Charging RL wages for SL work... discussion?

George,

Yes, there are quite a few people, probably most, in Sl as a 'game'. However if you read carefully the words of Linden Lab executives you will see they do not view SL as a 'game'.

They are providing an engine for a virtual world where RL people come to design their own content. It is not surprising that the first here are gamers since it is, on first inspection, so close to other MMOG.

Granted initially people that came here came here for the novelty, for the enjoyment of building things, for socialization and for creating 'games' and entertainment. However these are not things that LL provided, the provided the engine, the residents provide the content.

The idea of a virtual world being a place that RL business can conduct some or all of their busniness is coming into it's day here in SL. SL is beginning to be viewed as a valid extension of RL where it is more efficient to conduct certain types of business.

Yes, it will change the value of certain things in SL; such as the value of the L$, the value of privacy, the value of behavior, etc..

Eventually parts of SL will come to mimic RL in these things. But SL is virtual and, unlike RL, there will always be huge expanses where the rules...physical and social...are what YOU make them to be for the most part.

Val, I guess I can see where you are coming from. I'm 62 years old and I guess I still look back at the "good old days" when the internet was free. True, SL is getting just like real life and the internet, things are changing and not necessary for the good. I did not realize I was getting into a virtual financal world where the primary objective was to make money. I would guess that a large portion of the members do view this as a financial venture. It looks like I picked the wrong program for having fun and enjoyment. Thank for your reply and hope you make a lot of money. Second Life is not for me. I sent a lot of people references for this program and will be sending out a retraction. Good Luck!

I find your ideas intriguing/inspiring and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I'd like to run a scenario by you folks and see what you think...

Let's say I was starting up a company in real life, perhaps a software company. Among the many tasks at hand would be to create a company logo. I call around professional artists and ask for an estimate and they quote me anywhere from 50 dollars to 200 dollars per hour for their work.

So instead I join Second Life and set up a mock business. I then track down players who are RL professional artists like Chip Midnight and Devyn Grimm. I ask them to use their RL professional talents to create a logo for my SL company (which I will then use for my RL company BWA HA HA ). I am expecting to spend about 50 cents to a dollar per hour.

I understand that there is something about the very nature of Second Life that devaules everything we do, but it's simply not sustainable. At some point the skills that have a RL value are going to demand a RL price in SL.

I think I speak for both Trin and myself when I say......

I want Trin to have your baby!!!!

......I'd...*cough cough* do it myself, but.....ummmm.....Trin would kill me.....

......and it's just as fun to watch too!!!

Hi Val, After I sent my last message I started thinking, hey just why did you get into this program. So to regress I went back the the main web site and took another look at the page: http://secondlife.com/whatis/ . Rereading this page, and I would ask you to take a look at it, unless I am wrong, it is advertised as not only a way to make money but also as a game, looking at all the areas listed as example, it eludes over and over again that is is a game, not a virtual e-commerce program.

Explore
A Boundless World of Surprise and Adventure

Create
Anything you can Imagine

Connect
With New and Exciting People

Play
In-world Games of every Size and Style

Only two area mention anything about buy and selling:

Own
Your Own Land, and the Fruits of your Labor and Creativity

Buy and Sell
Virtual Goods and Services

Invest time and ingenuity in a fully integrated economy
Advertise and sell your business to a city-sized population of consumers
Exchange the Linden Dollars you earn for real dollars, and vice versa
Donate your earnings to in-world projects, or real world non-profit causes and organizations
Make all or part of your real world living from your efforts in Second Life

The first four indicate to me that this is a game and oh by the you can make a little money in it as shown in the last two.

As you said, you can make it what YOU want it to be. My point is, it is getting more and more so costly to really enjoy the program is it cost so much.

I really would like to stay and enjoy the game....but I can't afford to because things are costing more and more.

Again I am not saying you do not deserve the price you are getting, I am just say there are those "no names mentioned" who are making six figure incomes, have the financial resources available to gobble up massive areas of land for the sole purpose of millking those who do not have the money. And being, for the poor choose of words, Snobs, who are unpolite and rude.

I guess when you have accurred that amount of money and land you don't have to worry about how people feel about you.

As for you, thank you very much for letting me vent. I am a professional in rl. I teach leadership, management, and computer applications and am a training director for one of the largest companies in the US. It is a stressful occupation and when I get home I get on Second Life to relief those stresses and enjoy the program. I hope the majority of the residents feel the same way.....Let's keep it fun and enjoyable.

Hope to add you as a friend the next time I am in-world and get a chance to meet you there.

George Flan

You want...

...Trin...

MY baby....

Ok I need diagrams here.


<3

How about I contract you to 3d render plus texture with shading this diagram I have describing the whole process?

Oooh that could take me a full week to complete and it will cost you anywhere from 40-70 cents for the whole project.

I say you just show me instead

Professionals are paid more than hobbyists able to build a competitive product because they are professionals -- they offer more, like an established track record of coming in under deadline, working to spec, adhering to NDAs, availability during business hours, professional conduct in meetings/public speaking/interviews with the press, reliable backups and recordkeeping, industry experience and contacts, etc.

Stuff I sell in my store. I sell on the cheaper side (with the exception of a few products). I figure it never spoils and I will get repeat sales on the same item hundreds of times. '

Custom jobs, I am not cheap. Mainly because I am not spending time creating what I feel like creating so there should be some kind of immediate payout for me. Just like real work, I dont want to show up, I'd rather do something I like to do, but since I get a paycheck I show up everyday. I have the same attitude towards custom animations.

Exactly. I was talking about professionals in SL offering all the aforementioned services.

I will have to show you in private. I think we've successfully hijacked this thread and I will longer be a part of it...at least in public.

On topic, yes the day will come when a balance will be reached for ingame. Since most people use their SL income to pay for their tier fees in SL, it's just a matter of economics. Until the public has enough money to actually pay for these things, or accepts the fact that they will have to either create themselves or spend money to have someone else do it for them, there will be a flux.

Carry on, everyone. Back to paying more for stuff!

*drags Aimee off to a dark corner with a whiteboard, PowerPoint presentation, three small stuffed Raggedy-Ann dolls, a cucumber, a copy of "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare", two dozen ashtrays, and a jar of peanut butter*

I think I am with Sensual on this issue. Can we see pics please Aimee?

Alexa

Somebody explain to me the difference between a "hobbyist" and a "professional" in SL.

coco

I think the best definition is to answer this question:

Do you make enough money at what you are doing to pay for your housing, food, bills and other expenses, and do you have enough left over afterwards to come out in the black (making more than you are spending)?

If you answer yes, you're a professional.

If you answer no, you're a hobbiest.

The central focus of my work can be found at Midnight City though there are less publicized jobs like the Learning2005 expo. If you are asking me how much I charged for what projects, or to "open my books" so to speak, I'm not going to do that. I am just stating how much it costs to get my ass off the couch for an hour

Someone will do this. Y'know, I was once at a meeting inworld where there was a discussion of whether an organization paying someone $200 L an hour or whatever to work on a RL project in SL would get busted for violating the law re minimum wage. But that doesn't apply to contractors . . .



Back before I got into the prim biz, I picked up about 20 years of experience as a pro freelance writer. I could tell you some horror stories about contracts ended because someone volunteered to do my job for free, year-long response times on submissions, greedy boilerplate contracts (take it or leave it), etc. The problem is the same in that field as here: where there are so many people giving away their work for free, your work is devalued, even if you're a pro. Don't even get me started on how legions of hobbyists sell their (admittedly good) writing, despite sometimes tremendously unprofessional behavior, so a whole industry's workers are viewed as "flakey artists."

BTW, I am *not* trying to pick a fight with hobbyists, or to say anyone can't give away their work for free, or that hobbyists are all a buncha flakes. I'm just pointing out the effect hobbyists can have on professional supply-n-demand, etc., 'cause I'm kinda obsessed with money 'cause I need a bigger pile of it to sleep in when the weather gets cold.

No I wasn't asking to know prices for particular builds. Its just that I wasn't aware until I read your post that people charge US$ for work in SL.

Alexa

What especially impresses me are the fringy, eccentric individuals who do topnotech work but don't—or rarely—charge for it. The artists who can toss off their Mona Lisa (Overdrives) like wrappers of consumed candy bars, and just keep making more. Those kind of rare people that you're tempted to shout at, "THIS SCHTUFF IS GOOD ENOUGH TO SELL! YOU SHOULD DO THIS FOR A LIVING! OR AT LEAST HAVE A STORE!!!" but for whatever reason, and invariably their own reasons, they don't. Maybe they're bored. Maybe they're just challenging themselves. I find them insanely great.

Examples with pictures (and more to come, I'm sure): Madlax Stygian and Cottonteil Muromachi.

My trees cost about forty cents a piece. So I make about $4 a day. Is that good?

No Khamon - its not. Your trees are wonderful and unique.

I am wondering if anyone else charges US$ for SL work? Is this a new phenomenon?

Alexa

My point all along has been that if SL is not a game, its time it grew up and stopped acting like one. Dump the linden and dump the mandatory last names. Let businesses come in and be businesses, with reall dollars as the currency and real names so that people can bve sued in real court for breach of real contracts and real intellectual property rights can be enforced. Real business demands the rule of law to promot accountanbility for contracts and for theft of intellectual property. That is not present in SL.

Right now SL is a collection of hobbyists, some of whom are able to sustain a large income from their hobby. I don't know of any "professionals" in SL because ther eis no licensing, no regulating bodies to ensure compliance with general standards, no discipline for failure to conform to accepted standars. As a RL professional in three fields, I can promise you that the government and professional associations go to great length to ensure the compentence of thier members. (oK so this is a narrower definition of professional than previously discussed, but hey its my definition).

What I see happening if SL pushes the business platform, is that RL compnanies paying RL wages will establish themselves in SL and a few people from SL might actually be retained or hired by the companies. The rest of the businesses will be SOL. Thus content creation will be forclosed as a method for the casual player to make money. After that we return to what I see as the basic problem of SL, outside playing barbie, there is little developed utility to this platform. If you don't make virtual content, then what do you do with SL?

This is not to say SL does not have huge potential, just that right now none of that is being developed. This is why I always advocate for dwell and subsidieds for non-fungible content creators. The Chatroom aspect is built in, and that isa solid base, but really if SL is to be useful people have to beable to use it for something.

Also one consideration is what happens when the corporations come and people can no longer afford to play SL for minimal dollars, what happens when virtual shirts are $25-55 USD? (I have been looking over project entropia to see how their economy works.) Sl will not longer be the "play it your way" platform and I think risks losing a lot of support, unless the free underpinnings are better developed. whethe this is done by LL or by the users, I think SL is a long way off from being ready to compete as a platform.

Right now the economy is sheltered and protected as a game, it is sustained by its niche.
The fact that it is a economic simulation game means that certain attitudes and business behaviors can foaster and be rewarded-like the guild mentality. Undoubtedly most content creators are sucessful becuause atm the causual players can afford to play the game and spend disposable income on virtual goods. This will radically change when RL wages become the norm in SL.

However even among gamers the graphics on SL are considered second rate, and the physics are laughable. I know that SL pushes the envelope in other ways, but we are not comtpeting with technical possibilites here, we are competing with expectations. It said a lot to me when I went to SF and found the lindens played Battleground2 in LL. It means the creators of the enviromnet do not themselves know what to do with enviroment.

This to me is the weak point of SL it is neither a good game nor a good platform. LL needs to pict a directs and commit to it. this bait and switch tactic of selling as a game but then making it a platform will hinger it in the long run. LL have pioneered a concept, but we are still in concept stages.

Glad to see the only thing keeping you from having Aimee's baby is the prospect of me killing you. Hrmph.

Interesting post Jake.

But who in SL would pay US$25-50 for a shirt? I see no point in paying that sort of money for a bunch of pixels. You would price out a large percentage of players and they would leave. Some of them won't or can't even pay for a premium account or buy L$ so the chances of them paying that sort of money for a virtual shirt are slim to none I would think. And then of course, there would be no market for content creators.


I agree that we are some way off of that.

Alexa