The Thrill of the Hunt

Treasure hunts have become extremely popular in Second Life, and for good reason:  everyone benefits from them.  The store owners (including the hunt organizers) who provide the free hunt gifts gain traffic, a few sales, some new customers, and some publicity; the hunters get loads of free stuff, often of pretty high quality.  It's a win-win situation.

However, I've participated as a retailer in a number of hunts now, and I have often observed one or more store owners getting bent out of shape about hunters who cheat to find the hunt object, or who help other hunters to cheat by giving away the object's location. I have also observed some hunters getting extremely frustrated and giving up on stores who hide their hunt items in ridiculously obscure locations.

Here's the thing:  as store owners, we absolutely want the hunters to fulfill their end of the implied bargain by taking some time to look around our shops.  So it's understandable that cheating would be frowned upon, and it's also understandable that some shop owners would attempt to maximize the amount of time that the hunters spend in their stores by being extra sneaky about where they hide their item.

But there's a caveat for store owners in all of this, which is that if you come down too hard on cheaters, or if you frustrate your hunters to the point of desperation, the hunters will come away with a negative impression of you and your store. If you anger them enough, they may even make a conscious effort to avoid your store in the future and to warn their friends away from it.  In short, you'll end up losing customers instead of gaining them.

My advice to hunt retailers is therefore to shoot for a happy medium in hiding your hunt object, and remember that even if the hunters manage to find the item instantly and end up spending only seconds in your store, they are still coming away with your landmark and info (which you have of course included in the box with your hunt prize, right?), as well as an excellent example of your work that might tempt them to return later for a second look at your wares.

And if a hunter is cheating, or helping others to cheat, deal with it privately and politely in IM--or better yet, ask the hunt organizers to follow up, since they have likely already honed their PR skills in dealing with scores of prior hunts and can handle the situation with expertise.  Whatever you do, don't malign the person openly in the hunt's group chat or otherwise publicly embarrass them.  You're only hurting yourself in the long run.