You Can Do Anything vs. It's Just Too Hard!

Why then are there so many people with balls enough to create physical content?

And so many people without balls enough to create non-physical content?

coco

In RL, my best friend and I can sell handmade clay, stone, and Fimo jewelry (we do - at arts and crafts fairs, and the like), or, I can invite my brother over to play his guitar and sing (which he is very good at btw, as good as Frogg or Tommy to be sure) in my back yard and charge people admission to see him.

Which do you think is going to be more profitable?

See, the problem in SL with non-physical content is largely the same as in RL. It is exceedingly difficult to break into that market unless you can provide top notch entertainment.

We can all make doo-dads in SL, and likely achieve some measure of profitability, but enticing folks to pay for entertainment short of full-blown amusement parks, first-run movies, big name rock bands, etc., is a whole different thing. It will come someday, hopefully.

I don't see event subsidies as any guarantee that non-physical content will be compelling, which is why I am glad they removed it. The only thing it guaranteed was that folks would come up with any kind of event and hold it as often as possible to milk the dole. That doesn't foster innovative, creative, and compelling non-physical content - that fosters stagnancy, complacency, and expectations of a hand out for minimal work.

Coco, did you ever try to import your game shows to SL?

Yes, exactly right. We already have proof of this reality from the event support days.

No, but I got a friend bugging me to do it. This would be the same friend who successfully bugged me to get cable and play SL in the first place! lol

coco

To Jake:
I've looked at the economic data but conclusions are hard to come by. The data we are provided is too thin, and the buckets themselves are too broad to lead to relevant conclusions (the noise factor is too high, which leads to bad assumptions which leads to bad conclusions).

To crack this, LL needs either to figure out how to collect and release more, or someone needs to create a polling system that samples a broad enough range of content/service providers and consumers to contain meaningful data. Even that data, of course would be suspect, because with alts and ... well, simply lying... polls can be warped.

And yeah I agree there needs to be balance in SL. A lot of people, myself included, make both free and purchasable stuff. That's not our problem -- our problem is needing better tools to create better products, a better platform to support actual entertainment, continued innovation from old and NEW creators, better search capabilities, etc.


To cocoa:
yes, I don't think I've seen a successful service entertainment business that charges up front, or that has successful product-sale tie ins. There's probably some group out there that charges for membership to keep it "elite" ... exclusivity always being a draw for some.

That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, for one, since I don't get out enough. I know Perspephone Phoenix was grappling with these issues many months ago and I had the impression she got something workable off the ground with her spa.

But even if it doesn't exist now, I still think it WILL as the population and the platform evolves. Someone's gonna crack the nut and everyone's gonna stand around saying, "now why didn't I think of that?"

As they should. I have a feeling that they know that you could probably make a pretty damned good go at it.

I would pay to attend.

I used to hold events a couple years back, and the biggest barriers I saw were lack of interest and griefers. The griefers are the reason they started allowing events to be held on private property. Lack of interest - more than likely my fault. The few hundred L$ I received certainly didn't ensure that my events were compelling.

Well, ty Nolan!

coco

I'm new to SL, I've flown to the sex shops, I've frequented the casinos, and even spent a little time sightseeing. And now I've read a post depicting the buisiness aspects of this "game". And what strikes me as odd, is that it seems to be a cross-section of the world. A pessimist would say you have two groups, the have's and the have not's. Well, I was born into the second group. Watching other people have nice things and almost resenting them for it. Because it's always easier to assume that the "have's" just happened upon their life, and have had such incredible good fortune. Meanwhile,,I was skipping school, smokin dope, doing anything I could to keep from assimilating into the general "achievement oriented" population.
But, to make a long story short, I screwed my head on straight. I'm now in a desireable financial situation, although it takes working 60 - 65 hours a week. And I've come to a realization. There's no such thing as the have's and the have not's, there are only the do's and the do-little's. And frankly if we should strive to appeal to the "least common denominator" what do we achieve? Should SL possibly open a ghetto thats accessible to dial-up modems and require no verification for sign-ups because it discriminates against the homeless folks wanting to visit SL at the Library downtown? Personally I say set logical standards that apply to all, indiscriminantly, police the violations, and stay out of the way of the free market. It works every time its tried.

To all those who think it's hard to succeed in SL

I sell vehicles, in theory. In practice, I haven't sold a vehicle in ages, because I hate LSL with a firey passion.

I never lack for spending money.

Why?

Because a few random products I created as *newbie*, literally only a month old or so, are still in stores in a few places as SL. These are two year old products, not that great to begin with, that only exist in world because I'm *too lazy* to take them down.

So, yeah.

I'm a success by accident, for God's sake, I shudder to think what will happen if I get off my lazy butt and actually start finishing up these vehicles.

Woo! Necromancy!

First of all, "you can do anything" isn't true. For that to be true, SL would have to have no technical limitations. That's not possible (well, unless you count coding up your own virtual world as something you could do, which is true I suppose, but not really relevant to discussion of SL)

Second, the model you describe works every time it's been tried in real life. But SL is not real life - because SL is completely optional. No other economic system in the real world, anytime in the past, has had to deal with that. If people can't enjoy themselves, they won't play. And if your response to "why does she get nice things and I don't?" is "because they worked really hard and you didn't" then.. well, they might just turn around and walk out the door. But they don't then become a road sweeper or burger flipper and provide a useful low-end service that folks need, and also consume cheaper goods. They disappear completely. And then you look around and wonder why the L$ is falling.

SL is an intruiging economic experiment, but it is not yet known how well it will go and pushing on with standard values based on how they work in RL is not automatically the best idea. The fact that people have invested in the hope of recieving rewards that were never originally guaranteed (LL presumably never originally intended that you'd be able to pay your tier from L$ sales, since if they did they'd have put LindeX up in v1.2) has now complicated the process of making changes in the experiment, and obviously protecting those people's investments is now vitally important, but there is still a risk of the experiment failing because it isn't able to adapt to the results it delivers. Those folks who don't make anything do need to be around, but unfortunately it's human nature to determine the value of stuff based on what others do to get it as well as what you're asked to do.

I do next to nothing and it covers my account cost

It's all lies! It is far easier to get married to a talented content creator than to actually do it yourself.