of "hey, wait a minute... what if I used this same technique to pull people into my store!"

I ratched around in my inventory, and found a nice throne/chair that my friend - Funaria Moose - had built, and put together a really simple, no-frills, Lucky Chair script. It probably only took me 2 or 3 hours to physically implement, but the "thinking-it-through stage" had gone on for weeks... so the total time involved is a bit hard to quantify, in retrospect.

(BTW, that original chair is still rezzed - now with a commemorative plaque(!) - at the back of LapGirl Boutique)

As I recall, the implementation went pretty smoothly. The hardest part was thinking of a name for the product - (I *hate* coming up with names for things!!). I remember thinking - at the time - that the name "Lucky Chair" seemed a bit weak, but I ended up just going with that name anyway, purely because I was spending far too long stewing over alternatives.

Retrospectively, it seems odd that I could have ever considered calling them something else... ;)

* * * * * * *

Are you a Nubile Female Journalist who'd like to Bombard me with Questions? Simply drop me a notecard in-world. And don't forget the pictures!

Remember the true meaning of Easter...

CHOCOLATE!

OK, maybe virtual chocolate isn't quite as interesting as the real thing... sooooo, in lieu of theobromine-laced cocoa-solid goodness, what else can I offer you? How about ... Lucky Easter Eggs!

These were really popular last year (so popular, in fact, that I've spent much of the last 12 months answering enquiries from people saying "hey, why can't I find your Easter eggs on sale any more?" ... in, like, November? July? Hmmmm....)

Anyway, in the grand tradition of pimping-my-own-wares  (and since it's finally the right time of year again!) ... I thought I'd post a reminder that Lucky Easter Eggs are back on sale again at Lucky Designs.

The idea is simple... you hide an "egg generator" in your store ... every now and then, the generator rezzes an Easter egg somewhere nearby. The eggs display letters - Lucky Chair style - and if a visitor manages to spot an egg displaying the initial letter of their name, they can click it to claim a prize.

They're really quick to set-up; just insert a prize into the rezzer, position it somewhere un-obtrusive, and utter the magic word to make the rezzer turn invisible and commence the rezzing of eggs. If you're in need of a fast, off-the-shelf Easter promotion for your store/venue, then this could be exactly what you need!

You can buy the basic single-rezzer kit for L$400 at Lucky Designs... and we have discount multi-packs (useful to extend your coverage over a larger venue) on offer too.

Have a great Easter! :)

Numbers...

Just been adding some stats up. Thought I'd reproduce my findings here, for the curious...

Total number of prizes given out via 3rd generation* Lucky Chairs, grid-wide, since their release in July:

2,066,642 

(or, in other terms, an average of 9,657 "lucky letters" are claimed every day....)

Number of bid box** auctions won (since the system was launched, 1 year ago):

487,082

So.... put together, that's over 2 and a half million user interactions with Lucky Designs Content clocked up since I started measuring usage.... and that's only based on two attractions! (unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight to put user metrics into the likes of MobVend and "What's in the Box?" - doh!)

Still, pretty impressive audience figures, IMHO :)

 

*Only 3rd generation chairs are included in this total - earlier chairs didn't include a networked odometer, so I can't track those. The actual number of prizes given out by _all_ lucky chairs in SL will be significantly higher.

**Charity auctions are excluded. The "charity edition" of bidbox doesn't link into the LuckyNet advertising network, so isn't reflected in these stats.

Oops, that was Christmas, right there...

Norovirus ... it's the disease sensation that's sweeping the UK! ... and, of course, being a total trendsetter, I decided to go and contract it a couple of weeks before everybody else ... and in a much more complicated, side-effect-laden way than the hoi polloi. I'll spare you the gory details - but take it as read that I spent a whole lot of time immediately prior to Christmas being generally unwell, and unable to focus on Second Life world domination plans...

Which is a shame, as I had a couple of neat products to roll out over the festive season ... but they ended up getting a really low-key release, as I just couldn't make it into SL long enough to get the momentum going with all the Lucky Designs regulars. I guess that's one of the hazards of being a (primarily) one-man show ... you can't afford to take sick leave!

Anyway, since this blog has become a potted history of my SL business adventures, I figured I should still blog the items retrospectively ... even though they're not actually on sale any more. (Though, give me another 10 months, and I'll probably have them out on the shelves again...)

 

Firstly, Lucky Santa - my old collaborative project with caLLie cLine made a re-appearance for the 2007 season ... this time sporting a much more up-to-date 3rd generation Lucky Chair script. Of course, since we originally built this item, caLLie has gone on to become an international virtual supermodel megastar ... but that seemed like a good excuse to call her in for a new promotional photoshoot *grin*.

"Lucky Santa is the perfect centerpiece for your store's Christmas Grotto - he's a third-generation Lucky Chair, with fully-customised dialogue and effects. Sit on his knee, and let Lucky Santa decide if you've been naughty or nice.... your customers will love it!"

And secondly... The Lucky Advent Countdown made its debut. I love the principle behind this device ... a really simple mechanic, underpinning a sure-fire traffic builder. Unfortunately, during the critical pre-Christmas run-up, I spent more time lying in a dark room wishing that the world would stop spinning than doing useful things like hyping my SL wares, so not very many people found out about it :(

It's too good to waste - expect a less-seasonal remix of the basic concept to emerge sooner or later. Definitely before next Christmas ;)

Anyway,  I hope you all had a great Christmas holiday - (fortunately, I was fully recovered in time for the big day, so Christmas in the Korvin Household wasn't a *total* wash-out!).

Wishing you all a very Lucky 2008!

Halloween pimpage...

...So, while I have your attention.... (I know, I know, I only seem to post when I want to sell you something) ...I should also announce that the Halloween Department is open for business at Lucky Designs!

Everything you need to promote YOUR store this Halloween, including:

The Unlucky Chair

...a 3rd Generation Lucky Chair, complete with an assortment of grisly death animations, bloody particle effects, and stomach-churning sound effects. Watch out for the rotary-saw head-chopper, that's my favourite!

Ye Olde Haunted Apple Bobbing

The traditional Halloween game, re-imagined for SL... A great new mechanic to attract people to your store - and keep them there! :)

Lucky Jack'O Lantern Hunt

Back in spring, I released a "Limited Edition" Lucky Easter Eggs game that was so popular that people still ask me for copies! This is a seasonal remix of that same game ... install this device in your venue, and grinning "Lucky Lanterns" will appear at random locations and intervals around your store, with lucky chair-style letters + prizes  ... keeps your customers searching; you never know where one might appear next!

All items are AVAILABLE NOW at Lucky Designs - and be sure to check our bundle deals for extra discounts!

Have a great Halloween!

New products, New home, and 10,000 chair-hops a day.

Wow... July has - possibly - been my busiest SL month *ever* (which is why the blog fell a little bit by the wayside). Apologies to everybody who's relying on my RSS feed to see what I'm up to. Here's the obligatory catch-up post...

First, the latest version of the Lucky Chair ("3rd Generation") went on sale couple of weeks ago. The new version of the chair is way more user-friendly than previous incarnations - has nice pop-up menus, and a boatload of handy new features like wildcard wins, options for cash prizes, self-repair mode, test wins, content tags, full oXDos compatibility... the list goes on! Suffice to say, it's a pretty major advance over the 2nd generation design.

Perhaps one of the more interesting new features - from my point of view - is the fact that the chairs can (optionally) report usage statistics back to a central server ... so, for the first time, I can finally track how popular lucky chairs are. (Or, at least, how popular this new batch of lucky chairs is). Can you believe that these new chairs are already reporting over 10,000 uses every day? Pretty impressive figures ... I doubt you'll find many other SL marketing attractions that pull in that kind of audience figure :)

Last month also saw the release of a brand new product - "What's in the Box?", which was developed in co-operation with a new Lucky Designs collaborator, Fnordian Link. I originally hooked up with Fnord a couple of months ago, when he came to me with a pitch for new device that he thought would be of interest to Lucky Chair customers. Weeks later (and after much refinement of the original design), "What's in the Box?" (AKA WITB?) is now available for purchase.

At heart, WITB? is a simple guessing game - if you're the first player to guess the prize that's concealed inside the box, you win the round (and the contents of the box!). Between "guessing" rounds, the unit displays a slideshow of potential prizes... so, in order to play the game, players need to hang around and watch pictures of your products.

The benefits to you, as an operator, are multifold: People spend time in your store playing the game (=dwell), people have to concentrate on pictures of your products in order to play (=improved brand/product range awareness), and of course - ultimately - you're dropping sample products into the hands of potential customers ... which they percieve as being higher value than a "regular" feebie, by virtue of the comparative scarcity/difficulty to obtain (the "lucky chair" effect!).

Development of WITB? was a new experience for me, as although I've collaborated with other developers on various SL projects in the past, this is the first time I've shared scripting duties with anybody. Fnord wrote the core of the script, while I concentrated on some of the trickier anti-cheating refinements (and ensuring the game has the same look + feel as other Lucky Designs products). The process went really smoothly - I'd anticipated a leisurely development cycle that would probably last a few weeks, but I think we managed to nail the majority of the code within a couple of days. Fnord was great to work with; expect further collaborations soon!

And finally - Lucky Designs has moved! The company was starting to outgrow the parcel we had in the November Sim ... so, I've moved to a much larger plot in Bermuda. (Frequent readers might recognise this as the spot that formerly housed my millionaire playboy mansion. What can I say... land is at a premium... sacrifices have to be made. *sob*). The building is actually a (very slightly modified) prefab by (???), called "Enigma" - as soon as I saw it in the store, I thought it would make the *perfect* beachfront corporate HQ. The new place has a huge showroom, a presentation room (which we packed full of avatars for the "WITB?" launch event), and a couple of other areas which I've got plans for... all to be revealed soon!

Do drop by and check the new place out :) http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bermuda/50/21/22/

How Big?

Metrics. I wish I had them. If I'd only known _just_ how big the Lucky Chair phenomena would be *before* they hit the streets, I would've included a networked visitor counter in each and every one. As it stands, I have absolutely no idea how many virtual butts are dropped into a virtual chair each day in the name of indiginous brand advertising. And that bugs me.

Earlier today, I was reading Tateru's headcount stats over at New World Notes. I can't remember seeing these before (clicking the blog category tags suggests that Tateru has only been producing them for a couple of weeks), but I was kind of fascinated by just how low the throughput is on a lot of the commercial brand lots in SL. Pontiac, for example, has the highest throughput of all... but Tateru calculates only 62 (estimated) visitors per peak hour.... and second-placed L-Word only has 36.

I wonder how many people sit on a lucky chair in the space of an hour? I bet if you tallied that figure across *every* Lucky Chair in SL, it would easily be a 4-figure number (seriously! - there's a *lot* of those things out there now!)... but unfortunately, due to the aforementioned lack of foresight, I have no way of knowing :( 

Time for an experiment...

I switch to one of the lucky chair channels, and wait for a promising looking SLURL to pop up.... within a couple of seconds, I spot an announcer calling the chair letters at a place called "Fridays Girl". I've never heard of this place, but it looks like they have 5 chairs, and there's a dedicated "caller" active there now, so it's probably a good example of a "serious" chair installation. 

It's 1pm SLT on a Monday.... online concurrency is (surprisingly) over 40k, so I guess that's not too distant from peak ratings. I warp into a good hiding place at the other end of the sim, untether my camera, pan into the store.... and start counting...

                            

It's a boring job - but I'm prepared to suffer in the name of science! For an hour, I note the people coming in, and the people going out. Fortunately, this venue has all the chairs in a special annex (along with a couple of mobvends, and a prize pyramid), so it's pretty easy to distinguish chair users from other visitors.

The result of my (highly unscientific and somewhat random) investigation: 35 visitors to the chair area.

According to Tateru's projections, this chair installation is pulling in more visitors than Dell, IBM, AOL.... and is only one warm body behind equalling the popularity of "The L word" (and I bet the people who comissioned *those* campaigns paid a tad more than the 8 bucks that the owner of this place invested in lucky chairs!)

But... this is just one lucky chair installation. There are *hundreds* of stores across SL running similar lucky chair set-ups. How many other people are spending time in Lucky Chair hotspots around the grid during the same period that I'm spending scoping out Friday's? And just how "engaged" is the typical chair hopper - I keep hearing stories of how some people spend an 8 hour day just chair-hopping around SL... to them, chair-hopping *is* the defacto SL activity - that's the point of the SL "game". If you consider all the lucky chairs across the grid to be one huge, distributed advertising campaign for indiginous SL brands (and trust me on this - as the SL population grows, distributed events are the *only* way to go).... it's the killer campaign! None of the real-world brands have come close to this level of popularity amongst SL residents.

I guess, as the creator of this whole scene, I should be shouting this fact from the tallest roofs.  

if only I had those metrics...

(and a roof)

Prize Pyramid - Field Test

As promised... here's that "very close relative" to the lucky chair that I was talking about earlier, having its very first field-test on-site in LapGirl Boutique...

How does it differ from a lucky chair?

After claiming a letter, the "winner" is given the chance to improve their prize by bringing other people into the store to collect other letters. Each time a letter is claimed, another tier of the pyramid lights up ... and lighting up the entire pyramid awards the top prize to all participants.

So, here's two big advantages over a lucky chair:

Firstly, a user can't tp in, grab the prize, and tp out again - the pyramid has a buffer period (currently 7 minutes by default) in which winners are offered the opportunity to attract somebody capable of unlocking the next tier and improving the pay-out. If they leave the sim during this period, they don't get their prize. There's no way to skip or fast-forward this period - so users are either going to work their address books to bring in more bodies, or (if they don't have sufficient contacts online, or are just happy to take the first tier prize), they're going to start browsing your store to kill time. Both of which are good results for you.

Secondly.... the winner has a real incentive to bring more people into your venue... they *want* the top prize - they *need* to light up the whole pyramid ... and anybody they bring in to light up a level is going to have to hang around for their own 7-minute "count-down" period.

OK... this is probably sounding more complex than it should ... bottom line: it's a pretty intuitive system to understand when you see it in action (the first test-victims had no problem at all getting to grips with it), and devilishly effective at bringing small crowds into your shop who _must_ hang around for a short time before leaving.

Assuming this test session completes without problem, the Prize Pyramid will be on pre-sale to members of the "Lucky Designs" group tomorrow, with wider distribution to follow ASAP.

                           

(P.S. - don't sit on it. It's not a chair. It's pointy. Sitting on it would be a baaaaad thing.)

Better than virtual chocolate...

You might've spotted these popping up at various SL stores over the course of the last week... Lucky Easter Eggs! Basically, they're a cross between a traditional easter egg hunt, and the "Lucky Letter" system that operates on Lucky Chairs. Once installed, the "Lucky Egg" system makes fancy easter eggs pop up at random locations around your store... each egg has a different letter floating above it; if you find an egg that's showing your initial, click it to claim a prize. Eggs constantly appear and disappear throughout the day - keep searching, you never know where the next one might be!

I've installed the system at LapGirl Boutique, where it'll run until the end of Easter weekend, with several different outfits up for grabs... and there's been a strong take-up of the system from other merchants, so hopefully there'll be plenty of other venues where you can go hunting for Lucky Easter eggs very soon! If you'd like to install Lucky Eggs at your own store, the full system can be purchased from Lucky Designs - it's completely automated, and can be installed in minutes... all you need to do is add some prize items.

Have a great easter!

Crowdpricing and Podcasts

Walker Spaight has coined a wonderfully web2.0-esque phrase to summarise exactly what it is that MobVends do.... "crowdpricing". I love that word! ... so expect me to use it a lot in the future :)  ... you can read what he had to say about MobVendors over on 3pointD.com. In a predictably yin-yang fasion, Prokofky uses the associated comments section to diss Mobvends/Lucky Chairs. Yay!... my first public denunciation by Prokofky Neva - I feel like I've finally arrived on the SL developer circuit! My FIC membership card must surely already be in the post?

Elsewhere in the SL mediasphere... (this happened 6 weeks ago, and I have to admit - with slight embarassment - completely passed me by at the time) ...the "GBAffair" Podcast devoted an entire episode to Lucky Chairs! Episode #61 (direct mp3 link) features almost 30 minutes of LC-related goodness ...chat, interviews, and even a spot on Lucky Chair etiquette! Great stuff :)