McSim? Burger Sim? SimBucks? MicroSim?

Looking for opinions on something I'm curious about. If any Lindens would like to chime in, I'd appreciate it, but getting other players' views and perspectives is what I'm after.

If a company, like McDonald's or Starbucks, bought a sim -- payed the money a month to own a whole sim, and whatever in-game tricks they'd have to do to keep it -- which, in-turn, gave Linden Labs enough money to open up a new sim, would that be horrible? If there was a McDonald sim, and the McDonald's corporation owned it so that they could offer SL accounts to people like they do wireless access (in some places), but kept all their McD's stuff on their sim, would that be a bad thing?

I, personally, would find it quite exciting if, like the web, SL gained corporate interest. If Dell had events where they payed players in Lindens to give talks on home computer repair. If Victoria's Secret (for example) paid players to create textures of their lingerie so players could model them in the game. MIT or Harvard could buy up a sim to have virtual registration, orientation, and eLearning classes.

Things like the web and MP3's start out as cool tricks, much like SL has. However, exciting innovations can come about when they seen as being financially lucrative (Amazon, eBay, iTunes, Napster, etc.). I'm of the opinion that, as nervous as 1.2 makes me, it has potential to slingshot SL into a full-fledged niche of the Internet, like IRC or the web.

So, in regards to businesses buying their own sims, what do you think?

the corp would have to broker an external deal with the lindens. there's no guarantee that they would manage to buy an entire sim unless ownership was restricted from the beginning. or i suppose they could just also outbid everybody in the RL$ auctions.

to answer your questions jarod, i'm not sure what i think of this idea?

I haven't been here long, so my opinion is probably only of minor interest, but I would have no problems at all with commercial sims, so long as they were created specifically for that company to use - in other words so long as they didn't take away available sims from us.

It would be interesting to see what companies did with their land. It could be that we could see some even more imaginative use of building and scripting.

the corp would have to broker an external deal with the lindens.

Well, obviously. With Linden Labs using off-the-shelf Linux machines, they could easily have a "corporate plan" where they sell a sim to a corp. for $1000 a month, much like Selador said.

I'm not sure a corp buying a sim's good business. After all, they will take into account how much money they'd -make- from it.

Would advertising to a few thousand people justify spending, let's say $1000 a month, $12000 a year? Would spending this alleged $12K a year turn into profit several times that?

How exactely would a full commercial owned sim sell their products to a wide market? The in-world players don't really constitute a wide market. Now, if we were talking a McDonald's in say Freeport in Everquest, ok, that's a lot of people seeing that, but SL doesn't have that kind of population.

It may some day, sure, but not now, and not anytime next year. An important question an advertiser would consider; Does spending this money make me a helluva lot more than I spent?

I don't think the answer will be yes for quite a long time.

Maybe one day, sure. One day (this is my dream SL) traveling from one coast to the other will be, distance-wise, the same as traveling from NY to LA. With a full country full of sims between. Then, sure, that would be something to get into for corps. But we're a long long way from that.

Personally I don't like this idea because I don't think they'd stay confined to their sim. Unless they offered something really cool there why would anyone want to go to the McSim? My fear would be that their paid player accnts would end up traveling the whole SL world proselytizing for their parent corp. Do we really want that? Would anone NOT mute them?

Its really not that bad of an idea, especially if SL grows to a large user base.

I can imagine a partnership being quite cool

A member of a corporation would 'spearhead' the operation.

They would simply buy land (perhaps a large portion of land), make a build, and sponsor events.....

Corporate sponsorship != evil

I know if I could figure out a way to make it a publicity stunt, I could get our company to fund such a project.

We don't have that many people in our office, but we spend SUBSTANTIALLY more than $195/month on various marketing bits

And who says you need a whole sim? We could build something really cool in 1/4 sim. $75 /month? If I could figure out a way to generate a little tiny bit of interest in our products, it would be done already.


This is something I'll have to brainstorm about........

Who knows, maybe we could give away $9.95 basic memberships?

SL has some really brilliant things, and the flexibility of the system would allow corporate sponsored 'sub-games'. There are clearly corps who could fund projects like darklife, while at the same time get a marketing message across.

Marketing doesn't always have to be tasteless, people--->You are exposed to subtle marketing everywhere in life---the logo on your computer monitor, the brand names on your clothing tags.

We are often 'aware' of marketting, without it directly impinging on our conciousness. In fact, any marketing guy worth his salt would understand that mile-high billboards across the SL landscape would NOT help.

Funding a project, and participating as an active member of the community, could be a positive measure.

Now this could be a great marketing concept for the right company. Distributing special CD's waiving the 9.95 lifetimefee, but when newbies first come into world, they land on a special "prelude" sim.

The partner picks up the distribution costs of putting CDs in retail stores, etc. And SL gives them a very unique marketing opportunity.

I also agree with the other posts here that companies hoping to market in SL, would have to create compelling content. If not, then hiring town criers will only hasten their demise. Because more people will see what they are doing and a negative word-of-mouth compaign will begin. Basically, a corporation would have to work with the SL environment, bear the slings and arrows, and take the risks of failure and backlash, just the same as a player.

My first response was, and I'm sure I'm not alone, "Oh, for the love of Pete, no!" (Who, by the way, is this Pete?) Then I realized I was reacting as much to the specific brands being bandied about as to the idea in general. While it's true that the idea of a McSim or a Simbucks Coffee makes me a bit queasy, I have to admit there are other brand synergies that make me almost giddy! How about:

- The Discovery Channel Sim - Lots of great interactive builds, including interactive archeological digs with carefully researched content, an SL version of Trading Spaces (although this would require code that simply didn't allow Frank to put chickens in your kitchen if it were to work), in-world seminars by topic experts, etc. (BTW, LL, if you're reading. i-traffic USED to be The Discovery Channel's online ad agency. I don't know if they still are, but this is totally the sort of thing that TDC would eat up with a spoon, and that would be the first place to try to make a connection.) Come to think of it, there are a NUMBER of entertainment companies this makes great sense for - although not as personally appealing, every movie company and speciality cable company, in fact.

Oh, pooh, I had a lot of other great ideas but it turns out this is one of those days at work where I actually have to work, rather than make up psuedo-brilliant marketing strategies for folks who aren't paying me to do so!

Bhodi

Good points Bhodi, and I pretty much agree with you. A discovery channel sim could be pretty cool. I could also see other game companies doing previews of upcoming games by having professional coders and artists make mini-games within SL. The one thing that really gives me pause though is that I don't want to compete with them for L$. There are many people here already who work in diverse fields including game design, and I kinda like the grass roots feel of SL now. I'd kinda hate to see that dilluted.

SecondLife reminds me of a richer, user-friendlier version of the World Wide Web. Both are Internet based, allow people to publish their own content, and both have a free and pioneering spirit. It’s kind of like what VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) was suppose to be. Just like The Web, it’s only a matter of reaching critical mass before SL explodes (in a good way).

Of course there are some challenges to overcome.

The 30 people per sim rule limits growth. It means they would have to have roughly 3,300 sims to support a peak EQ player count (100,000). And that's only if everyone was nice and evenly spaced out. Realistically you probably would have to have closer to 7,000 sims. Hopefully something can be done about the 30 people per sim cap or SL will have some serious growth pains.

So moving on suppose the growth problem was solved and everyone used SecondLife like everyone uses The Web.

I would imagine an Amazon or Yahoo like company embracing SeondLife as an advertising medium before a more traditional company like McDonalds.

Throw in a little data security/encryption and one day you will be able to shop Amazon's online store from within Second Life. Imagine being able to see a 3D model of the item you are going to buy first. Enter your credit card number and you can have the real thing shipped to your house (and maybe get a copy of the virtual object also). If it's a clothing item you see how it looks on your avatar before you buy the real thing. Or if it's a music CD maybe you can hear sample clips. Do all of your holiday shopping from within SecondLife!

The possibilities are really endless.

I think a paradigm shift is needed in the way we think of SecondLife. I hear people constantly say that SecondLife is not a “game”. Yet they still treat SecondLife as a little private playground when it’s more like a public communication medium, potentially just as powerful as The Web, or E-mail, or even the telephone.

This has set of a series of completely over the top ideas for me - some very good, some dystopian in the extreme! So, I have a few questions that it would be lovely if LL would answer, although it may be too early for them to tip their hand in this way.

1. Will "walled garden" versions of SL be available? For instance, could Disney buy up a bunch of servers and build a Virtual Epcot that wasn't connected to the rest of SL and had it's own user base?

2. Could those walled gardens be accessible by people with general passes to SL WITHOUT making the SL content or other walled gardens accessible to people whose only membership was to one of the theoretical walled garden?

3. Could an entity purchase the rights to a sim in SL proper, with the agreement that a whole sim would be made available to that entity, and be allowed to set their own rules for that Sim?

Number three is the most interesting to me - because, if that were possible, IT WOULD ALSO BE POSSIBLE FOR SL ARTISTS TO WRITE GRANTS TO FUND SIM-SIZED PROJECTS IN SL! That's right, there are funding sources available for this kind of thing! Particularly if (and this may be a pipe dream) SL could also provide access to that sim only in some sort of limited way for use in installation pieces at galleries or museums.

As for the other ideas - I can already think of three or four of my former clients who would love this idea IF they could have a walled garden for their users.

Bhodi and the burning smell coming from her brain...

Bhodi - I e-mailed Linden Labs yesterday to inquire about this kind of thing, but I haven't heard back yet. My employer might be interested in using a sim to promote a DVD about the 3D animation project I'm working on. We might even be interested in hiring SL users to build some of the content. I don't work for McDonald's though. It does seem like the same bulb is lighting up over a number of people's heads

I could get behind shopping in SL because I really don't care much for shopping IRL. I would love to be able to walk into a fully appointed Barnes and Noble bookstore in SL and browse to my heart's content. Or shop for my husband's work clothes at a virtual J. C. Penney in SL. I'd buy makeup for myself from a virtual MAC makeup counter and toys for my kids from a virtual SL Target. Since I seem to go through a lot of coffee, I'd go to a virtual Starbucks and order a pound of my favorite strong blend to be sent to my home (I know you all hate Starbucks as a mega-corp, but I live in WA State, so I see them more as local ), then I'd go to a virtual SL Safeway and pick out steaks, green salad fixings, a loaf of fresh-baked bread and a bottle of good wine to be delivered in time for dinner preparation. Oh, and maybe a cheesecake for dessert.

Oh, and the ability to see a first-run movie in a virtual SL movie theater might be interesting, as well...

I'm certain it is! And you've just casually named one of the reasons I think SL builders should welcome this - because if this happens, building in SL might very well go from a fabulous hobby to a marketable skill!

Additional ideas:
- Seek corporate sponsorship for projects like Americana. Let the users themselves seek these sponsorships - so there is no danger of the sponsor's brand or content restrictions offending the members of the group, since they would be negotiating themselves. What would we need from LL? A boiler-plate contract for the users and the sponsors alike, demographic info on users that could be made available to potential sponsors, and a set of guildelines for how LL would interact with these sponsors and/or their responsibility for the continued life of the sponsored content over the life of the sponsorship.

- Create a "Developer" option for accounts. For x-number of RL dollars, you get x-number of texture and/or sound file uploads. This will allow for greater experimentation with textures and more quickly increase the proficiency with which they are used. And they're getting more important all the time!

- Create "certifications" in building and scripting to be issued by LL. There would have to be a curriculum and testing, but it would permit those who want to turn this into a marketable skill to do so, and keep companies from having to guess at whether an individual "SL Freelancer" really had the chops to make their project happen.

Okay, okay... wow, I'm drunk on the fumes of all these burning possibilities!

As long as LL doesn't take preference to Corporate Sponsors over the Community, in ideas, bug fixes, and everything else. And that corporations don't over-run the SL economy, and run user businesses out of business. I'm for it.

The problem I have mostly with corporations is because most of the time the developing companies (LL) will take preference to them over actual users. Example being, theres a feature the community wants, but theres a feature a big name corporation wants, the developing company usualy listens to the corporation.

Maybe if corporate sims were restricted to being educational, such as The Discovery Channel and things like that. Theres nothing you can learn or would need in SL from McDonalds and/or Starbucks other than how to use a fryer or frappicinio.

Here is what is scary about corporations buying sims.

Currently, we have about seven billion items being sold that are blatant copyright violations. And that ISN'T counting all the nudes.

Right now, if a company decided to go after somone for selling a t-shirt in Second Life with their logo on it, they would find it hard to prove any damages, and so the maker might get told to stop, but wouldn't be in any financial jepordy.

But now say that company starts selling t-shirts in game. Now they can sue for.. well.. linden bucks? Still safe.

But wait.. you can now turn linden dollars into real money! All of a sudden every user who uses a texture they downloaded off the internet is at risk of being sued for some serious damages.

Now, it might seem far fetched.. but trust me.. it's just a matter of time before some empire like Disney decides to go after people using their images.

Yet another reason why selling Lindens for dollars is bad. Restrict it to credit on your account vs monthly fees.. that should be sufficent. You don't need to pay people to get great content.. just addict them, provide a fun place and take care of their needs.. people will do a LOT of hard work for free if they are having fun at it.

(Just waiting for the first 15 year old who signed up with his moms credit card to get hammerd by a $20,000 lawsuit from the record industry because he was selling music clips on SL.)

Very good point, with the IP deal now too could even be potentialy bad. I highly doubt a company would sue for L$ most likely they'd go straight for USD, ESPECIALY Disney. So thats something to think about too, if coroporations get involved alot of cool t-shirts made by people will go away. And there will have to be an approval processes like There has to make sure no copyrighted material is being submited. *shudder*

If Disney gets within 200 miles of LL, SL will turn to crap. No thank you.

(Just waiting for the first 15 year old who signed up with his moms credit card to get hammerd by a $20,000 lawsuit from the record industry because he was selling music clips on SL.)

Speaking as someone who wears a Kim Possible shirt, I have to wonder how different using copyrighted material (like a KP shirt or a 30 second Metallica clip) in SL is from downloading MP3's through an ISP.

it's not different. that's drathor's point. and it's THE reason that introducing RL$ into the world is a bad idea. people are going to end up in RL legal trouble. i don't doubt that for a minute.

Thanks for the brainstorming so far.

Allowing companies to buy / give away basic accounts is a fascinating idea.

As to walled gardens, we wil certainly be OK with some, but we also really want to keep a very large and contiguous mainland, as that is what drives the diversity, access, and intrigue of SL. Very much like the early internet with its early intranets.

I agree, as Bel suggested, that any company buying sims in SL will still very much have to "earn its stripes" to be relevant in any way. I have to smile at the thought of the sort of immune system response SL would have to McDonalds. Really I do. This is one of the reasons, as discussed in this thread, that I feel we are going to be OK with a bit of commercial enterprise, and should not expect to be overrun.

Morally? No difference. Practically? The MP3 is of higher quality, and more portable.

With the brand new Canadian Copyright law that allows downloading but provides very stiff penalties for uploading copyrighted media things are only going to get more confusing. So far as I can make out, selling uploaded clips used to fall somewhere under the fair use policy, even though the Digital Milennial Information law really does away with most fair use. Now that Linden dollars have a commodity value in the real world (i.e. may be converted to $US) the sale, trading or even sharing of these music clips leaves the individuals involved open to the RIAA, who have proven that no case is too small for them to pursue in the courts and the popular press. As for selling Lindens for US dollars, it was purely an outside group that has been doing anything beyond some basic transactions berween players so far, and Lindendollars seem to trade at a much better rate than all the other game currencies, which are worth about what Italian Lira used to trade for.

Lindens - Could you let me know if you received my e-mail about using a sim for promotional purposes, or recommend a different address than [email]contact@lindenlab.com[/email]? Thanks.