We've got the creators, now bring in some buyers!

Wandering around the grid, it's painfully clear that the supply of created items exceeds demand in almost all areas, by a collosal margin.

It's as if we lived on just half a planet (or a tenth of a planet) ... namely that part containing all of the producers and none of the consumers.

Of course, creators also consume a little themselves, especially since they don't have all the necessary skills to do everything themselves nor the time to do so. However, it's still just a tiny amount of consumption. The shops in SL are practically empty of buyers almost all the time.

What's the solution? Easy, and it happens to be the solution to a lot of other problems too (including Linden prosperity): just give us some of the interactive gaming features that we've been requesting, so that we can create attractions that will bring in the ordinary interactive gamer, not just those who like building and sim games.

Outside of catering to our creative instincts, SL is very impoverished in its feature set for hosting exciting attractions, largely because many of the essential hooks for scripting interactive gaming are missing. This needs to change.

And, as a side-effect, the infusion of gamers into the world would then provide the missing element for our trades, the consumer.

hehe. your LL's consumer, and the grid is their farm.

That's true, at the outer level of abstraction.

I was, however, referring to the inner level of economics in this virtual world.

Maybe the solution is providing a read-only client that has completely free, unlimited access. Now how do these people get L$? Maybe it has built in interaction with GOM or IGE.

Or maybe SL needs to expand to directly support real money, either via LL selling L$ for USD or options to sell things directly for USD in SL. For example, if SL allowed linking to PayPal, then those parties that had PayPal linked could do direct USD transactions.

What this solves is that initial $9.95. It also makes it significantly simpler for the first time user -- no creation bits to worry about; just using things that others have created. If they wanted to upgrade to the full client, it would only be $9.95, which is a great price already.

Understandably, though, LL needs some ROI and profit so things can keep growing. This would fit in well, though, because it would mean a higher consumer base for the producers and thus a more lucrative market for the producers.

-Zax

*fear*
I fit the Hiro Protagonist stereotype pretty well.
POOR (but no a pizza boy thankfuly)

You're suggesting a level of commercialism that SL has never seen; one that ties the RW to SL in such a way that they can't be seperated. One that makes SL no longer a game in it's own write but a development platform that can support anything (not a bad thing in it self) and have that anything tied to your bank account. It sends chills down my spine. Before any of this can happen of course SL will need to become more of a development platform. To acheive such an end we will need multiple continents that are not connected, with different asset servers (with asset server import abilities from one of the other servers). The ability to control what objects can exist and be attached to players in continents. Greater control over the sims. Political structures assembled to take care of continents.

SL will take over the world.

*Wonders if this will be SL2 or SL3*


of course if SL does money transactions on this scale they will probably be held to banking laws.

Strife, I think that what you say is exactly what Linden Labs have in mind, given Philip Linden's remarkable talk yesterday. No corporate control though, he knows that he has to take the harnesses off and let the community find its own way, as it did with the Internet. He said that plainly.

As you say, LL do need to make a return on investment, but that won't be hard in their role as a hosting company (after the bulk of the software development is done and some stability is reached), because the money just keeps rolling in from the land tax and it keeps growing without limit. As long as they're not too greedy and don't try to cream off more than the profits that normal developers of attractions can earn, they have a winning recipe.

As for how to get those non-creative players to come in with cash to fund the whole operation, that's easy. If we provide large and interesting gaming attractions, they will come because all gamers are perpetually looking for great new games. And they could bring with them say US$8 a month (a "no land" gaming account) which LL could split into a share for them and a share for us, by giving the players a large bunch of L$ to spend on our products.

That's a remarkably easy system to set up. However, this cannot happen until we are provided with the means to create large interactive attractions in the first place, and we're a long way from that, sadly.

That's exactly what they are. You can browse for free, or own some shared hosting space for 9.95/mo and up, or go for a whole host at 195 /mo.



Actually, they already have the no land accounts. It costs $9.95 one-time and there is no monthly fee. Only thing is, the stipend is only L$50 per week. This means the no-land residents need to either buy more L$ off of GOM or IGE, or get it some other way -- which doesn't exist yet (besides rating bonuses and such). L$50 just isn't enough on an individual level to be able to afford much of value. At current levels, it's just about USD 25 cents.

Compare that to ring tones and wallpaper on cell phones that cost USD$2 each. If that seems expensive, it certainly hasn't slowed a market down that could be more lucrative than CDs themselves shortly. Those are the sort of prices and buying activities that get big business interested. And once big business is interested, stuff stays around -- and that's good for everyone.





Not to mention gambling laws... I'm actually wondering why they don't have that issue already? Seems like it's someting that if not taken care of could really hurt at some point.

This was something i was trying to put into the post just didn't quite make it in.

about every 2 months i get roped into working on one of the mulitplayer games in SL. And building games is difficult because of the problems with security and speed. LSL wasn't designed for either.

There are a few diffirent reasons (regardless of Philips on-high speech) that I dont think SL wont be selling L$ and perform the functions of the third party exchanges. One of the most important is that Linden Lab protects itself from its consumer (us) by specifically claiming -zero- true dollar value to the L$, as well as -zero- true dollar value to in-world items (ie sections 4.3, 6.4, 10 of the eula). How could the company both sell an item for a price and yet claim legally that it has no value? hmmmmmmm

Ah, that explains why "gambling" isn't an issue with the 18-21 year olds that can't gamble in all states. (And any inter-country issues that exists there, as well...)

I think that what they mean is that it has no value controlled by them. This is true because they inject land primarily into the auctions, so any value is assigned by the community, not by them. And that's how they want it.

In any event, land is just an intermediate concept for them, because what they're really hosting (ie. what uses up their resources) is prim activity which translates directly into CPU usage and bandwidth. Land itself costs very little to host in the absence of activity, it's just disk space.

What this means is that the resource which has a hard tangible value on their balance sheet is not the resource that they are overtly placing on the market and talking about (land) ... a very peculiar state of affairs which brings to mind the phrase sleight of hand.

I love it!

Yep Morgaine - as the financial infrastructure continues to be built - create and build and buyers will come - and others too!

I think that's entirely by design, Zax. We need people to go buy L$ from GOM and IGE. That's what makes it possible for content creators to cash out and receive their incentive for developing. If the dole was higher for the basic accounts there'd be less demand for L$, making the market for L$ collapse. Land has driven L$ sales up til now, and that kept the exchange rate high, but also caused land prices to hit unreasonable levels. I'm not sure LL ever intended land sales to be the driving force behind the third party currency exchanges. We need to get to where the content is compelling enough that people are willing and eager to buy it ala carte. LL has recently talked about making it easier for third party exchanges like GOM to sell and buy currency so that their customers don't have to leave the SL UI to do it, with LL taking care of the credit card transactions. That should help drive L$ sales since it takes a while for a new users to discover that GOM and IGE even exist and the need to set up a paypal account and get it verified probably turns a lot of people off. If someone hasn't already set themselves up with paypal then they can't buy L$ on impulse since it takes a couple of days to get and verify a paypal account. Once the currency exchanges are incorporated into the UI, impulse buying will rise dramatically I bet... which in turn should keep the exchange rate fairly high. But content has to be king and I think Morgaine is right... it's not likely to all completely gel until more elaborate interactive content gets developed.

What we need is to raise prices and get it through the noobies' thick skulls that they arent supposed to "figure out how to make money" in order to enjoy the game. They are supposed to go buy it with USD just like in There.
A lot of people leave because they "have no money". I suppose it's because they are used to stupid inflationary economies such as EQ, where you can squeeze money out of rabbits and snakes.

Hahaha. I think your post could have done with a smily or ten.

However, when presented slightly differently, it doesn't sounds so bad: if enough interactive gaming content is available and of high standard, then they'll want to come in and bring their dollars with them. The hardcore interactive gamer has absolutely no interest in paying money in order to be allowed to build his own gaming world (yeah, we're sort of nutty that way), but give him something exciting to do and he'll bring a wallet packed with notes. I know that from having several friends in that category --- their biggest quibble is that there is almost nothing good out there for them to play.