The Solution To Devaluation

I get more and more $L every day that I did not pay for. I will never go to such a site, because I also have real US$ costs associated to running my business. I can't wait forever to sell. I will always try to get the most possible out of my $L, but I will always sell cheaper when there are more $L up for sale than $L demanded for buying. At least in a variable market I can adjust to get things sold in the time period I need them in. In your suggested situation, I have to wait however long it takes for everyone to get sold in front of me in line. I want the option to jump the line and sell my $L cheaper.

I agree, and I think some of us should be able to provide a "L$ Baron" type service, where we buy up L$ from those who are in a hurry to sell and then hold/sell them at higher price.

Unfortunately, the way the Lindex is structured at the moment, that is a far too risky adventure to undertake.

This seems like it would involve an AWFUL lot of buying and holding, but not much selling. You definately chose the right term in "adventure". It would be interesting to see the results though.

I feel relieved. Sorry, that I got you wrong. Who were the other participants in the discussion believing in LL "swiping your idea and making it their own"?
Sorry, when I phrased my reply in a way that lead to missunderstandings. The words "small" or "limited" were being used by me in a comparitative fashion. When you are clustering companies by size for statistical or analytical purposed, you often build groups like "small", "medium", "large" etc. Official statistics use groupings like that a lot. And in these terms Linden Lab is a "small" company with "limited resources" when you build such clusters in the global economy, the US economy, the software industry etc.

While 8 Million US$ is a nice sum for many of us, an engagement on this scale actually is "below the radar" for many of the larger VC firms.

I guess that you are using "most expensive" comparitatively, similar to my usage of "small" or "limited". If this is the case, it is a little hard for me to understand why you think SL to be "most expensive" in such a comparison.

We did an overview of the market some 5 months ago and Second Life came out as one of the inexpensive platforms. There are many offers on the market which are significantly more expensive that 9.95$/month for a premium account (6,00$/month with yearly payment). And if you count in basic accounts for 9.95$ lifetime it is not easy to find an offer that is much cheaper.

Me too!

Agreed! But not all of them at once.

Pham's understanding agrees with mine. According to a Reuters story dated yesterday, online gaming is still growing fast, and "Blizzard Entertainment's "World of Warcraft," has attracted 5.5 million users to shatter previous records. Players not only buy the PC game, they pay a monthly subscription fee of roughly $15 per month -- something that appeals to upstart online game service providers looking for ways to turn a profit."
Online console gaming primed for take-off (Feb 3, 2006)

So 5.5 million WoW players pay $15/month, its not the most populous MMORPG, and this is just mainstream online gaming. Compared to the cost of a health club, country club, theater and movie tickets twice a month, ballet or opera subscription, or season tickets to your local sports team, the cost of SL is peanuts for any employed adult.

NP. I don't like naming names directly because it puts other folks on the spot, but two users on the first page made the same basic observation (albiet one somewhat slyly. ).



Ah, my turn to backtrack and explain. The basic membership is cheaper than other platforms, most of which are $15 to $20 a month. However, land is another matter. In most other games, land is either not available, free or low cost. I remember seeing one less-technically-advanced board that rented out 140,000 sqm at about $300 a year. When we consider that it costs over US$3,500 the first year to rent a sim, SL is the most expensive platform I've ever seen.

We have no idea how many actual "Premium" members they have... but let's say that of 120,000 members... 10% of them are Premium (we have no way of knowing for sure, but it's a good medium range). That's 12,000 people paying between $72 and $120 a year for membership. Let's average to $85 per person. $1.02 million right there. There are 1000+ sims at this time. More than half of those have been set up in the last year, for fees ranging from $800 to $1250. Average to $1000 just for fun. That's $400,000 to $500,000 in sim setup fees. 1000 sims, with a minimal tier fee of $195 per month per sim (most sims pulling far more than that from smaller land parcels with higher /m tier)... and we have $195,000 per month in sim fees... minimum. (My guess is the actual figure is much higher).

So, total yearly gross would come to a very conservative estimate of $3.86 million dollars. Or, based on that 12,000 blind-guess Premium members, comes to a total of $321 per paying member per year, $26.80 per month.

But the best actual gauge I can think of when it comes to expense is the total cost of owning a 4096m piece of land (which most folks consider to be a workable size piece of land). $25 tier + cost of land itself + Premium membership. If the land runs L8/m with an L$ conversion rate of $3.50 / 1000, that land costs US$112. The total 1-year cost of owning a 4096 (based on annual rather than monthly membership) then comes to $484... or $40.33 a month.

Expensive platform.

Now I do appreciate that LL allows a lot of people to pay for virtually nothing, and KUDOS for that (on the other hand, it's really increased the griefer problem and LL seems to be doing nothing about that). But if we're talking about the cost to actually be a resident in the system, that's high-dollar. Agreed, as one user pointed out it's not as much as some other forms of entertainment. But it's not cheap. I figure our landgroup right now is paying $13,360 to LL for the first year ownership of our Elven sims. That's a wad-o-cash.

Wayfinder, we both know that it is possible to get nearly any result you want out of a comparison by cutting the comparison group accordingly and weighting the different parameters. I have to admit, that I once wrote a program with exactly this shameful purpose when I was a young assistent at the university. I hope you don't doubt, that with a different set of assumptions and weightings I could "prove" to you that EVE online, Project Entropia or even WoW are terribly expensive and SL is dirt cheap? It is all a question of what facts you want to prove.

But the team that made this comparison was not motivated in any way to bring out that SL - or any other platform - is either the cheapest or most expensive. So, I guess it was as objective as such a comparison can be. You don't have to - and probably won't - buy that, of course.

I agree with you that you can spend a lot of money in SL (I surely do ). But there is absolutely no need to do that to enjoy the game. You can have a lot of fun with the Basic Account. And a premium account with an additional 1,024 sqm brings you a long, long way (and is cheaper than a subscription for WoW). The majority of residents does not feel the need to build large castles. The go dancing and chatting or are playing *ingo.

Why don't you include basic accounts in you calculation? Nobody of us two knows how many "active" residents on basic accounts we have. (The assumption of 10% to 12% Premium Accounts is plausible, BTW). Even, if this number is only double that of the premium account holders the avarage price for "playing" SL that you calculated comes down fast ...

We might agree that it makes sense to include only estate owners in our statistic though ...