Furnation Sims Down?

This brings us to the question of how you build large attractive park-like builds. You either have to have people willing to pay for them directly, perhaps through some kind of fan- or social- club running a shared build, or you have to slice off the majority of the space for rental. It's too hard to recover money from simply providing a place Linden Labs' customers enjoy hanging out in.

I've discussed the lack of _service franchise income_ before. Avatars don't eat, or get sick, you don't need to buy gas or maintain your car. In the real world making stuff and doing things for people is the majority of the economy, and just about all public venues from parks to movies are subsidised by renting the exclusive right to sell popcorn and sodas.

In SL you only have luxury goods. The largest part of the economy doesn't exist, but it's simulated by having avatars shed dwell and by the DI. But that stuff is getting thinner and thinner on the ground. DI is gone, and dwell is going to camping chair barons.

This is a problem that needs to be addressed. Or Furnation will be just the start.

Well, there are other furry sims, of course, where furries who live in Furnation could go, if it doesn't return. The Forest, Lusk, Kitsune Valley, Fox Valley, Wolf Valley... and many others. Kitsune Valley, in particular, is fairly new and I know it has lots of room yet for new residents and for merchants. But losing Furnation would be a bad thing, in my opinion. I do hope they get it back on line.

I didn't tend to hang out in Furnation primarily because it was usually too laggy, except up in the Skymall there. But I do rent vendor space in Furnation's Skymall, as did many, many other merchants. If it does NOT re-open, at least for the sim that has the Skymall, then Nexxus is going to owe refunds on mall rental fees to a lot of anxious merchants.

One option for maintaining a beautiful and park-like environ is to place the rental properties at the margins, or in the sky. I'm designing an Island Paradise theme set of sims right now, for a client who owns several sims. Tropical islands like Tahiti or French Polynesia. Part of my design is that the residential properties are largely on the waterfront, while more 'public' spaces are inland, or are part of a 'resort' that will have several fun attractions like water slides. The themed homes that will be for sale on the island are all low-prim, well-textured designs that allow the resident quite a few prims for personal use, even on a fairly small lot. The first of those sims is Wailele Isle, and opens for new residents next month. These Island sims that I am making now are not furry-themed, incidentally, but furries are quite welcome there. In fact, so far, all the content creators on the project, other than the Sim owner, are furries.

Another option, for a multiple sim owner, is to have a sim that is 'dense residential/commercial', a 'city' with a large mall and tightly packed features, and use the income from that sim to offset the expenses of a more park-like, public-use sim.

Each sims costs what, a thousand US dollars? Then you have monthly teir on top of that? I don't even want to know how much that bill is. So I could see how it would be difficult to justify having 6 sims "just because" when LL has taken away 2 ways of offsetting monthly fees....

I understand that some, maybe most, sim owners are in for the moeny, but the way LL has their own fee system and pricing set up, you kinda have to be. Unless, as it has been said, you are independantly wealthy.

Personally, I'm getting tired of everything in SL being centered around making money. LL needs to come up with some bright idea to encourage more 'just for the fun of it' builds and activities. So maybe if they would lower their fees, I mean c'mon, can't they even have a slidind scale system? Like a discount of a certain percentage for each additional sim you own after the first. Or waive teir for anyone who buys an island.

Something has to change, that's all I know.

On that note, I announce the introduction of Abbotts Furrodrome*, where both the planes and the pilots have tails!














(*Yes, I'm kidding. )

Merlot, if only it was so easy. It does cost RL money for LL to buy, set up and maintain the servers that the SL sims run on. Also, from what I've gleaned, the US$ 195/month doesn't actually cover LL's costs and that they tried to make up the shortfall on their sale of sims. Both of which could explain the explosion of island sims in the last year. That, however, is LL's problem. Furnation needs to draw up a new and viable financial plan. Once they've done that I'm certain they will emerge on a sound footing and be able to continue.

LL barely makes any money on the servers for maintenance and startup on those fees. Lowering them is the exact opposite of what will happen.

Well poopie.....

I still hate that SL is all about making money....where is the fun in making money?


I hope Fur Nation does come back tho, better and stronger than before. It is/was a wonderful community and I'm very sad that it is gone.....

Not quite true.

The $1250.00 Setup - yeah, that is a raw cost (or close enough to it.)
But on the monthlies; I estimate about ~$120 or so goes towards paying for the staff-side of LL (Developers, Concierge, Support, etc.). Either way, pricing probably isnt going to go down in a hurry; if it does, it wont be by much.

You missed a staff meeting a few months back, Cubey. We've been the Furrodrome for a while now. Get with the program.

Do I *have* to wear the fox outfit? It itches.

No, what you really need are a cute set of neko ears and a tail Cubey. ^.-

Yah, considering a lot of us avoided FN when Club69 was the official station...and it still did well enough. DI loss seems far more logical.

Island sim startup = $1250 USD = L$375,000
Island Sim monthly maintenance fee = $195/month = L$58,500

Cost for buying a mainland sim and for additional monthly Tier on that much land are similar.

One sim = 65,536 M2, or 128 each 512 M2 plots, if every inch of land is 'usable'.

If you assume that only 3/4 of the land actually gets rented out/sold to residents, and assume an exchange rate of L$300 = $1 USD, then you would need to rent 96 512 M2 plots at about L$600 per month just to break even on your monthly maintenance.

Compare the economics of just becoming a Premium member and purchasing 1024 M2 of land, vs a Basic member renting the same plot on a private sim. Just looking at monthly overhead.

Premium member, owning 1024 M2:
Premium membership (Includes first 512 M2 land tier) = -$10 per month (-L$ 3000)
Tier on 2nd 512 M2 of land allocation = -$5 USD per month (-L$1500)
Monthly stipend for being Premium = L$2000
Net monthly maintenance, exclusive of land purchse costs = L$2500 / month

It's a little cheaper if you pay for your Premium membership 6 months or a year at a time. The above figures also assume that you only will own 1024M2 of land, and that you're applying all of your stipend to paying off your tier. It also does not take into account the purchase price for your land, which is likely to be at least L$512 for 512 M2 of 'first land', plus L$2048 or more for a second 512 M2 parcel.

To break even on monthly maintenance, you would need roughly 47 each 512 M2 plots being rented out at L$1250 per month. Typical actual monthly rental on a privately owned sim is closer to L$500 per month for 512 M2, which means you would need to rent 117 of your 128 possible 512 M2 lots at L$500 per plot, just to break even. That's 91.4% occupancy. And doesn't cover initial start-up costs at all.

So, charging L$500 per month to rent 512 M2 plot is perhaps overly optimistic on occupancy rates, leaves no real 'public spaces', and barely breaks even on monthly expsnses.

Charging any more than L$1250 per month for rent on 512 M2 of land is the high end, since if you charge any more than that, it's cheaper to go Premium and pay tier on 1024 M2. But if you managed 75% occupancy at that rate (96 each 512 M2 plots), you have a rental income of L$120,000, which covers maintenance and pays off the sim purchase in a little over 6 months. After the first 6 months, you have a monthly income of L$61,500, or about $205 USD per month.

Economic reality is probably somewhere in the middle of that. Charge less than L$1250 per month, so it's advantageous to rent rather than pay tier, and expect not to pay the sim off for a year or so. That would be about $950 per month to rent 512 M2. At that rate, and with 75% occupancy, you pay off the sim purchase in 1 year. One sim that I rent land in right now is charging L$500 per month for rent on 512 M2 of land. So it would take the sim owner 2 years to pay off the sim at that rate, assuming 75% occupancy.

Not that I am one to promote the increased existance of Furs in SL, but Ceera is right. There is an entire other contenent/island of Fur sims (seven and counting):

http://slurl.com/secondlife/wolf%20valley/128/128//

MM

Furs do not be discouraged. Furnation might be gone for a little while till nexxus works it out, but till then feel free to go to the other furry themed sims/locations in SL. I will list the ones below off the top of my head and plucked from the find menu.

Lost Furest
Rainbow Tiger
Tartarus island
Meeting Island
FurPleasure
Rabbit Valley
Fox Valley
Wolf Valley
Kitsune Valley
Istaria
Fae Valley
Dragon Valley
Tiger Valley
The Forest
Cub Conclave
Taco
Dwellget
Luskwood Creatures
Bruin
Jakkal's WereHouse
Ashland Isle (LOL)
Poke Furries's Pad
Dusun
FoxGlove
The Island of Satu Moreau
Island Marketplace
Furtopia
FlyinTails
OrcaHorse
Kathmandu's Furry Emporium
The Wild
xFrostx Workshop
Zeta Mall
Vixens Isle ( i think its furry )

Feel free to list more if i missed any. I just woke up an hour ago so i'm not thinking yet.

Wouldn't Cubey need to be a Tiny Penguin?

Let's simplify the calculations and do it all in dollars. I'm paying rent in dollars and tier in dollars and if I paid rent in Lindens it'd be based on exchange rate... only the very smallest parcels or apartments are rented in Lindens, so bringing in Lindens just confuses the matter.

Tony and Alliez rent land at tier levels, but with finer grain, starting with some 2048m parcels at $15/month. They don't seem to have major problems getting customers... and no wonder... it's a much better deal than you get on the mainland, and there's no terraforming limits. Now some people abuse the terraforming, but the fact that freedom and responsibility really do need to complement each other isn't news, is it?

Anshe actually charges MORE than tier for rental parcels, and has more restrictions, and gets plenty of customers.

So, let's assume that Nexus can rent at tier levels on Furnation, and we're only talking about operating expenses... the cost of the sims is sunk costs.

With 1024 parcels, at $10 each, you'd need to rent 20 parcels, less than 1/3 the sim, to make tier. Whether he could rent that many small parcels is another matter... people tend to find 1024 limiting.

With 2048 parcels, you'd need to rent 14 parcels, or just under half the sim, to make tier.

With 4096 parcels at $25, you'd need to rent 8 parcels, or exactly half the sim, to make tier. I find 4096 is more than enough prims for even very complicated builds.

If he's willing to keep paying part of the costs, he could keep more open than that... but for rental to pay for the sim you'll need about half the land rented just for maintainance. That's a lot more than Furnation has been doing... and they've been renting for less than tier.

This is a case where the purpose of "buying" of land, as Dreamland does, is shown. Neualtenburg has a similar scheme (although as we're effectively a co-op, you have a slightly better claim to your section of the server) and we paid off the sim after the first three months or so, and we're currently sitting on a decent cash reserve. (It's all publically posted on our forum here, should you care you know the exact numbers.) We haven't expanded yet, as we're operating on a conservative, non-profit basis - we intend to make sure we stick around for as long as SL itself does - but we didn't even notice the loss of DI.

... granted, I'm kind of annoyed the phenomenon gets called "buying" when it's "rent with a deposit", but really, that issue started with Linden Lab.

Although the Luskwood folks are the first to say they aren't so much a furry community, as they are a community composed of furries... if you see the subtle change of emphasis.

To paraphrase Reitsuiki... bullshit.

You have to include making some kind of income in your plans, true enough. But that's true of any endeavor. But there are many different ways to go about it. One is to subsist on donations. One is to rent. In the Squidsoft project that's still somewhat secret and thus I'd have to kill you if I revealed more, we're paying for the sim through the income we make at our shops (which are on the mainland, although we'll also have shops in the sim). However, fully half of the sim is given over to just pure fun; even the commercial district is designed to be a wonderful place to hang out first and a place to buy things second.

It does mean that the days throwing up a sim and expecting the bills to just sort of be magically paid by money-fairies are gone, but I don't see that as a bad thing; it encouraged people to be lazy and game DI rather than coming up with a plan that WORKS.

They never existed.

The days of working your butt off to attract visitors and getting paid a tiny fraction of the money those visitors were bringing to Linden Labs as a result of your efforts are gone, but if you don't see that as a bad thing you're looking at the wrong economy.

The purpose of the Linden economy is not to provide an income to developers, or to teach people how to come up with "a plan that WORKS", it's to make money for Linden Labs. Anything that helps Linden Labs make more money should be rewarded, because that way they encourage more people to do stuff that makes even more money.

Making money in the Linden Economy is one of the things that does that, but great builds that don't have a Linden-economy-level commercial purpose also makes LL more profitable (or less unprofitable) in the US economy. That's not "being lazy and gaming DI", it's "making Linden Labs money by playing a different game".

It encouraged some people to be lazy and game DI because DI wasn't based on a measurement that represented income to Linden Labs. But the losers of that "game" were the people who weren't lazy, weren't gaming DI, and DID have "a plan that worked"... so long as Linden Labs was prepared to reward people who were valuable to them.

Fixing that by killing DI instead of changing it to measure something actually relevant to what DI was supposed to be all about, that's one of those acts that explains why "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" is such a popular cliche.

Add to the List

Sables dAlliez
LostFurest dAlliez

Sables is an amazing build with a sandbox also.
LostFurest is comprised of Islands we rent out

We're trying to list and describe all such furry areas and islands on the Second Life page at WikiFur - if you add info somewhere on that page, it should get read, and it'll probably be easier to find later.

Cubland Theme Park (quarter sim of rides, sandbox, mall, etc.) - primarily furry cubs, but we doesn't turn away anyone ('cept griefers) looking for something to do in SL.

Maybe they need a seperate list for the seems where you aren't gonna see genetalia, one of the major factors of my never visiting most Furry sims. Taco is one, but the only reason for me going there is dwellget.

To be honest, I don't care if furnation will go down, infact I'd be slightly pleased. For my own reasons.