Charging RL wages for SL work... discussion?

After posting my opinion thread in the Land and Economy forum, I had a chat with another fellow architect on instant messenger.

Except that this guy has an actual architecture degree

Anywho, we had a long debate on whether or not charging obscene amounts of lindens (which equate to merely average wages in the real world) were feasible, and indeed necessary.

He also regaled me for charging too little for my custom jobs (which usually ran between $L2000 and $L5000 -- between 8-20$ US), and gave me some figures that top tier SL builders are fetching.

Hint: It's in the several THOUSAND US dollars at the top, and several HUNDRED dollars in the lower areas.

This is similar to what I've heard from other sources.

That blew my mind. If I got paid several thousand US dollars for a job, I'd have an entire semester of college paid for, like that *snap*

Now, am I a top tier builder? I used to be, when the world was small. But I'm small potatoes now, especially when compared to some of the content "teams" out there with custom textures and 3ds shadowing skills and whatnot. I'm not the worst either, but I AM technically proficient, and well versed in the SL tools. I'm perhaps in the tier below "the best", or maybe a rung below that.

Anyways, while my conversation partner was charging around $US 40 an hour for labor, he was saying that with my skillset I could get away with charging $US 10-15 per hour.

So, if a house took me 3 hours of total labor to finish, that's $US 30, or $L7500.

Is that fair? Is that too little? too much?

Personally I wouldn't mind making 15 bucks an hour for a hobby, it'd make college a lot cheaper. But does the SL market allow for such a drastic increase in price at this stage of the world's development?

Should content creators be charging "real" rates for development? Granted, we're not professionals, but consider professionals are making something like 50-250 bucks an hour doing what they do in their field.

Would 25 bucks an hour be too much for labor in SL?

edited to add: Or have I missed the boat already? Is this commonplace now?

Discuss.

LF

Personally this is just me but if I was gonna pay 40USD an hour then that house better do the dishes, clean me after using the bathroom, and please my bedroom urges better then a god could.

*watches as the Linden hired Pinkerton Guards line up to bust the uniionization of SL*

OMG, the memories of the bloody Homestead Strike come rushing back into my head; talk about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I was there sonny, and I'll never forget how courageously Frick's sons took pot-shots at the unarmed, freezing mobs below from their precariously exposed granite fortifications above the courtyard.

Well, LF, your rates are reasonable but you may find a hard time getting customers.

My suggestion would be to build prefabs and sell them that way, and you'll end up getting more than 15$ / hour.

RL wages to SL just don't convert, but if you can get in a niche market with sim owners and high rollers, maybe you can make it work for you.

As they say, everything is worth what the purchaser is willing to pay for it.

For builds + 3D rendered textures and shadowing I ask 30$-40$/hour USD. That's not priced to attract high volumes of casual players and I'm comfortable with that. But for folks who need me for professional projects, that's what it costs to get me to stop surfing for porn and help you.

I think its finding the right price.. You've probably got the right amount to get quite a few jobs. If you charge the higher end, my prediction would be jobs would be few and far between..

Its finding the middle ground between charging so little, that it doens't matter how many jobs you get, it won't be worth it.. And charging so much that you'll hardly ever get jobs.. I think your probably at it now..

But it depends how much you charge and how many jobs you get at the higher rate.. Might be worth an experiment?

Are you on the LindenLab developer list, Aimee?

You might want to get on that list, Lordfly, if you want to make the big bux.

Aimee Download.com reference Pic Sucker. Foulcault showed it to me and now I get that every 2 days...and all I do is pick it off my harddrive..FOR FREE! LOL

IMHO, Second Life work is valued just below what it's really worth on average.


There are several factors to that. To name a few:

1) Viewpoint: "It's a game, therefore your time isn't worth anything."
2) Viewpoint: "It's not a real product, therefore it's worthless."
3) Data is infinitely reproducable.
4) Content is transitive and has a good chance of breaking.
5) The tools available simply cannot compete at the "professional" level.

In a nutshell, Second Life simply does not stack highly enough to be considered a professional field. We have no control over a great deal of avatar features, the rendering and building systems are crude by today's standards, we frequently have grid stability issues, and the viewpoints are not stacked in the content creator's favor.

That said, the situation could greatly improve; it would simply require a paradigm shift in the way these systems are thought out and perceived by users and devs both.


One of the more frightening trends in this respect is LL offering penance for very real work. The SLTV blowup is a fairly good example of this; people want to be taken care of if they're going to put a lot onto the company line. Furthermore, they want to know their content is protected if they use LL's system at all, something that typically amounts to "poor you, come to the Preview Grid."

This is a major issue that the higher ups should understand if they wish to keep their investors willing to come back to Second Life.


That said, do I think your time is worth $15 an hour? Quite frankly, you should be making far more than that if you plan to specialize in higher level computer graphics or coding. If you can find that in Second Life LF, more power to you. If not, I'd suggest going somewhere that values your time.

This is dealing in the purely hypothetical right now, blaze... I don't have the time to invest in building for this semester.

On top of that, as I said in my post, I'm nowhere near the top tier of builders nowadays. I've been outgunned with degrees, custom textures, and 3d modelling knowledge.

I'm practically obsolete.

LF

Charge what you want, but I would never pay more than $5000 for a product in SL..unless you were building an entire island... and even at $5000, is a bit steep... I have seen fantastic builders that dont charge half that much...

I am curious to know what you think is worth $30-40 USD an hour? Got some pics of the builds you did at this rate? I am not trying to flame or anything, I just really want to know...

To be sure, the folks I talked to charging that amount are doing nearly professional or truly professional work. Maybe 1% of the SL population can command those kinds of wages.

But what about half that? 1/3 that? Possible?

LF

Yeah and aimee uses maya and has mad skills. I suck, but i am free.

I actually completely disagree with that Lordfly. I think you have great spacial designs that feel comfortable and natural to live in.

Is this a joke? Or to put it another way - this is what comes of no-bid contracting. There's no way the market would bear paying the same wages for SL design as they do for RL design - unless of course the clients are so completely un-savvy that it doesn't occur to them to shop around.

I really have not seen something in Sl where I would say, WOW I would pay $1500USD for that build! I wanna see what Aimee thinks is worth $30-40an hour... maybe I need to get out more?

IMO, one of the limitations on someone being willing to pay top USD for building skills, etc. is the nature of SL itself and the way LL runs it.

You have to have a high tolerance for risk or simply piles of money to toss around to invest in a medium which is transitory by nature, doesn't let you export your 3D designs, and may shift dramatically via update or LL decision.

Although some individuals may be willing, most businesses don't have this kind of risk tolerance vs. return.

I'd love to see one of these high $$ builds though. Got any places we should visit?

I wouldn't worry about it, 95% of RL architects suck too. I wouldn't be too imressed with some custome textures, most are available on the web. Although I actually have some comcrete custom ones I made from site inspection photos. My time is worth more than $30-$40 an hour. Its priceless to me really. Which is why its critical for me to spend it doing something I want. SL does not compete with my RL job, it competes with the time I want to spend paintig my Warhammer army or playing other games.

That seems a little outrageous to me.. But then, I'm known for being a cheap bastard.

I guess it really comes down to how you want to be viewed as a creator. You can be the guy who's really good at what he does and charges fair, honest amounts, or you can be the guy who's really good at what he does and charges so much that only rich people who suck at the teat of IGE can afford his services.

There are several content creators that fall into the latter category and I personally refuse to support them, even if I can afford it. The quality is certainly there, but I don't like to, you know.. encourage them. It seems so "I'm worth much more than other people, and if you can't afford me, then you don't deserve me in the first place." You know?

On the other hand, it's more than understandable that you might want to charge more after learning about this whole seeming legion of "high-end" designers. You'd think that maybe if you don't charge more, people will think your work isn't worth as much as theirs. And, from an accordant--if a bit proletarian--perspective, why SHOULDN'T you get paid more for your time? You have to work, go to school, AND build for people. You deserve more for all that.

I can't really tell you what you should do, but one thing to consider: Perhaps this person who told you to charge more, and these supposed bucketloads of other people who charge pretty steeply as well, just want to raise the market price so that they're more justified in what they're doing. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that most of those folks don't really get much business from ordinary residents, just the odd whatever-baron who's working on a major project, has money to blow, and wants the best-of-the-best-of-the-best. To feed into that would certainly cut down on having to cater to random blingtards and the like, but there are no guarantees anyone would want to pay that much, and if someone does, you would probably not be in much of a position to decline their $$$s. As it is, you do have some control and you can turn jobs down if you want to. Do you want to give that up?

Anyway, good luck in whatever you end up doing, but I hope you decide to keep your prices relatively low so that us poor bourgeois bastards can afford nice things. <3

In my professional life I bill my time at $200/hr, for the exact same skill set I use for the things I do in SL. This is why I rarely ever do any custom work for people. One-offs just don't pay well enough, and it would feel completely bizarre to charge someone my RL rates in SL. I prefer to put my effort in to doing products that can just sit there and sell forever. I end up better compensated for my time, and the number of people who get to enjoy the fruits of my labor isn't limited.

I think the decision you need to make is why do you build for people? If it's for the money then I'd stop doing custom builds. If it's because you really love building and enjoy the challenge of meeting the needs of your customers, don't worry about what you charge

There are some examples here and there...Launa's Store, the Radio Club, all my newer stuff. Basically I design the build twice, once in Second Life, then again in Maya. In Maya I do all the textures then render lighting and shadows. I then export the baked textures and load them up into photoshop so I can reduce the resolution as much as they eye will accept and find repeating patterns that will reduce load times in SL.

The end result is visually stunning, but oof...what a pain in the ass

Charge what you like - let the market decide if it will pay it.

Hell I know someone here who is a RL architect - and I think they build shite.

Dunno, maybe their vision is better than what they produce I'll never know coz they canna build for crap heheh

(Yes I have said that directly to the person too

Not sure where those are..can you post some pictures? and for the record. Launas store and the radio club... you have charged $30-40 an hour to build it?