The economy is broken...

Has anyone else reached the opinion that the SL economic model, as far as the average citizen goes, is broken?

As a full member, you get L500 per week. Buying some typical items - such as clothes - costs around 250. So you can buy 2 clothing items, if you dont buy anything else. Good skins, for example, cost a lot more.

So all those citizens on the standard (paid for in hard US$) account, are poverty stricken.
I've noticed this quite a bit, not so much myself but on talking to other new players. They'd all like to do more things, but havent got any money.

So how are we supposed to get more? The 2 ways in the real worls are to get a job, or sell stuff. Well, there isnt exactly a huge demand for SL jobs, and pretty much all I've seen are for escorts and dancers (!). Ignoring for a moment any moral twinges you might have about applying for those sort of jobs, they dont seem to make much, because - thats right, few of the potential customers have any money...!!

As to selling to each other - fine, but unless EVERYONE is doing this, this is also a bust. Might have worked initially, but things change. As the world grow, a smaller and smaller percentage will be people sho come here just to build and sell stuff.

I think that along the way the management have lost site of the goal of their customers - which is to have fun. I'm not saying you cant if you are broke, but that its a lot more difficult!

So what do we do? Raise the weekly stipend might work, but would it lead to inflation? Possibly not, although I can hear the screams of teh long-establisehd retailers already...
But I think something needs to be done if SL is to remain an expanding and growing world.

I think that along the way the customers have lost sight of the goals of the management - which is to create a persistant 3D universe within which users can do whatever they wish.

Having 'fun' is just a small part of this, but has been over emphasised by the influx of 'gamers' from 'game worlds' looking for another game.

You can play most games these days by connecting to other users via the internet, without visiting online games like EQ, et al. However that does not make the internet a game...

LindenLab consistantly repeat that they are NOT a game company.

You're SUPPOSED to buy money. It is ASSUMED that you will buy it. The weekly stipend you get is BOUGHT with your monthly fee. SL would not even WORK if people didnt buy money. That's the only reward creators have for the time they invest in creating content here.
They ought to just take the L$ out of the way and make the USD SL's official currency.

I got along fine with L$500/week before I started selling clothes. A lot of items cost $50-$150, and for the occasional $600 PixelDolls outfit it's worth saving for a couple weeks. Watch what you spend and you can easily build up folders full of clothes over time. Or if you're in a hurry, buy on GOM or find a way to make money.

That's a fascinating statement...the customers have lost track of the goals of the company!!!

There is a very good word in RL for companies who use this motto. Its called out of business!

The only reasonable way to achieve the goal without help from the customers is to pay for everything yourself - this obviously isnt going to happen.

So if I, as a customer, am to help in the goal, then what's in it for me? Why should I spend out time and money to help someone else achieve their own goal? Altruism is nice, but I dont know these people, don't necessarily agree with what or how they are doing, so why should I help them out?

The motive is the same as the bulk of leasure activities -fun. If I'm goin to do this, I want to enjoy it. If I don't, I'm probably going to spend my free time doing something else. And while SL may not be a game company, that is exactly who they are competing with for peoples time and money. They have got some thing sgoing for them - its a completely free form system, it caters for adults, you can create your own content.
It also has flaws (from the users pov) - its slow, the economy is a joke, and the user base needs to grow to keep it viable, and it would be nice if we had more 'world' that isnt just an image of the real one.

My feeling is that the management have lost the plot somewhat (or perhaps more accurately, havent realised that things change, and thatthey need to update and modify their plans as the user base and the world expand and grow). They need to look at giving the user a better experienec -ideally at minimal cost to themselves. That way Sl will keep growing, and become successful. Keeping with a small user base thats been around a long time, puls newcomers who stay a while an dleave, is going to mean death in the medium/long term, and that would be a shame.

Define what you would want the stipend to be and what would you do with this money. I can tell already that you arnt shopping around if you are paying $250 per piece of clothing. Also, as in RL, every average person cant run a business and succeed. But 'poverty' is SL is much more pleasant than RL. You arnt hungry, you can still attend events, you can still travel, you can still make/do things, etc.

My best advice: Define your goals, work towards those goals, make friends, be yourself. Even a friend with no money can be your best asset because their knowledge combined with yours may help you both succeed. Like I said, depends on what you mean by success. For some, success is just logging in and chatting for a few with their friends.

The internet is a very big and diverse place, full of very different businesses and target audiences. If a million gamers wrote support requests to a banking website do you think the bank would change their business to run games instead of providing bank services?



Their goal is to provide a place for you to do whatever you want... and that could include RL banking if you wish to open a branch within SL...


You're assuming LindenLab is a leisure industry company... they say they're not.


You're only speaking on behalf ot the users who choose to use SL in their free time as entertainment... what about all the research and teaching projects? (Universities) The medical projects? (Autism, altered perseptions, etc) Support groups? Design experimentation? (both product and architectural). There are way many more uses for SL than mere entertainment.

LindenLab provided L$, its the users who create the economy, and the users who create the content that 'mirrors' RL.



It's kinda like having the choice between a general purpose playing field or a dedicated football field. You could provide the best football field ever, but you'd only attract football players.
LL have provided a general purpose field. If you choose to play football on it and find you're no good at football, that is not their fault...

I think this economic system was designed to spur creativity, and to create a new world, not just a game. Don't want to be creative? That's fine, then buy some lindens. For the same price you would pay to play WoW every month, you would have plenty of lindens to have fun with.

Nah, the economy is not broken... you just have to find opportunity.

I've recently had an idea... take a look here /130/f4/51112/1.html and contact me if you're interested.

I was quite taken aback when I read this. I hadn't realized I was supposed to be concerned with the goals of management ...

I thought management was supposed to be concerned about me ... making sure that as a customer I remained satisfied, and willing to spend money.

Why would you buy something at any store in RL? You probably don't know the person who owns the store...

When you join the ebay community, you don't expect ebay to give you money every week.

Linden Lab is not a game company -- they're a service provider.

- Jon

I have to agree. I didn't realize that as a customer of Linden Labs, it was my responsibility to be in tune with the goals of Linden Labs. Gee, I guess that's the problem with my relationship with Wally World, I am not in tune with their goals. Hmm, maybe that's the problem with any company that goes bankrupt, the customers were not in tune with that companies goals!

Guess what, I really don't care what goals Linden Labs has, as long as they take care of us customers. You know, the ones who pay the bills. I don't pay US$195 a month in tier to worry about the goals of Linden Labs. I expect them to care about my goals in playing their game.

Oh, by the way, SL is a game, otherwise they wouldn't have a leader board. Its just a really cool game set in a very impressive, evolving 3-D world, that we, as customers, should hope will only get better.

This is very true, but how far do you expect them to go in changing their product to keep you happy? At what point in the developement of SecondLife do they turn to each other and say "This is not the product we set out to create, but a clone of other popular products".

There has to be a line drawn between the desires of a single group (the gamers) and the goals of the provider trying to make more than "just another game".


I'm not trying to insite gamers to leave SL and go play games... I'm saying there is more to SL than playing games...

This topic is brought up a lot .. Im confused at people who act like they cant survive on the stipend.

WITH ZERO money you can -

get a free apartment.
get an entire closet of free clothes.
get free houses, vehicles, specialty items.
attend events where you wont pay anything and may even make money.

not to mention you dont need to eat or pay any bills - love to see people pull that off RL


K - with that 500 stipend you could fairly easily (with the 9.95 a month plan)

can only buy 2 outfits a week true - outfits that never get dirty or wear out.
save up 2-3 weeks and get a skin (some very good skins are only 1k)
Buy a 400-500$ vehicle
Rent a nice apartment.
Buy some first land and BUILD a FREE house, or shop or whatever.

sure you cant do all of these in one week - but you cant IRL either. How many pay cash for a car the same week they shop for clothes or get a morgage on your house (which is what teir is kinda).


Add in a 100-300 Linden a week job and you are getting by no problem.

What I did when I started out is buy 5k Lindens for $20 - Making SL cost me a whole $30

I bought a Skin and some clothes and hair and things. Most dont need more then 1 decent skin for a long time or ever.

************************
All this other spending and buying money on GOM is Luxury spending

Its great there is a demand - it says SL has a considerable Entertainment value.

Its not somthing to complain about. You can get by without it.

As far as whether or not that SL economy is broken, I can honestly say I am not sure. I do know that with so many people focused on making US$ through sales to IGE.com and GOM, that there has been a huge outflux of L$ from the inworld economy. When you take that much money out, the butterfly affect goes into over drive. Of course, it could also be the virtural monopolies some players have on different segments of the economy. But, all of this is just my honest opinion.

I must admit, I get frustrated and tired when all I here from people is: Are you making enought to pay tier? Honestly, I don't care if I make enough to pay tier or not, I don's sell to IGE.com, though I purchase quite a bit from them. I am in SL to relax, have some fun and maybe, just maybe, make SL just a little bit better. I am not in SL to subsidize my RL. I have a RL career, thank you.

Lora and Colette are absolutely right.

Some weeks I spend very little of my stipend and it soon adds up to an amount where I can buy pretty much anything I want (i.e. 5k on a Romanza building from Relic which is must-haveable ).

I have tried making some items which haven't had the greatest success in selling, but now I am looking at other options. If your choice is to create nothing and just use SL as a social place, that's fine. But as Colette points out, there are thousands of free items in SL. And, of course, you can buy a few thousand L$ on GOM for very little US$

I would like to ask which other 'game' (which SL is not) gives you money with which to play it? None as far as I know.

Alexa

Remember that while IGE may horde piles of L$ in the hope of making a killing when they put their prices up, if you sell on GOM you're selling directly to other users, so technically you're not removing any L$ from the economy, just spreading it around to others that want it.

To me, there is no distinction between IGE.com and GOM. They are both ways in with those in SecondLife can buy and sell L$ for RL money. Yes, GOM has a different interface than IGE.com, but both of them use central clearing houses in which the L$ is stored. Also, in both, the L$ is taken out of the SL economy until it is sold to someone else inworld. Trying to sanctify GOM, which by the way, I don't agree with Linden Labs as endorsing as the official arbiter of exchange rates, does not change the fact that money is taken out of the SL economy in order for some to subsidize their RL lives.

It would appear I have been misunderstood. I never said anything about gamers ... didn't comment on my view of whether or not SL is a game or an evolving world.

I was seeking to make a very specific, narrow point. Which is that I feel that management's only goal is to make sure they have lots of happy customers. Not that their customers are in tune with any other goals they might have.

Sorry I was unclear.

IGE - IGE management decides how much the L$ is worth. If you disagree, tough.
GOM - Individual sellers decide, and if the buyer disagrees, buyer finds new seller.

The money is out of circulation only temporarily - and probably less temporarily than if most of us who sell on GOM were to spend it all in-world.

I was unaware that LL endorsed GOM as the final say on L$-real currency exchange rates. I thought it was more a de-facto thing. Where is this endorcement?

Jim,

I think you made yourself very clear. It just that there are those who see SL as only a place for creating and being all communal utopian. They don't like the fact that there those of us who see SL a bit differently or even see it as a game or entertainment.

You are very correct, its not a customers job to make sure that a company is happy, its the companies job to make sure that the customer is happy. Period.

No there isn't. The only money that is ever removed from the SL economy is because LL removes it with well-known sinks like upload fees, land auctions, etc.

IGE is a money trader. The L$ money never leaves SL. At some point, IGE may decide that they have too many L$ on hand, but that is their problem to deal with, and not some weakness in the SL economy.

- Jon

So, if I go to a Ford dealership, and insist that I want to buy a brand new Mazda RX-8, you think the dealer should provide what the customer wants?

If I go to McDonalds, I should be able to buy a Whopper?

- Jon

First, both IGE and GOM rely on the basic principals of supply and demand. If there is too much supply and very little demand, the price of a L$ drops, whether buying or selling. If the supply of L$ is tight and there is a lot of demand, the price of L$ goes up. Its very basic and simple concept. Again, trying to sanctify GOM because it is owned by those who play SL, does not make it any better or worse than IGE.

As far as an official endorsement of GOM by the Lindens, it is done everytime Philip Linden quotes the GOM rates or says that he is happy that the L$ is staying steady at a certain rate. If Philip was giving his official endorsement, then I would expect him to quote both IGE and GOM.

How do GOM / IGE sales tale L$ out of the economy?