Worth a shot

Wooohoo the joy. I'd just have to wait 1 month to buy a texture. What if I wanted a 1k object. Yummy would be great fun waiting to get that money saved up. Get a grip.

It just means "work for me for free".

If you want a 1k object as a basic account holder, waiting would be impractical. You should do one of three things:

1. Do something to make L$1000
2. Spend $3.30 or so to buy L$1000
3. Realize that you really didn't want it so badly in the first place, and stop complaining.

It would seem that those are the three prevailing options.

It's bad to buy L$ for $ because this is a game and doing so transforms it into a profit making engine for some. This taking away the fun of the game. It also makes people invest what they can't afford into the game.

So I should stop playing the game because I refuse to pay for your land in this game? I seriously feel sorry for you people that have this unbreakable link between this game and real life. Games are made for fun. You know what I've made a few cheezy animations and I gave them out for free just for the enjoyment of seeing someone actually using it. No I can not make animations and make money off it because like anything in this game with potential of turning into real money the market is flooded. Also not being thick enough to buy more land then my budget would allow WITHOUT money changing I can not buy the space to market any products I may be able to make.

So you cant spend 2 hours hosting an event for other playes for a bit of cash.. but you can go and kill the same monsters in WoW for 9 hours straight juts to get half a level of experience? Sorry to say it, but both situations are similar. Grinding for xp in the other MMO's is more mundane and boring than anything you can do in second life.

Furthermore second life is all about community and being social. You cant do the term "solo" in second life and get very far. Why is it so bad to go spend 2 hours helping out with a community event and getting paid bucks for it once a week? Thats what this game is built for.. having fun as a "community".

Are the folks at LL bad for working and making money to make this game? Are the folks at Blizzard wrong for working and making money on World of Warcraft? Are the folks at Cryptic Studios and NCsoft wrong for working on and making money from City of Heroes?

I think I know who's being greedy here. Hint: It's not me.

By the way, I've reported you for calling me stupid. If you can't argue a point without insutling people, you should just shut up.

Do you really want an answer to this question?

lol Shaun, so everyone makes a sofa and LL is supposed to guess whether it can sell at least 250 times (just to get to break even). And soon you have 40,000 sofas available on llMegaExchange -- and each one is going to sell 250 times because its on llMegaExchange? Or is LL supposed to dedicate staff to evaluating the quality and marketability of each item and set their retroactive work-for-hire price accordingly?

it'll never work

If soemone is leveling that slowly in WoW they suck. Grinding on murlocs is more entertaining that watching some pixel hoe grind the EXACT SAME WAY on a pole for an hour, while listening to 50 cent till your ears bleed. Watching a bunch of Tringo drones play Tringo, ohh yeah that is a THRILL.



You can't win the war like this. People have different preferences in what they find enjoyable.


The topic here is what can be done so that average users (you know the people that support the content creators) have money to spend in SL on content. I think many people will probably just buy Lindens when it becomes easier to do so, but the question is how long will they last in SL?

Perhaps this is the wrong "game" for you.



Why do you feel like you should have to pay or leave? Just expect to get what you pay for.



I doubt if anyone who's smart enough to produce income here considers it significant IRL yet, with such a small population of residents.



Fun costs.



Translation, you gave up income potential because you felt it would be FUN to have a broader base of residents using your content. The sacrificing of potential earnings was what this perticular instance of fun cost you.



BETTER! FASTER! CHEAPER! Or, better yet, how about making the NEXT great thing (innovation)?



This is a sound strategy. Perhaps you could rent mall space instead though.

Ok then, maybe you should only get 50x! I was TRYING to be generous! At any rate, I think the principle is sound as long as there is some huge L$ sink offseting the huge L$ influx.

Actually, in SL, if you create your own teacups, you dont have to pay to ride them. However, if you want to ride somebody else's teacup, you *might* have to pay something. And if someone wants to ride *your* teacup...

That being said, there are a lot of things that you can do in SL that is fun and entertaining without having to pay for anything. And if you need a few L$, extra, you are certainly welcome to idle at my casino -- $8 is given to random people every 10 minutes.

Oh I know the two games cannot be compared.. they are completely different. I only brought it up because WoW was used earlier in the thread as a reference point to compare to SL. And I was overexaggerating about grinding.. just trying to make a point that any game takes "some" type of work to succeed in.

And you are correct.. it is preference. Some people have fun leveling up in games.. others have fun just hanging out and chatting.

Real economics are the only thing that is constant between RL and SL - thats the primary link and incentive system, not to mention "metaphor" for the game. There are in fact "plumbers, mechanics, etc." in SL - they are called Scripters. Putting everyone who "creates" in the same bucket called "content creators" does a terrible disservice to your comparison between RL and SL.

From an economic perspective - the right thing for SL would be for all prices in-world to drop dramatically to properly reflect in-world incomes rather than to expect more effort from more residents that fits your definition of "content creators".

Never played WOW and no intentions of doing so. I played Anarchy Online and had quite a bit of fun doing so until the developers ruined the game. No I can't go host events for 2 hours because 1: that sounds extremly boring to me 2: the pay isn't squat and 3: noone would hire me because they'd have to teach me how to do it in advance. Noone wants to teach anything useful in this game. When I was making animations a long time ago with intentions of selling I asked and asked for help with coding a vending machine. Noone would help so I said screw it and just gave them away.

Cory,

I do not think you understand the premise of SL. The idea here is that the users that create the content, can be compensated irl for creating that content. That is one of the basic foundations of SL, if you don't like that you are in the wrong place.

You pay NOTHING to play SL, not one dime. You give away your content that you created for free. You are not willing to learn any new skills or try something new. You are not willing to buy $L. And you want to get paid. And you want to call others greedy? I think you may be the one who needs to get a grip.

totally, Eboni. As usual, you cut to the chase.

I agree: tools have to improve (easier to make better content, easier to form hierarchical teams without needing 100% trust), the content needs to improve (increase demand), the opportunities need to improve (subcontract yourself out somehow).

Also: so many people who aren't on the creation/selling side don't realize what poor returns most content creators right now get. As has been pointed out, the hourly rate is definitely sub-minimum wage. Unless there's an SL job out there that looks FUN to you, you'd be kind of nuts to do it! If you need a few bucks to spend on entertainment, make it in the real world -- you get paid MUCH better.

Scripters creat content. They are behind the scenes but they often make more money than the people that they have created the script for since often they are paid a flat fee up front for a script. Even still, scripting in SL is a skill that you have to learn for SL since it is not taught outside of SL currently. That being said scripting is not entry level employment in SL.

The only entry level employment in SL that is always hiring is prostitution.

I believe the age of the simple product provider has reached it's plateau. Simply building single products like furniture, aircraft or clothing is no longer enough to build a world interesting enough to hold the sorts of users we're seeing sign up now.
Now we need larger scale projects - games and activities that are more involved and lay out specific and fun goals. Tringo and it's ilk are along these lines for short-term, single evening play. But I'm thinking more broadly as well. A more involved version of Dark Life, the ability to engage in dogfights with scores being kept long term for "ace" status, horse racing, involved role playing systems... SL is capable of doing so much, despite its shortcommings. We're just not pushing hard enough.
I suspect once we get more of this sort of thing down, far more people will be willing to spend some RL money to get L$.
Up to us, though. LL's not in this to make the content for us.

I agree 100% Jillian.

Actually, this isn't entirely true. Anyone who knows C/C++/similar language can come into SL and begin scripting nearly right away. All that's left at that point is to learn the API and learn how the events work. Well, and to learn how to tolorate lists.

i also agree 100% Jillian. Although I think we have platform problems that get in the way of building the kind of cool content we need.

This is going to shock some people....



I think everyone here is being a little mean to Corey. I think that Corey may be a good representation of what new members may think when coming to SL. I can see now why people think that people on forums are hell bent on running new members off, this thread is a prime example.


The new people are the people that are going to buy our stuff. Most content creators incestuously pass content around amongst themselves for free. People are not going to continue to have income unless we can get new members, keep them and have them see the value in purchasing content in SL and why it is acceptable for people to earn RL cash at it. The concept of SL is a new one, nothing else like it exists. Threads like this make SL seem like a hostile money grubbing place where cash is King.


The internet for a lot of people is a way to escape the downfalls of RL. If people are joining SL only to find they are poor, have no way to earn money and at the bottom of the social totem pole, can't they just move to Arkansas for that shit? *dodges tomatoes* SL is really lacking as a fantasy outlet for people if they have to constantly be concerned about economics. Yes some people are willing to buy Lindens, but a lot of people won’t be.


In winning the content for cash is king battle, you may end up losing the war, SL.


This thread has depressed me.

Your attitude disturbs me. How shortsighted you are.

No, there are no cook openings per se (no need to eat) or truck drivers (no need to transport goods from place to place) or nannies (no actual children to care for). There are a lot of RL jobs that don't apply in SL, but there are a lot of things that can translate over from RL to SL.

My partner and I run a newspaper. We have jobs for writers, sales people, and graphic artists that pay quite well, by SL standards. There is a new Notary Public that has opened. There are ministers with churches. There are a lot of things that don't exist yet, but only because no one has started doing them.

The whole argument that SL is not a game is based on this concept: in a game, there must be a goal of some sort to achieve, whether it's scoring the most points, killing the most monsters, or whatever. SL has none of this.

Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of the whole "I can't make any money because I don't have any skills" whine. It's not that hard to learn to build, for example. six months ago I was clueless about how to do anything like that. There are classes available in building, and scripting, and texturing... there are LOTS of resources.

My opinion is, SL is what you make it. If someone wants to just have everything handed to them, maybe they should find another "game."

P2

I live in Arkansas, Eboni.

modifies watermelon gun to shoot rotten tomatoes



P2